Solo Scriptura, Sola Scriptura, and the Question of Interpretive Authority

Nov 4th, 2009 | By Bryan Cross | Category: Featured Articles

According to Keith Mathison, over the last one hundred and fifty years Evangelicalism has replaced sola scriptura, according to which Scripture is the only infallible ecclesial authority, with solo scriptura, the notion that Scripture is the only ecclesial authority. The direct implication of solo scriptura is that each person is his own ultimate interpretive authority.

Christus Pantocrator in the apsis of the cathedral of Cefalù

Solo scriptura is, according to Mathison, an unbiblical position; proponents of sola scriptura should uphold the claim that Scripture is the only infallible authority, but should repudiate any position according to which individual Christians are the ultimate arbiters of Scriptural truth. In this article we argue that there is no principled difference between sola scriptura and solo scriptura with respect to the holder of ultimate interpretive authority, and that a return to apostolic succession is the only way to avoid the untoward consequences to which both solo scriptura and sola scriptura lead.

Contents:

I. Introduction
II. Description of Solo Scriptura and What is Wrong with It, According to Mathison
III. Mathison on Sola Scriptura, and How It Differs from Solo Scriptura
IV. Why There Is No Principled Difference Between Sola Scriptura and Solo Scriptura

A. Direct and Indirect Ultimate Interpretive Authority
B. The Contradiction Internal to the Sola Scriptura Position
C. The Delusion of Derivative Authority

V. Objections and Replies

A. Tu Quoque: “The Catholic Position Does Not Avoid Solo Scriptura“
B. Sola Ecclesia: The Church is Autonomous, a Law unto Itself, and Unaccountable

VI. Implications

I. Introduction

Sola scriptura is arguably the most foundational point of disagreement underlying the nearly five-hundred year rift between Catholic and Protestant Christians. The Catholic Encyclopedia identifies sola scriptura, alongside sola fide and the ministerial priesthood of all believers, as one of the three fundamental principles of Protestantism; and nineteenth century Church historian Philip Schaff, in agreement with many Protestant thinkers, describes sola scriptura as the “formal principle” of Protestant theology.¹ The doctrine may be viewed as a “dangerous idea” by some, or as an exhilarating and liberating one by others.² But there can be little doubt that sola scriptura is an essential component of historic Protestant theology, and that it is crucial to the justifiability of the sixteenth-century schism and the perpetuation of this schism today.

Catholic critics of sola scriptura have argued that sola scriptura is essentially a denial of ecclesial authority, and hence that sola scriptura necessarily leads to a fragmentation in which each person interprets Scripture as seems right in his own eyes. In this way, they argue, sola scriptura is largely responsible not only for the separation of Protestants from the Catholic Church, but also for the vast number of schisms between Protestants. But a relatively recent book has given Protestants a way of replying to these criticisms, by seeking to accommodate the Catholic critics’ legitimate concerns while simultaneously repudiating their vision of the relation between Scripture and Tradition. That book is titled The Shape of Sola Scriptura, by Keith A. Mathison, the associate editor of Tabletalk.

In his book, Mathison distinguishes between sola scriptura, which he claims to have been the belief of the early confessional Protestants, and what he calls solo scriptura, which Mathison believes is a deviation of the last one hundred and fifty years from the belief and teaching of the early confessional Protestants. As a result of Mathison’s book, in our experience, Protestants now more commonly respond to Catholic arguments against sola scriptura by claiming that these are arguments against solo scriptura, not against sola scriptura. In other words, the common Protestant response to the Catholic critique of sola scriptura is that the Catholic argument aimed at sola scriptura criticizes a straw man, critiquing solo scriptura instead of sola scriptura.

We understand and appreciate the prima facie significance of the distinction Mathison wishes to draw between solo and sola scriptura. However, as we shall argue below, there is no principled difference between sola scriptura and solo scriptura with respect to the locus of “ultimate interpretive authority:” sola scriptura, no less than solo scriptura, entails that the individual Christian is the ultimate arbiter of the right interpretation of Scripture. This implies that what Mathison calls ‘solo scriptura‘ is in fact a more clearly distilled manifestation over time of the true nature of sola scriptura. Moreover, we shall show that the only way to avoid the solo/sola position (and the unbiblical consequences to which it leads) is by way of apostolic succession.

The overall structure of our article is as follows. In the second section we present an overview of Mathison’s account of solo scriptura, explaining exactly what he believes to be wrong with solo scriptura. In the third section we present Mathison’s explanation of sola scriptura, and describe the putative contrast between solo scriptura and sola scriptura. In section four we show why there is no principled distinction between sola scriptura and solo scriptura. In section five we consider some objections to our argument, and show why they do not refute our argument. Finally, in section six we lay out a few noteworthy implications of our argument, including the implication that all the criticisms Mathison levels at solo scriptura apply equally to sola scriptura.

II. Description of Solo Scriptura and What Is Wrong with It, According to Mathison

In his book and his related article, Keith Mathison criticizes the position he calls ‘solo scriptura,‘ namely, the position that “Scripture [is] not merely the only infallible authority but that it [is] the only authority altogether.”³ He describes the solo scriptura position as rejecting altogether even “the true but subordinate authority of the church and the regula fidei” (i.e., the “rule of faith”).⁴ Mathison admirably demonstrates various significant problems with solo scriptura, including a hermeneutical problem, a set of historical problems, and a Scriptural problem. Because we agree substantially with Mathison’s critique of solo scriptura, we shall present his criticisms with scant commentary before turning our attention to his account of sola scriptura.

Hermeneutical Problem with Solo Scriptura

Mathison begins his criticism of solo scriptura by pointing his readers to the widespread “hermeneutical chaos and anarchy” caused by the existence of conflicting interpretations of Scripture. Why is this “hermeneuetical chaos” a problem? One primary reason, according to Mathison, is that the divisions and disagreements between Christians undermine the credibility of Christians and the gospel. He writes:

One of the most obvious facts facing any intelligent person who has been a Christian for more than a few days is the reality of multitudes of conflicting interpretations of Scripture. . . .

Is there any way to ever resolve the hermeneutical chaos and anarchy that exists within the Protestant church largely as a result of its adoption of radical individualism? Most Protestants do not seem to have taken this question seriously enough if they have considered it at all. If we proclaim to the unbelieving world that we have the one true and final revelation from God, why should they listen to us if we cannot agree about what that revelation actually says? Jesus prayed for the disciples that they would be one (John 17:21a). And why did He pray for this unity? He tells us the reason, “that the world may believe that You sent me” (17:21b). The world is supposed to be hearing the Church preach the gospel of Christ, but the world is instead hearing an endless cacophony of conflicting and contradictory assertions by those who claim to be the Church of Christ. This is the heart of the hermeneutical problem we face in the Church today.⁵

The fact of so many different conflicting interpretations dims the light of the gospel to the world.⁶ This “cacophony of conflicting and contradictory assertions” leaves even the Christian bewildered and uncertain, groping about to find the way, the truth and the life of Christ and His gospel. Mathison writes:

Almost every Christian who has wrestled with theological questions has encountered the problem of competing interpretations of Scripture. . . . Each man will claim that the other is in error, but by what ultimate authority do they typically make such a judgment? Each man will claim that he bases his judgment on the authority of the Bible, but since each man’s interpretation is mutually exclusive of the other’s, both interpretations cannot be correct. How then do we discern which interpretation is correct?⁷

The cause of this hermeneutical chaos, according to Mathison, is solo scriptura. Solo scriptura creates this hermeneutical chaos because it leaves no interpretive authority by which interpretive disputes may be definitively resolved. He writes:

The typical modern Evangelical solution to this problem is to tell the inquirer to examine the arguments on both sides and decide which of them is closest to the teaching of Scripture. He is told that this is what sola scriptura means-–to individually evaluate all doctrines according to the only authority, the Scripture. Yet in reality, all that occurs is that one Christian measures the scriptural interpretations of other Christians against the standard of his own scriptural interpretation. Rather than placing the final authority in Scripture as it intends to do, this concept of Scripture places the final authority in the reason and judgment of each individual believer. The result is the relativism, subjectivism, and theological chaos that we see in modern Evangelicalism today.⁸

According to Mathison, then, when each person is deciding for himself what is the correct interpretation of Scripture, Scripture is no longer functioning as the final authority. Rather, each individual’s own reason and judgment becomes, as it were, the highest authority, supplanting in effect Scripture’s unique and rightful place. Can we avoid this result simply by letting Scripture interpret itself? According to Mathison, the answer is no:

All appeals to Scripture are appeals to interpretations of Scripture. The only real question is: whose interpretation? People with differing interpretations of Scripture cannot set a Bible on a table and ask it to resolve their differences. In order for the Scripture to function as an authority, it must be read and interpreted by someone. According to “solo” Scriptura, that someone is each individual, so ultimately, there are as many final authorities as there are human interpreters.⁹

This is a fundamental insight. All appeals to Scripture are appeals to interpretations of Scripture. But, according to Mathison, adherents of solo scriptura have not realized that all appeals to Scripture are in fact appeals to interpretations of Scripture. Because they fail to appreciate this fact, Mathison charges that:

Ultimately the interpretation of Scripture becomes individualistic with no possibility for the resolution of differences. This occurs because adherents of solo scriptura rip the Scripture out of its ecclesiastical and traditional hermeneutical context, leaving it in a relativistic vacuum. The problem is that there are differing interpretations of Scripture, and Christians are told that these can be resolved by a simple appeal to Scripture. . . . The problem that adherents of solo scriptura haven’t noticed is that any appeal to Scripture is an appeal to an interpretation of Scripture. The only question is: whose interpretation? When we are faced with conflicting interpretations of Scripture, we cannot set a Bible on a table and ask it to resolve our difference of opinion as if it were a Ouija board. In order for Scripture to serve as an authority at all, it must be read, exegeted, and interpreted by somebody.¹⁰

Because Scripture must be interpreted, and because Scripture cannot interpret itself by itself, it follows that some person or persons must interpret Scripture if Scripture is to function as an authority. Otherwise, irreconcilable hermeneutical disputes can only end in division, as each faction has no recourse but to separate. And these divisions are contrary to the will of Christ who prays in John 17 that all His followers would be one, so that the world would see that the Father sent the Son. These divisions are also contrary to the command of the Apostle Paul, who exhorts us that there be no divisions among us.¹¹ According to Mathison, the false assumption among advocates of solo scriptura is that the individual Christian can somehow bypass the interpretive process, resolving these hermeneutical disputes by a “simple appeal to Scripture.” But that does not resolve the dispute, as Mathison rightly notes, precisely because each disagreeing party is in actuality appealing to his own interpretation of Scripture. And hermeneutical disputes cannot be resolved so long as the disputing parties deny that hermeneutics is involved. So the necessity of interpretation leads us to the obvious question: “Whose interpretation should be given the final say?”

To this question Mathison responds forthrightly, “the Church.” And naturally, our dispute with Mathison on this point does not center upon his answer (“the Church”), so much as the referent he assigns to that term, and the basis for its being the referent of that term, as we shall discuss below. First, however, we explain why Mathison contends that solo scriptura is not only false, inasmuch as it fails to align with the Biblical pattern and example, but is also pernicious.

According to Mathison, when Christians do not follow the authoritative guidance of the Church in their interpretation of Scripture, not only do they fall into various kinds of errors, but Scripture itself, as he shows by various examples, necessarily ceases to function as their authority. In one example, he refers to Reformed theologian Robert Reymond’s call for “an abandonment of the Nicene Trinitarian concept in favor of a different Trinitarian concept,” referring to Reymond’s rejection of the Nicene Creed’s teaching that Christ is eternally begotten.¹² According to Mathison, this shows that for proponents of solo scriptura the Nicene Creed has no real authority.¹³

Mathison also refers to Edward Fudge, who defends annihilationism, as another example of someone operating according to solo scriptura. Fudge claims that Scripture “is the only unquestionable or binding source of doctrine on this or any subject.”¹⁴ The fact that annihilationism is heterodox does not deter him; he believes that his own interpretation of Scripture is correct on this matter, and that here the Church has been wrong. In addition to these examples, Mathison identifies Ed Stevens, who defends hyperpreterism, as another proponent of solo scriptura. Mathison quotes Stevens as writing:

Even if the creeds were to clearly and definitively stand against the preterist view (which they don’t), it would not be an overwhelming problem since they have no real authority anyway. They are no more authoritative than our best opinions today, but they are valued because of their antiquity. . . . We must not take the creeds any more seriously than we do the writings and opinions of men like Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, the Westminster Assembly, Campbell, Rushdoony, or C.S. Lewis.¹⁵

Referring to this quotation, Mathison writes:

Here we see the clear rejection of scripturally based structures of authority. The authority of those who rule in the Church is rejected by placing the decisions of an ecumenical council of ministers on the same level as the words of any individual. This is certainly the democratic way of doing things, and it is as American as apple pie, but it is not Christian. . . . If this doctrine of solo scriptura and all that it entails is true, then the Church has no more right or authority to declare Arianism a heresy than Cornelius Van Til would have to authoritatively declare classical apologetics a heresy. Orthodoxy and heresy would necessarily be an individualistic and subjective determination.¹⁶

The fundamental problem in each of these three examples, according to Mathison, is that the individual is failing to recognize the secondary authority of the Church and of the creeds. The result of making the individual the final interpretive authority, and not recognizing the interpretive authority of the Church, argues Mathison, is that the authority of Scripture is destroyed:

The adherents of solo scriptura dismiss all of this claiming that the reason and conscience of the individual believer is the supreme interpreter. Yet this results in nothing more than hermeneutical solipsism. It renders the universal and objective truth of Scripture virtually useless because instead of the Church proclaiming with one voice to the world what the Scripture teaches, every individual interprets Scripture as seems right in his own eyes. The unbelieving world is left hearing a cacophony of conflicting voices rather than the Word of the living God.¹⁷

Mathison’s point is that when individuals take Scripture out of its ecclesial context, and treat themselves as the ultimate or highest interpretive authorities, the practical authority of Scripture is effectively destroyed. Scripture can function as an objective authority only when interpreted in and by the Church.¹⁸

When each individual acts as his own ultimate interpretive authority, the result, argues Mathison, is a kind of de facto relativism. One person thinks a passage means one thing; another person claims that the same passage means something else. But without a divinely established interpretive authority to adjudicate the dispute, the practical result is that the meaning of Scripture is reduced to “what it means to me.” There is no one with interpretive authority to say, “That’s not what it means.” Rather, without interpretive authority the objector’s disagreement with another’s interpretation amounts to, “That’s not what it means to me.” To this the first person understandably replies, “I understand that that’s not what it means to you, but that’s what it means to me.” And this situation is a form of practical relativism. In this way, argues Mathison, solo scriptura “destroys” the authority of Scripture.¹⁹

Historical Problems with Solo Scriptura

According to Mathison, not only is there a hermeneutical problem with solo scriptura, there are also historical problems. The primary historical problem is that solo scriptura was not the position of the early Church or the medieval Church.²⁰ The early Christians, not only layman but even presbyters and bishops, did not resolve theological disputes by taking to themselves ultimate interpretive authority.²¹ The historical position, according to Mathison, is for a synod of bishops to address the matter with an authoritative decision. On this point Mathison quotes John Calvin, who wrote:

We indeed willingly concede, if any discussion arises over doctrine, that the best and surest remedy is for a synod of true bishops to be convened, where the doctrine at issue may be examined.²²

Mathison defends this position by pointing out that the Apostles provide an example of meeting in council (Acts 15:6-29) to resolve a question or dispute.

Another historical problem entailed by solo scriptura, according to Mathison, is that if the Church had no authority, then we would not have any certainty regarding the canon of Scripture.⁴ According to Mathison, solo scriptura thus leads to a “fundamental self-contradiction” in the solo scriptura position.²³ The contradiction is that proponents of solo scriptura appeal to Scripture as their only authority, yet without the authority of the Church they would not know with certainty which books belong to the canon of Scripture. In this way, argues Mathison, supporters of solo scriptura could not adequately respond to a modern-day Marcion who challenged the canon of Scripture, because they could not appeal to any authority to establish or confirm the canon.⁴

A third historical problem is the multiplication of schisms, which Mathison largely attributes to solo scriptura. He writes:

The Christian Church today is split into literally tens of thousands of denominations with hundreds of new divisions arising daily. Much of the responsibility for this divisiveness rests with the doctrine of solo scriptura. When each individual’s conscience becomes the final authority for that individual, differences of opinion will occur. When men feel strongly enough about their individual interpretations, they separate from those they believe to be in error. In the world today, we have millions of believers and churches convinced of thousands of mutually contradictory doctrines, and all of them claim to base their beliefs on the authority of Scripture alone.

Not only has solo scriptura contributed heavily to this division and sectarianism, it can offer no possible solution. Solo scriptura is the ecclesiastical equivalent of a nation with a constitution but no court of law to interpret that constitution. Both can lead to chaos. . . . But using Scripture alone, it cannot tell us what “Scripture” is or what it means. It simply cannot resolve differences of interpretation, and the result is more and more division and schism. The resolution of theological differences requires the possibility of authoritatively defining the propositional doctrinal content of Christianity, and it requires the possibility of an authoritative ecclesiastical “Supreme Court.” Since neither of those possibilities are allowed within the framework of solo scriptura, there can be no possibility of resolution.²⁴

As Catholics, we do not believe that Christ’s Church is split, because we believe that unity is one of the four essential marks of the Church specified by the Nicene Creed, and that since Christ cannot be divided, therefore Christ’s Body, the Church, cannot be divided. Any persistent schism therefore involves schism from the Church. ²⁵ But, we do agree with Mathison that non-Catholic Christians are split into thousands of denominations, and that these divisions are primarily the result of each individual treating himself as his own final interpretive authority.

A fourth historical problem resulting from solo scriptura, according to Mathison, is that it destroys the historic Christian faith by denying the ecclesial authority by which certain doctrines were definitively determined at particular times in the history of the Church to be orthodox and essential, and other doctrines definitively determined to be heretical. By rejecting the authority of the Church, solo scriptura reduces the authority of the ecumenical councils and creeds to that of the opinion of any individual Christian, and thus eliminates the possibility of an objective Christianity handed down to us through history.²⁶

In that respect, rejecting the authority of the Church, according to Mathison, has devastating consequences for Christianity, because it eliminates the creeds, and thereby eliminates the historic Christian faith as an objective reality.

If the ecumenical creeds have no real authority, then it cannot be of any major consequence if a person decides to reject some or all of the doctrines of these creeds-–including the Trinity and the deity of Christ. If the individual judges the Trinity to be an unbiblical doctrine, then for him it is false. No other authority exists to correct him outside of his own interpretation of Scripture. This is precisely why solo scriptura inevitably results in radical relativism and subjectivity. Each man decides for himself what the essential doctrines of Christianity are, each man creates his own creed from scratch, and concepts such as orthodoxy and heresy become completely obsolete. The concept of Christianity itself becomes obsolete because it no longer has any meaningful objective definition. Since solo scriptura has no means by which Scripture’s propositional doctrinal content may be authoritatively defined (such definition necessarily entails the unacceptable creation of an authoritative ecumenical creed), its propositional content can only be subjectively defined by each individual. One individual may consider the Trinity essential, another may consider it a pagan idea imported into Christianity. Without an authoritatively defined statement of Christianity’s propositional doctrinal content, neither individual can definitively and finally be declared wrong. Solo scriptura destroys this possibility, and thereby destroys the possibility of Christianity being a meaningful concept. Instead, by reducing Christianity to relativism and subjectivity, it reduces Christianity to irrationalism and ultimately nonsense.²⁷

Here again, Mathison is quite right. Denying the authority of the Church, by treating oneself as having greater interpretive authority than the Church, destroys the Christian faith for the very reasons Mathison so aptly explains. The content of the deposit of faith then becomes like a silver dollar hidden among a sea of silver dollars; there is no principled way of distinguishing it from the myriad of contending theological opinions. This is not the situation that Christ the Good Shepherd would have handed on to His sheep. But the problem here is not merely that the deposit of faith becomes murky and inscrutable. According to Mathison,

Solo scriptura results in the autonomy of the individual believer who becomes a law unto himself. Scripture is interpreted according to the conscience and reason of the individual. Everything is evaluated according to the final standard of the individual’s opinion of what is and is not scriptural. The individual, not Scripture, is the real final authority according to solo scriptura. This is rebellious autonomy, and it is a usurpation of the prerogatives of God.

Adherents of solo scriptura have not understood that “Scripture alone” doesn’t mean “me alone.” The Bible nowhere gives any hint of wanting every individual believer to decide for himself and by himself what is and is not the true meaning of Scripture.²⁸

By rejecting the interpretive authority of the Church, the individual makes himself autonomous. He might not think of himself as being autonomous or rebellious; he most likely thinks of himself as following God, by following [his own interpretation of] God’s Word as contained in Sacred Scripture. But by disregarding the divinely established interpretive authority of the Church, the individual usurps to himself an authority that Christ entrusted to the Church. This is why, according to Mathison, taking final interpretive authority to oneself makes the individual guilty of “rebellious autonomy.”²⁸

Solo Scriptura is Unbiblical

Mathison argues that the solo scriptura position is unbiblical. He writes:

The Bible itself simply does not teach “solo” Scriptura. Christ established his church with a structure of authority and gives to his church those who are specially appointed to the ministry of the word (Acts 6:2-4). When disputes arose, the apostles did not instruct each individual believer to go home and decide by himself and for himself who was right. They met in a council (Acts 15:6-29).²⁹

Scripture itself indicates that the Scriptures are the possession of the Church and that the interpretation of the Scriptures belongs to the Church as a whole, as a community. In particular it has been entrusted to specially gifted men. … The fundamental point is that Christ established His Church with a structure of authority that is to be obeyed (Heb. 13:7). … The modern Evangelical doctrine of Scripture essentially destroys the real authority of ministers of the Word and the Church as a whole.³⁰

According to Mathison, Scripture itself teaches that Scripture belongs to the Church and is to be interpreted in and by the Church. Importantly, he is not here speaking of an invisible Church. He is saying that Scripture teaches that Christ founded a visible Church, with a visible authority structure composed of ordained men entrusted with the responsibility of expositing and interpreting the Scriptures. Scripture itself, according to Mathison, teaches that these men are to be obeyed.³¹ Because solo scriptura denies the interpretive authority of the Church, claims Mathison, therefore solo scriptura is contrary to Scripture.

III. Mathison on Sola Scriptura, and How It Differs from Solo Scriptura

In contrast to the ‘solo scriptura‘ position, Mathison defends what he calls ‘sola scriptura,’ namely, the position that “Scripture [is] the sole source of revelation; that it [is] the final authoritative norm of doctrine and practice; that it [is] to be interpreted in and by the church, and that it [is] to be interpreted according to the regula fidei.”³² Notice that for Mathison these four claims together constitute sola scriptura. Mathison is emphatic that sola scriptura is not the notion that Scripture is the only ecclesial authority. In this respect sola scriptura differs from solo scriptura. He writes:

It is important to notice that sola scriptura, properly understood, is not a claim that Scripture is the only authority altogether. … There are other real authorities which are subordinate and derivative in nature. Scripture, however, is the only inspired and inherently infallible norm, and therefore Scripture is the only final authoritative norm.³³

As mentioned above, he approvingly quotes Calvin proposing that doctrinal disputes be resolved by recourse to synods and councils.³⁴ And Mathison defends this position by pointing out that the Apostles provide an example of meeting in council (Acts 15:6-29) to resolve a question.

According to Mathison, Scripture must be interpreted in and by the Church:

Scripture does not exist in a vacuum. It was and is given to the Church within the doctrinal context of the apostolic gospel. Scripture alone is the only final standard, but it is a final standard that must be utilized, interpreted, and preached by the Church within its Christian context. If Scripture is not interpreted correctly within its proper context, it ceases to function properly as a standard.³⁵

It is therefore to the Church that we must turn for the true interpretation of the Scripture, for it is in the Church that the gospel is found. … Although individuals can and must read and study Scripture in order that their conscience may ultimately be bound by the Word of God, final ecclesiastical authority does not and cannot rest in the judgment of each individual member of the Church. … Individual private judgment, however, does not replace the corporate judgment of the covenant community. The creeds of the Church are the authoritative confessions of the communion of saints as the covenantal body of Christ. Excommunication is an authoritative judgment of the communion of saints as the covenantal body of Christ.³⁶

But sola scriptura does not mean only that Scripture must be interpreted in and by the Church. According to Mathison sola scriptura also means that Scripture is the final authoritative standard. He writes:

Scripture alone, therefore, can function as the “canon,” the rule, the final authoritative standard of truth against which all else is measured. Yes, it is the Church which does the measuring, and yes the rule of faith provides the basic parameters of measurement, but it is the Scripture and Scripture alone that is the standard norm.³⁷

An essential aspect of sola scriptura is that it affirms the infallibility of Scripture, and denies the infallibility of the Church. For this reason, according to Mathison, the Church, being fallible, is corrected by Scripture and subordinate to Scripture. He writes:

Because of the Church’s propensity to wander from the true path, she needs a standard of truth that remains constant and sure, and that standard cannot be herself. It can only be the inspired and infallible Scripture.³⁸

For Mathison, then, sola scriptura ascribes the highest ecclesial authority to Scripture, and ascribes subordinate ecclesial authority to the Church and the creeds. The individual believer is to be subject both to the primary authority of Scripture and to the secondary authority of the Church and creeds. The primacy of the Scripture’s authority, according to Mathison, does not nullify the genuine secondary authority of the Church.³⁹

But this does raise a difficult question. If the Church has higher interpretive authority than does the individual, what is the individual to do when he or she disagrees with the Church’s decision regarding what Scripture teaches? In other words, what is the relationship between private judgment and the Church’s interpretive authority? Mathison answers this question by appealing to Francis Turretin.

As Turretin explains, although the corporate doctrinal judgment of the Church is not infallible and does not have an authority equal to that of Scripture, it does have true authority over those who are members of the visible communion of the Church. What then is the relationship between private judgment and this corporate judgment? What is an individual Christian to do if he believes the corporate judgment found in the creeds and confessions to be in error? Turretin explains,

“Hence if they think they observe anything in them worthy of correction, they ought to undertake nothing rashly or disorderly and unseasonably, so as to violently rend the body of their mother (which schismatics do), but to refer the difficulties they feel to their church and either to prefer her public opinion to their own private judgment or to secede from her communion, if the conscience cannot acquiesce in her judgment. Thus they cannot bind in the inner court of conscience, except inasmuch as they are found to agree with the word of God (which alone has the power to bind the conscience).”⁴⁰

According to Turretin, the individual Christian should submit to the Church’s teaching and interpretation, except when his conscience, ultimately informed by his own interpretation of Scripture, cannot accept what the Church says. Mathison adds,

There is a difference then between the external ecclesiastical court and the internal court of conscience. The inward court of the individual conscience cannot be bound by anything other than the Word of God, but the Church does have doctrinal authority in the external ecclesiastical court. This authority is given to preserve unity in the Church’s faith and to reject the errors of heretics.⁴¹

Mathison maintains that the only authority that can bind the conscience is the Word of God. So when the Church teaches something that is incompatible with one’s conscience, as informed by one’s own interpretation of Scripture, one should reject the Church’s teaching and follow one’s own conscience. We can summarize Mathison’s explanation of the distinction between solo scriptura and sola scriptura as follows. Whereas solo scriptura rejects the interpretive authority of the Church and the derivative authority of the creeds, sola scriptura affirms the interpretive authority of the Church and the derivative authority of the creeds, except when they teach something contrary to one’s conscience, as informed by one’s own interpretation of Scripture.

IV. Why There Is No Principled Difference Between Sola Scriptura and Solo Scriptura

A. Direct and Indirect Ultimate Interpretive Authority

What makes the solo scriptura position problematic, according to Mathison, is not its high view of Scripture, but its presumption that the individual has higher interpretive authority than does the Church. Solo scriptura treats the individual as having the ultimate or final interpretive authority regarding whatever matters he or she considers to be theologically essential or important. That is precisely why solo scriptura leads to the situations Mathison describes in his book. Robert Reymond can reject one line of the Creed because he sees himself as having at least equal interpretive and magisterial (i.e. teaching) authority to the bishops who gathered at Nicea in AD 325 to formulate the Creed. If Reymond believed that those bishops had greater interpretive and magisterial authority than himself, he would treat the Creed as a corrective to his own interpretation and position, in whatever areas his interpretation and position were at odds with that of the Creed.

But there are two ways to make oneself one’s own ultimate interpretive and magisterial authority. One is a direct way and the other is an indirect way. The direct way is to subject all theological questions directly to the final verdict of one’s own interpretation of Scripture. That is the solo scriptura position. Because it is direct, the nature of the position is quite transparent; we can see clearly in such a case that the individual is acting as his own ultimate interpretive authority.

The indirect way of making oneself one’s own ultimate interpretive and magisterial authority is more complicated and subtle. In this case the individual, based upon his own interpretation of Scripture, either establishes or chooses an ecclesial community that conforms to his own interpretation in matters he considers to be essential or important. Then, he ‘submits’ to this institution so long as it continues to speak and act in accordance with his own interpretation of Scripture. If it deviates from his own interpretation of Scripture in matters he deems important, he repeats the process of either establishing or choosing an institution or congregation that conforms to his own interpretation in matters he considers to be essential or important.

In both the direct and indirect ways, the individual is acting as his own ultimate interpretive and magisterial authority. But his doing so is more difficult to see in the indirect case because he appears to be submitting to the interpretive authority of a body of persons other than himself. Yet, because he has established or selected this body of persons on the basis of their conformity to his own interpretation of Scripture, and because he ‘submits’ to them only so long as they agree with his interpretation on matters he considers to be essential or important, therefore in actuality his ‘submission’ to this body is in fact ‘submission’ to himself. To submit to others only when one agrees with them, is to submit to oneself. But submission to oneself is an oxymoron, because it is indistinguishable from not submitting at all, from doing whatever one wants. Yet because this indirect way of being one’s own ultimate interpretive and magisterial authority maintains the appearance of being in submission to another body of persons, it allows those who practice it to believe falsely that they are genuinely submitting to another body of persons, and not acting as their own ultimate interpretive and magisterial authority. Accumulating for themselves this body of persons to whom they ‘submit’ allows them to remain under a delusion that they are submitting to the Church.⁴²

Solo scriptura is the direct way of acting as one’s own ultimate interpretive and magisterial authority. But as we show below, the indirect way of acting as one’s own ultimate interpretive and magisterial authority is precisely the methodology entailed by sola scriptura. Here’s why. In Mathison’s account of sola scriptura, Scripture must be interpreted “in and by the church.” He even says that we must turn to the Church for the true interpretation of Scripture, “for it is in the Church that the gospel is found.”⁴³ Notice that Mathison claims that it is in the Church that the gospel is found.

But how does he determine what is the Church? Being Reformed, he defines ‘Church’ as wherever the gospel is found, because the early Protestants defined the marks of the Church as including “the gospel,” where the gospel was determined by their own private interpretation of Scripture. So he claims that it is in the Church that the gospel is found, but he defines the Church in terms of the gospel. This is what we call a tautology. It is a form of circular reasoning that allows anyone to claim to be the Church and have the gospel. One can read the Bible and formulate one’s own understanding of the gospel, then make this “gospel” a necessary mark of the Church, and then say that it is in the Church that the gospel is found. Because one has defined the Church in terms of the gospel [as arrived at by one’s own interpretation of Scripture], telling us that the gospel is found “in the Church” tells us nothing other than “people who share my own interpretation of Scripture about what is the gospel are referred to by me as ‘the Church.'” This kind of circular reasoning allows falsehood to remain hidden.

The Catholic position does not suffer from this circularity, because ‘Church’ is not defined in terms of “gospel,” but in terms of apostolic succession, involving an unbroken line of authorizations extending down from the Apostles. Just as Christ authorized and sent the Apostles to preach and teach in His Name, and govern His Church, so the Apostles, by the laying on of their hands, appointed bishops as their successors, and by this mystery handed on to them the divine authority to preach and teach and govern the Church. And these men also, in the same way authorized other men to succeed them to preach and teach the gospel and govern Christ’s Church. Only those having the succession from the Apostles are divinely authorized to preach and teach and govern Christ’s Church. For that reason, the Church is defined not by the gospel (as determined by one’s own interpretation of Scripture). Rather, the content of the gospel is specified by the Church, and the Church is located by the succession from the Apostles. This is why apostolicity is one of the four marks of the Church taught in the Creed: “we believe one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.” But given Mathison’s account, what counts as ‘church’ is always and ultimately up to each individual to decide on the basis of his or her own determination of the gospel, on the basis of his or her own interpretation of Scripture. So on Mathison’s account, no one has any more authority than anyone else to say definitively what is the Church and where is the Church, and what is her doctrine and what is not her doctrine.

That can be seen in the very events of the Protestant Reformation. The first Protestants did not submit their interpretations of Scripture to the judgment of the Catholic Church in which they had each been baptized and raised. Rather, the first Protestants appealed to their own interpretation of Scripture to judge the Church to be apostate, and thus justify separating from her. They did this by redefining the marks of the Church. The first generation of Protestants, without any authorization from their bishops, appealed to their own interpretation of Scripture to determine three (or two) new “marks of the Church,” beyond the four marks given twelve hundred years earlier in the Nicene Creed. These new marks consisted of: (1) the preaching of the gospel (or ‘sound doctrine’), where what counts as ‘gospel’ and ‘sound doctrine’ was determined according to their own interpretation of Scripture, (2) the proper administration of the sacraments, where what counts as a sacrament and what is its proper administration were determined again by their own interpretation of Scripture, and (3) the right exercise of church discipline, again, as determined by their own interpretation of Scripture.⁴⁴ By these new marks derived from their own interpretation of Scripture, they determined that the Catholic Church governed by the successor of the Apostle Peter had become apostate, and thus that the Catholic bishops under whose authority they lived, had no ecclesial authority, and that they themselves [i.e. these first Protestants] were the continuation of the Church.

In this way they could seem to affirm devoutly the prohibition against spurning the authority of the Church, as Calvin did when he wrote:

However it may be, where the preaching of the gospel is reverently heard and the sacraments are not neglected, there for the time being no deceitful or ambiguous form of the church is seen; and no one is permitted to spurn its authority, flout its warnings, resist its counsels, or make light of its chastisements — much less to desert it and break its unity. For the Lord esteems the communion of his church so highly that he counts as a traitor and apostate from Christianity anyone who arrogantly leaves any Christian society, provided it cherishes the true meaning of Word and sacraments.⁴⁵

How did Calvin, who was baptized in the Catholic Church as an infant, and yet lived the last thirty or so years of his life in separation from the Catholic Church, avoid believing that he was spurning the authority of the Church? Simply by redefining the Church as “wherever the preaching of the gospel [as determined by Calvin’s own interpretation of Scripture] is heard and the sacraments [as determined by Calvin’s own interpretation of Scripture] are not neglected.”

The early Protestants appealed to their own interpretation of Scripture to make sola fide the sine qua non of the gospel, and appealed to their own interpretation of Scripture to make “the gospel” a new mark of the Church. In thus stipulating that sola fide was a now a mark of the Church, based on their own interpretation of Scripture and without any authorization from their bishops, the Reformers ‘avoided rebelling’ against their Catholic bishops simply by redefining ‘Church’ to match their own interpretation of Scripture, so that, by this redefinition of the ‘Church,’ their Catholic bishops were no longer even members of the Church. In doing so, these first Protestants placed their own interpretive authority above that of their bishops. For this reason, the assumption that final interpretive and teaching authority belongs to oneself is intrinsic to Protestantism, because to subordinate the individual’s interpretive and teaching authority to that of the Church would undermine the act by which the first Protestants separated from the Catholic Church in the sixteenth century, and thus undermine the very legitimacy of Protestantism as such.

Our point here is not to show which side was right and which side was wrong in the sixteenth century schism. Our point is to show that implicit within the claim by proponents of sola scriptura to be submitting to the Church, is always a prior judgment concerning which body of persons count as the Church, and a theological assumption about how that judgment is to be made. Mathison cannot say, “All Christians should submit to the Church’s determination of the marks of the Church,” because such a claim would beg the question, i.e. presume the very thing in question, by presuming the identity of the Church in determining the identity of the Church. At most he can say that all Christians should accept the three Protestant marks of the Church, on the ground that according to his [Mathison’s] own interpretation of Scripture, these three are the marks of the Church. Mathison’s position does not allow the Church to have the definitive and authoritative interpretation and teaching of Scripture regarding the marks of the Church. Mathison’s position entails that the authoritative determination of the marks of the Church ultimately and perpetually rests with the individual.

No Middle Ground: Solo Scriptura or Apostolic Succession

This implication follows from Protestantism’s rejection of apostolic succession. Without apostolic succession, there is within Protestantism no group of persons already having divine authorization to provide the definitive decision regarding matters of doctrine and interpretation, including the marks of the Church. By granting a position in which each individual has the highest interpretive authority in determining the marks of the Church, Mathison leaves himself without a principled distinction between solo scriptura and sola scriptura, and thus his position is likewise open to the individualism and fragmentation that he rightly recognizes result from solo scriptura. Hence for this reason as well, sola scriptura reduces to solo scriptura.

The same point applies to determining which tradition is authoritative. Protestant theologian R. Scott Clark, in his book Covenant, Justification and Pastoral Ministry, claims that Christians should read Scripture through the eyes of the Reformed and Presbyterian standards, such as the Westminster Confession of Faith.⁴⁶ The only available basis by which he can argue for this is that the Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF) matches his own interpretation of Scripture, and that of those who share his interpretation. Clark has no a priori ecclesial authority to which all Christians should submit. Nor can the individual Christian use the WCF as the standard by which to evaluate the WCF. Nor can he use the WCF in order to evaluate the other Protestant confessions, without begging the question. Thus, if one denies apostolic succession, then in order to determine whether Scripture should be interpreted according to the doctrinal framework specified by the WCF, the individual Christian must evaluate the WCF by comparing it to his own interpretation of Scripture. For this reason, without apostolic succession, the secondary ‘authority’ of a tradition or ‘standard’ by which to interpret Scripture ultimately remains subordinate to the judgment of the individual, and thus retains only the illusory appearance of authority, not any actual authority.⁴⁷

For the proponent of sola scriptura, if his interpretation of Scripture changes concerning what doctrines or practices constitute ‘sound doctrine,’ or if the body of persons presently satisfying his determination of what counts as ‘Church’ makes a decision that is contrary to his own determination from Scripture of what is essential or important, then there is no reason for him to submit to them. By that very fact (i.e. change of this sort) they no longer satisfy his criteria for what is essential to the Church, just as the Catholic bishops were simply defined out of authority by the first Protestants. When that happens, the proponent of sola scriptura then establishes or chooses another body of persons that matches his current interpretation of Scripture, and ‘submits’ to them, until he and this new body of persons sufficiently diverge in their determination of what counts as ‘sound doctrine,’ proper administration of the sacraments, and right discipline. So the reason why there is no principled difference between solo scriptura and sola scriptura is that in both cases the individual is his own ultimate interpretive and magisterial authority: solo scriptura in a direct way, sola scriptura in an indirect way.

We can see then that there is no principled difference between sola scriptura and solo scriptura because given sola scriptura and the denial of apostolic succession, and thus given the equality in interpretive authority between the individual and the Magisterium, no Church council or promulgation of a dogma can bind the conscience of any individual. For any line in any creed or Church pronouncement, the individual may stand in judgment over it, just as the early Protestants stood in judgment of the decrees and canons of the Council of Trent (and other earlier ecumenical councils), based on their own interpretation of Scripture. As we saw above, Calvin seems to recognize the authority of Church councils, as when he wrote:

We indeed willingly concede, if any discussion arises over doctrine, that the best and surest remedy is for a synod of true bishops to be convened, where the doctrine at issue may be examined.⁴⁸

But notice the term ‘true bishops.’ Without apostolic succession, what counts as a “true bishop” can only be “one who agrees with my interpretation of Scripture.” In other words, Calvin’s statement amounts to being willing to submit to a synod composed of bishops who agree with his own interpretation of Scripture. And there is no principled difference between this and solo scriptura; the former is solo scriptura masking itself from itself. ‘Submitting’ only to those with whom I agree, is merely a species of “submitting only when I agree,” which is itself an indirect form of “submitting only to me,” which is submitting only in semblance.

Calvin and the early Protestants rejected the decree of the Council of Trent regarding sola fide. They did so based on their prior determination, according to their own interpretation of Scripture, that sola fide was a mark of the Church. Because the Council of Trent denied justification by faith alone,⁴⁹ the Council had not satisfied one of the Protestants’ own stipulated marks, and was therefore ipso facto not constituted of “true bishops,” and was ipso facto an invalid council.⁵⁰

Since apart from apostolic succession the determination of ‘the gospel’ and ‘sound doctrine’ rests ultimately and irrevocably on the individual’s own interpretation of Scripture in order to identify the Church, it follows that any particular line of any creed or Church decree becomes ‘authoritative’ only if the individual approves it as being sufficiently in agreement with his own interpretation of Scripture. If he judges it to be sufficiently contrary to his own interpretation of Scripture, and of sufficient import, then it ipso facto has no ‘authority’ over him. His disagreement with “the Church’s” interpretation of Scripture does not make his position heretical. It may very well be (according to his line of thought) that ‘the Church’ is heretical, and his own position is orthodox (and hence that he himself is the continuation of the actual Church, the rest being heretics). We may never know for sure this side of heaven. Thus ‘orthodoxy’ and ‘heresy’ are relativized by the rejection of apostolic succession. Because sola scriptura rejects apostolic succession no less than does solo scriptura, and because the rejection of apostolic succession entails the relativization of heresy and orthodoxy, there is also for this reason no principled difference between solo scriptura and sola scriptura.

That is because given sola scriptura and a denial of apostolic succession, the individual has final interpretive and teaching authority in determining what is the ‘gospel’ and what is ‘sound doctrine,’ in order to determine who and what is the Church. If, however, apostolic succession is true, and the Church has final interpretive and teaching authority in determining what counts as the ‘gospel’ and ‘sound doctrine,’ then the first Protestants were not justified in separating from the Catholic Church. They could attempt to justify separating from the Catholic Church only by appealing to their own interpretation of Scripture regarding the marks, and thus only by rejecting apostolic succession and presuming that they themselves had equal or greater interpretive authority than did those Catholic bishops under whose authority they had been placed at their baptism. For this reason sola scriptura can never grant final interpretive authority to the Church, without refuting itself. So even though sola scriptura creates the appearance of submitting to Church authority, with regard to ultimate interpretive authority there is no principled difference between sola scriptura and solo scriptura. In both solo scriptura and sola scriptura, the individual is and remains his own final interpretive and teaching authority.

In sum, Mathison thinks he is defending a position that is fundamentally distinct from solo scriptura, but in fact it is in essence the same position, only hidden within a personally selected practice and a personally selected people such that its true essence is concealed. This can be seen in Mathison’s description of sola scriptura. On the one hand, he rejects the notion that the individual has final interpretive and teaching authority; according to Mathison the idea that each individual has final interpretive and teaching authority is precisely what is wrong with the solo scriptura position. On the other hand, Mathison grants that each individual may appeal to Scripture to correct the Church, disobey the Church and leave the Church, so long as he is following his conscience.⁵¹ According to Mathison, the individual’s conscience is bound only by his own interpretation of Scripture. That notion reduces every other so-called ecclesial authority (e.g. creed, confession, magisterium) to mere advice. Here’s why. Without apostolic succession no one’s teaching and interpretation is divinely authorized, and therefore one’s conscience is not bound by any interpretive or teaching authority other than that of one’s self. And that is exactly the essence of solo scriptura. In order for the individual to stand in judgment of the interpretation of the Church, he must have equal or greater interpretive and teaching authority than does the Church. Otherwise, if the Church’s interpretation differed from that of the individual, the Church’s teaching and interpretation would serve as the standard to which the individual should make his own interpretation conform.⁵²

The Argument

1. According to solo scriptura, Scripture is the only ecclesial authority. [def]

2. If solo scriptura is true, then each individual is his own final interpretive authority concerning what he considers to be essential. [1]

3. According to sola scriptura, Scripture is the only infallible ecclesial authority. [def]

4. If sola scriptura entails that each individual is his own final interpretive authority concerning what he considers to be essential, then in this respect there is no principled difference between solo scriptura and sola scriptura.

5. If apostolic succession is false, then no one’s determination of the marks of the Church is any more authoritative than anyone else’s.

6. If no one’s determination of the marks of the Church is any more authoritative than anyone else’s, then each individual is his own final interpretive authority concerning what he considers to be essential.

7. If apostolic succession is false, then each individual is his own final interpretive authority concerning what he considers to be essential. [(5),(6)]

8. The doctrine of apostolic succession is false. [A]

9. If sola scriptura is true, then each individual is his own final interpretive authority concerning what he considers to be essential. [(7),(8)]

10. There is no principled difference between sola scriptura and solo scriptura. [(4),(9)]

B. The Contradiction Internal to the Sola Scriptura Position

Mathison’s account of the sola scriptura position contains an internal contradiction. On the one hand, he claims that all appeals to Scripture are appeals to interpretations of Scripture:

All appeals to Scripture are appeals to interpretations of Scripture. The only real question is: whose interpretation? People with differing interpretations of Scripture cannot set a Bible on a table and ask it to resolve their differences. In order for the Scripture to function as an authority, it must be read and interpreted by someone.⁵³

On the other hand, he claims that Scripture is the final authority:

Of significant importance to the doctrine of sola scriptura is the insistence that Scripture is the one final and authoritative norm of doctrine and practice.³³

Each of these newer concepts of tradition [Catholic and Evangelical] confuses the locus of final authority, ultimately placing it in either the mind of the Church or the mind of the individual. This always results in autonomy and rebellion against the authority of God and His Word.⁵⁴

But, if all appeals to Scripture are appeals to interpretations of Scripture, then it follows necessarily that either someone’s interpretation of Scripture is the final and authoritative norm of doctrine and practice, or Scripture itself cannot be the final and authoritative norm of doctrine and practice. The latter option is not open to Mathison as a Protestant, because to deny that Scripture is the final and authoritative norm of doctrine and practice is to deny sola scriptura, the very foundation of Protestantism. But neither is the former option open to Mathison, because without apostolic succession, Protestantism has no sacramental basis for anyone’s interpretation being the final and authoritative norm of doctrine and practice. Mathison’s position thus creates a dilemma for himself that cannot be resolved without ceasing to be Protestant.

There is no middle position between the Church having final interpretive authority and the individual having final interpretive authority. Mathison recognizes that all appeals to Scripture are appeals to interpretations of Scripture, and denies that the individual has final interpretive authority. But at the same time, as a Protestant, Mathison maintains that the individual can appeal to his or her own interpretation of Scripture to hold the Church accountable to Scripture, even to walk away from the Church (and thus treat himself as the continuation of the Church), otherwise Mathison would undermine the very basis for Protestants separating from the Catholic Church in the sixteenth century. So Mathison’s position essentially reduces to this: the Church has final interpretive authority, except when the Church’s interpretation disagrees with the individual’s interpretation. But that exception belies the charade, because “when I submit (so long as I agree), the one to whom I submit is me.” For this reason, in sola scriptura it is the individual who ultimately has and always retains final interpretive authority. Sola scriptura is a more sophisticated version of solo scriptura, but this added sophistication makes the position more deceptive, by allowing the individual to believe that he is not one of those me-and-my-Bible individualists.

C. The Delusion of Derivative Authority

Mathison claims that the creeds, the tradition, the ecumenical councils, and the fathers are authentic secondary authorities having derivative authority. Recognition of their genuine, though secondary authority, is one of the primary ways in which Mathison seeks to distinguish sola scriptura from solo scriptura. What does he mean by “secondary” and “derived”? He writes:

[T]he traditions, the fathers, and the Church are all inherently fallible standards. What this means is that these fallible traditions, these fallible fathers, and this fallible Church must be measured against the one infallible perfect standard.⁵⁵

And he writes that the Church’s authority:

consists in the fact that the Church has been entrusted with the Scriptures (Rom 3:2); in the fact that she is the proclaimer and defender of Scripture (1 Tim 3:15); and in the fact that she must make doctrinal judgments for the sake of the communion (Acts 15:6-35). These judgments usually find their public expression in the creeds and confessions of the Church. But these authoritative judgments are not to be confused with the final authority of Scripture. Their authority derives from and depends upon their conformity with the inherently authoritative Word of God.”⁵⁶

We showed above how Mathison argued that the proponents of solo scriptura do not recognize the secondary (or derived) authority of the Church and of the creeds. But here we want to show that Mathison’s own position is essentially equivalent to the denial of secondary authority. Mathison claims here that the authority of the creeds and other judgments of the Church “derives from and depends upon their conformity with the inherently authoritative Word of God.” But recall that according to Mathison, all appeals to Scripture are appeals to interpretations of Scripture.⁵⁷ Therefore, the notion that the authority of the creeds and other judgments of the Church “derives from and depends upon their conformity with the inherently authoritative Word of God” entails that the authority of creeds and other judgments of the Church depends upon their sufficient conformity to the individual’s interpretation of Scripture. In other words, Mathison’s position entails that the creeds and other judgments of the Church are ‘authoritative’ only insofar as they agree with the individual’s interpretation of Scripture. But that conception of derivative authority is no different from that of Reymond, Fudge or Stevens, the very exemplars of solo scriptura that Mathison rejects.

The only relevant difference between Mathison’s position on the one hand, and that of Reymond, Fudge and Stevens on the other hand, is a merely accidental difference. According to Mathison’s interpretation of Scripture, the traditional positions of the Church on the eternal generation of the Son, annihilationism, and hyperpreterism, happen to be correct, meaning, they conform to Mathison’s own interpretation of Scripture. According to the Reymond, Fudge and Stevens’ interpretations of Scripture, respectively, the traditional positions of the Church are incorrect. Mathison himself rejects the teachings of the Council of Trent, because they do not conform to his interpretation of Scripture. So Mathison’s criticism’s of Reymond, Fudge and Stevens amount to “you are not conforming to my interpretation of Scripture.” And the proper response from Reymond, Fudge, and Stevens is, “So what? You have no more authority than do we, that we should conform our interpretations to yours. Moreover, you too pick and choose among the councils, according to your own interpretation of Scripture. So there is no principled difference between your practice and ours.”⁵⁸

Mathison addresses the heart of the issue when explaining how solo scriptura undermines ecclesial authority by treating the individual as having final interpretive authority. He writes:

Solo scriptura also undermines the legitimate ecclesiastical authority established by Christ. It negates the duty to submit to those who rule over you, because it removes the possibility of an authoritative teaching office in the Church. To place any kind of real hermeneutical authority in an elder or teacher undermines the doctrine of solo scriptura. Those adherents of solo scriptura who do have pastors and teachers to whom they look for leadership do so under the stipulation that the individual is to evaluate the leader’s teaching by Scripture first. What this means in practice is that the individual is to measure his teacher’s interpretation of Scripture against his own interpretation of Scripture. The playing field is leveled when neither the ecumenical creeds nor the Church has any more authority than the individual believer, but Christ did not establish a level playing field. He did not establish a democracy. He established a Church in which men and women are given different gifts, some of which involve a special gift of teaching and leading. These elders have responsibility for the flock and a certain authority over it. Scripture would not call us to submit to those who had no real authority over us (Heb 13:17; Acts 20:28).⁵⁹

Here Mathison is arguing that solo scriptura undermines legitimate ecclesial authority established by Christ. It does so by denying the “authoritative teaching office” in the Church, and the “hermeneutical authority” of those holding that office. How does it do that? Mathison is explicit: “the individual measures his teacher’s interpretation of Scripture against his own interpretation of Scripture.” For Mathison, God did not establish the Church as a democracy; rather, He gave specific gifts to men to teach and govern His Church.

The problem, however, is that the very basis for the existence of Protestantism as such, the very basis for the separating of Protestants from the Catholic Church, is this very act. The individual measured his teacher’s interpretation of Scripture against his own interpretation of Scripture, and in doing so performatively denied the authority of the teaching office of the Catholic Church. Mathison wants to affirm genuine ecclesial authority as a secondary authority to which individuals should submit, but his position is contravened in two ways. First, the existence of Protestantism as such is based on the legitimacy of the individual rejecting the established ecclesial authority on the basis of his own interpretation.⁶⁰ So Mathison is trying to propose a system incompatible with Protestantism’s historic foundation, and thus intrinsically incompatible with Protestantism as such.

Second, given Mathison’s denial of apostolic succession, he cannot make a principled appeal to any ecclesial authority as that to which every individual ought to submit. Nothing can give what it does not have. But Mathison’s foundational starting point does not include apostolic succession, and hence de facto it begins with each individual as his own highest interpretive and teaching authority. Therefore no qualitatively greater ecclesial authority than the teaching and interpretive authority derived from the “permission of those who sufficiently agree with me” is available to Mathison. Every secondary authority, given Mathison’s starting point, can be nothing more than a permission extended from the individual to the ‘secondary authority’ to function as an authority for the individual at that present time.

Mathison is right about the implications of denying creedal authority. He writes:

The modern Evangelical denial of creedal authority necessarily results in the impossibility of authoritatively and objectively defining the propositional content of Scripture. The very act of authoritatively defining the propositional doctrinal content of Scripture would be the creation of a creed — that which is deemed unacceptable within the framework of solo scriptura. This leaves the responsibility for defining Scripture’s doctrinal content to each individual. In other words, the modern Evangelical denial of genuine creedal authority reduces the doctrinal content of Christianity to mere subjectivism.⁶¹

The modern Evangelical church must come to the realization that if the ecumenical creeds have no authority, then there are no essential or necessary doctrines of the Christian faith. There would be only subjective individual opinions of what the “essential truths” of the Christian faith are.⁶¹

He is correct that solo scriptura undermines the possibility of authoritatively defining the propositional doctrinal content of Scripture. He is correct that undermining the authority of the creeds practically entails that “there are no essential or necessary doctrines of the Christian faith.” But Mathison’s position does exactly the same thing, because by denying apostolic succession, he undermines the possibility of a creed having any more authority than anyone’s subjective opinion. Apart from apostolic succession, the only ultimate basis for a creed’s ‘authority’ is (1) it agrees with one’s own interpretation of Scripture and/or (2) it was formulated by persons who sufficiently shared one’s own interpretation of Scripture. But both of those reasons reduce to “when I submit (so long as I agree), the one to whom I submit is me,” the very essence of the solo scriptura position Mathison rightly rejects.

How does Mathison attempt to defend his position from this sort of critique? He claims that the authority of the ecumenical creeds follows from the perspicuity of Scripture.

It is interesting to observe that the authority of these ecumenical creeds necessarily follows from one of the fundamental qualities of Scripture itself — its perspicuity. Scripture itself indicates it’s [sic] essential perspicuity or clarity on basic and essential matters.⁶²

If we confess the perspicuity of Scripture, then a confession of the ecumenical creeds inevitably follows. The ecumenical creeds are simply the written form of the confession of the faith of the universal Church. They are a confession of what the Church as a whole has read in the Scriptures.⁶²

[A] denial of this consensus of faith is not only a denial of the perspicuity of Scripture, it is in effect a denial of Scripture itself. Why? If the essential teachings of Scripture are clear (perspicuous); if the Holy Spirit has been promised to guide the Church into the knowledge of the truth of Scripture; if the entire Church for thousands of years confesses to being taught by the Spirit the same essential truths in Scripture, then it follows that those truths are what Scripture says.⁶³

This only compounds the problems with Mathison’s position. If the authority of the ecumenical creeds only followed from the perspicuity of Scripture, there would be no need for the creeds in the first place, since the creeds would have restated only what was already plainly explicit in Scripture. This would entail that all those who opposed the creeds were blind, deaf, and stupid. But history does not support that notion. The Arians, for example, were not unintelligent. They argued from the Scriptures that Christ was the first of God’s creation, a lesser deity, and the highest of all created things. The Macedonians and Nestorians and Sabellians, etc. all argued from Scripture for their respective heresies. Resolving these disputes was precisely the primary purpose of the ecumenical councils. So the purpose of the ecumenical councils shows that Scripture alone was not sufficient to resolve the theological disputes. And this shows that the ecumenical creeds are neither restatements of Scripture (which would simply leave the dispute unresolved) nor are they limited to statements simply and obviously deducible from Scripture by all persons of at least ordinary intelligence. The ecumenical creeds address doctrinal questions not clearly and explicitly stated in Scripture. Hence the authority of the ecumenical creeds cannot come from the perspicuity of Scripture. Mathison’s position is stuck between a rock and a hard place. He wants the creeds and the Church to have secondary authority so as to avoid solo scriptura, but his rejection of apostolic succession leaves any secondary authority with no possible basis except agreement with one’s own interpretation of Scripture.⁶⁴

His position also faces similar problem consisting of the following dilemma. He claims that it is “to the Church that we must turn for the true interpretation of the Scripture, for it is in the Church that the gospel is found.”⁵⁶ But at the same time he claims that “Because of the Church’s propensity to wander from the true path, she needs a standard of truth that remains constant and sure, and that standard cannot be herself. It can only be the inspired and infallible Scripture.”³⁸ So, since for Mathison all appeals to Scripture are appeals to interpretations of Scripture, then when, as Mathison claims, the Church wanders from the true path, whose interpretation of Scripture will correct her? If it is the individual’s, then it is false that we must turn to the Church for the true interpretation of Scripture. The individual has no more reason to believe a priori that the Church’s present interpretation of Scripture is correct than he has to believe that the Church now stands in dire need of correction from his own lips on the basis of his own personal interpretation of Scripture. On the other hand, if it does not belong to the individual to correct the Church when she “wanders from the true path,” then it can belong to none other than the Church to correct herself when she wanders from the true path.” So the errant Church is then supposed to be corrected by her own erronious interpretation of Scripture. Not only does that seem implausible, if Protestants truly believed that to be the case, they would simply have remained in the Catholic Church, waiting for the ‘erring’ Church to be corrected back to the truth on the basis of her own erroneous interpretation of Scripture. But Protestants did not remain in the Catholic Church; and this indicates that Protestants did not and do not in fact believe that Scripture corrects the Church when she “wanders from the true path.” The problematic assumption in Mathison’s position entailing this dilemma is his notion that the Church “wanders from the true path,” something he has to hold in order to justify being a Protestant.⁶⁵

V. Objections and Replies

A. Tu Quoque: “The Catholic Position Does not Avoid Solo Scriptura“

One objection to our argument that there is no principled difference between sola scriptura and solo scriptura is that the Catholic position likewise ultimately reduces to solo scriptura. This is so, according to the objection, because the individual who becomes Catholic must start in the same epistemic position as the person who becomes Protestant. In choosing to become Catholic, he has simply chosen the denomination that best conforms to his own interpretation of Scripture. He places himself under the authority of the Catholic bishops in the same way that a Lutheran places himself under the authority of a Lutheran pastor, that a Baptist places himself under the authority of a Baptist pastor, or that a Presbyterian places himself under a Presbyterian pastor. Hence if the person who becomes Protestant retains final interpretive authority, then so does the person who becomes Catholic.

The objection is understandable, but it can be made only by those who do not see the principled difference between the discovery of the Catholic Church, and joining a Protestant denomination or congregation. Of course a person during the process of becoming Catholic is not under the authority of the Church. At that stage, he or she is like the Protestant in that respect. But the Catholic finds something principally different, and properly finds it by way of qualitatively different criteria. The Protestant is seeking a group of persons who believe, teach and practice what his interpretation of Scripture indicates was the belief, teaching and practice of the Apostles. He retains his final interpretive authority so long as he remains Protestant. No Protestant denomination has the authority to bind his conscience, because [in his mind] the Church must always remains subject to Scripture, which really means that the Church must always remains subject to [his interpretation of] Scripture, or at least that he is not ultimately subject to anyone’s interpretation but his own.

The person becoming Catholic, by contrast, is seeking out the Church that Christ founded. He does this not by finding that group of persons who share his interpretation of Scripture. Rather, he locates in history those whom the Apostles appointed and authorized, observes what they say and do viz-a-viz the transmission of teaching and interpretive authority, traces that line of successive authorizations down through history to the present day to a living Magisterium, and then submits to what this present-day Magisterium is teaching. By finding the Magisterium, he finds something that has the divine authority to bind the conscience.

Here we should say something about what it means to bind the conscience. It is of the very nature of law to bind the conscience. Law does not coerce the will, but law binds the conscience precisely insofar as reason grasps it as the standard or rule to which our beliefs, words and actions ought to conform. God’s law, written on our hearts in the form of the natural law, informs the conscience of every man. Once one knows the law, then one knows acting against the law to be unlawful. Likewise, once one knows the Church’s magisterial authority, and her divinely revealed laws and dogmas concerning faith and morals, then one’s conscience is bound to believe and obey them. One knows that to disbelieve the Church’s dogmas is heresy and sinful, because one knows that what the Church has definitively determined, the Holy Spirit has ipso facto spoken. When the Church, with the authority she has received from Christ through the Apostles, definitively declares dogma, she ipso facto binds the conscience insofar as the hearer knows both the content of these dogmas and the divine authority by which they have been determined.

So for the person becoming Catholic, when he recognizes the authority of the Magisterium, he recognizes that his beliefs and interpretation of Scripture must conform to the authoritative teachings of the Church’s Magisterium. “When the Magisterium of the Church makes an infallible pronouncement that a teaching is found in Revelation,” he assents to it by an act of faith, believing this pronouncement to be the teaching of Christ, on account of the divine authority given to the Magisterium through apostolic succession to teach in Christ’s name and with His authority.⁶⁶ In this way, his faith in Christ is expressed as an act of faith in the infallible pronouncement of the Church’s Magisterium. In those teachings which are not infallible, he also, as an act of faith in Christ, gives religious submission of intellect and will, even while recognizing the fallibility of those teaching.⁶⁷

The Protestant, by contrast, in joining a Protestant community does not find the Magisterium. That is because he does not find something that can bind his conscience regarding the canon of Scripture, the interpretation of Scripture, and the identity of orthodoxy and heresy. This is why in his Protestant community he perpetually retains final interpretive authority, because no decision of that community has the authority to bind his conscience. This is why Mathison, drawing from Turretin, claims that “the individual conscience cannot be bound by anything other than the Word of God.”⁴¹ And since, for Mathison, “All appeals to Scripture are appeals to interpretations of Scripture,”⁵⁷ it follows that the individual conscience cannot be bound by anything other than his own interpretation of Scripture.

Here we see precisely why the tu quoque fails against the Catholic. The person who becomes Catholic finds something that binds his conscience viz-a-viz the canon of Scripture and the interpretation of Scripture; he finds the Magisterium that the incarnate Christ established and authorized. By contrast, the person who becomes Protestant, finds nothing outside himself that binds his conscience viz-a-viz the canon of Scripture and the interpretation of Scripture. For this reason, until a person finds the Magisterium, he remains his own final interpretive authority, because he knows of nothing that can bind his conscience regarding the interpretation of Scripture. But when a person finds the Magisterium, and recognizes it for what it is, he immediately ceases to be his own final interpretive authority. He recognizes that his interpretation of Scripture ought to be conformed to the teaching and interpretation of the Magisterium, and that to reject the teaching of the Magisterium would be to reject Christ, just as Jesus said to the Apostles:

The one who listens to you listens to Me, and the one who rejects you rejects Me; and he who rejects Me rejects the One who sent Me. (Luke 10:16)

The Protestant epistemological stance, by contrast, is exemplified in the words of Martin Luther at the Diet of Worms:

Unless I am convicted by Scripture and plain reason — I do not accept the authority of popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other — my conscience is captive to the Word of God.⁶⁸

Luther’s statement captures the very essence of Protestant religious epistemology. All Protestants who followed Luther’s example took this very same stance, subjecting the Church’s teaching, councils, and interpretive tradition to the standard of their own interpretation of Scripture, picking and choosing from them as though they were mere advice. Since according to Mathison “all appeals to Scripture are appeals to interpretations of Scripture,” Luther’s claim that his conscience was “captive to the Word of God” means in actuality that his conscience was ultimately bound by his own interpretation of Scripture. That very claim, namely, that our conscience is bound ultimately by our own interpretation of Scripture, is contrary to the perpetual teaching of the Church, because that claim denies that Christ established a perpetual teaching authority in His Church, a magisterial authority through which the Holy Spirit works to determine definitively matters of faith and morals, and to which all Christians are to be subject. If the Church has the authority from Christ to give the definitive decision regarding some question of faith or morals, then she has the authority to bind the conscience ultimately regarding such matters. If the Church did not have the authority to bind the conscience, she could do nothing more than offer advice, because in that case no decision she made regarding faith or morals would be definitive.

The follow-up objection to our argument takes the form of a dilemma. The dilemma runs like this. Either the individual needs the guidance of an interpretive authority when interpreting Scripture, or not. If the individual needs the guidance of an interpretive authority when interpreting Scripture, then he will need the guidance of another interpretive authority when interpreting the first interpretive authority. And he will need the guidance of third interpretive authority when interpreting the second interpretive authority. That would lead to an infinite regress. But there cannot be an infinite regress, hence the individual does not need the guidance of an interpretive authority when interpreting Scripture.

The problem with this dilemma is that it ignores the qualitative ontological distinction between persons and books, and so it falsely assumes that if a book needs an authoritative interpreter in order to function as an ecclesial authority, so must a living person. A book contains a monologue with respect to the reader. An author can often anticipate the thoughts and questions that might arise in the mind of the reader. But a book cannot hear the reader’s questions here and now, and answer them. A living person, however, can do so. A living person can engage in genuine dialogue with the reader, whereas a book cannot. Fr. Kimel talks about that here when he quotes Chesterton as saying that though we can put a living person in the dock, we cannot put a book in the dock. In this respect, a person can do what a book cannot; a person can correct global misunderstandings and answer comprehensive interpretive questions. A book by its very nature has a limited intrinsic potency for interpretive self-clarification; a person, on the other hand, by his very nature has, in principle, an unlimited intrinsic potency with respect to interpretive self-clarification. This unlimited potency with respect to interpretive self-clarification ensures that the hermeneutical spiral may reach its end. A book cannot speak more about itself than it does at the moment at which it is completed. A person, by contrast, remains perpetually capable of clarifying further any of his previous speech-acts.

This objection can also take the following form. Even if the Church possesses final interpretive authority, yet because the individual must nevertheless interpret the Church’s dogmatic pronouncements, therefore, the individual must be the final interpretive authority of the Church’s dogmatic pronouncements. This objection conflates two senses of the term ‘final.’ ‘Final’ can mean the terminus of a movement or of a series of movements, as an airplane has a final destination, the terminus of a series of flights for the day. ‘Final’ can also mean the terminus in an order or hierarchy, as the Commander in Chief is for the military.⁶⁹ In a communication, the individual receiving that communication is, by definition, the terminus of the movement whereby knowledge is transmitted. He is, in that sense, the final interpreter. But he is not thereby the final interpretive authority in the sense of a terminus in an order or hierarchy. He may be the terminus of the motion of the communication, while remaining subordinate in the order of interpretive authority. The exercise of interpretive authority by the Magisterium, say, at an ecumenical council, does not prevent believers from interpreting Scripture or any other communication. Nor does it withhold from them the skill by which to interpret Sacred Scripture. On the contrary, the exercise of this teaching and interpretive authority provides a supernatural light by which the believer ought to interpret Scripture. We ignore or disregard that interpretive authority at our peril, because it is God-given authority, for our good.⁷⁰

A related objection takes the following form. Civil government leaders have genuine authority, yet they are neither infallible nor can they bind the conscience nor do they require some kind of analog to apostolic succession. Therefore neither infallibility nor the power to bind the conscience nor apostolic succession is necessary for genuine Magisterial authority in the Church. In response, it is true that civil government leaders have genuine civil authority, which they have received from God. And it is true that they are not infallible. But it is not true that they cannot bind the conscience. Civil laws bind the conscience in that we are obligated to obey them, so long as they do not conflict with a higher law, whether that be the natural law, or the law of God as revealed through the Church. Hence the nature of genuine civil authority does not show that the Magisterium cannot bind the conscience of the faithful.

In addition, the nature of the Church’s Magisterial authority is not rightly determined by determining what nature of authority is sufficient for civil government. Such a method would presuppose both that the Church is equivalent in nature to a civil society and that there is no existing ecclesial authority that provides the definitive answer to questions about the nature of the Church’s authority. Hence the fallibility of civil authority does not show that the Church’s Magisterial authority is always likewise fallible. Most importantly, Magisterial authority differs from civil authority in that the Magisterium of the Church provides the authoritative interpretation both of natural law and divine law supernaturally-revealed. For this reason, while the civil authority cannot bind the conscience with respect to natural and divine law, the Magisterium of the Church does bind the conscience with respect to natural and divine law. Those who know this can never, in good conscience, oppose the definitive teaching of the Magisterium in matters of faith and morals, by claiming that they must obey God rather than men. The definitive teaching of the Magisterium is the voice of God to the Catholic, just as conscience is the voice of God to the pagan. This is why the Catholic must seek to conform his conscience according to the definitive teaching of the Church in matters of faith and morals, because the Church’s Magisterium is a higher authority than his conscience (i.e. than reason alone).

Regarding whether civil authorities acquire their authority through some kind of analog to apostolic succession, the answer is both yes and no, though in different respects. The rightful ruler in a civil society is the one who has been selected according to the process specified by the law. A usurper, no matter how popular, is not the rightful ruler. In this respect, the way in which a civil authority acquires his civil authority is similar to the way a person holding ecclesial authority acquires that ecclesial authority, because an ecclesial authority rightly acquires such authority by a process already laid down in Church law and tradition. And we know that the civil authority has been given his authority by God’s providence, as Jesus indicates in John 19:11 in speaking to Pilate. And St. Paul teaches the same in Romans 13:1.

Magisterial authority in the Church, however, cannot be acquired only through providence. If there were no essential difference between these two authorities, the Church would be nothing more than a civil society, and this would contradict Christ’s statement, “My kingdom is not of this world.” (John 18:36). When Jesus says that His Kingdom is not of this world, He is not saying that His Kingdom is located in some other world; He is saying that His Kingdom, which is in this world, does not have its authority from the world, i.e. from the natural order. What makes the Church a supernatural society, and not merely a natural society, is precisely that the authority by which she is governed is a supernatural authority. That supernatural authority is Christ’s own authority. His authority is supernatural because He is God. And He gave His supernatural authority sacramentally to His Apostles, and they in turn handed it on to their successors.⁷¹ For this reason, without apostolic succession, the Church would be a natural society providentially governed by God, another nation among the nations. Only by apostolic succession is she a divine society that does not compete with natural societies, because grace builds on nature. In short, civil authorities acquire their natural civic authority by God’s providence through lawful processes. Since the Church is a supernatural society, ecclesial authorities cannot acquire their authority naturally under providential guidance. Ecclesial authority is not natural authority, but supernatural authority, and therefore requires succession from a supernatural source.

B. Sola Ecclesia: The Church Is Autonomous, a Law unto Itself, and Unaccountable

A second type of objection follows directly from the preceding paragraph. According to this objection, if the Church’s Magisterium has final interpretive authority, then the Church is placing itself above Scripture, making itself autonomous, and entirely unaccountable. Mathison himself makes this sort of objection against the Catholic Church. Recall that for Mathison the problem with solo scriptura is that it “results in the autonomy of the individual believer.”⁷² He claims that Catholic doctrine makes the Church similarly autonomous. He writes:

The fundamental problem with “solo” Scriptura is that it results in autonomy. It results in final authority being placed somewhere other than the Word of God. It shares this problem with the Roman Catholic doctrine. The only difference is that the Roman Catholic doctrine places final authority in the church while “solo” Scriptura places final authority in each individual believer. Every doctrine and practice is measured against a final standard, and that final standard is the individual’s personal judgment of what is and is not biblical.⁵⁷

One difficulty for Mathison is that if, as he argues, “the church” has greater interpretive authority than the individual, then Mathison cannot avoid the result that “the church” must likewise be ‘final’ in the sense he thinks is objectionable. In that case it follows that his own interpreters must also be subject to the charges of “autonomy” and to a Reformed version of “sola ecclesia.” Mathison’s objection to the Catholic Church’s position is that in relation to Scripture the Catholic Church is hermeneutically equivalent to a large subjective individual composed of many individuals — a collective version of the individual proponent of solo scriptura — and that the Catholic Church therefore falls victim to the same problem of individualism found in solo scriptura, except that it does so in a large scale, institutional way. So if he thinks all this follows against the Catholic Church because the Catholic Church (as opposed to Scripture) has, or makes itself out to have, final interpretive authority, then, if it follows that in his own sola scriptura position “the church” is also the final interpretive authority, then his position must also face the same problems that he attributes to the Catholic position.

Mathison clarifies this somewhat by claiming that what makes the Catholic Magisterium autonomous viz-a-viz Scripture is the notion that the Magisterium is infallible under certain conditions. He writes:

Finally, we must always be mindful that claims to infallibility by the Church or any member of the Church inevitably lead to autonomy on the part of the one or ones claiming such infallibility. Even such qualified infallibility as that which is claimed by Rome has led to virtual autonomy. The Roman church has become a law unto herself. Against what higher standard can an infallible Church be measured? None. The only standard against which Rome allows herself to be measured is Rome.³⁸

Mathison thinks that if the Church claims to be guided infallibly in her definitive formulations of dogma, this makes her a “law unto herself,” not subject to a higher standard. And that result, thinks Mathison, is precisely the mistake of solo scriptura; it makes final authority rest some place other than the Word of God.

Let’s consider this objection carefully. Mathison claims that “the only difference [between Catholic doctrine and the ‘solo scriptura‘ position] is that the Roman Catholic doctrine places final authority in the Church while solo Scriptura places final authority in each individual believer.” Notice that he does not specify what he means by ‘final authority.’ The term can refer to two different types of authority. It can refer to the authority of the deposit of faith entrusted by Christ to the Apostles, or it can refer to teaching and interpretive authority with respect to that deposit of faith. Mathison seems to conflate the two types, or fail to distinguish between them, as though having final interpretive authority with respect to Scripture is to be equal in authority to the deposit of faith.

There is a difference, however, between the authority of the deposit of faith, and interpretive authority. We can see this difference already in Tertullian, who writes:

Our appeal [in debating with the heretics], therefore, must not be made to the Scriptures; nor must controversy be admitted on points in which victory will either be impossible, or uncertain, or not certain enough. For a resort to the Scriptures would but result in placing both parties on equal footing, whereas the natural order of procedure requires one question to be asked first, which is the only one now that should be discussed: “With whom lies that very faith to which the Scriptures belong? From what and through whom, and when, and to whom, has been handed down that rule by which men become Christians? For wherever it shall be manifest that the true Christian rule and faith shall be, there will likewise be the true Scriptures and expositions thereof, and all the Christian traditions.⁷³

Since this is the case, in order that the truth may be adjudged to belong to us, ‘as many as walk according to the rule,’ which the church has handed down from the apostles, the apostles from Christ, and Christ from God, the reason of our position is clear, when it determines that heretics ought not to be allowed to challenge an appeal to the Scriptures, since we, without the scriptures, prove that they have nothing to do with the Scriptures. For as they are heretics, they cannot be true Christians, because it is not from Christ that they get that which they pursue of their own mere choice, and from the pursuit incur and admit the name of heretics. Thus not being Christians, they have acquired no right to the Christian Scriptures; and it may be very fairly said to them, ‘Who are you?'”⁷⁴

Before debating the interpretation of Scripture, says Tertullian, we must first discover who has teaching and interpretive authority with respect to the deposit of faith. To do this, we locate those to whom the deposit of faith was entrusted, as handed down from the Apostles. Tertullian was writing about one hundred years after the death of the last Apostle. So the method he indicates for locating interpretive authority was not limited only to the generation after the Apostles. Tertullian indicates here a relation between interpretive authority and apostolic succession. In each generation, those persons having interpretive authority viz-a-viz the Scriptures are those to whom the deposit of faith was entrusted in the previous generation, all the way back to the Apostles themselves.

In this way Tertullian provides a clear example of the Catholic understanding of interpretive authority, and the basis for it in apostolic succession. Regarding the interpretive authority of the Church viz-a-viz the individual, the Council of Trent stated the following:

Furthermore, to check unbridled spirits, it decrees that no one relying on his own judgment shall, in matters of faith and morals pertaining to the edification of Christian doctrine, distorting the Holy Scriptures in accordance with his own conceptions, presume to interpret them contrary to that sense which holy mother Church, to whom it belongs to judge of their true sense and interpretation, has held and holds, or even contrary to the unanimous teaching of the Fathers.⁷⁵

And the First Vatican Council reaffirmed this, saying:

Now since the decree on the interpretation of Holy Scripture, profitably made by the Council of Trent, with the intention of constraining rash speculation, has been wrongly interpreted by some, we renew that decree and declare its meaning to be as follows: that in matters of faith and morals, belonging as they do to the establishing of Christian doctrine, that meaning of Holy Scripture must be held to be the true one, which Holy mother Church held and holds, since it is her right to judge of the true meaning and interpretation of Holy Scripture. In consequence, it is not permissible for anyone to interpret Holy Scripture in a sense contrary to this, or indeed against the unanimous consent of the fathers.⁷⁶

In the Catholic understanding, the individual’s own interpretation of Scripture does not have equal or greater authority than does that of the Magisterium. One of the primary tasks of the Magisterium is to give the authoritative interpretation of the deposit of faith.

The task of giving an authentic interpretation of the Word of God, whether in its written form or in the form of Tradition, has been entrusted to the living teaching office of the Church alone. Its authority in this matter is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ.⁷⁷

The pronouncements of the teaching and interpretative authority of the Church do not hold the same intrinsic authority as the deposit of faith, just as the Apostles were not equal in authority to Christ Himself. Christ has greater authority than did the Apostles, but that does not entail that when the Apostles were preaching and teaching they had no authority, or that they only had authority when what they were saying was divinely inspired. Having interpretive authority does not entail that the interpreter has the same or more authority than what is being interpreted. Jesus told them, “The one who listens to you listens to Me, and the one who rejects you rejects Me.” (Luke 10:16) When the Apostles testified that Jesus is the Christ, they did not take away from Christ’s authority; they spoke with His authority, by His authorization. But if interpretive authority were ipso facto equivalent in authority to that which it had been given the authority to interpret, then since the Apostles had the authority to speak in Christ’s name and interpret and explain what He had said, it would follow that the Apostles and Christ had equal authority. The Apostles and Christ, however, do not have equal authority. Therefore, interpretive authority is not ipso facto equivalent in authority to that which it has been given the authority to interpret. An authorized witness can give an authoritative testimony concerning an authority greater than himself; otherwise no one could have come to believe in the divinity of Jesus through the authority of the Apostles’ testimony. That is why, according to Catholic doctrine, the Magisterium “is not superior to the Word of God, but is its servant.”

Yet this Magisterium is not superior to the Word of God, but is its servant. It teaches only what has been handed on to it. At the divine command and with the help of the Holy Spirit, it listens to this devotedly, guards it with dedication and expounds it faithfully. All that it proposes for belief as being divinely revealed is drawn from this single deposit of faith.⁷⁸

Protestants sometimes mistakenly think that the Catholic position is sola ecclesia, but that is inaccurate. There is a three-fold arrangement of ecclesial authority consisting of Sacred Tradition, Sacred Scripture, and Magisterium, each according to its own mode:

It is clear therefore that, in the supremely wise arrangement of God, sacred Tradition, Sacred Scripture and the Magisterium of the Church are so connected and associated that one of them cannot stand without the others. Working together, each in its own way, under the action of the one Holy Spirit, they all contribute effectively to the salvation of souls.⁷⁹

In Catholic theology Scripture is something known and properly understood only within the bosom of the Church, and only as explicated by the Magisterium of the Church. Of course this does not preclude private study of Scripture; that is encouraged.⁸⁰ But in the Catholic Church Sacred Scripture is something properly known and understood through the Magisterium’s teaching authority guided by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit operates through the Magisterium to cast a supernatural light upon Scripture, so that it may be understood according to the same Spirit by Whom it was inspired.

So, in sum, the authority of Scripture is the authority of the deposit of faith. The authority of the Magisterium, on the other hand, is interpretive authority with respect to the deposit of faith. These are two different types or modes of authority. They do not compete with each other, but complement each other, and are mutually dependent. The Magisterium cannot exist as an interpretive authority, without the sacred deposit of the Word of God. Similarly, the Sacred Scriptures cannot provide their own authentic and authoritative interpretation to the Church, and so require the Magisterium in order to fulfill their purpose in the Church.

Mathison indicates that it is not teaching and interpretive authority per se, that (in his view) entails Magisterial autonomy. It is primarily the doctrine of Magisterial infallibility.⁸¹ There are at least two principled reasons why a Protestant might object to the doctrine that the Magisterium is infallible. First, one might believe that if any doctrinal pronouncements by the Magisterium are infallible, then such pronouncements are equivalent in authority to Scripture. Second, he might think that if any doctrinal pronouncements by the Magisterium are infallible, then there is no court of appeals for such doctrines.

Consider the first reason. If two statements are true, this does not entail that they are equally authoritative. Authority is not reducible to truth. The statement “I exist” is no less true than Christ’s statement, “I am the way, the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.” (John 14:6) Both statements are equally true, but the latter has greater authority because it was spoken by God Himself. Since infallibility means protected from error, therefore it only means that the result is true. It does not, in itself, determine the degree of authority the statement has. Authority in this sense is that to which submission and obedience is due from those entrusted to it. Reducing authority to truth conceptually eliminates authority. That is because such a reduction would imply that we need only submit to authority when the authority speaks what we already believe, or can independently verify, to be the truth. Hence, the result would eliminate authority, because “When I submit (so long as I agree), the one to whom I submit is me.”

So the true interpretation of Scripture is not authoritative because the interpretation is true, but this interpretation can be known to be true because it has been divinely authorized. An authoritative interpretation of Scripture is authoritative not because it is true (though it is true), but because of the authority given by Christ to the Magisterium to which is due submission of mind and will regarding the authentic interpretation of Scripture. For this reason the infallibility of a doctrinal pronouncement by the Magisterium does not make that doctrinal pronouncement as authoritative or more authoritative than Scripture itself.

The other objection to Magisterial infallibility is that it removes the possibility of a court of appeals for such doctrines. More specifically, given this doctrine of infallibility, the Scripture cannot be the “final court of appeal” if the Magisterium has already definitively and infallibly ruled on some matter of faith or morals, and there is no court of appeal beyond the Magisterium. In reply, recall that for Mathison,

All appeals to Scripture are appeals to interpretations of Scripture. The only real question is: whose interpretation?⁵⁷

There are a few things we can say here. First, if all appeals to Scripture are appeals to interpretations of Scripture, then Scripture alone cannot function as the “final court of appeals.” So Mathison’s requirement that Scripture be the final court of appeal is incompatible with his claim that all appeals to Scripture are appeals to interpretation of Scripture.

Second, if the Church’s definitive rulings are infallible, then there is no reason to challenge them by appealling to some higher authority. It makes no sense to appeal an infallible decision. So Mathison’s autonomy charge against the Catholic doctrine of Magisterial infallibility only applies if the Catholic doctrine of Magisterial infallibility is false. Hence in that respect Mathison’s charge begs the question (i.e. presumes precisely what is in question). Wishing to appeal an infallible ruling begs the question, by presuming that the infallible ruling is fallible. The problem in that case is not that the Magisterium has a charism of infallibility, but that the person requiring an additional court of appeals has not recognized that the Magisterium has this charism.

Third, when Mathison claims that the Church’s Magisterium needs to be accountable, he only pushes back the question. Accountable to whom? It cannot be Scripture itself, for the reason shown above, that Scripture needs to be interpreted. So it must be some other person or persons. Designate those to whom the Magisterium is accountable as x. Now, to whom are x accountable? Designate those to whom x are accountable as y. Now to whom are y accountable? We can keep asking this question. Either there is an infinite regress, or there is a final interpretive authority. But an infinite regress of accountability is absurd. So if there is to be accountability with respect to doctrinal and interpretive judgments, there must be a highest or final interpretive authority. Therefore the request for the Magisterium to be accountable to some other body is a denial that the Magisterium is the Magisterium, and a presumption that there is another Magisterium having final interpretive authority.

But the person who wants the Magisterium to be accountable to some other body, can only be satisfied if that body is either himself or those whom he approves. Otherwise his dissatisfaction with the lack of accountability would necessarily remain, for any body which has final interpretive authority. Hence the person who demands that the Magisterium be accountable to some other body is in actuality demanding that the Magisterium be accountable (directly or indirectly) to himself. And that is another way of showing that the demand is in essence an implicit arrogation to oneself of Magisterial authority. It is an expression of the maxim: “When I submit (so long as I agree), the one to whom I submit is me.”⁸²

VI. Implications

The Objections to Solo are Objections to Sola

In this paper we have argued that apart from apostolic succession, there is no principled difference between solo scriptura and sola scriptura. If our argument is sound, it follows that the criticisms Mathison raises against solo scriptura apply no less to sola scriptura. If “hermeneutical chaos and anarchy” result from solo scriptura, then they likewise result from sola scriptura. If solo scriptura leads to the “multiplication of schisms,” so does sola scriptura. If solo scriptura entails that the creeds have no “real authority,” then sola scriptura likewise entails that the creeds have no real authority. If the necessary result of solo scriptura is a practical relativism concerning the content of Scripture, then this too is the necessary result of sola scriptura. If solo scriptura “destroys” the authority of Scripture “by making the meaning of Scripture dependent upon the judgment of each individual,” then so does sola scriptura. Given the soundness of our argument, it follows that the claim by various Catholics that sola scriptura is the source of Protestant fragmentation and division in which each person interprets Scripture as seems right in his own eyes, is not a criticism of a straw man, but is in fact quite accurate.

Concerning solo scriptura, Mathison writes,

By denying the authority of the corporate judgment of the Church, solo scriptura has exalted the individual judgment of the individual to the place of final authority. It is the individual who decides what Scripture means. It is the individual who judges between doctrines on the basis of his individual interpretation of Scripture. It is the individual who is sovereign.”⁵⁴

In light of our argument that there is no principled difference between sola scriptura and solo scriptura, Mathison’s criticism of solo scriptura turns out to be a criticism of sola scriptura. So long as the individual retains final interpretive authority, it is the “the individual who is sovereign.” Yet as we have shown, in sola scriptura, the individual retains final interpretive authority. Hence it follows that in sola scriptura, it is the individual who is sovereign.

Solo Scriptura is the Fuller Manifestation and Outworking of Sola Scriptura

Moreover, our argument helps explain the rise over the last one hundred and fifty years of the explicit embrace of a solo scriptura approach within Protestantism. Philosophies and theologies more fully manifest their nature over time. If there is no principled difference between sola scriptura and solo scriptura, then we would expect the sola scriptura doctrine taught by the early Protestant to come to manifest its true nature over time as outright solo scriptura. Sola scriptura could temporarily conceal its true nature, as Protestantism lived on the inertial remnants of Catholic conceptions of sacramental authority. Sacramental magisterial authority is supernatural in origin, as we explained above, because the Church is a divine institution. The denial of sacramental magisterial authority closes a person off to the Church as supernatural, leaving only the possibility of democratic (bottom-up) man-made authority under providential guidance. As Protestants have come to understand more clearly the democratic nature of Protestant ecclesial authority, they have come to see that as Protestants, they themselves as individuals, hold final interpretive authority, and have come to live as such. This explains the widespread solo scriptura phenomenon within Protestantism that Mathison decries. Louis Bouyer concurs, saying:

The main difficulty Protestants have with the Catholic Church (and with the separated Eastern church as well) is on the subject of authority, and more particularly the teaching authority she claims. The opposition of those Protestants who are closest to the spirit of primitive Protestantism rests, as we have said, on the fear that whatever is conceded to the authority of the Church detracts correspondingly from the authority of the Word of God in the Bible. The opposition of those who adhere to doctrinal liberalism, however, while equally strong, has a different object, quite the reverse of the other. They object to the authority of the Church not for replacing another authority held to be divine and, as such, claiming man’s exclusive and undivided submission. They object to it simply because it is authority and therefore something inimical to the individual religious conscience.

This being the case, we may be tempted to believe that Protestantism, in the course of its development, has passed from one extreme to the other. That is to a certain extent, but not absolutely, true. The Protestantism which rejects the authority of the Church because it rejects all authority has come out of the Protestantism which rejected the authority of the Church because of the fear it wronged that other authority, held to be sovereign, of the Scriptures. If it was possible for the first to come from the second, it must somehow have been contained therein.⁸³

Bouyer presents two stances within Protestantism toward Magisterial authority. One of them, which he refers to as those closest to early Protestantism, fears that Magisterial authority detracts from the authority of Scripture, as though the two are the same sort of authority, and hence must be in competition with each other. Liberal Protestantism, by contrast, likewise objects to Magisterial authority, not for fear that it might detract from the authority of Scripture, but simply because it rejects authority. We might be tempted, claims Bouyer, to think that liberal Protestantism’s attitude toward authority is the opposite extreme of early Protestantism’s notion of authority. But according to Bouyer, that would be inaccurate. The liberal rejection of authority came out of the earlier Protestant conception of authority, precisely because it was somehow contained within it.

Recovering Apostolic Succession is the only way to avoid Solo

How then can Protestants avoid solo scriptura? Only by recovering apostolic succession. Solo scriptura logically follows the denial of apostolic succession. Either ecclesial authority has its basis in agreement or approval as determined by the individual’s own interpretation of Scripture, or ecclesial authority has its basis in Christ’s authorization and appointment. Wherever ecclesial authority has its basis in the individual’s agreement with that authority’s interpretation, there in essence is solo scriptura. And there in essence is the fulfillment of St. Paul’s prophecy:

For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires (2 Timothy 4:3.)

Only where ecclesial authority has its basis in Christ’s authorization and commission is the individual’s interpretation ultimately subject to that of the Church. Mathison’s positive intention to read and understand Scripture in the Church has genuine implications only if ‘Church’ is not defined as those who interpret Scripture like he does regarding the marks of the Church.⁸⁴ But authorization and appointment by the incarnate Christ can be found only in those having the succession of authorizations extending back through the Apostles to Christ Himself. Without apostolic succession, the individual has no less interpretive authority than does the Church. For this reason, only by recovering apostolic succession can Protestants overcome solo scriptura and all its destructive effects. May Christ the Good Shepherd bring us all into the one flock with one shepherd. (John 10:16).

By Bryan Cross and Neal Judisch

See the Catholic Encyclopedia entry ‘Protestantism.’ See also Philip Schaff, The Principle of Protestantism (Wipf & Stock, 2004). [↩]
Cf. Alister McGrath, Christianity’s Dangerous Idea (HarperOne, 2007). [↩]
“Solo Scriptura: The Difference a Vowel Makes,” pp. 25-29, 16 Modern Reformation Mar./Apr. 2007. Cf. The Shape of Sola Scriptura, pp. 237-253 (Canon Press, 2001) [hereinafter Shape]. [↩]
“Solo Scriptura: The Difference a Vowel Makes.” [↩] [↩] [↩]
Shape, pp. 274-275. [↩]
In his letter of March 10, 2009, Pope Benedict XVI said something quite similar. He wrote:

Leading men and women to God, to the God who speaks in the Bible: this is the supreme and fundamental priority of the Church and of the Successor of Peter at the present time. A logical consequence of this is that we must have at heart the unity of all believers. Their disunity, their disagreement among themselves, calls into question the credibility of their talk of God. Hence the effort to promote a common witness by Christians to their faith – ecumenism – is part of the supreme priority.

Readers are also encouraged to examine the exposition of this theme in Pope John Paul II’s encyclical, Ut Unum Sint. [↩]
Shape, pp. 239-240. [↩]
Shape, p. 240. On the following page Mathison writes, “Unless one can escape the effects of sin, ignorance, and all previous learning, one cannot read the Scriptures without some bias and blind spots.” Here he is decrying what he describes as the “naïve belief in the ability to escape one’s own noetic and spiritual limitations” that undergirds the solo scriptura orientation. Shape, p. 241. [↩]
“Solo Scriptura: The Difference a Vowel Makes,” pp. 25-29. Note that we, as well as Mathison, nevertheless accept that scriptura scripturae interpres (Scripture interprets Scripture), in the sense that the whole and each of the parts of Scripture function in such a way as to illuminate the meaning of one another. Dei Verbum, one of the documents of Vatican II, teaches:

Holy Scripture must be read and interpreted in the sacred spirit in which it was written, no less serious attention must be given to the content and unity of the whole of Scripture if the meaning of the sacred texts is to be correctly worked out. The living tradition of the whole Church must be taken into account along with the harmony which exists between elements of the faith. It is the task of exegetes to work according to these rules toward a better understanding and explanation of the meaning of Sacred Scripture, so that through preparatory study the judgment of the Church may mature. For all of what has been said about the way of interpreting Scripture is subject finally to the judgment of the Church, which carries out the divine commission and ministry of guarding and interpreting the word of God. Dei Verbum, 12.

[↩]
Shape, p. 246. We do not agree with Mathison that solo scriptura necessarily entails relativism. The person holding solo scriptura may believe firmly that his own interpretation is objectively true, and that everyone who disagrees with his interpretation is wrong. But we agree with Mathison that there is some truth to the connection between solo scriptura and relativism. That is because it is difficult in our present fluid culture to sustain the notion that anyone who disagrees with one’s own interpretation is wrong. The continual encounter with those of obvious intelligence and sincerity revering the very same book, and yet interpreting it differently from oneself, makes some form of relativism attractive without a principled basis for believing that one’s own interpretation is the authorized interpretation. So in this way, solo scriptura lends itself to a ‘practical relativism,’ which easily slides into an unqualified relativism. [↩]
1 Corinthians 1:10. Someone might object that divisions are good, since St. Paul says, “For there must also be factions among you, in order that those who are approved may have become evident among you.” (1 Cor. 11:19.) But St. Paul is not there praising division among Christians. He is teaching that division always entails schism from, not schism within. [↩]
Shape, p. 241. See also Paul Helm’s 2001 article “Of God, and the Holy Trinity: A Response to Dr. Beckwith.” [↩]
Reymond, for his part, will respond that the Nicene Creed does have “real authority,” but that the authority it possesses is derivative and contingent upon its fidelity to Scripture; and since in his estimation it fails to conform to Scripture on this point of Trinitarian doctrine, he wishes to see it rectified “in light of the Biblical teaching.” The confluence between Mathison’s and Reymond’s orientations in this instance is quite striking. Striking, too, is the appearance that for Mathison the “real authority” of the Nicene Creed entails its irreformability: for Mathison does not criticize the theological or exegetical argumentation upon which Reymond relies to justify his repudiation of the “Nicene Trinitarian Concept,” but contents himself merely to point out Reymond’s departure from it, leaving us to conclude that his departure from the Nicene Creed is ipso facto a mistake. Yet if the “real authority” of Nicaea entails the irreformability of its Creed — as it certainly appears to here for Mathison, at least “in practice” — then it can be no argument against the “infallibility” of Nicaea or any other Council that the dogmatic decrees promulgated in them are likewise “irreformable.” Why, then, are we meant to believe that the irreformability of (infallible) Catholic dogma is objectionable, whereas the irreformability of the “real but subservient authority” of the Councils Protestants accept fails to infringe upon the ultimate authority of Scripture? [↩]
Quoted in Shape, p. 242. [↩]
Shape, p. 243. [↩]
Shape, pp. 243-244. [↩]
Shape, p. 246. [↩]
He writes:

The doctrine of solo scriptura, despite its claims to uniquely preserve the authority of the Word of God, destroys that authority by making the meaning of Scripture dependent upon the judgment of each individual. Rather than the Word of God being the one final court of appeal, the court of appeal becomes the multiplied minds of each believer. One is persuaded that Calvinism is more biblical. The other is persuaded that dispensationalism is more biblical. And by what standard does each decide? The standard is each individual’s opinion of what is biblical. The standard is necessarily individualistic, and therefore the standard is necessarily relativistic. Shape, pp. 246-247.

[↩]
Someone might claim that “the science of exegesis” will overcome this problem. But the evidence does not support that claim. Protestant theologians in many different traditions have been using exegetical methods to support their particular interpretations of Scripture for almost five hundred years. And yet there has been little to no convergence of these various traditions and denominations. Instead new theological positions and traditions have arisen, positions such as dispensationalism, Pentecostalism, open theism, federal vision, etc., each defending itself by the very exegetical methods that are supposed to bring and preserve all Christians in unity. The continued diversification and variegation within Protestantism indicates that exegesis is not capable of establishing or preserving unity among Christians who believe in the inspiration and authority of Scripture. Exegesis has shown itself to be used more within a tradition to support the theological position held by those in that tradition. So the appeal to exegesis only pushes back the question: Whose exegesis? Lutheran exegesis? Calvinist exegesis? Methodist, Anglican, Baptist, Pentecostal, (etc.)? And we have to ask ourselves how much more time would be necessary to falsify the claim that exegesis is capable of unifying all Christians. [↩]
Mathison writes, “It should go without saying that solo scriptura was not the doctrine of the early Church or of the medieval Church. However, most proponents of solo scriptura would not be bothered in the least by this fact because they are not concerned to maintain any continuity with the teaching of the early Church.” Shape, p. 247. [↩]
The first recorded use of the term ‘layman’ in the early Church Fathers is found in St. Clement’s epistle to the Church at Corinth, written around AD 96. [↩]
Quoted in “Solo Scriptura: The Difference a Vowel Makes.” [↩]
Shape, pp. 248-249. [↩]
Shape, pp. 250-251. [↩]
In 1 Corinthians 1:13 St. Paul asks, “Is Christ divided?” The obvious answer is “no.” And that answer must remain the same forever. [↩]
Mathison writes:

The doctrine of solo scriptura also reduces the essential doctrines of the Christian faith to no more than opinion by denying any real authority to the ecumenical creeds of the Church. We must note that if the ecumenical creeds are no more authoritative than the opinions of any individual Christian, as adherents of solo scriptura must say if they are to remain consistent, then the Nicene doctrine of the Trinity and the Chalcedonian doctrine of Christ are no more authoritative than the doctrinal ideas of any opinionated Christian. The doctrine of the Trinity and deity of Christ become as open to debate as the doctrine of exclusive psalmody in worship.

It is extremely important to understand the importance of this point. If the adherents of solo scriptura are correct, then there are no real objective doctrinal boundaries within Christianity. Each individual Christian is responsible to search the Scripture (even though he can’t be told with any certainty what books constitute Scripture) and judge for himself and by himself what is and is not scriptural doctrine. In other words, each individual is responsible for establishing his or her own doctrinal boundaries-–his or her own creed. Shape, p. 249.

[↩]
Shape, p. 250. [↩]
Shape, p. 252. [↩] [↩]
“Solo Scriptura: The Difference a Vowel Makes,” pp. 25-29. [↩]
Shape, p. 245. [↩]
Mathison’s claim here is very much in agreement with that of the Catholic Church. The Catholic understanding of the relation between Scripture and the Church treats Scripture as a treasure entrusted by Christ to the Church, properly known and understood only within the bosom of the Church as explicated by her divinely appointed shepherds. Catholics come to Scripture through the guidance of Holy mother Church. [↩]
Shape, p. 256. [↩]
Shape, p. 260. [↩] [↩]
“We indeed willingly concede, if any discussion arises over doctrine, that the best and surest remedy is for a synod of true bishops to be convened, where the doctrine at issue may be examined.” As quoted in “Solo Scriptura: The Difference a Vowel Makes.” [↩]
Shape, p. 259. [↩]
Shape, p. 270-271. [↩]
Shape, p. 262. [↩]
Shape, p. 264. [↩] [↩] [↩]
To assert that the Bible is the sole infallible authority, and that the Bible is the final and supreme norm, in no way rules out the necessity or reality of other secondary and penultimate authorities. The Church is one such subordinate authority recognized by the early Church and by the Reformers. The Church was established by Jesus Christ Himself and given authority by Him. Jesus gives the Church an authority of “binding and loosing” that is not given to every member of the Church as individuals. . . . It is only within the Church that we find Scripture interpreted rightly, and it is only within the Church that we find the gospel. Shape, pp. 267-268.

[↩]
Shape, p. 272. [↩]
Shape, p. 273. [↩] [↩]
Cf. 2 Timothy 4:3. [↩]
“It is therefore to the Church that we must turn for the true interpretation of the Scripture, for it is in the Church that the gospel is found.” Shape, p. 270. [↩]
Cf. the Confession of the English Congregation at Geneva (AD 1556), the French Confession of Faith (AD 1559), articles 26-28; the Scottish Confession of Faith (AD 1560), chapters 16 and 18, the Belgic Confession of Faith (1561), articles 27-29, and the Second Helvetic Confession (AD 1566), chapter 17. [↩]
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, IV.i.10 [hereinafter Institutes]. [↩]
Covenant, Justification and Pastoral Ministry, p. 12. [↩]
Once again: “When I submit (so long as I agree), the one to whom I submit is me.” [↩]
Institutes, as quoted by Mathison in “Solo Scriptura: The Difference a Vowel Makes.” [↩]
Cf. Session 6, Canon 9. [↩]
We see here again the relevance of the statement, “When I submit (only when I agree), the one to whom I submit is me.” [↩]
Shape, pp. 272-273. [↩]
Kevin Vanhoozer writes:

While God’s word is infallible, human interpretations are not. God is in heaven; we are on earth. Situated between heaven and earth, we lack the knowledge of angels. What, then, are our options? (1) Hermeneutical relativism: embrace the interpreter within you and live as they did in the period of the Judges where everyone did what was right in their own eyes (so long as you don’t hurt anyone, presumably!); (2) take the road to Rome and the safety of numbers; (3) join an independent church, where right reading is a function of one’s local interpretive community. None of these options inspires confidence. I propose a fourth possibility: that we set out like pilgrims on the way indicated by our book; that we employ whatever hermeneutical tools available that help us to follow its sense; that we pray for the illumination of the Spirit and for the humility to acknowledge our missteps; and that we consult other pilgrims that have gone before us as well as Christians in other parts of today’s world. “Lost in Interpretation? Truth, Scripture, and Hermeneutics,” JETS 48/1 (March 2005) p. 92.

Vanhoozer’s option (1) is a description of solo scriptura. His option (2) is Catholicism. His option (3) is a description of sola scriptura, where “independent church” replaces denomination. His option (4) is not a fourth theoretical option, but a proposal to search for a way out of the hermeneutical mess. Of course we agree that (1) and (3) are false, for reasons we have explained in this article. And we believe that Vanhoozer’s option (4) leads inevitably to option (2). [↩]
“Solo Scriptura: The Difference a Vowel Makes,” pp. 25-29. [↩]
Shape, p. 276. [↩] [↩]
Shape, p. 261. [↩]
Shape, p. 270. [↩] [↩]
“Solo Scriptura: The Difference a Vowel Makes.” [↩] [↩] [↩] [↩]
John Calvin similarly says:

In this way, we willingly embrace and reverence as holy the early councils, such as those of Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus I, Chalcedon, and the like, which were concerned with refuting errors – in so far as they relate to the teachings of faith. For they contain nothing but the pure and genuine exposition of Scripture, which the holy fathers applied with spiritual prudence to crush the enemies of religion who had then arisen. Institutes, IV.9.8.

The reason Calvin accepts the first four ecumenical councils, but not the following councils, is because the first four, but not the later ones, sufficiently agree with his interpretation of Scripture. This shows again the same problem described above: “when I submit (so long as I agree), the one to whom I submit is me.” In other words, Calvin does not in fact recognize the authority of the first four councils. Rather, he merely ascribes authority to them on the ground that these four councils agree with his own interpretation. [↩]
Shape, pp. 251-252. [↩]
In June of 1520 Pope Leo issued the papal bull titled Exsurge Domine in which he warned Luther that he faced excommunication from the Church unless he recanted 41 sentences contained in his writings. Luther responded by publicly burning a copy of this Church document in December of that year. As a result, on January 3, 1521, he was excommunicated. In the Spring of that year, Luther appeared before the Diet of Worms. He was asked by Johann Eck, an official of the Archbishop of Trier, whether he rejected any part of his writings. At first he said, “If I am shown my error, I will be the first to throw my books into the fire.” Eck replied, “Martin, …Your plea to be heard from the Scripture is the one always made by heretics. You do nothing be renew the errors of Wyclif and Hus. . . . Martin, how can you assume that you are the only one to understand the sense of Scripture? Would you put your judgment above that of so many famous men and claim that you know more than they all? You have no right to call into question the most holy orthodox faith, instituted by Christ the perfect lawgiver, proclaimed throughout the world by the apostles, sealed by the red blood of the martyrs, confirmed by the sacred councils, defined by the Church in which all our fathers believed until death and gave to us as an inheritance, and which now we are forbidden by the pope and the emperor to [debate] lest there be no end of debate. I ask you, Martin — . . . do you or do you not repudiate your books and the errors which they contain?” Luther replied, ” . . . Unless I am convicted by Scripture and plain reason — I do not accept the authority of popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other — my conscience is captive to the Word of God.” Roland Bainton, Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther, pp. 143-144 (Mentor, 1950). [↩]
Shape, p. 278. [↩] [↩]
Shape, p. 279. [↩] [↩]
Shape, p. 280. [↩]
This same problem faces Kevin Vanhoozer’s attempt to distinguish between magisterial authority and ministerial authority. See his The Drama of Doctrine: A Canonical-linguistic Approach to Christian Theology (Westminster John Knox, 2005). [↩]
See our previous article, “Ecclesial Deism.” [↩]
Donum Veritatis, 23. [↩]
Among the principal duties of bishops the preaching of the Gospel occupies an eminent place. For bishops are preachers of the faith, who lead new disciples to Christ, and they are authentic teachers, that is, teachers endowed with the authority of Christ, who preach to the people committed to them the faith they must believe and put into practice, and by the light of the Holy Spirit illustrate that faith. They bring forth from the treasury of Revelation new things and old, making it bear fruit and vigilantly warding off any errors that threaten their flock. Bishops, teaching in communion with the Roman Pontiff, are to be respected by all as witnesses to divine and Catholic truth. In matters of faith and morals, the bishops speak in the name of Christ and the faithful are to accept their teaching and adhere to it with a religious assent. This religious submission of mind and will must be shown in a special way to the authentic magisterium of the Roman Pontiff, even when he is not speaking ex cathedra. Lumen Gentium, 25.

When the Magisterium, not intending to act “definitively”, teaches a doctrine to aid a better understanding of Revelation and make explicit its contents, or to recall how some teaching is in conformity with the truths of faith, or finally to guard against ideas that are incompatible with these truths, the response called for is that of the religious submission of will and intellect. Donum Veritatis, 23.

[↩]
Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther, pp. 143-144. [↩]
Of course the Commander in Chief is under the authority of God, but here we are speaking of ‘final’ only in a certain respect, i.e., within the human society. [↩]
Hebrews 13:17. [↩]
Christ did this when He instituted the Eucharist, and when He breathed on them and gave them the authority to forgive sins. Cf. Luke 22:19 and John 20:22-23. [↩]
Shape, p. 239. [↩]
Tertullian, On Prescription Against the Heretics, ch. 19. [↩]
Ibid., 37. [↩]
Council of Trent, Session IV. [↩]
First Vatican Council, Session 3, ch. 2, paras. 8-9. [↩]
Dei Verbum, 10. [↩]
Dei Verbum, 10. [↩]
Catechism of the Catholic Church, 95. [↩]
Cindy Wooden, “Pope encourages Christians to read Bible,” Catholic News Service (Nov. 14, 2007). [↩]
See Lumen Gentium, 25. [↩]
This does not mean that an infallible doctrine cannot be further developed (i.e. unpacked, unfolded, unveiled, etc.) Anything taught by the Magisterium can be further developed. This is how the Nicene Creed went from the form it had in AD 325 to the form it acquired in AD 381. But development never contradicts what has already been given. If it could, then over the last 2000 years, nothing at all would have been definitively established; the Arians might still turn out to have been right. And in that case, there would have been no point in holding any councils. [↩]
The Word, Church and Sacraments: In Protestantism and Catholicism, pp. 37-38 (Ignatius Press, 2004). [↩]
See Scott Hahn’s article titled “The Authority of Mystery: The Biblical Theology of Benedict XVI” in 2 Letter & Spirit, pp. 97-149 (2006). [↩]

Tags: Sola Scriptura

1,237 comments
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Jeremy Tate November 4th, 2009 12:41 pm :
Dear Bryan,

Excellent article. Some of my closest reformed friends have taken up Mattison’s argument which you describe in rejecting solo scriptura in favor of sola scriptura. I think you are right in pointing out that ultimately there is no difference between the two. What I had not seen before reading your article was how somebody indirectly makes themselves their own interpretive authority.
Here’s what I found interesting in light of a class I recently dropped at RTS (partially over this issue). I think my Professor might have realized the strength of the Catholic argument on this huge point, so he was very careful to say that the issue is not interpretation, but rather, making things up which are nowhere even hinted at in Scripture (he then discussed the Assumption of Mary, Immaculate Conception, ect…ironically all doctrines which were formally defined long after the Reformation – so even if they were wrong I’m not sure how they would justify the reformation). Have you seen this approach, which my Professor took before? How would you respond to it?
Bill Cobbett November 4th, 2009 2:32 pm :
Jeremy,

Isn’t the Catholic critique of sola scriptura just as powerful as the case made above against Mattison’s argument? The Catholic position does not abide by sola scriptura therefore your professor has still begged the question. He operates from a sola scriptura paradigm (which cannot be found in Scripture) and then hammers the Catholics for not operating from sola scriptura. But sola scriptura is the novelty, and therefore doesn’t it have to be justified appropriately before one can reasonably appeal to that principle to critique that which has always existed?

Best,
Bill
JJS November 4th, 2009 6:52 pm :
Our point is to show that implicit within the claim by proponents of sola scriptura to be submitting to the Church, is always a prior judgment concerning which body of persons count as the Church, and a theological assumption about how that judgment is to be made.

I know this has come up before and will do so again, but how is it that the Catholic is not doing the exact same thing (albeit in a different way)? Bryan, you have made a “prior judgment concerning which body of persons count as the church,” haven’t you? Your own interpretation of history and Scripture tells you that it is apostolic succession that locates the church, while Mathison’s tells him it’s the gospel that locates it. But in both cases, private judgment is being followed in order to locate where exactly Christ’s church is.
Tim A. Troutman November 4th, 2009 8:34 pm :
JJS > Section V above deals with that argument. Also Dr. Liccione on “Bad Arguments Against the Magisterium Part 2” would be good supplemental reading.
Bryan Cross November 4th, 2009 9:12 pm :
Hello Jeremy,

I’m glad you appreciated our article. You asked me how I would respond. I would call into question his working assumption that if a doctrine is not explicitly stated in Scripture, then Christians do not need to believe it. I might write a post up on the subject of Scripture and Tradition, but in the mean time, I recommend listening to the first lecture in this lecture series by Prof. Feingold. Then I would recommend reading Newman’s An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, if you have not already done so. The fact of development should lead us to be very cautious about inferring from apparent early silence about a doctrine to the conclusion that the doctrine is a heretical accretion.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
JJS November 4th, 2009 9:47 pm :
Tim,

You’re right, I posted my comment before I had finished the article (and I am doing it again right now, only now I’m closer to the end).

The Protestant is seeking a group of persons who believe, teach and practice what his interpretation of Scripture indicates was the belief, teaching and practice of the Apostles….

The person becoming Catholic, by contrast, is seeking out the Church that Christ founded. He does this not by finding that group of persons who share his interpretation of Scripture. Rather, he locates in history those whom the Apostles appointed and authorized, observes what they say and do viz-a-viz the transmission of teaching and interpretive authority, traces that line of successive authorizations down through history to the present day to a living Magisterium, and then submits to what this present-day Magisterium is teaching.

I still don’t see the difference. The Catholic convert studies the Scripture and the fathers and concludes that the church Christ founded looks like what the Catholic Catechism says it is, while the Protestant does the same and concludes the church looks like what the Heidelberg Catechism says it is.

It sounds like the position being advocated is that as long as one uses his private judgment to come to the right position, it’s OK. If you step outside your tradition for a moment and consider this, can you see how it looks to the rest of us?
Jared Brattoli November 4th, 2009 10:33 pm :
Very well thought out and structured article. I love it. Just what I’ve been waiting for.
Andrew McCallum November 4th, 2009 11:13 pm :
Bryan,

There are a number of ways to address your points. One of them is to point out that we don’t believe that apostolic succession is false. Now if you are just assuming the RCC understanding of apostolic succession that’s a different story. But if we assume Rome’s understanding of apostolic succession then we don’t need to talk about sola scriptura at all, do we? If the only thing that matters concerning ecclesiastic validity is for there to be literal succession from the bishops of the 1st century to now then Rome is right about everything, end of story. In short to assume the RCC definition of apostolic succession is to define away Protestantism.

But let me give you another way of looking at the issue. At the origins of Christianity we find writings of men who assumed the infallibility of the Scriptures. We have talked about Clement on a number of occasions here. He speaks with great authority by pounding home verse after verse from the Bible. He assuredly believed what the Apostles and Prophets had before him that the Scriptures were the infallible Word of God because they were inspired and thus these could be used as an ultimate standard. The question before us is then whether or not the ECF’s believed that there was anything else that rose to the level of the Scriptures. If they did not,then we are left with Scripture alone (unless you want to suggest another possibility?). If they did, then they did not believe in Scripture alone, they believed in Scripture plus this something else. But note this – if they did believe that only Scripture alone could provide this ultimate authority, this fact does not undermine the Church’s ability to rule or act authoritatively. The Church could still act as a Church whether shew was using either a standard of 1) only Scripture or 2) Scripture + whatever tradition might be around at the time.

Now of course as a Protestant my position is that the Scriptures are superior to the words of the bishops (as Augustine held), but I think we have been through that before. The point I want to really bring home is that the Church would not have fallen apart if she had always viewed tradition as a secondary authority to the Scriptures. Play this thought game for me, Bryan. Assume for the moment that Clement and his contemporaries believed that only Scripture could be the final bar of authority. Now given this belief of the Early Church, what would have stopped the Church from acting authoritatively as that authority was laid out by Christ and the Apostles?
David Pell November 4th, 2009 11:40 pm :
The point I want to really bring home is that the Church would not have fallen apart if she had always viewed tradition as a secondary authority to the Scriptures.

The history of Protestantism until now shows this statement to be patently false.
Teri November 4th, 2009 11:43 pm :
Bryan and Neil,

Excellent article! Of course, I will have to read it several times to absorb it completely. Professor Feingold is an amazing gift to the Church. As a Jewish Convert to the Catholic Church, his insights are phenomenal. I believe you suggested his lecture series, Bryan. All of his lectures give new meaning to our common faith.

May Our Lord bless your work and give you His peace,
Teri
Bryan Cross November 4th, 2009 11:49 pm :
Andrew,

The comment box is intended for use only by those who have read the article. The article is long, I understand, but if you wish to comment, please read the article first.

Also, comments should stay on-topic, that means, directly interacting with the argument in this article. Comments that don’t interact with the article, but strike off on a different topic, will not be approved.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Sean November 5th, 2009 12:06 am :
Andrew,

Its not as if the Catholic definition of apostolic succession was just invented yesterday and we are backing into something here. This is creedal Christianity.

“For if the lineal succession of bishops is to be taken into account, with how much more certainty and benefit to the Church do we reckon back till we reach Peter himself, to whom, as bearing in a figure the whole Church, the Lord said: ‘Upon this rock will I build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it !’ The successor of Peter was Linus, and his successors in unbroken continuity were these: — Clement, Anacletus, Evaristus, Alexander, Sixtus, Telesphorus, Iginus, Anicetus, Pius, Soter, Eleutherius, Victor, Zephirinus, Calixtus, Urbanus, Pontianus, Antherus, Fabianus, Cornelius, Lucius, Stephanus, Xystus, Dionysius, Felix, Eutychianus, Gaius, Marcellinus, Marcellus, Eusebius, Miltiades, Sylvester, Marcus, Julius, Liberius, Damasus, and Siricius, whose successor is the present Bishop Anastasius. In this order of succession no Donatist bishop is found. But, reversing the natural course of things, the Donatists sent to Rome from Africa an ordained bishop, who, putting himself at the head of a few Africans in the great metropolis, gave some notoriety to the name of “mountain men,” or Cutzupits, by which they were known.”
Augustine, To Generosus, Epistle 53:2 (A.D. 400)

Augustine, here, describes what Apostolic Succession means. Its pretty clear which definition is a later invention intended to back into a presupposition.

“In like manner as if there take place an ordination of clergy in order to form a congregation of people, although the congregation of people follow not, yet there remains in the ordained persons the Sacrament of Ordination; and if, for any fault, any be removed from his office, he will not be without the Sacrament of the Lord once for all set upon him, albeit continuing unto condemnation.”
Augustine, On the Good of Marriage, 24:32 (A.D. 401).

The second part of your comment is an attempt to pit scripture against the church. This is not the Catholic position.

Scripture must be interpreted by the Church. Bryan’s paper addresses the question of how one defines church and specifically addresses Mathison’s error in not identifying the church by apostolic succession.
Bryan Cross November 5th, 2009 12:16 am :
Jason,

Both the person becoming Protestant, and the person becoming Catholic, are using their own judgment. That’s not where the difference is located. And you are correct that the Catholic convert might study Scripture and the Fathers. And the Protestant convert might study Scripture and the Fathers. That too is not where the difference is located. The difference is that while the person becoming Protestant bases his determination of the nature and location of the Church fundamentally on agreement with his own interpretation of Scripture (not on what those having the succession from the Apostles say is the nature and location of the Church), the person becoming Catholic bases his determination of the nature and location of the Church fundamentally on what those having the succession from the Apostles say is the nature and location of the Church.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
mateo November 5th, 2009 1:49 am :
Congratulations to Bryan Cross and Neal Judisch for a great article.

So long as the individual retains final interpretive authority, it is the “the individual who is sovereign. … As Protestants have come to understand more clearly the democratic nature of Protestant ecclesial authority, they have come to see that as Protestants, they themselves as individuals, hold final interpretive authority, and have come to live as such.

To me, the “democratic nature of Protestant eccelesial authority” and the belief that it is “the individual who is sovereign” is reflected most glaringly in the Protestant practice of church shopping. The practice of church shopping indicates two things, that the individual believes that he has the right to church shop until he finds a church that agrees with his own private interpretation of scriptures, and that the Protestant churches have the right organize themselves via democratic principles. I am astounded that so many “bible believers” can practice church shopping without being bothered by the practice. Where in the Bible did the Old Testament prophets teach synagogue shopping or the Apostles teach church shopping?

Even worse than church shopping is the idea that a bible believer has the authority to found a new church that teaches novel doctrines. The new non-denominational church in town spun off from the Vineyard Church that spun off from the Calvary Chapel Church, that spun off from the … Sheesh! Do Protestants really have the freedom to go church shopping and found new sects that teach novel doctrines? The answer to that question depends on the answer that one gives to “the Question of Interpretive Authority.”

Mathison grants that each individual may appeal to Scripture to correct the Church, disobey the Church and leave the Church, so long as he is following his conscience.

I find it surprising that this particular Protestant doctrine doesn’t have a name by which it is commonly known, such as the Doctrine of the Primacy of Conscience, or the Doctrine of the Primacy of the Believer. The closest thing that I can think of that expresses this doctrine is what some Protestant sects call “Bible Freedom”.

Without apostolic succession, there is within Protestantism no group of persons already having divine authorization to provide the definitive decision regarding matters of doctrine and interpretation …

The Jehovah Witnesses and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are sects that take issue with their Protestant brethren over the doctrine of “Bible Freedom”. Both Jehovah Witnesses and Mormons teach that the believer must submit to the men that hold the authority of a teaching office within their respective churches:

Hence, besides individually possessing God’s Word, we need a theocratic organization. Yes, besides having God’s spirit of illumination, a Christian needs Jehovah’s theocratic organization in order to understand the Bible. (Watchtower; June 15, 1951; p. 375)

As members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we are blessed to be led by living prophets—inspired men called to speak for the Lord, as did Moses, Isaiah, Peter, Paul, Nephi, Mormon, and other prophets of the scriptures. We sustain the President of the Church as prophet, seer, and revelator—the only person on the earth who receives revelation to guide the entire Church. Prophets – The Church of the Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints

The Jehovah Witnesses and the Mormons may claim that certain men are vested with the authority of a teaching office within their respective churches – what they can’t claim is that doctrine that their churches officially teach has always been the same. A church hierarchy that can change the doctrine of the church cannot also be a source of infallible truth.

… “when I submit (so long as I agree), the one to whom I submit is me.” For this reason, in sola scriptura it is the individual who ultimately has and always retains final interpretive authority.

… that our conscience is bound ultimately by our own interpretation of Scripture, is contrary to the perpetual teaching of the Church, because that claim denies that Christ established a perpetual teaching authority in His Church …the Catholic must seek to conform his conscience according to the definitive teaching of the Church in matters of faith and morals, because the Church’s Magisterium is a higher authority than his conscience (i.e. than reason alone).

The Catholic Church has never taught a doctrine of the Primacy of Conscience, but has, instead, taught the doctrine of the Primacy of Peter. Who among those that adhere to the doctrine of the Primacy of Conscience believe that all men and women are born with perfectly formed consciences? The man born with a conscience that is perfectly formed does not need scripture to form it, and the man that does not have a perfectly formed conscience could not depend on his conscience to infallibly guide him in his interpretation of scriptures.

If the authority of the ecumenical creeds only followed from the perspicuity of Scripture, there would be no need for the creeds in the first place, since the creeds would have restated only what was already plainly explicit in Scripture. This would entail that all those who opposed the creeds were blind, deaf, and stupid …

Very good point. The creeds are summaries of the doctrines believed by the Church. I always wonder how Protestants can seriously claim to believe in the perspicuity of scriptures and then reconcile that belief with the reality that outside of their particular Protestant sect there are thousands upon thousands of Protestant sects that that teaching contradictory church doctrine.

Do most Protestants think that the Protestants belonging to the other sects that preach contradictory doctrine are “blind, deaf, and stupid”? I doubt it, since most Protestants also believe that there is nothing wrong with church shopping. What sane person would look for the truth in a church that is comprised of the blind, deaf and stupid? Nor do I believe that Protestants think that the other Protestants that preach contradictory doctrine are doing so because they actually know the truth and are maliciously teaching heresy. I suppose one way to reconcile these two beliefs is to become hostile the concept of doctrine, which is a stance that is not uncommon among the members of Protestant “bible churches”.

I also find it hard to accept Mathison’s thesis that Protestants are oblivious to the “the hermeneutical chaos and anarchy that exists within the Protestant church” for the reason that he gives: “Most Protestants do not seem to have taken this question seriously enough if they have considered it at all.”

I believe that most Protestants are, in fact, not oblivious to the reality that there are thousands of other Protestant sects that teach contradictory church doctrine. But what, exactly, is the source of the “hermeneutical chaos and anarchy” within Protestantism if it is not a misplaced belief in sola sciptura, not a misplaced belief in the perspicuity of scriptures, not a belief that Protestants that disagree with them are “blind, deaf, and stupid”, and not a belief that other Protestants know the truth and are maliciously spreading heresy? From whence does the scandal of Protestant division spring?

Mathison is most certainly correct, the scandal of Protestant division is a scandal to the unbelieving world that hinders the spread of the gospel: “If we proclaim to the unbelieving world that we have the one true and final revelation from God, why should they listen to us if we cannot agree about what that revelation actually says?”

May Christ the Good Shepherd bring us all into the one flock with one shepherd. (John 10:16).

Amen!
JJS November 5th, 2009 3:40 am :
Bryan,

The difference is that while the person becoming Protestant bases his determination of the nature and location of the Church fundamentally on agreement with his own interpretation of Scripture (not on what those having the succession from the Apostles say is the nature and location of the Church), the person becoming Catholic bases his determination of the nature and location of the Church fundamentally on what those having the succession from the Apostles say is the nature and location of the Church.

I understand that, but is it not true that the Catholic’s “basing his determination of the nature and location of the Church fundamentally on what those having the succession from the Apostles say is the nature and location of the Church” itself a result of that Catholic’s own private determination of whose judgment is most trustworthy?

In other words, this is how it sounds to someone who doesn’t share your assumptions: “The problem with Protestantism is not its use of private judgment (since all decisions involve this). Rather the problem with Protestantism is that it understands church authority as being derivative rather than rooted in an infallible Magisterium. How Protestant of those Protestants!”

Your claim seems self-serving. You admit that before you became a Catholic, you were not under the Church’s authority. But then somehow, through lots of study I’m sure, you came to believe (before coming under the jurisdiction of Rome) that the best way to locate the church Jesus founded was to consult the successors of the apostles (whom you somehow, through lots of study I’m sure, came to believe were the God-ordained and infallible leaders of the church for endless generations).

Forgive me for being overly dense, but I still fail to see how this is different from that for which you fault us Protestants. What is the difference between using my decision-making power to conclude that the Bible is the only infallible authority, and using my decision-making power to conclude that it isn’t?
Devin Rose November 5th, 2009 8:45 am :
Thank you for this excellent article. I found it really helpful. I have some questions about the answers to the objections part which I hope to ask if I get some time later, but I had an insight I wanted to share which I hope is relevant to this part:

“The objection is understandable, but it can be made only by those who do not see the principled difference between the discovery of the Catholic Church, and joining a Protestant denomination or congregation….But the Catholic finds something principally different, and properly finds it by way of qualitatively different criteria.”

For myself, a convert from Evangelical Protestantism to Catholicism, the word “discovery” exactly describes my experience, and I would draw an analogy of this experience to when I found Christ a year or so before becoming Catholic. When I “discovered” Christ as an atheist, all of a sudden my entire life’s paradigm shifted: I realized that there was One who created me and loved me and that I wanted to love Him in return. It was no longer a question of following what I had previously thought to be true but to re-orient myself to the One who could not lie. I wanted to know who Jesus was, what he taught, his truth and then live that truth by his grace.

This is not a perfect analogy, but as a Protestant when I continued looking ever deeper for Christ’s truth in the Faith and in morals, I read the Bible daily, prayed all the time, had Bible studies, listened to pastors preach at church and on tapes: I was always trying to discern whether one interpretation of the Scriptures or system of interpreting them made more sense than others so that I could have an accurate understanding of God’s truth which is found in them. I only got so far before realizing that, unless God has divinely protected “some Church” from error could I ever hope to have a correct Faith and not believe and follow falsehoods. No Protestant Community I had heard of even claimed to have this fullness of the truth. It seems that the Mormons claimed it and the Catholics and Orthodox did. The Mormons were not credible in my eyes.

So I began researching into the history of the Faith. How credible was the Catholic Church’s claim to being the Church Christ founded and protected from error? I don’t want to go too far off topic here, but I “discovered” the Catholic Church was this Church and knew that I could trust her as I would trust Christ because Jesus preserved his Bride from error. This discovery was a paradigm shift from Protestantism, where it was very much “do you best to find the denomination and local church that seems to most closely match what I currently believed to be the right interpretation of the Bible.”

I hope that this is not off-topic. Thanks and God bless!
Bryan Cross November 5th, 2009 10:08 am :
Jason,

I’ll respond to your comments paragraph by paragraph, if you don’t mind.

I understand that, but is it not true that the Catholic’s “basing his determination of the nature and location of the Church fundamentally on what those having the succession from the Apostles say is the nature and location of the Church” itself a result of that Catholic’s own private determination of whose judgment is most trustworthy?

In the case of the person becoming Catholic, the judgment regarding who is most trustworthy follows from the discovery of a living divinely authorized teaching office having the divine authority to bind the conscience. In the case of the person becoming Protestant, the judgment regarding who is most trustworthy does not follow from the discovery of this divinely authorized teaching office; it follows from one’s interpretation of Scripture, to determine who is teaching most closely in accordance with one’s interpretation.

In other words, this is how it sounds to someone who doesn’t share your assumptions: “The problem with Protestantism is not its use of private judgment (since all decisions involve this). Rather the problem with Protestantism is that it understands church authority as being derivative rather than rooted in an infallible Magisterium. How Protestant of those Protestants!”

The problem with understanding church authority as being derivative (rather than being based on apostolic succession) is not that it is Protestant. That would just be putting a label on the practice, not pointing to an actual problem. The problem is that there is a contradiction internal to the sola scriptura position. It claims to be different in a principled way from solo scriptura, but because it understands church authority as being derivative, there is ultimately [as we showed in the article] no principled difference between solo scriptura and sola scriptura.

Your claim seems self-serving. You admit that before you became a Catholic, you were not under the Church’s authority. But then somehow, through lots of study I’m sure, you came to believe (before coming under the jurisdiction of Rome) that the best way to locate the church Jesus founded was to consult the successors of the apostles (whom you somehow, through lots of study I’m sure, came to believe were the God-ordained and infallible leaders of the church for endless generations).

Correct.

Forgive me for being overly dense, but I still fail to see how this is different from that for which you fault us Protestants. What is the difference between using my decision-making power to conclude that the Bible is the only infallible authority, and using my decision-making power to conclude that it isn’t?

The difference is not in the initial use of one’s decision-making power. The difference lies in whether or not one discovers the living teaching authority appointed and authorized by the incarnate Christ. Because the Protestant convert does not discover this, he retains ultimate interpretive authority (and hence this creates the contradiction in his claim to reject solo scriptura). But the Catholic convert does discover this, and so does not retain ultimate interpretive authority. This is why, as we argued in the article, the only way to avoid solo scriptura is by discovering apostolic succession.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Tim Troutman November 5th, 2009 10:19 am :
What is the difference between using my decision-making power to conclude that the Bible is the only infallible authority, and using my decision-making power to conclude that it isn’t?

There is no difference in the process, but in the result. What is the difference in me concluding that Jesus is the Messiah and that He isn’t? Well, nothing (in the process) and everything (in result).

There is a qualitative difference in what happens when you submit to the Catholic Church and when you join a denomination just as there is a qualitative difference when you submit to Christ and when you submit to the President of the United States.

This is exemplified when we start talking about the Church being infallible. That’s scares the hell out of men because it means that we have to obey her even if we think we know Scripture better than her.
K. Doran November 5th, 2009 10:21 am :
Hi JJS,

You asked: “What is the difference between using my decision-making power to conclude that the Bible is the only infallible authority, and using my decision-making power to conclude that it isn’t?”

I see one difference (there are many others) in our use of private judgment as the following. If you read the bible carefully, and concluded that your denomination’s belief about (say) Matthew 16 was sufficiently likely to be wrong, and your denomination refused to change it’s interpretation and tried to make you agree publicly that it’s interpretation was at least concurrently acceptable, you would leave your denomination for another one. And your denomination couldn’t really complain, because they have never claimed to have an infallible interpretation of Matthew 16 or of any other bible verse.

But if I use my private judgment to conclude that the Catholic church is likely wrong about Matthew 16 based on non-magisterial data, I won’t leave the Catholic Church. Because I include the magisterial data as of sufficient weight to override my own best interpretations of scripture. Thus, when Augustine developed different views of the verses in Matthew over time, he didn’t feel so sure of these new views that he could either leave the Catholic Church or demand that the Church’s various traditional interpretations of these verses needed to change. Rather, he required of himself and others to stay in the Catholic Church, and recognized that his new interpretation should not ipso facto replace the traditional ones in Church teaching.

Thus, we simply don’t use our private judgment to church shop in the same way that protestants do. We of course use private judgment to: (a) determine that apostolic succession is necessary for the true church, and (b) identify the church with the best claims to apostolic succession. But once we apply our private judgment to (a) and (b), we turn off the private judgment and accept magisterially-taught doctrines whether we have sufficient non-magisterial proof or not.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but you would not accept a protestant doctrine without a plain proof from scripture, and if your best private interpretation of scripture changed with sufficient certainty, then you would not accept any magisterial teaching as capable of overturning that certainty? In other words, you wouldn’t do what we do: accept magisterial teachings whether or not we think the non-magisterial evidence points against them?

Sincerely,

K. Doran

p.s. I have always found the non-magisterial evidence to be quite consistent with Catholic magisterial teaching. But to the extent that I don’t initially see the evidence perfectly in line, I still accept the magisterial teaching. The correlation between evidence and teaching doesn’t eviscerate the obedience.
Jared Brattoli November 5th, 2009 11:57 am :
Very Good point by K. Doran! :)

I would like to add that when it comes to using our private interpretation (which is unavoidable for everyone), as K. Doran points out, the Catholic spirit is to withhold final judgement from ourselves and leave it for those given the responsibility and authority to make those final judgements, and that the spirit and mind of the church collectively, while being ordered properly, is the true spirit and mind of Christ. By holding final judgement to ourselves, we withhold from ourselves the promise Christ made that he will send the Holy Spirit to lead the Church into all truth. There must be some kind of final, infallable judgement on doctrine if the Scriptures and Apostolic tradition will have any meaning or use to us, to the effect that it will unite us as one body. Since final judgement is not to be assumed by any individual who so chooses, then it must be assumed by someone, or else we have the effects of solo scriptura, which are contrary to the will of Christ. Whatever the final judgement is it must be infallable, or else we inevitably have the effects of solo scriptura, which are contrary to the will of Christ. If the final judgement on doctrine is to be infallable, that infallable body must be easily identified and recognized, or else we have the effects of solo scriptura, etc. Apostolic succession is that thing which is easily identified and recognized–it is the one thing that is perspicious. It is as easy as using our private judgement to determine the color of the sky–every one uses there own private judgement, but the color of the sky is so perspicious and apparent that those who use their private judgement to recognize it need not be blamed for using private judgement, while those who would deny that the sky is blue can be blamed for using private judgement, for they oppose what is so perspicuous and apparent. This isn’t the best analogy, but it is the quickest analogy my limited mind can think of at the moment. No protestant denomination can say they have authorization to make such final judgements, because no member of any protestant denomination has been given (i.e. ordained) authority to do so by a prior valid authority, and this is easily recognizable. If authority is to be derived, it cannot be derived privately; it cannot be privately assumed without order (this is protestantism).

One may object that Apostolic succesion is not easily identified and recognized, but I would only point out that at the very least we can easily identify and recognize what/who does not have that necessary kind of authority, i.e. protestantism.

For the first 1500 years of the Church’s existence it has held reletively few divisions, and there is no reason the true Chruch of Christ cannot be recognized today by those seperated from her, despite our private scruples with her doctrine.
Andrew Preslar November 5th, 2009 2:31 pm :
Matt Yonke has made some brief and lucid comments about the relationship of authority and private judgment in the act of conversion. See Podcast #8, beginning around the 30:00 minute mark.
Keith Mathison November 5th, 2009 2:34 pm :
Hi Bryan,

I just ran across this critique of my book. I’ve only had time to skim it so far, but I do plan to read it carefully. I appreciate you taking the time to try present my argument fairly, even while disagreeing with it. That doesn’t always happen in such discussions. Do you mind if I interact with your paper here in the comments section of the site?

I don’t have anything substantive to say in response to the paper itself yet since I haven’t read it all the way through, but in the meantime, may I ask about something you wrote in response to Jason in comment #13? You wrote:

“Both the person becoming Protestant, and the person becoming Catholic, are using their own judgment. That’s not where the difference is located. And you are correct that the Catholic convert might study Scripture and the Fathers. And the Protestant convert might study Scripture and the Fathers. That too is not where the difference is located. The difference is that while the person becoming Protestant bases his determination of the nature and location of the Church fundamentally on agreement with his own interpretation of Scripture (not on what those having the succession from the Apostles say is the nature and location of the Church), the person becoming Catholic bases his determination of the nature and location of the Church fundamentally on what those having the succession from the Apostles say is the nature and location of the Church.”

This looks to me like you are saying:

The person becoming Protestant determines the nature and location of the Church by examining Scripture and/or history.

The person becoming Catholic determines the nature and location of the Church by asking the Roman magisterium (those having succession).

To those of us who aren’t Roman Catholic, it seems that to ask Rome if Rome is the Church begs the question since the very point to be determined is whether Rome is the Church.

Even if this were not the case, by what criteria would the person determine that the best way of determining the nature and location of the church is to ask the Roman magisterium? Does he ask the Roman magisterium if asking the Roman magisterium is the best way, or does he determine (discover) that the Roman magisterium is the best way to determine the location and nature of the church by examining Scripture and history?

I’m not sure whether your response gets to the heart of Jason’s question since the person in question will have to base his evaluation of the magisterium’s claims either on some other criterion or combination of criteria (Scripture, history, reason, etc.) or else make a fideistic leap of faith and accept the magisterium’s claims because they are the magisterium’s claims.

I look forward to going through your paper and hope you don’t mind my following up on it here.

Keith
Bryan Cross November 5th, 2009 3:23 pm :
Hello Keith,

I’m glad you commented here, and yes, you’re welcome to comment here about the article. I tried to look up your email address yesterday, to send you a heads-up on our article, but I couldn’t find your email address through the Ligonier site. So, I’m glad you came across our article.

In regard to your question, you put it this way:

The person becoming Protestant determines the nature and location of the Church by examining Scripture and/or history.

The person becoming Catholic determines the nature and location of the Church by asking the Roman magisterium (those having succession).

To those of us who aren’t Roman Catholic, it seems that to ask Rome if Rome is the Church begs the question since the very point to be determined is whether Rome is the Church.

If I had been making an argument, and my premise was “The Catholic Church claims to be the Church Christ founded”, and then concluded, “Therefore, the Catholic Church is the Church Christ founded” that would be question-begging. In other words, if I was here (in this thread) arguing that we should all be Catholics and not Protestants, and using as my reason “that Rome says so”, I would indeed be begging the question. But, in my comments (in the combox here) I haven’t been arguing that the Catholic Church is the true Church that Christ founded (even though I believe that it is). Rather I have been pointing out that there is principled epistemic difference between the person who becomes Catholic, and the person who becomes Protestant. The person becoming Catholic discovers (from his study of all these things) that Christ instituted apostolic succession. The Protestant does not. That discovery changes the epistemic condition of the Catholic viz-a-viz the Protestant, regarding the retention of ultimate interpretive authority by the individual. And so my point has been that the Catholic is not subject to the tu quoque objection in response to our argument that there is no principled difference between sola scriptura and solo scriptura with respect to the holder of ultimate interpretive authority.

Even if this were not the case, by what criteria would the person determine that the best way of determining the nature and location of the church is to ask the Roman magisterium? Does he ask the Roman magisterium if asking the Roman magisterium is the best way, or does he determine (discover) that the Roman magisterium is the best way to determine the location and nature of the church by examining Scripture and history?

This will involve an investigation into early Church history, to determine whether the early Church practiced apostolic succession, and how the early Church understand the role of Peter and his successors. If such things are found, then we can either believe that those were corruptions or, that they were manifestations of the Spirit-protected unfolding of the deposit of faith entrusted by the Apostles to the Church.

I’m not sure whether your response gets to the heart of Jason’s question since the person in question will have to base his evaluation of the magisterium’s claims either on some other criterion or combination of criteria (Scripture, history, reason, etc.) or else make a fideistic leap of faith and accept the magisterium’s claims because they are the magisterium’s claims.

It would most definitely not be the latter, i.e. the fideistic option. But, the false dilemma is that we have to choose between being governed ultimately by our own interpretation of Scripture and leaping blindly into the dark. The other possibility is that we can, through an investigation of early Church history, discover the Church’s understanding and practice of apostolic succession, and all its implications. Once we discover that magisterial authority, and trace the lines of succession, then that changes our epistemic position viz-a-viz the interpretation of Scripture.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
JJS November 5th, 2009 4:20 pm :
Bryan et al,

Thanks for your responses. So am I right in understanding you to be saying that there is no difference between the Catholic’s and Protestant’s process of arriving at their respective destinations, but once we’ve each landed, THEN the difference kicks in (the Protestant retains, while the Catholic surrenders, ultimate interpretive authority)?

Because if so, my question now becomes, “If the Catholic’s ‘discovery’ that he is supposed to listen to the Magisterium is no less a result of his private study than the Protestant’s discovery that, as messy as it may be, Scripture is our only infallible authority, then how exactly does this furnish the Catholic with bragging rights against the Protestant?”

I mean, if the initial discovery was made through private judgment, and then (and only then) is private judgment set aside, that seems problematic, not unlike the guy who favors free markets, but only after the government gives everyone a house and farm, with six acres and ten cows to begin to make their living.
Chris Donato November 5th, 2009 4:37 pm :
So then, Bryan, if one does indeed investigate early Church history and comes to different conclusions than what you’ve come to, then that person is somehow epistemically deficient? What other options are there (to view the other’s Protestant or Orthodox or [fill in the blank] choice) for the one who consciously chooses to become Roman Catholic? You’ve “arrived,” in a manner of speaking.

Well, good for you.
Tim A. Troutman November 5th, 2009 5:05 pm :
JJS, if I may step in. My response to you earlier may have muddied the waters a bit. Bryan is answering you from a different angle so I don’t want the two angles to add confusion.

When we say “private judgment” it has a negative overtone, but on the other hand, “reason” has a positive overtone. What is the difference? In most practical applications – there is none. Did I submit to the authority of the Catholic Church by reason (private judgment)? Yes I did. How about the young man who grew up Pentecostal, searched the Scriptures and studied great theologians and came to the conclusion that conservative Presbyterianism most faithfully represented biblical truth? He also used reason (private judgment). In this specific respect, there is no difference (in that we both used reason to decide which was best).

But what evidence did we evaluate? Was it the same? Some of it was, but not all of it. We both used Scriptures, reason, theologians, (possibly) Church fathers. But the Catholic also uses the evidence of material succession to determine the true Church. So at least on that point we differ.

Additionally, my submission to the Catholic Church involves an act of faith that her teaching authority is divinely protected from error. The young man selecting the Presbyterian church makes no such act of faith. He believes that she is capable of teaching error and when she does, then he will leave.

So there is a difference in the ‘selection’ process, but not one that excludes reason or private judgment from either side. As far as using reason to make a decision, we are both in the same boat.

Compare it to a man who wanted to discover the teaching authority of America and judged by reason that a particular group of the constitution party was the rightful government of America because they most faithfully reflected the founding fathers’ intentions for the government (in his judgment). Another man decides that Obama, the legislators, and duly elected judges were the rightful authorities. Was there a principled difference in the way these two men chose their authority? Is there any principled difference in their selections? They both used private judgment yes, but one used his private judgment correctly and the other used it incorrectly. The former may say to the latter “Well you also used private judgment to submit to your government.” He would be right that they both used private judgment, but wrong about thinking they were in the same boat. The latter’s position does not reduce to solo-constitutiono because he evaluated a tangible, objective, piece of evidence that is not contingent upon his private interpretation of the constitution. The former’s position is reducible to solo-constitutiono because it is entirely based on his private interpretation.
Faramir November 5th, 2009 5:07 pm :
I am currently in RCIA in part because I started asking questions about sola scriptura. One of my family members, who is a Protestant minister, gave me a copy of Mathison’s book and it was definitely a challenge to the arguments against sola scriptura I had been considering. I had assumed that sola scriptura = solo scriptura and was intrigued by Mathison’s difference – I wondered if this might be a way to answer my worries without having to go “all the way” to Rome.

Everything sounded fine with Mathison’s argument that Scripture should be interpreted by the Church using the regula fidei, but my question then became, “Where is the Church?” I was really hoping Mathison would give some set of objective criteria by which I could determine what is the true Church with the authority to interpret the Scripture. I was hoping to read, “The true Church is the church that teaches doctrines x, y, and z” or even “The true Church is the Presbyterian Church in America”. That would give me something solid and objective to investigate. Instead Mathison identifies the Church in a very vague and subjective way, and I recall it being very disappointing and anti-climactic when I read it.

I enjoyed this article very much because it clearly articulates the vague feeling of uneasiness that I had with Mathison’s argument. It states and develops as a logical argument what I felt as sort of a vague feeling of not quite being convinced. As much as I wanted it to be correct and to give me a “way out”, his vague identification of the Church left me disappointed. I also suspected that Mathison’s definition of sola scriptura was attempting to walk a fine line between solo scriptura on the one hand and full-fledged church authority on the other, and I wasn’t fully convinced that his position avoided falling into one side or the other.

I’m very glad that Dr. Mathison is interacting in the comments on this site and look forward to following the dialogue.

Bryan, I notice that this article did not deal with the sections of Mathison’s book dealing with church history and the allegations of erroneous and contradictory pronouncements that Mathison rasises. Nor do you interact with his distinction of Tradition 0/I/II/III. These may be topics for future articles, but I am your curious what your thoughts are regarding Mathison’s claim that the Catholic Church has shifted from Tradition I (sola scriptura) to Tradition II (scripture + tradition) and Tradition III (magisterium).
Tim Troutman November 5th, 2009 5:28 pm :
Chris – JJS is not arguing that the Catholic Church is not, in fact, in material succession from the apostles. He’s arguing that (or asking why not) the Catholic Church is in the same epistemic boat. Bryan showed him why this is not the case.

Person a: “Whoever I privately decide is the heir to the throne of England is the true heir.”
Person b: “Whoever is the first to touch the throne after the king dies is the true heir.”

They are not in the same epistemic boat. Person b’s criteria does not rely on private judgment like person a’s does. Person b is wrong, but he is not in the same boat as person a. The issue immediately at hand is not whether or not the Catholic Church actually has material apostolic succession nor whether material apostolic succession is a valid indication of the true Church, but whether or not we are in the same epistemic boat as Protestants. We have sufficiently shown that we are not.
JJS November 5th, 2009 5:35 pm :
Tim,

Compare it to a man who wanted to discover the teaching authority of America and judged by reason that a particular group of the constitution party was the rightful government of America because they most faithfully reflected the founding fathers’ intentions for the government (in his judgment). Another man decides that Obama, the legislators, and duly elected judges were the rightful authorities. Was there a principled difference in the way these two men chose their authority? Is there any principled difference in their selections? They both used private judgment yes, but one used his private judgment correctly and the other used it incorrectly.

Well, sure, but what if the whole issue at stake centered around whether the way we choose leaders itself is legitimate or not? And furthermore, what if some Americans believed that the whole legitimacy and authority of our government rested in the passing on of some invisible gift to the president, and NOT in merely electing someone? And what’s more, what if our country were really, really old (like 2000 years), and our entire existence hinged upon there never being a break in that link (a claim that millions of us thought was fanciful and romantic)?

You see, that’s my problem with Bryan’s language of “discovery” on the part of the Catholic of the Magisterium, it seems to assume that it is true, and that I have just failed to discover it.

Returning to your illustration, any American today would (and should) be laughed at for denying that the government we really have is the legitimate one. But in the case of the church, you have millions of people who question whether or not Rome was ever intended to be (by God) or thought to be (by the early fathers) what she claims to be today. And it’s not just Protestants, either.

So like I said before, THE main issue, namely apostolic succession, is precisely the issue that the Catholic must embrace as a result of his private judgment. And that’s why I don’t see why you claim bragging rights.
Chris Donato November 5th, 2009 5:58 pm :
I don’t get it.

You are, Tim, not unlike the rest of us, born into this fragmented world—which includes, obviously, deeply divided religious institutions. And, like the rest of us, you are forced to choose which you’d like to belong to. This is your heretical imperative. You cannot escape it. We are in epistemic communion. And I am the fellow touching your shoulder. Take your head out of the sand.
rfwhite November 5th, 2009 6:06 pm :
Bryan, glad to see you finished this piece. I look forward to reading it.
Bryan Cross November 5th, 2009 6:08 pm :
Jason,

So am I right in understanding you to be saying that there is no difference between the Catholic’s and Protestant’s process of arriving at their respective destinations, but once we’ve each landed, THEN the difference kicks in (the Protestant retains, while the Catholic surrenders, ultimate interpretive authority)?

No, that’s not what I’m saying. If the process were absolutely identical, the destination would be identical. The process is the same in one respect, but differs in another respect. The process is the same in this respect: both persons use their own power of reason, and hence their private judgment, in the investigation of the data available to them. If the convert to Protestantism encounters evidence of apostolic succession in the early Church Fathers, he discounts it as an accretion, primarily because he doesn’t see it in Scripture. When the convert to Catholicism encounters evidence of apostolic succession, he treats it as evidence of what the Apostles handed down to the early bishops. So at that point, the respective processes diverge. I’m generalizing a bit, to make the point, but the Protestant is using his assumption that if it is not taught clearly in Scripture, it isn’t part of the deposit of faith, and therefore when it is found in early Church history it must be an accretion. His presupposition regarding that form of sola scriptura forces him to adopt a stance of ecclesial deism when he encounters patristic data supporting apostolic succession. The convert to Catholicism is not bringing that assumption to the investigation. He doesn’t assume that apostolic succession in the Fathers is an accretion.

Because if so, my question now becomes, “If the Catholic’s ‘discovery’ that he is supposed to listen to the Magisterium is no less a result of his private study than the Protestant’s discovery that, as messy as it may be, Scripture is our only infallible authority, then how exactly does this furnish the Catholic with bragging rights against the Protestant?” I mean, if the initial discovery was made through private judgment, and then (and only then) is private judgment set aside, that seems problematic, not unlike the guy who favors free markets, but only after the government gives everyone a house and farm, with six acres and ten cows to begin to make their living.

We necessarily make use of private judgment in the discovery of divine authority. But once we discover that divine authority, we subordinate our own judgments to it. That’s true for Protestants and Catholics alike. The fundamental point of difference between Catholics and Protestants is that the Catholic believes he has found living divine authority in those having the succession from the Apostles, and a Sacred Tradition from the Apostles and a written form of the Word of God as the Bible, while the Protestant would not claim to have found the first two, but only the latter.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Andrew Preslar November 5th, 2009 6:21 pm :
I think that Neal and Bryan’s paper demonstrates one of the important differences between (1) being Catholic and being Protestant. Some of the discussion here is pointing to the differences between (2) becoming Catholic or remaining Protestant, or between (3) an unchurched person choosing between the Catholic Church and one among the various Protestant denominations.

Everyone seems to appreciate the difference between (1) and the other two. I suggest that there is an important difference between (2) and (3). I tried to write out what that might be, but it got all long and autobiographical, so I’ll save it for later. The second dilemma involves a much greater degree of continuity, pre- and post- conversion, and this includes the general and “irreformable” relation of all forms of Protestantism to Catholicism, than does (3).
JJS November 5th, 2009 6:23 pm :
Bryan,

Thanks for the interaction, it is helpful.

We necessarily make use of private judgment in the discovery of divine authority. But once we discover that divine authority, we subordinate our own judgments to it. That’s true for Protestants and Catholics alike. The fundamental point of difference between Catholics and Protestants is that the Catholic believes he has found living divine authority in those having the succession from the Apostles, and a Sacred Tradition from the Apostles and a written form of the Word of God as the Bible, while the Protestant would not claim to have found the first two, but only the latter.

But all that says is that the fundamental difference between a Catholic and a Protestant is that the former believes Catholic theology, while the latter doesn’t. I mean, if we’re both using our deliberative faculties, but you come to believe in the Magisterium and I do not, then I still fail to see why you get to slap yourself on the back.

If we both went to Baskin Robbins and surveyed their 31 flavors, and I chose vanilla (hey, I’m Presbyterian, remember?) and you chose Rocky Road (no hidden meaning there), we can debate the merits (ahem) of our respective choices, but I don’t see how either of us is more a company man while the latter is maverick.

Now of course, if you vow from that moment on to eat Rocky Road forever, even if they tinker with the recipe in a way that makes you a bit uncomfortable, and I make no such vow, THEN you can say that you’re a more submissive guy and I’m more of a rogue.

Now swinging back to the point under discussion, I completely agree with you that you are more submitted to your church than I am to mine. But it’s not like we both “discovered the Church’s divine authority” but I alone rejected it. No, you believe you discovered it by means of your own personal study, while my own personal study yielded a different conclusion. So the difference between you (a Catholic) and me (a Protestant) is that you adhere to Catholic theology, while I do not. And likewise, the difference between me (a Presbyterian) and James White (a Baptist) is that I adhere to Presbyterian theology while he does not.

Yes, James White and I each reached our conclusions through private judgment, but so did you.
Taylor Marshall November 5th, 2009 6:24 pm :
Great article. I hope this one makes the rounds.

One of the frustrating things about this so-called distinction between sola scriptura and solo scriptura is that “solo scriptura” is an impossibility in Latin? Does Mathison have a way of justifying the ungrammatical rendering of “solo scriptura”?

How can SOLO scriptura have any grammatical meaning?

This seems akin to other mistakes that I see here and there by well-meaning Calvinists writing wanna-be Latin such as “sola Christus” or “post tenebrus lux”.
Bryan Cross November 5th, 2009 6:24 pm :
Chris,

I don’t think the “you’ve arrived; good for you” sort of thing is helpful for resolving the disagreement. We [both sides] cannot pretend that we don’t think we have discovered something that the other side doesn’t see or get. Protestants generally think they’ve discovered that we’re justified by faith alone, and that Catholics for some reason don’t see the truth of what they [Protestants] see. So, let’s just be open with each other and move past the offense of the other person claiming to know something (or have something) that we don’t. The more helpful/constructive response to what I’ve said in these combox comments, in my opinion, is to dig into the evidence together — in this case the evidence regarding apostolic succession. “Here, Bryan, is why I think you are wrong about the Fathers on apostolic succession.” etc. Perhaps it can’t be done in a combox. Maybe we need another article just dealing with patristic evidence related to apostolic succession, where we can sort through that evidence carefully. But I think that’s the more constructive way to move forward, and I hope you agree on that point.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Matthew Anderson November 5th, 2009 6:30 pm :
Bryan and Neal,

Once one has submitted to the Roman Catholic Church, let’s say, and been sacramentally received, are there any significant epistemological or hermeneutical difficulties left for the individual within that tradition? If so, what might they be? For example, are there any significant interpretive decisions that need to be made about church teachings? Or, is everything absolutely clear? I can’t imagine the answer to that question is yes (but it could be), but I think it might be interesting to explore some of the epistemological and hermeneutical questions that remain for the intellectually sensitive Roman Catholic even after there has been a formal submission to the church.

Matthew Anderson
JJS November 5th, 2009 6:45 pm :
Taylor,

Latinus Calvinisticum es superiorum ad Latinus Catholicus. Implorum, no continua braggadorium, it’s very unbecomingum.

See? Latin’s easy, a piecem tortam.
Tim A. Troutman November 5th, 2009 6:46 pm :
Chris, do any two positions on any subject vary in epistemology? The scientist and the witch doctor evaluate the cause of a man’s illness. The scientist relies on private judgment to decide whether or not to trust the scientific method and likewise, the witch doctor relies on his private judgment to decide whether or not to trust the ‘spirits’ and the omens. Are they in the same epistemological boat just because they’re both born into a world with a lot of unknowns and rely on private judgment? This is skepticism.

It is possible, even with private judgment involved, for two positions to be on uneven epistemological ground.
Tim A. Troutman November 5th, 2009 6:55 pm :
JJS,

But all that says is that the fundamental difference between a Catholic and a Protestant is that the former believes Catholic theology, while the latter doesn’t.

See #38 – we might claim that the fundamental difference between the scientist and the witch doctor is that the former uses the scientific method without begging the question. The scientific method is both what makes him a scientist and what proves that he is more objective than the witch doctor. The Catholic method for determining the Church is both what makes a man a Catholic and what makes the Catholic choice more objective than the Protestant choice.

The Catholic method may be wrong. And we may be wrong in our estimation of it. But that’s not what we’re talking about yet. We’re just refuting the “tu quoque” idea. It seems to be the only objection raised so far.

Suppose, for the sake of the argument, that we were able to convince you that there was an epistemological difference but you decided, even still – the Catholics either A) Can’t prove they have material succession or B) Material Succession is not proof of authority at all or more likely C) All of the above. Even given that, you would still be left in the same boat – sola scriptura is reducible to solo scriptura unless you or someone else has an unmentioned objection.
K. Doran November 5th, 2009 8:24 pm :
Hey Chris,

I’m glad you’re posting again! It would be a lot of fun to look at the evidence for apostolic succession and petrine ministry together. Send me an email if you’re interested!

sincerely,

K. Doran
Chris Donato November 5th, 2009 8:30 pm :
Bryan (#36) — of course not, but neither are some of the implications of what you’ve written (to resolving disagreement). Regarding the way forward, you’re not going to find much disagreement from me about apostolic succession, at least in principle. It’s how that principle has developed via Roma that’s the rub.

Also, I hope you and others realize my tone is light when I take jabs. I know I’m a smart ass, but I don’t intend to be a jerk.

Finally, Tim (#39): You’ve hit it on the head — This is skepticism. Welcome to the real world.
Matt Yonke November 5th, 2009 9:14 pm :
I think there’s an approach to this from a slightly different angle that might help to clarify the “distinction without difference” problem a lot of our Protestant readers seem to have.

That approach would start with the understanding of the Church as the Body of Christ. When the Body of Christ was on earth incarnate and fully present, how did He demand allegiance and how was that allegiance given? Jesus told people, give up everything and come follow me. He didn’t lay out a ten point plan, He didn’t tell the disciples what was going on and ask if they could think about it, see if it jived with their worldview and come back tomorrow to tell Him if they could get on board. He required them to believe a lot of weird stuff and follow Him.

It seems to me that the Protestant approach to accepting the Christian faith and choosing a Church is akin to a prospective disciple who said to Jesus, “Alright, give me a list of propositions, I’ll see if they check out with my understanding of Scripture and get back to you.”

The response of the Catholic is to realize that the Mystical Body of Christ on earth, the Catholic Church, has the words of eternal life, so we drop our nets and follow.

Now, we certainly try to make sense out of some of the baffling things Jesus said, but we don’t follow because the propositions check out.

Put another way, we don’t follow a list of propositions, we follow a source of propositions. The Church to us is not the ecclesial body most in line with the truth as we understand it, but the body that gives us the truth that we accept because we trust the source.

I would also submit that the way we Catholics got to believing this truth was not a simple measuring of Catholic doctrine against reason and Scripture. There is a deeper act of faith involved that makes it truly different than the Protestant embracing one system of doctrine or another. Particularly because the Protestant could switch systems of doctrine tomorrow without undergoing a radical change to the basis of his faith.

A way to sum this up might be to look at the reason C.S. Lewis eventually gave for not becoming Catholic before he got to Heaven ;) That was, not that he didn’t believe anything the Catholic Church taught now, but that he couldn’t commit himself to believing what the Catholic Church might teach tomorrow.
Jonathan Brumley November 5th, 2009 11:36 pm :
Hi Bryan,

Thank you for another thought provoking article.

You said:

“Maybe we need another article just dealing with patristic evidence related to apostolic succession, where we can sort through that evidence carefully.”

I am looking forward to that article. I am very skeptical that divine authority was somehow passed down 2000 years through a succession of men who ordained each other – possibly sometimes for ill reasons. I would like to see what evidence you have that God has protected the Church in this way.
Tom Brown November 6th, 2009 2:11 am :
Dear Pastor Stellman,

With the risk that further discussion of the “distinction without a difference” problem detracts from Neal’s and Bryan’s primary arguments in mind, I will take a stab:

“But all that says is that the fundamental difference between a Catholic and a Protestant is that the former believes Catholic theology, while the latter doesn’t.”

This misses Bryan’s point about discerning (with private judgment, yes, of course) divine revelation and divine authority. The Catholic is not Catholic because he “believes Catholic theology.” The Catholic is Catholic because he believes it is the visible Church vested with the authority of Christ and graced with divine revelation and preserved from error. He believes Catholic theology because he is Catholic.

“I mean, if we’re both using our deliberative faculties, but you come to believe in the Magisterium and I do not, then I still fail to see why you get to slap yourself on the back.”

I think we try hard on Called to Communion to avoid back-slapping. In a discussion of the body of divine revelation and the location of divine authority, this site exists to discuss/debate/wrestle with our reaching different conclusions following the efforts of our respective deliberative faculties. With [all of] our prayers, and God’s grace, this is not a lost cause. But I hope you can see the difference Bryan has been making between reaching the conclusion that Catholic theology is right, and reaching the conclusion that Catholic authority is authoritative.

Peace in Christ,
Tom
Bryan Cross November 6th, 2009 2:45 am :
Jason,

I wrote:

The fundamental point of difference between Catholics and Protestants is that the Catholic believes he has found living divine authority in those having the succession from the Apostles, and a Sacred Tradition from the Apostles and a written form of the Word of God as the Bible, while the Protestant would not claim to have found the first two, but only the latter.

You replied:

But all that says is that the fundamental difference between a Catholic and a Protestant is that the former believes Catholic theology, while the latter doesn’t.

No, that’s not all it says. Your redescription of what I said reductively eliminates some of the relevant content of what I said. I’m not simply saying that the Protestant believes Protestant theology, and the Catholic believes Catholic theology. The person becoming Catholic does not just come to believe a theology; he discovers a living divinely-appointed authority, and that discovery then shapes his theology. The person becoming Protestant does not discover such a thing, and so remains his own ultimate interpretive authority in shaping his theology. This difference has nothing to do with back-slapping; it is simply the reason why the Catholic is not subject to the tu quoque objection, in response to our argument that there is no principled difference between sola scriptura and solo scriptura with respect to the holder of ultimate interpretive authority.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
JJS November 6th, 2009 4:02 am :
Tom,

You can just call me “Jason.”

The Catholic is not Catholic because he “believes Catholic theology.” The Catholic is Catholic because he believes it is the visible Church vested with the authority of Christ and graced with divine revelation and preserved from error. He believes Catholic theology because he is Catholic.

I think I need to just give up, because we’ve been talking about this for over a year and I still can’t see your point.

You say that “The Catholic is Catholic [not because he believes Catholic theology, but] because he believes it is the visible Church vested with the authority of Christ and graced with divine revelation and preserved from error.” But isn’t the belief that “the visible Church is vested with the authority of Christ and graced with divine revelation and preserved from error” itself Catholic theology? Isn’t that the WHOLE ISSUE that we disagree on?

So when you say that “the Catholic believes Catholic theology because he is a Catholic,” I scratch my head in bewilderment. As Bryan has repeatedly said, the convert to Rome doesn’t surrender private interpretive judgment until he has joined the church, but uses it in order to “discover a living divinely-appointed authority, and that discovery then shapes his theology.” So at the most crucial stage in the game, namely, when you are reading the Scriptures and the fathers about apostolic succession and weighing all the evidence against the Protestantism that you are now beginning to doubt, you are admittedly not yet submitted to Rome, but are still in the deliberative, investigative stage. Now regardless of which road you take (to Rome or Geneva), the decision you make is NOT made out of deference to a Magisterium, since you’re not yet convinced of its authority. Sure, once you are, you bow to it. But first you must make that determination, that “discovery.” So my question is, what constitutes it a “discovery” (which is good) rather than a something you reject? It can’t be the case that you come to believe that the Magisterium is the Magisterium because it says it is (else I’ve got a bridge to sell you). And it has already been stated that it’s not a leap into the dark. So the only other option that I can see is that you came to believe that the Magisterium demands your submission because you weighed the evidence and found it satisfactory and in accord with your private interpretation of the facts as you understand them.

So putting aside the differences between us once we’ve chosen our road (since I’ve admitted that you’re way more submitted to your church than I am to mine), I see no difference between the way we each come to make our respective decisions.

Please tell me what I’m missing, because it seems that you are every bit as subject to the tu quoque objection as we are.
Keith Mathison November 6th, 2009 8:32 am :
I’m still working my way through the main article, but had to comment on one thing in the comments thread:

Taylor,

You wrote (#35): “One of the frustrating things about this so-called distinction between sola scriptura and solo scriptura is that “solo scriptura” is an impossibility in Latin? Does Mathison have a way of justifying the ungrammatical rendering of “solo scriptura”? How can SOLO scriptura have any grammatical meaning? This seems akin to other mistakes that I see here and there by well-meaning Calvinists writing wanna-be Latin such as “sola Christus” or “post tenebrus lux”.

Three quick points:

1. I didn’t come up with this term. Doug Jones coined it.
2. Jones knows (and I know) that it’s not grammatically correct. It was a tongue in cheek idea he had.
3. At least it’s not as dull as Heiko Oberman’s terms – Tradition I, Tradition II, and Tradition III. :-)

Back to the paper…

Keith
Bryan Cross November 6th, 2009 9:52 am :
Jason,

The tu quoque we address in our article is not “You too used private judgment to come to your position”. That’s not the point in question, because no one denies it. The tu quoque is “You too retain ultimate interpretive authority.” That’s the objection, I think, that in our article we have shown to be false.

You might have in mind another tu quoque, namely, “you too are an ecclesial consumerist.” That’s the impression I’m getting from your following statement:

So the only other option that I can see is that you came to believe that the Magisterium demands your submission because you weighed the evidence and found it satisfactory and in accord with your private interpretation of the facts as you understand them.

If that’s the tu quoque you have in mind, then perhaps that explains why we’re talking past each other.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Trevor Britton November 6th, 2009 10:00 am :
Hi, this is my first post here. I have really enjoyed reading the articles here at Called to Communion.

I have been reading the tu quoque discussion and been trying to make sure I understand it clearly. It seems to me that the important point is what type of decision is being made after the investigation, not how it is made. Both sides use their reason, etc., but the person who becomes Catholic discovers an authority and so submits to it. The person who decides on a specific protestant tradition discovers a tradition that agrees with or convinces them of its doctrine (not its authority). Tu toque would apply if the person becoming Catholic was also discovering a tradition and only being convinced of its doctrinal correctness and not its authority. Is that the correct distinction?
Matthew Anderson November 6th, 2009 10:10 am :
Jason,

I’m actually an evangelical Anglican, but my sense is that a Catholic could respond to you by saying that the process by which we come to our decisions between Catholicism or Protestantism is much the same, but the end result is different. So, yes, both sides weigh evidence, consider arguments, make individual judgements, etc., but the Catholic position entails additional epistemological security once the decision has been made to become Catholic. I think I would grant that.

But, I would add that claims to epistemological security are not a guarantee of truth. The Church of Latter Day Saints and many other institutions and religious traditions through the ages have offered a greater sense of epistemological security to their followers, and we all know this doesn’t mean that what they teach is true. As far as I can tell, the Roman Catholic tradition does offer a greater measure of epistemological security than the Protestant tradition, but that doesn’t guarantee it to be true. Obvious, but I wanted to point it out.

Knowledgeable Protestants or Orthodox Christians find that whatever epistemological security is offered through the papacy and Catholic magisterium, and however appealing it may be, it is on offer at too high a cost. I might say that to take refuge in this security would be theologically speaking a “Pyhrric victory,” in that it would require me to accept doctrines that appear clearly unbiblical (e.g. the perpetual sinlessness of Mary), doctrines that feel theologically dangerous (e.g. eucharistic adoration of the transubstantiated host), or doctrines that appear to contradict historical facts (e.g. the infallibility and exclusive supremacy of the Pope). Of course, my Catholic friends assure me that all of these kinds of questions can be answered. But I’ve too often found that what is driving the answers they provide is not objective historical research or cogent theological explanation, but the very thing under discussion: the desire for increased epistemological security.

Perhaps one day God will grant me to see the truth they claim to have found. Or perhaps one day I will more fully supplement my theology with the aspects of catholic ecclesiology found in Orthodoxy or even Anglo-Catholicism. In the meantime, I’ve found the safest place to rest is what I believe is the most certain and non-negotiable core of the Christian tradition, the holy Scriptures. If they fail the church, no amount of ecclesiological scaffolding can save her, in my view.

Lord have mercy.
Sean November 6th, 2009 10:33 am :
Tu toque would apply if the person becoming Catholic was also discovering a tradition and only being convinced of its doctrinal correctness and not its authority. Is that the correct distinction?

That is a good distinction. Its been discussed before that somebody becoming Catholic because they agree with Catholic doctrines X, Y and Z but do not submit to the authority of the Church would be becoming Catholic for the wrong reasons.
K. Doran November 6th, 2009 10:51 am :
Hi Matthew,

You said: “doctrines that appear to contradict historical facts (e.g. the infallibility and exclusive supremacy of the Pope). Of course, my Catholic friends assure me that all of these kinds of questions can be answered. But I’ve too often found that what is driving the answers they provide is not objective historical research or cogent theological explanation, but the very thing under discussion: the desire for increased epistemological security.”

I think one thing that can help you here is to realize that the most important first step in analyzing historical data relating to a particular doctrine (such as the petrine ministry) is to look at the general relationship in the data. There will always be outliers from this general relationship because of many reasons: the insufficiency of language, the indeterminacy of intentions, large gaps in the historical record, corruptions in the historical record, etc. When the data is particularly solid (as it is for some of the counter-examples against Mormon beliefs, as I understand it) then it is good to place considerable weight on supposed contradictions of a doctrine. But when the data that makes up a supposed contradiction of the petrine doctrines is sparse, ambiguous, and interpretable in many different ways, then a reasonable person will interpret that data in light of the general relationship found in all of the data. To rely on outliers for your historical defense of doctrine is to court falsehood.

A great example is non-papal anglo-catholic historians arguing in favor of (and indeed, perhaps basing their entire early defense of) their ecclesiology by relying on Cyprian’s theologically-incorrect temper tantrum in favor of re-baptism of those baptized by heretics. This episode is an outlier relative to the pattern of other writers from the first 350 years of Christianity, and furthermore to interpret Cyprian’s actions here without reference to his pro-papal comments elsewhere makes it even more of an outlier. Thus, it makes more sense to interpret his actions in light of his own pro-papal comments elsewhere, and in light of the general tilt of the other papal data of the first 350 years. When one does, it is certainly no contradiction of the Catholic claim that there was some form of petrine ministry in the early Church. We are certainly not obliged by the limited data to interpret the Cyprianic evidence in a manner that contradicts the Catholic claim. There is indeed so little data that the data isn’t capable of obliging us to interpret it one way or another! This makes me unsympathetic to the claim that outliers such as Cyprian’s temper tantrum can only be surmounted by ignoring the “clear” evidence that they provide against papal claims. They don’t provide clear evidence for or against any doctrine at all — to the extent that they provide any evidence, it is through interpreting them in light of the other data, which makes them weak evidence in favor of Catholic claims, not strong evidence against them.

Do you see what I am getting at? You said: “Lord have mercy.” You sound sad and dejected about the prospects of more certainty.

But maybe one way He will have mercy on you is for you to see that the supposed contradictions of the petrine ministry in early Christianity have been advanced without reference to the usual requirements of data analysis: careful recognition of the general relationship, humility towards the epistemic usefulness of outliers, humility towards areas of the data where the observations are sparse and hence the models that can be rejected are few, etc. If any of this is helpful, just send me an email and we can talk about the things that make you feel that the Catholic Church is an impossibility for you: KBDh02@yahoo.com

Sincerely,

K. Doran

p.s Sorry CTCers for not directing people back more closely to the topic at hand. I will do my best to let the discussion continue without my interruptions now!
Bryan Cross November 6th, 2009 10:55 am :
Matthew,

Welcome to Called to Communion.

As far as I can tell, the Roman Catholic tradition does offer a greater measure of epistemological security than the Protestant tradition, but that doesn’t guarantee it to be true.

If there is no guarantee of truth, then there is no “epistemological security.” You also wrote:

I might say that to take refuge in this security would be theologically speaking a “Pyhrric victory,” in that it would require me to accept doctrines that appear clearly unbiblical (e.g. the perpetual sinlessness of Mary), doctrines that feel theologically dangerous (e.g. eucharistic adoration of the transubstantiated host), or doctrines that appear to contradict historical facts (e.g. the infallibility and exclusive supremacy of the Pope). Of course, my Catholic friends assure me that all of these kinds of questions can be answered. But I’ve too often found that what is driving the answers they provide is not objective historical research or cogent theological explanation, but the very thing under discussion: the desire for increased epistemological security.

Your claim here amounts to one long ad hominem. I have addressed that in more detail here. As for whether those uniquely Catholic doctrines are “unbiblical,” we’ll have to save that for another thread, because it would take us down multiple rabbit trails to address them here. But, we will be discussing each of these subjects, in due time.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
David November 6th, 2009 11:13 am :
Taylor,

We could all try nuda scriptura!

Dr. Mathison, glad you’re in the mix here; Bryan, thanks for the article – you had mentioned a few months ago hat this was forthcoming and I am grateful for your work on the subject.

It seems to me that lurking beneath the surface of the assertions against (a properly understood)sola scriptura is a form of the Augustinian Totus Christus – from which some might derive a doctrine of ecclesial infallibility (which for the ultramontanists becomes in the long run Papal infallibility), the attributes the Head being transferred to the Body, or at least to the ‘successors’ of the Apostles founding the Body. The ‘proposed discovery’ of an ‘authority’ suggests in fact an ‘infallible’ authority on these issues. But does Christ promise an infallible Church? Or is it more a case of a fallible Church given grace to recognize the words of the Apostles in written form as infallible and thus possessing the authority to be the regulators of what is claimed to be ‘traditioned’ to us from the apostles?

It is the notion of apostolic succession and the nature of infallible authority supposedly passed to these successors to the Apostles which is the central issue. Answer that question in one or the other, and everything else tends to line up for debate in a different context (i.e., between RCC and EO on various spheres and nature of apostolic succession, Marian Dogmas, etc).

Perhaps we might wish to consider the idea of a fallible community capable of infallible pronouncements. Simply because any mom can make an infallible statement regarding her child does not mean the mom is infallible on all matters concerning her child – or her husband. One might say that Mom made an infallible judgment on what constitutes Scripture – a judgment ratified by Council but made in practice by all the Church – and that this infallible reception of infallible and inspired words recognizes these words as the ultimate and infallible authoritative standard to resolve disputes as they arise for it is the sole source of infallible revelation. This does not do away with ‘lower courts’, and it places Scripture within Tradition as opposed to it coming alongside Tradition, pitting one against the other. It would also guard against the imposition of Dogmas not found in Scripture (and I note dogmas as opposed to traditions, various pietistic practices and beliefs, etc).

Now obviously this gets into the question of which Council affirms what and when, and one suspects that this discussion will go on for some time…but it is a good discussion.
Teri November 6th, 2009 11:14 am :
From a female prospective – believing that my Bridegroom, who says He is The KING of Kings and LORD of Lords, would leave me with a book of His instructions but no one to explain them to me correctly is absurd. That is not love, much less agape love.

A Kingdom presupposes a King and He did not abdicate His throne, nor did He leave His Bride unprotected until His promised return. How cruel of a Bridegroom who would have His beloved Bride searching door to door for someone to explain truthfully His words to prepare her for His return.

Maybe I’m being a simple minded and terribly “female romantic”, but if my King did not leave anyone to look out for me until His return, then He doesn’t love me. If He told me that the gates of Hell would not prevail against His Church, which is His Bride, then I have faith in HIM for all things.

In the peace of Christ,
Teri
Matthew Anderson November 6th, 2009 11:43 am :
Bryan,

To be fair, my paragraph that you cite above does not amount to one long ad hominem. If I grant there is an ad hominem in the paragraph, it is the second part of it. I will take your thoughts seriously about that, but the first part of the paragraph involves my conviction that each of those three doctrines is significantly problematic for different reasons, and this can be clearly distinguished from ad hominem argumentation. And I can say that I’ve not been convinced by the Catholic responses that I’ve heard to these matters and others like them.

By the way, do you feel it is necessary to argue that all Catholic doctrines are in any significant sense “biblical”? Wouldn’t it be a legitimate Catholic approach simply to say that not all doctrines of the Catholic Church are found in Scripture? I’m not saying that every Catholic has to take that approach, but wouldn’t it be acceptable to hold that position?

Matthew
T Ciatoris November 6th, 2009 11:50 am :
Dear Bryan,

I wonder if I might try slightly recasting Matthew’s argument (“As far as I can tell, the Roman Catholic tradition does offer a greater measure of epistemological security than the Protestant tradition, but that doesn’t guarantee it to be true”). When he refers to “epistemological security”, I take him to mean “subjective certainty or epistemological confidence.” If I’m right about this, then he is making the same point as you made at Principium Unitatis: certainty and truth are not the same thing, so a reduction of desire for truth to desire for certainty is not a legitimate move to make. (Thanks for the link, by the way. I’d had the same fundamental objection to McKnight’s article.) As you say, the status of the doctrines Matthew finds untenable should be addressed elsewhere. But his point is a good one, IF the Catholic’s alleged desire for truth is in fact a desire for certainty. A person who finds doctrines X, Y, and Z untenable (for whatever reason) should not acquiesce to them out of a mere desire for certainty that he believes can be fulfilled through the Magisterium. If, however, submission to the Magisterium comes about through a search for TRUTH and not merely because it seems to offer more subjective certitude than anything else on the market, then he MUST accept doctrines X, Y, and Z.

To return to more central points in the article, I’d like to echo the pleas of several comments for a clarification from those who wish to disagree with Bryan and Neal’s article. First, the article claims that there is no principled difference between *sola scriptura* and *solo scriptura*, and I’ve yet to see anybody challenge that. Would anybody like to? Second, the arguments about the tu quoque objection have proceeded as though the objection addressed by Bryan and Neal had been, “You Catholics also are inescapably bound to private judgment.” I don’t think that’s the point. Of course Catholics are bound to private judgment (though the content of a Catholic’s private judgment vis-a-vis the relationship between Scripture, Tradition, Church, and one’s personal reasoning on a given doctrine will differ from the content of a Protestant’s personal judgment about these). But, unless I’m mistaken, Bryan and Neal simply rebut the objection, “There is no principled difference between Catholic epistemology and solo scriptura.” I haven’t seen anybody challenge that directly.

in Christ,

TC
Matthew Anderson November 6th, 2009 11:54 am :
K. Doran,

Thanks for your comments. If I agreed that the evidence against the *Roman Catholic* doctrine of the papacy is as insignificant as you say, then of course it would be insignificant. My reading of early church literature has not led me to such a conclusion. But, I would be interested in hearing more of your thoughts about it, and will email you.

Matthew
Chris Donato November 6th, 2009 1:06 pm :
Not wanting to bog down this great article and its thread with sidetrails (in anticipation of Keith’s engagement), I’ve attempted to say something relevant with respect to epistemological certainty (security) over here.

Thanks.
Neal Judisch November 6th, 2009 1:18 pm :
Hello, all.

It’s gratifying to see the discussion this article has sparked. I’m unfortunately pretty busy just now and likely won’t being playing any very large role in this thread, but I wanted to respond to some of the remarks that have been lodged so far, especially those that have been voiced by more than one participant.

It seems the main issue so far has centered on the question whether there is parity between Catholics and Protestants along one or more of the points at which Bryan and I have criticized Protestantism. One form of the question concerns whether Catholics and Protestants as such are in the same ‘epistemic situation’, whether they’re (to use Chris’ memorable phrase) in ‘epistemic communion’. Another form takes up the question whether Catholic converts, in coming to accept the claims of the Catholic Church on the basis of their own reasoning, studies, or whatever (as of course they must), have done pretty much the same thing that any Protestant who’s moved from (say) mainline evangelicalism into a confessionally Reformed communion has done. And if so, it’s a nice and pressing question whether this implies that an affirmative answer to the first question should be given, i.e. that the current (post-conversional) ‘epistemic situations’ of Catholic and Protestant are equivalent.

Take the second one first. To put my cards on the table, I must say that this rejoinder is exactly the one I’d use (and, in fact, did for a time use) if I were a Protestant. Sounds pretty good, pretty damning. I don’t (no longer do) find it very persuasive, but I still find myself dissatisfied by my attempts to articulate why precisely I don’t think parity holds here. But maybe someone here can help me get clearer about this. So let me try to do it indirectly, less by argument and more by way of hopefully suggestive analogy.

Suppose you’re a presuppositionalist, and are extolling the superiority of what we can call ‘the Christian worldview’ over alternative, non-Christian worldviews. And suppose that among the reasons you find the Christian one superior and much more epistemically satisfying is that you’re not (as a presuppositionalist Christian) in the unenviable position of having to think ‘autonomously’, having to be an epistemic egoist, etc., but are now able to think in some sense “according to” the Scriptures. You’re now under an epistemic authority (a legitimate one) whereas before you weren’t. And you’re no longer saddled with systems of thought (‘worldviews’) that contain internal contradictions or evidently irresolvable tensions, and which inevitably rely upon bits and pieces of the Christian worldview that have to be borrowed from it so as to prop up the internally unstable non-Christian ones.

We can imagine a critic of presuppositionalism arguing like this.

Compare the ‘epistemic situations’ of two persons, Bertie and Clive. Both of them are atheists, but they decide to make a study of Scripture, historical theology, etc., and both of them (let’s add) make a reasonably thorough study of folks like Schaffer and Van Til and Bahnsen and Frame and whoever else you’d like to name. At the end of the process Bertie remains unconvinced and doesn’t convert. Clive, however, is impressed by the extent to which his previous ‘worldview’ has coming crashing down about his ears, aghast at the previously unseen or unacknowledged tensions and contradictions within his system, and has decided that Christianity does in fact deliver a uniquely coherent and satisfying worldview against which the gates of hell won’t prevail. The Spirit does His work, Clive is baptized, and spends the better part of his life as a committed and (let’s add) confessionally Reformed/presuppositionalist Christian.

But here’s what the critic says. “It’s clear that Bertie and Clive are in the same ‘epistemic situation’ still, because Clive had to use his ‘autonomous’ reason in an effort to figure out whether he should accept Christianity, and he had to do this to the same extent that Bertie did. Bertie comes down on one side of the question, Clive the other. But that hardly implies that there is any difference between Bertie and Clive’s current ‘epistemic situations’, for despite their differences in judgment they both necessarily deployed their autonomous reasoning capacities in the act of judgment itself. So the claim that Clive is now under an epistemic authority and Bertie is not is not defensible. Clive and Bertie are autonomous thinkers to the same degree, and if Clive protests to the contrary he’d better get his head out of the sand.”

I’ll leave the presuppositionalists (or others) to explain why the critic’s criticism misfires. My guess is that it misfires because it fails to understand that Clive, but not Bertie, hasn’t simply come to a conclusion that has left him constitutionally unaffected (epistemically speaking), but has actually undergone something like an ‘epistemic restructuring’ or ‘reconfirguring’ (in some sense), which entails a significant change in his doxastic practices. But however that may be, the point is that the presuppositionalist’s dissatisfaction with this analysis of Clive’s epistemic situation (vis-à-vis Bertie’s) is, I think, the Catholic’s dissatisfaction with the analysis that his epistemic situation is no different from that of sola (or solo) proponents. Not so, I think.

Let’s extend (just quickly) the presuppositionalist analogy.

It’s worth noting that the article we’ve written is taken up primarily with a presentation of Mathison’s fine refutation of solo scriptura, and an explanation as to why we agree that solo is not biblical, historically and practically problematic, etc. This constitutes (should I even say it in this context?) ‘common ground’ between us and Reformed folks like Mathison. What concerns us is that Mathison’s position (which was the position I previously held) looks to contain a number of internal tensions and conflicts, which are difficult satisfactorily to resolve given the confessional tools at his disposal and the constraints imposed on his theorizing by the pertinent Reformed commitments he must uphold. We find instead that sola scriptura evidently stepwise-reduces to solo scriptura, and that the problems with solo may be directed with apparently equal force against sola. We find that a good number of the arguments aimed at distinguishing solo from sola, and which aim at justifying the conclusion that Catholicism amounts to its own version of solo scriptura (‘sola ecclesia’), either do not work or contain suppressed premises that, after some consideration, we find ourselves unable to discover. We notice that a number of these tensions disappear if we drop sola scriptura in either of its permutations and adopt a position that would justifiably allow us to treat external interpretive authority as de facto irreformable and infallible, rather than insisting that they really aren’t either of these things, but either (a) going ahead and treating them as if they were, or (b) refusing so to treat them, and finding ourselves stuck (de facto) with solo scriptura. (The adopted position in question treats the authority as irreformable and infallible de jure.) We notice, in other words, that a pretty nice presuppositionalist-style case can be made against sola scriptura, and can lead a person to consider afresh the Catholic alternative.

(Before anyone says it: no, the ‘alternative’ isn’t “tension-free,” and no, not everything becomes automatically clear and so forth, not in my experience at any rate.)

Last remark before I have to go away. It might be worthwhile to consider the notion of authority more closely, specifically as it relates to the question of individual autonomy, the conditions under which it is justified, and what’s entailed by submission to an authority. Has anyone read Joseph Raz’s influential book, The Morality of Freedom (Oxford 1986)? It’s a ‘modern classic’ in political philosophy, and it contains a defense of the authority of the state which is supposed to reconcile political authority with individual autonomy under the strictures imposed by a modern liberal perspective. (This entails among other things that state authority derives, bottom up, from the authority of the autonomous [consenting] self, because the authority of self-over-self is really [according to modern liberalism] the only non-derivative authority. Both Catholics and Reformed will reject that presupposition, but there’s lots of other stuff he says that doesn’t rest upon it.)

Bypassing questions about the conditions under which the individual is justified in submitting to authority, there are a couple of features of authoritative directives that are worth thinking about. The first is ‘content-independence’. And what this condition says is roughly that an authoritative directive is one that gives the subject a reason to follow the directive, which is such that there is no direct connection between the reason and the action for which it is a reason. In other words, within certain limits, the authority’s authority doesn’t depend on the content of the directives issued by the authority, and that the subject has reason (second-order reasons) to obey the directive irrespective of its content. (This is necessary but not sufficient for a directive to be authoritative, because things like threats, advice of experts, etc. may also satisfy this condition at times, but ‘experts’ are not ipso facto authorities.) The second interesting thesis for our purposes is the ‘preemption thesis’. What this one says, roughly, is that the fact that an authority requires performance of an action is reason for its performance that replaces (preempts, trumps) whatever other reasons the subject may have to perform it. It does not simply add another, additional reason to the set of reasons subjects may already possess to do something, but (as it were) ‘replaces’ those reasons in the sense that it becomes the reason for which the submitting subject acts.

It’s interesting to apply these to questions about religious and epistemic authority. I won’t try to do this here since I don’t have the time, but here’s some fodder for discussion anyway: one might think that the Catholic’s epistemic situation entails that what the Church tells him to believe or do ‘preempts’ his other reasons for believing and doing those things. And it might be that the Catholic’s epistemic situation entails that what the Church tells him to believe or do provides him with reason to believe and do these things irrespective of the content of the directives or dogmas promulgated by the Catholic Church. And it may be that these things do not hold in the case of the Protestant’s epistemic situation. From this latter perspective, to the extent the Church (denomination, communion) has (apostolic) authority, it is because (and only because) of the content of the Church’s directives and dogmas – in particular, it’s exclusively about whether the Church’s teachings and decrees faithfully reflect those of the apostles’ (e.g.). Moreover, it might be that the Church couldn’t give reasons to believe or do something in a preemptive way, on Protestantism, since the Protestant’s submission to authority is going to depend at least in part upon whether he agrees that the authority in question deserves to be considered ‘the Church’, a question that cannot be answered without reference to the individual’s (Biblical-)interpretive stance. (Note well: this isn’t to say that a Protestant cannot accept something “just because” the WCF says so; I think he can. But in this case it will likely be because, in so many other and perhaps more central areas, the WCF says things he finds to be uniquely in conformity with Scripture. In this case, plausibly, the WCF and the divines who wrote it are being viewed as legitimate and trustworthy experts; but expertise isn’t the same as authority in the sense defined, as noted above.) We may then want to try to tighten up our discussion of authority by considering conditions/theses along these lines, and then move to a comparative analysis of religious and epistemic authority from the Protestant and Catholic perspectives.

Again, just some fodder for discussion. Thanks for letting me think aloud a bit. I’ll return at some point to see what you’ve made of all this, but (again) I can’t promise a lot of prolonged interaction just now.

Much love and so forth,

Neal
Bryan Cross November 6th, 2009 2:26 pm :
Matthew,

What I find methodologically unhelpful [with respect to ecumenical efforts] is the mere assertion [without substantiation] that Catholic doctrines are “unbiblical,” and then the dismissal of arguments explaining in what way these doctrines are biblical, as merely a rationalization aimed at obtaining “epistemological security.” That methodology, in my opinion, is not charitable. It assumes that one’s interlocutor loves something else [i.e certainty] more than he or she loves truth.

And I can say that I’ve not been convinced by the Catholic responses that I’ve heard to these matters and others like them.

What we need to be doing [in ecumenical dialogue] is not substituting self-referring statements for presentations of arguments, evidence, objections, etc. Many people found Jesus’ claims unconvincing. But their remaining unconvinced by Jesus’ statements tells us nothing (positively or negatively) about whether what Jesus said was true. The focus of ecumenical dialogue, if it is to advance, must be on that which is external to us, i.e. the truth of claims, the cogency of arguments, the coherence of positions, etc., not on our own internal state.

By the way, do you feel it is necessary to argue that all Catholic doctrines are in any significant sense “biblical”? Wouldn’t it be a legitimate Catholic approach simply to say that not all doctrines of the Catholic Church are found in Scripture? I’m not saying that every Catholic has to take that approach, but wouldn’t it be acceptable to hold that position?

First, just to be clear, my decisions and positions are not primarily the result of feelings, nor do I think they should be. Advancing in ecumenical dialogue would be impossible if we each followed our feelings, because rational discourse requires the use of reason. Second, there is an ambiguity in the term ‘unbiblical,’ for which reason, in my opinion, the term should be avoided. The term can mean “not stated in the Bible” or it can mean “contrary to what is stated in the Bible.” If we wish to mean only that some doctrine is not stated in Scripture (or not stated clearly in Scripture), then we should use the term ‘extra-biblical.’ Otherwise, we’re implying by connotation that the other person is contradicting Scripture. You are correct that a Catholic may believe that some Catholic doctrines are not taught explicitly in Scripture.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
JJS November 6th, 2009 2:50 pm :
Tu toque [sic] would apply if the person becoming Catholic was also discovering a tradition and only being convinced of its doctrinal correctness and not its authority. Is that the correct distinction?

Yes, I think that is a correct distinction, but what I can’t get past is the fact that what makes Catholic authority actually authoritative is a set of ecclesiological tenets, and if one does not share them, he will look at the so-called authority of the Magisterium and reject it. In other words, without a proper doctrine of the church, one cannot even recognize the Magisterium’s authority in the first place.

And as I’ve been saying all along, if the initial “swallowing of the red [Catholic] pill” is due to the same kind of deliberative and investigative process as the “swallowing of the blue [Protestant] one,” then what’s the big deal? I mean, what if I joined a cult of people who believe their leader is not the vicar of Jesus, but Jesus himself, and I vow allegiance to him and will not refuse a single command he gives me? Could I not then look at Catholics and Protestants as being kind of the same, since they both are only partially submissive to their respective leaders?
Tim A. Troutman November 6th, 2009 3:20 pm :
Jason,

what I can’t get past is the fact that what makes Catholic authority actually authoritative is a set of ecclesiological tenets, and if one does not share them, he will look at the so-called authority of the Magisterium and reject it.

And if one is an atheist, he will reject Christ’s authority because his world view does not allow for divine authority at all (much less in a man). So the atheist has to adopt a Christian world view before he can accept Christ’s authority. A Protestant must accept a Catholic ecclesiology before he can submit to the Church. It’s just the nature of the game.
Jared Brattoli November 6th, 2009 5:26 pm :
Maybe this aspect can add to the discussion…Would spiritual orientation/direction influence which epistemology a person carries? A strong part of me feels that the distinction over epistemologies is not enough because, for me, it wasn’t merely my intellectual recognition of the Catholic epistemology which made me discover the Catholic Church as being what she says she is.

Consider…

In order to discover which kind of ecclesiology is necessary for the Church, it is first necessary to discover the nature of authority which Christ invested into his Church before he went away for a little while. But, before it is even possible to fully comprehend the nature of that authority, one must truly and intimately comprehend the nature of the spirit of Christ–that is, what is the character of the servent of God within the body of Christ and community of the kingdom God, who participates in the building of that kingdom for the glory of God. In other words, before one can understand the nature of the authority of the Church, one must first understand what it is to submit as a servent to authority as Christ did–not merely intillectually, but spiritually and existentially. Besides the clear epistemic difference between the Catholic and Protestant positions, a deeper issue lies close at hand, and that is the spiritual virtue which accompanies the different empistemology of the Catholic and Protestant. In my own experience, and the experiences of many Catholic converts, the most significant aspect of our conversions was not so much the epistemology by which we arrived at our private conclusions, as important as that is, but primarily the virtue of Christ which we have grown to understand and experience as we moved along in our persuit of Christ and our knowldge of Him–which helped us grasp that empistemology. For my own part, I found the Catholic Church more favorable and necessary for my continuing spiritual developement because as I was growing more intimate with Christ I began to see why such and such teachings were necessary, not only for my spiritual health, but the health of the whole Church. My mindset evolved from a centerdness on my own spiritual welfare to that of the body, and only then did I discover that I was not an individual in relationship to Christ, but a small part of something much larger than myself–a very small part. I for the first time entered out of myself and into Christ, at least in a deeper way. And since that time I have learned that Christ is experienced and known in the Catholic Church in ways that are for the most part near impossible in any other communal context, i.e. Protestantism–I, at least, was not able to find it there; it was way off radar. As I entered the Catholic communion I was for the first time submitting to Christ in the most complete way(at least more complete than it was previously), and the peace and joy which accompanied that decision assured me that I was. I went from being my own authority as an individaul existing among other individuals in what was so called “church”, to a servant devoutly submitted to the authority of Christ which I could only truly find within the bosom of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.

I think there is more which can be said concerning this particular point, but I think I have explained myslef decently.

In Christ,
Jared B
Nathan November 6th, 2009 7:54 pm :
Jason,

Is there a principled difference between rejecting the apostolic message (and consequently Christ himself) on the basis of (an interpretation of) scripture and a rejection of apostolic succession on the same basis? In other words, what’s the difference between my arguing against Paul or Peter vs. arguing against Timothy, Titus, Linus, Ignatius, et. al.?
Tom Brown November 6th, 2009 9:07 pm :
Dear Jason (the honorfic was always meant with respect, by the way),

I think Matthew’s response generally aligned with what I want to communicate. Please don’t give up, and thank you for this discussion. I benefit, and I think it helps ‘place’ where a helpful Reformed-Catholic discussion should occur.

I admit that I was using “Catholic theology” in a narrow sense—not in the fullest sense of the “study of God.” Could you take my comments above with “Catholic theology” meaning something like: “non-ecclesial doctrines”? So the Catholic believes Catholic Trinitarian doctrine, or understands the descendit clause in a Catholic way, in accordance with the ecclesial authority he [privately] concluded to be governing him.

I think I agree with you about the hypothetical inquirer using private judgment to weigh evidence [Scripture, the Fathers, history] and reaching a conclusion. He does not choose Catholicism out of deferrence to the Magesterium, for the reason you implied. I think your articulation seems fine, that this person, after weighing the evidence, “found [Catholic authority] satisfactory and in accord with [his] private interpretation of the facts as [he] understand[s] them.”

The difference is this: the Catholic decides [via private judgment] which authority governs him [choosing magisterium, tradition, and text], and then accedes to non-ecclesial teachings on faith and morals in submission to that authority; the Protestant decides [via private judgment] which authority governs him [choosing text over magisterium], and then decides [via private judgment] which beliefs of faith and morals are true, and then decides [via private judgment] which denomination is most in line with his own conclusions.

I would profit from hearing from you what (if anything) is disagreeable about this perspective. I don’t think you give up that much, or maybe even anything, by this formula. And if we could agree here, we would know how to proceed with the discussion about our disagreements: we would discuss the evidence and rationale yielding conclusions of governing authority.

(I hope this moves the ball down the field. If I lost a down and gained no yardage, I regret it.)

Peace in Christ,
Tom
JJS November 7th, 2009 3:59 am :
Nathan,

Is there a principled difference between rejecting the apostolic message (and consequently Christ himself) on the basis of (an interpretation of) scripture and a rejection of apostolic succession on the same basis? In other words, what’s the difference between my arguing against Paul or Peter vs. arguing against Timothy, Titus, Linus, Ignatius, et. al.?

Well, I can’t imagine a scenario in which a Protestant would “reject the apostolic message (and consequently Christ himself)” on the basis of Scripture. That just doesn’t compute. Now on your clarifying question, I would want to as you whether Linus or Ignatius ever claimed to speak under the inspiration of the Spirit. As far as I know, Catholics make a “principled,” qualitative distinction between inspired Scripture and non-inspired writings. So to answer your question, a Protestant would never knowingly disobey Scripture, but if he felt that someone’s extra-biblical teaching (which we all admit is non-inspired) was contrary to Scripture, he could not in good conscience obey it. And as far as I know, Rome teaches that one’s conscience should not be violated. So speaking for myself, I could not bow down to a statue or speak of Mary as co-Mediatrix without sinning in the process.
JJS November 7th, 2009 4:09 am :
Tom,

The difference is this: the Catholic decides [via private judgment] which authority governs him [choosing magisterium, tradition, and text], and then accedes to non-ecclesial teachings on faith and morals in submission to that authority; the Protestant decides [via private judgment] which authority governs him [choosing text over magisterium], and then decides [via private judgment] which beliefs of faith and morals are true, and then decides [via private judgment] which denomination is most in line with his own conclusions.

I would profit from hearing from you what (if anything) is disagreeable about this perspective.

Yeah, I don’t see any problem with this. I would want to stress, however, that a Reformed and confessional Protestant minister like myself does not take something like “going rogue” lightly. They used to say back in the ‘30s that the difference between fundamentalists and Reformed folks was that the former left their mainline denominations rejoicing, while the latter left weeping.

So no, I don’t disagree in general with Bryan’s points on the tensions within our position (as taught by Mathison). What was said about governments can be said about our ecclesiology: “Presbyterianism is the worst kind of church government out there, except for all the other kinds.”

My only point in all of this has been that you guys lose all bragging rights (for lack of a better term) when you concede that at the most crucial moment—deciding that Rome’s Magisterial authority is in fact Christ’s authority—you are relying on private judgment every bit as much as I was when I finally embraced TULIP.
Matthew Anderson November 7th, 2009 6:12 am :
Given the various critiques of sola scriptura offered here at CTC, it would be helpful for someone to outline a Catholic perspective on the authority of Scripture in relation to tradition as well as the nature of tradition itself. Is tradition an actual parallel stream of information flowing from the apostles? Is it simply the right interpretation of Scripture? What is it, where does one find it, and how does one defines its parameters? What should a Catholic expect Scripture supply to the Catholic faith? What should a Catholic expect tradition to supply? Should a Catholic necessarily expect a doctrine to be evidenced in Scripture or tradition, or is it appropriate to believe a doctrine that isn’t clearly found in either? Are there a variety of perspectives on these questions, and if so, does that really matter?

I know those are several questions, each requiring extensive discussion. However, given the focus on the sufficiency/insufficiency of Scripture here, I think it will be important at some point to provide some answers to such questions.
Devin Rose November 7th, 2009 9:35 am :
Jason (and I think Matthew A. from up above),

I don’t know if anyone on CTC responded about the statement that “we Catholics could still be wrong/not guaranteed to have discovered the truth,” but I don’t see why we as Catholics cannot concede this point. Yes, I think I have found the fullness of the truth in the Catholic Church, but I could certainly be wrong. (If the CTC guys need to correct me here, I’m all ears.)

Jason wrote that “My only point in all of this has been that you guys lose all bragging rights (for lack of a better term) when you concede that at the most crucial moment—deciding that Rome’s Magisterial authority is in fact Christ’s authority—you are relying on private judgment every bit as much as I was when I finally embraced TULIP.”

I agree that we lose all bragging rights, and I know you used that phrase loosely, for the simple truth that we never had any bragging rights. If we as Catholics have found what is in actuality the fullness of the truth, then it is not because of our own greatness and brilliance, though certainly effort on our part was involved in seeking God’s truth, but instead by God’s grace that we have discovered it. If we have actually discovered something false because the Catholic Church’s claims are not true, then we failed in some way to listen to our Lord who was surely not wanting us to fall into error. This seems obvious to me, but perhaps it seems like we are claiming that we are better because we discovered the Catholic Church.

We can only brag on God who has been merciful and gracious to us.
Bryan Cross November 7th, 2009 10:40 am :
Jason, (re: #63)

but what I can’t get past is the fact that what makes Catholic authority actually authoritative is a set of ecclesiological tenets,

What makes the successors of the Apostles actually authoritative is their having received this authority from the Apostle; no set of tenets makes the successors of the Apostles actually authoritative. I’m distinguishing between having authority, and recognizing that a person has authority. Even what allows a person to recognize the authority of the successors of the Apostles is not a “set of tenets,” but evidence in the Fathers that these successors were given authority by the Apostles, and that they understood themselves as having received such authority from the Apostles, and as handing down such authority to those succeeding them. That’s not a “set of tenets;” that’s evidence discoverable within the record of history.

and if one does not share them, he will look at the so-called authority of the Magisterium and reject it. In other words, without a proper doctrine of the church, one cannot even recognize the Magisterium’s authority in the first place.

The situation here is not some form of presuppositionalism, where we get out of it only what we bring to it. That’s the worry I hear you raising, if I’m understanding you correctly. The evidence of Church history shows that apostolic succession was the practice of the early Church, wherever the Church spread throughout the world. But if one brings ecclesial deism to the study of Church history, then everything one finds in the early Church Fathers will be subject to doubt (as to its orthodoxy) until verified by one’s own interpretation of Scripture, including this practice of apostolic succession. In that respect, ecclesial deism is a kind of hermeneutic of suspicion that strips away the evidential value of the teaching and practice of the Church Fathers, except, by arbitrary exemption, the authority of Scripture itself. And if the only thing a person believes he can truly trust is Scripture, and he doesn’t find apostolic succession in Scripture, then necessarily he will remain his own ultimate interpretive authority, and hence become or remain Protestant. But if he does not bring ecclesial deism to the evidence, then when he reads St. Ignatius of Antioch, for example, he’s going to see that he had better be figuring out where is the bishop to whom he needs to be subject, and what the bishops are teaching regarding Christ and the gospel.

The Protestant approach is to locate the Church by figuring out the gospel from Scripture, and then finding those who hold this gospel. The Catholic approach is to locate the gospel by finding the Church, and then listening to what she says is the gospel. There is a principled difference right there.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Bryan Cross November 7th, 2009 10:51 am :
Faramir (re: #27),

Welcome to CTC. In our article we didn’t deal with the question of Tradition, because we didn’t need to do so in order to make our argument. We have some beliefs about this issue, and about Mathison’s treatment of it, but addressing them here would take us off-topic. Look for this topic in a future post/article.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Bryan Cross November 7th, 2009 11:13 am :
Jason, (re: #29)

You see, that’s my problem with Bryan’s language of “discovery” on the part of the Catholic of the Magisterium, it seems to assume that it is true, and that I have just failed to discover it.

But that’s exactly what the Catholic is claiming, namely, that he has discovered something (i.e. apostolic succession) that the Protestant (as Protestant) has not discovered. That shouldn’t be any more offensive than a scientist announcing he has discovered a new species of bird. Having a “problem” with the very language of discovery would presuppose that it is impossible for anyone to discover something you haven’t yet discovered. I don’t think you want to put yourself in that kind of epistemic position. (When my wife says, “What was that noise?” and I say, “I didn’t hear anything.” she rightly responds, “Just because you didn’t hear anything doesn’t mean I didn’t hear something.” Sometimes I’ll just bite the bullet, to get a rise out of her: “No, if I didn’t hear it, there was no sound.”)

So like I said before, THE main issue, namely apostolic succession, is precisely the issue that the Catholic must embrace as a result of his private judgment. And that’s why I don’t see why you claim bragging rights.

No one is claiming bragging rights. Claiming to have discovered the Church Christ founded does not translate into ‘bragging rights.” When Andrew went and got Peter, and said, “We have found the Messiah” (John 1:41), Peter didn’t say “I have a problem with your language of discovery; you used your private judgment, so you don’t get bragging rights.” Instead, they both went to Jesus. So here also, I think that if one party claims to have discovered something, the right response is, “Ok, show me, or let’s look at it together.” As I said earlier, it seems to me that what is needed, given the discussion here, is another thread(s) focusing on the patristic evidence regarding apostolic succession.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Matthew Anderson November 7th, 2009 11:31 am :
One thing I’ve noticed in the original paper and the various posts is that the Catholic position (represented here by Bryan and others) is more often emphasizing the concept of apostolic succession (which is not a exclusively Roman Catholic doctrine) rather than other more distinctive Catholic ecclesiological beliefs (i.e. the Papacy). Why is this? Am I imagining this? But, my understanding is that when the Catholic position is reduced to its essentials, even apostolic succession is inadequate outside of the claims of the papacy.

Are the various Catholic posters here granting that apostolic succession is valid and ecclesiologically adequate outside of the papacy? Or, is this a two-step argument where first one is supposed to accept apostolic succession, and then find that only the papacy can really guarantee this as well?
Bryan Cross November 7th, 2009 12:50 pm :
Matthew (re: #75),

Yes, apostolic succession is “valid” apart from the papacy. That is, from a Catholic point of view, apostolic authority can be (and is) handed down from those bishops (not presently in communion with the Pope) to those whom they ordain as successors. This is why, from the Catholic point of view, apostolic succession is retained in the Orthodox Churches, for example. And this is why ordinations among the Donatists in the fourth century were valid. But Protestants in the 16th century explicitly denied and departed from the practice of apostolic succession. This is precisely why, from a Catholic point of view, you see the difference in approach in questions 4 and 5 of the Responsa ad quaestiones. As for whether apostolic succession is “ecclesiologically adequate” outside the papacy, in order to answer that question we’d need to know exactly what you mean by “ecclesiologically adequate.” Can there be a valid Eucharist if there is apostolic succession but not full communion with the Pope? Yes. But apostolic succession apart from full communion with the universal Church, nevertheless deprives a particular Church of the fullness of communion and life of the universal Church, as explained in Communionis notio. To separate from the Church Christ founded is, in some respect, to cut oneself off from the Holy Spirit who is the soul of the Church, and from its ongoing life and growth.

Since our article is directed toward a conversation with Protestants, among whom apostolic succession is rejected, there is no need in this article (in order to make our argument) to include an argument for the necessity of full communion with the successor of St. Peter.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Matthew Anderson November 7th, 2009 1:30 pm :
Bryan,

Thanks for your response. I am aware that the Catholic church recognizes the validity of Eastern Orthodox orders. This in itself poses several interesting questions, but those aside…

Of course, your paper is in dialogue with Protestantism, but is also about questions of theological epistemology more broadly. You’ve framed the discussion primarily as if it is between apostolic succession and sola scriptura, and I guess I’m not convinced that is an adequate representation of the Roman Catholic position. It feels to me that this particular formulation obfuscates what is actually the central claim of Roman Catholic theological epistemology, the papacy.
Tom Brown November 7th, 2009 1:42 pm :
Dear Jason,

Yeah, I don’t see any problem with this. I would want to stress, however, that a Reformed and confessional Protestant minister like myself does not take something like “going rogue” lightly.

Our having reached some common understanding on this matter is wonderful news to me. And you are right to make that qualification: when the Protestant uses private judgment, his judgment gives due weight to the consensus of those around him and those that preceded him, gives due weight to the cost of schism, etc.

My only point in all of this has been that you guys lose all bragging rights (for lack of a better term) when you concede that at the most crucial moment—deciding that Rome’s Magisterial authority is in fact Christ’s authority—you are relying on private judgment every bit as much as I was when I finally embraced TULIP.

I agree that the Catholic has no bragging rights for having done other than used private judgment to conclude that the Catholic Church has been vested with Christ’s authority. I hope I haven’t bragged. He should, however, be able to love and admire this facet which he holds to be true, just as we can all love and admire Scripture for its divine inspiration and perfection.

All this marvelous agreement to say that the point of discussion between us should be whether the Catholic or Reformed claim of spiritual authority is true.

Peace in Christ,
Tom
Randy November 7th, 2009 1:47 pm :
Great article.

“All appeals to Scripture are appeals to interpretations of Scripture”. This is a stunning admission. I found this to be the biggest hurdle in becoming Catholic. Once I thought through the implications of this Sola Scriptura was dead.

I did want to object to the dismissal of a community of like-minded people. I do think people benefit greatly from interpreting scripture as a community. I know I have. Even as Catholics we are called to do that. I know such a community is not going to question your entire exegetical framework. But they can correct a lot of errors.

I can see your point but it seems made to strong. Such a community is not useless. It is, I think, in a different philosophical category that we are talking about. It is more along the line of best practices rather than core principles. Something like always reading scripture in context. A good thing to do but it does not really belong in this conversation.

Maybe it is a subtle distinction but I don’t really believe there is no difference between what he calls Sola and Solo. Sola is better and evangelicals know it. But it does not have a better foundation. It does more to make up for it’s flaws. Still it does not do enough. This is proved because there are different truths arrived at.
Tim A. Troutman November 7th, 2009 2:00 pm :
Matthew, do you agree that there is no principled difference between sola scriptura and solo scriptura? If not, why not?

The papacy is a separate issue. If you think that the papacy is involved in the fact that there is no principled difference between sola scriptura and solo scriptura, then please explain how.
Bryan Cross November 7th, 2009 2:02 pm :
Matthew,

We call this the “stinking fish fallacy”, where the objector says, “I smell a stinking fish here,” but does not explain what it is, or how it refutes the argument. So the objector discredits the argument by suggestion, without refuting the argument. To avoid that sophistic fallacy, the one raising the objection to the argument must identity the error, and show how the error makes the argument unsound. In other words, show that because of the [alleged] error, either the conclusion does not follow from the premises, or one of the premises is not true.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Tim A. Troutman November 7th, 2009 2:04 pm :
Matthew – Also, to see where the Catholic Church is coming from on the issue of Scripture and its relation to Sacred Tradition, see Dei Verbum.
Matthew Anderson November 7th, 2009 3:46 pm :
Well, I think did explain what I though the “stinking fish” is, but generally it is that broad appeals to “apostolic succession” or even a “magisterium” do not get to the heart of Roman Catholic theological epistemology. And so this makes, in my view, the comparison between sola scriptura and “apostolic succession” somewhat misleading. The evidence for this can be found in the First Vatican Council, but the fact is, that according to Roman Catholicism, even a council of bishops in apostolic succession will need to have papal approval for its decrees. So, what validates epistemologically the doctrines of the Roman Catholic church is not apostolic succession broadly defined, nor even an ecumenical council, but papal approval. Do you disagree with that?
Matthew Anderson November 7th, 2009 4:19 pm :
Do I believe that there is no principled difference between sola scriptura and solo scriptura? I think in principle I could agree to that.

Let me suggest a few qualifications, however.

1) Most importantly, I’m not convinced that sola/solo scriptura is unviable.

2) Even if in principle they are the same, in practice they can be different. Sola scriptura would presumably be drawing on the wisdom and experience of the church in its interpretation, whereas solo scriptura may be completely ignorant and indifferent to the practice of the church. So, even if in principle they are identical, I think the difference in practice could be consequential.

3) I think there may be aspects of Protestant theological epistemology for which are affirmed but difficult to comprehensively account for. Take the canon of Scripture, for example, a favorite for Roman Catholics in this discussion. People who have read this history of this process know that early church father were appealing to certain aspects of the NT as scripture long before a council or Pope gave any official canonical list. The process by which the church discovered these books is not exactly clear, but involves a lengthy process of deliberation. I think a Protestant could hold to the conclusions that were arrived at on the NT, for example, even though the precise method by which this was decided is unclear.
Tim A. Troutman November 7th, 2009 5:00 pm :
Matthew –

1) Most importantly, I’m not convinced that sola/solo scriptura is unviable.

Solo Scriptura is unviable for the reasons that Mathison gave (see the first part of this article). If you disagree with Mathison then why?

2) Even if in principle they are the same, in practice they can be different.

I agree that there is a practical difference between Reformed and many other denominations on the subject of Church authority. The point of this article isn’t to try and paint the Reformed as if there is no difference whatsoever between their approach to ecclesial authority and the ‘me & Jesus’ evangelical. But this article does show that without a principle of distinction between solo and sola, their position amounts to the same thing. As you said above, it might still be a viable position, but we agree with Mathison that it is not.

3. We’ll talk about the canon in our next major article. Please try to keep the discussion as focused as possible. There are a *lot* of issues to discuss, but right now, we’re talking about whether or not there is a distinction between sola and solo scriptura and if not, whether or not solo scriptura is a viable option for a Christian.
Matthew Anderson November 7th, 2009 6:14 pm :
Tim,

I will be interested to see Mathison’s own reaction to the article. But I do think I disagree that solo/sola scriptura is as *necessarily* bleak as he seems to paint it. For example, it appears that he paints solo/sola scriptura as producing hermeneutical chaos, endless division and schism, etc. The fact that the Protestant tradition is suffering from this, may not mean that it *has* to. It might mean that there has been sinful and ignorant disregard for the unity of the church that needs to be repented of. It might mean that many old shibboleths need to be laid down, and a more simple “catholic” core of Christianity is affirmed. That is the direction I would like to see the Protestant tradition move in. But, my point is that there could be other causes for the divisions in Protestantism than solo/sola scriptura, and there could be fresh solutions to some of these issues as well. That is not a full answer to your question, but it gives you an idea.

Briefly on the question of whether sola scriptura is historical or ancient, I would argue that there were competing, mixed theological epistemologies in the early church. Anyone who thinks that these men were arguing like modern evangelicals is going to get a shock. But so will anyone who thinks they were arguing like modern Roman Catholic apologists. I think a case can be made from the early church writings that Scripture was functionally the supreme authority in the church.
Bryan Cross November 7th, 2009 8:14 pm :
Matthew, (re: #83)

Papal authority is based on apostolic succession, in this case from the Apostle Peter, in that See in which he handed down the keys. So there is no way to understand papal authority apart from apostolic succession. The reason why there is no need to go into the details of papal authority in order to make the argument we made in this article, is that the Orthodox could make the very same argument we presented in this article. So if the Orthodox could make the very same argument, then the argument doesn’t depend on papal authority.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Matt Yonke November 7th, 2009 8:51 pm :
Matthew A.,

In #86 you allege that there is a case to be made that the ECF’s regarded Scripture as the supreme authority in the Church.

You could certainly find quite a number of quotes from the ECF’s that speak in glowing terms, and rightfully so. But I’d refer you to my article on Hermeneutics and the Authority of Scripture.

In that article, I compare several of those quotes from the ECF’s with quotes using equally high language to express faith in doctrines that are not explicitly taught in Sacred Scripture.

Whatever the view of the ECF’s was on the authority of Scripture, it was certainly not the Westminster Confession of Faith’s view that Christian doctrine must be taught explicitly or follow from good and necessary consequence from Sacred Scriptures.

Good job, by the way, keeping up with such a multitude of interlocutors ;)
Paige Britton November 7th, 2009 11:58 pm :
Bryan,
Thank you for this article – you are informative and challenging as always!

Here is a small question, for either you or Tim, which I ask out of genuine curiosity. Tim wrote in #64,
“And if one is an atheist, he will reject Christ’s authority because his world view does not allow for divine authority at all (much less in a man). So the atheist has to adopt a Christian world view before he can accept Christ’s authority. A Protestant must accept a Catholic ecclesiology before he can submit to the Church. It’s just the nature of the game.”

…You know that no Reformed person would award “bragging rights” to the converted atheist over his atheist friends who have not embraced Christ’s authority, because we’d understand that his conversion means that the Holy Spirit has overcome the noetic effects of sin, an epistemic change that the former atheist had no control over. On the other hand, a Protestant might be tempted to boast when she moves from a non-denominational church into the PCA, because she has done the reasoning and weighing and has decided that Presbyterians have the right stuff. There’d be no assumption of a divine overcoming of the noetic effects of evangelicalism there.

What’s the Catholic p.o.v. re. entering the Catholic fold from the Protestant camp? Is it truly considered a matter of reasoned choice? Or is it more akin to conversion – does the Spirit need to overcome the noetic effects of Protestantism? Just following the above discussion, this almost seems like what needs to happen.

Thanks!
pb
Tim A. Troutman November 8th, 2009 1:58 am :
Paige, An act of faith in the Church (submission) is an act of faith in Christ. In that regard, I’d affirm that grace from the Holy Spirit is necessary to become Catholic.

But I really don’t like the term “bragging rights” in any capacity within this discussion. No Catholic should ever think for a second that he has earned any right to brag about personal achievements. Coming into the Church, for some, is a largely intellectual journey where they have weighed and wrestled with various propositions. Yet for others that I meet, it is something far less intellectual. Some of the people I know who have become Catholic are dumb as bricks to be honest with you. It isn’t about intelligence as if all the smart people become Catholic and all the dumb ones stay Protestant. But even if that were the case, it wouldn’t grant us bragging rights.
JJS November 8th, 2009 4:27 am :
Tim,

I will cop to introducing the term “bragging rights,” for which I apologize if you take it as my misconstruing you or your attitude. The reason I used it was that the underlying position of the featured article seems to be that Protestants are individualists while Catholics are not. My point in saying that I am denying you bragging rights is simply that we both, at the most critical point in our respective investigations, use the exact same private judgment to come to our conclusions. But I never intended to imply that you guys are bragging. Hope that clears things up a bit.

Cheers….
Richard November 8th, 2009 8:46 am :
I’m looking forward to reading this article.
Tim A. Troutman November 8th, 2009 12:50 pm :
Jason, no worries. I hadn’t mentioned the phrase before now because I got where you were coming from. It keeps getting re-used and I just wanted to make sure no one was getting the wrong idea.

Also, to reiterate, the problem with the Protestant position isn’t that they use reason. We readily admit to using reason also. I’ve tried to show a few examples demonstrating that two positions, both using reason, can be an uneven epistemic ground. I.e. one is more objective and can be known more certainly than the other because it is based on something more objective. I haven’t seen any response to my analogies or arguments. I think I have rubbed Donato the wrong way and maybe you too.

Let me just explain that I’m not comparing Protestants to witch doctors, I’m just showing that it is conceivable that two positions, both relying on reason, could have varying levels of subjectivity involved. The mere fact that both positions start with a man’s reason does not automatically put the two positions in the same epistemic boat which is what you’re claiming in response to this article.

So if you grant that it is possible for any two positions to differ in regards to objectivity, then we would turn our focus to the question of whether the Catholic position (identifying the Church based on private judgment of historical material apostolic succession) is more objective than the Protestant position (identifying the Church based on private judgment of Scripture).
Richard November 8th, 2009 1:05 pm :
Dear Keith,

Having read the article I find it making points that I have seen but been unable to articulate clearly for a few months now. May I ask that in your response you interact with Bryan’s point regarding who decides whether the Church’s reading of the text is correct rather than simply dealing with the epistemic argument he articulates to deal with potential objections? The reason I ask is that my solution to the problem of “Whose interpretation is authoritative?” has been to move in a more liberal Protestant direction rather than a Catholic one. It strikes me that, asuming Bryan has articulated your position correctly, your position argues that I should submit to the teaching of a Church that may make mistakes in how it interprets the biblical text and that I really have no way of determining which Church is the correct one because as soon as I test what each Church teaches against Scripture I am interpreting Scripture instead of accepting the Church’s interpretation of it and still I am not sure which Church’s interpretation I should be accepting (Presbyterian, Reformed, Anglican, Orthodox, Catholic…). There may well be problems with Bryan’s proposed solution but pointing those problems out doesn’t demonstrate the validity of your position and I think this is one of the issues we face today – if Bryan’s statement of the problem is correct then to my mind either we accept the Catholic solution or we slide into a radical skepticism about a real meaning in the text.

I hope that makes sense. :-)
K. Doran November 8th, 2009 5:12 pm :
Dear Richard,

You said: “if Bryan’s statement of the problem is correct then to my mind either we accept the Catholic solution or we slide into a radical skepticism about a real meaning in the text. I hope that makes sense.”

It made sense to John Henry Newman :-) It makes sense to me too.

Sincerely,

K. Doran
Nicholas T. Batzig November 8th, 2009 5:35 pm :
Bryan,

In a typical Roman Catholic fashion you fall back on apostolic succession in the comment sections of this post. I would be interested in knowing who the apostolic successor of Peter from the time of his death until Gregory? Even your own ecclesiatical community cannot answer that question, leaving a five century hole in your system. Furthermore, where was the center of Rome and who was the Pope during the Avignon period? Did the Pope have the authority, as the apostolic successor of Peter, or did the counsel that chose which of the three Popes would be Pope? Furthermore, have you read what Ireneaus meant by “apostolic succession?” Seems to me that this would be important since your entire argument hinges on the veracity of it. Did Irenaues mention the church of Rome in his exposition? The absence of support for Roman Catholic adaptation of such dogma actually makes Rome look like a usurper. How could you believe that you have unity in dogma in Rome when transubstantiation was not even formulated or articulated until Radbertus Paschasius in the 9th Century. It was not official Roman Catholic dogma until the Fourth Lateran Counsel. In fact, prior to this counsel variations of explanation of the significance of the Eucharist were held and tolerated in the church of Rome. What about Limbo. It is dogma for so many centuries and then all of a sudden the Pope waves his magic wand and it disappears. Explain that one to your readers. How could Jesus say, “Not one jot or tittle will pass away,” but the Pope can add or remove them at will?

How can you be so arrogant as to attack Protestantism when you system is a fraudulent version of ecclesiastical unity. It is, in reality, a deceitful institution of equivocation and human authority. The Reformers understood the abuses and have marked them sufficiently in their writings, but, as is true for so many in this world, it is far easier to adhere to human religion than to Christ.
herbert November 8th, 2009 6:14 pm :
It seems that much of this conversation has been focused upon that which precedes one’s submission to the Church. As the article reasons, once a person recognizes/discovers the Authority of the Magisterium, she is then subsequently bound to allow the Church to play a definitive role in the binding of her conscience.

I am seeing a problem, though. It seems that in this case, continual “rediscovery” of the Magisterium’s authority is necessary in the faith life of the believer in order for this argument to stand. The believer, even after submitting to the Magisterium, can always dissociate himself from the Catholic Church- and believe herself to be thoroughly justified in doing so. In that case, rather than her “discovery” having opened her eyes to Catholic authority, the opposite takes place. She “discovers” as Luther did, that she isn’t bound after all…
Bryan Cross November 8th, 2009 9:37 pm :
Nicholas,

Welcome to CTC. You ask a lot of questions, many of which seem to be rhetorical questions, though perhaps you are asking them sincerely. Although I would be glad to answer your questions, this combox is for discussion of the article above; it is not a Catholic-Protestant free-for-all. Also, let me suggest that you first read the “Posting Guidelines” under the ‘About’ tab above. If you’re not familiar with CTC, we believe strongly that ecumenical dialogue cannot be productive unless conducted very carefully and charitably, and in a focused way. Throwing everything but the kitchen sink at each other, is not productive; it wouldn’t persuade anyone or get us one step closer to agreement. So, we have to discipline ourselves, restrain ourselves, and just roll up our sleeves and consider together the points that separate us, one at a time. And this combox is devoted exclusively to the argument we raised in the article above. So, feel free to raise objections here to the article, but in this combox we’re not going into the subjects of “transubstantiation”, Limbo, etc.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Tom Brown November 8th, 2009 9:41 pm :
Dear Herbert,

A Catholic does not spend each moment or each day trying to determine if she still believes that the Catholic Church has authority, any more than a Protestant would spend time trying to determine if he still believes that the Bible has authority. Why do you believe that a process of “continual ‘rediscovery'” must be occurring?

The Catholic can always dissociate herself from the Catholic Church, but she would only believe she were justified in doing so if she concluded that the Catholic Church has no authority over her (as she had once believed). She cannot believe both that the Catholic Church has authority over her in matters of faith and morals, and that the Catholic Church is wrong in a matter of faith or morals. So she cannot rationally leave over, say, a dispute on the Trinity or indulgences, but only over a dispute regarding the Church’s own authority claims.

Peace in Christ,
Tom
Bryan Cross November 8th, 2009 9:46 pm :
Herbert,

At the end of Matt’s comment #43, he wrote:

A way to sum this up might be to look at the reason C.S. Lewis eventually gave for not becoming Catholic before he got to Heaven ;) That was, not that he didn’t believe anything the Catholic Church taught now, but that he couldn’t commit himself to believing what the Catholic Church might teach tomorrow.

Lewis understood what it would mean. Once the Apostles discovered Christ’s authority, they did not need to “rediscover” Christ’s authority; they simply needed to remember it. Likewise, once a person discovers that the successors of the Apostles have authority from Christ to govern the Church and preach and teach in His Name (i.e. as His authorized representatives), then so long as one remembers this, one cannot “dissociate” from them without violating one’s conscience.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Paige Britton November 8th, 2009 10:34 pm :
Thanks, Tim, for your reply in #90.
For the record, I used “bragging rights” in a tongue-in-cheek way (as I think Jason does, too), so as to distinguish the monergistic work of the Holy Spirit from either the synergistic work of our cooperation, or the monergistic work of our solitary action. (If I said all that, see, I’d sound like an egghead. :)
herbert November 9th, 2009 8:03 am :
Bryan and Tom- Thanks to both of you for your replies. And though Bryan may recall me… Tom, for the record, I joined the Catholic Church on Easter Vigil 2008. So I speak as a Catholic in full communion. So, though I am bound by Church teaching, and can’t imagine this changing, I am curious about this idea of “discovery” of the Magisterium. I certainly experienced such a discovery. I can still remember when my sponsor suggested that Christ actually founded the Roman Catholic Church. For me this was a “discovery” indeed. However, I know that people don’t make decisions based solely upon principle. So what I’m trying to get at is this:

1. It seems to me that just as a “born-again evangelical” may commit apostasy on any day of the week, and NOT feel as though he’s violated his conscience in doing so (depending on the change that’s taken place in his perspective, i.e. he’s become agnostic, he’s become Mormon, etc.), similarly, why might a Catholic not come to believe that his having understood the Catholic Church as retaining Divine Authority was based upon flawed thinking?

2. And I don’t quite understand Lewis’s argument. Why wouldn’t this same reasoning apply to his identification with the C of E? Was he implying that when it came to submission to church authority, he could just “take it or leave it”? Like so many others who SEEM to hold the Church in high regard, did his thinking boil down to solo Scriptura, as well?

thanks.
Nicholas T. Batzig November 9th, 2009 8:42 am :
Bryan,

I certainly should have read the guidelines. Sorry about that!

Since you say at the outset of the post, “a return to apostolic succession is the only way to avoid the untoward consequences to which both solo scriptura and sola scriptura lead,” would it be fair for me to ask the first series of related questions concerning the nature and origin of the doctrine of apostolic succession? If so, can you answer the first? Who were the apostolic successors of Peter from Peter until Gregory?
retro satana November 9th, 2009 8:48 am :
I’d love for one of you guys to read Erik Wait’s Presuppositional Defense of Sola Scriptura, which is a direct response to “Not By Scripture Alone” by Sungenis. Perhaps, you could even do a review on the website, refuting it as necessary. Here’s the link: https://www.erikwait.com/index.cgi?location_id=2&subject_id=6.
Blessings!
Tim Troutman November 9th, 2009 9:47 am :
Nicholas, Irenaeus lists the successors of Peter from Peter until his day (the second century). Church historian Eusebius continues tracking them until the fourth century. If you want a complete list check out the Liber Pontificalis (or any Catholic Bible will have them).
Keith Mathison November 9th, 2009 10:14 am :
I asked earlier if it would be okay to respond to this article in the comment box. I’m not sure now that this will work. I think that what I will try to do is write a single response, post it somewhere (perhaps at Ligonier’s website), send you the link, and let you respond in whatever way you deem best. If you post a new article in response, then I can jump in the comments to carry on the discussion if necessary. Sound okay?

I’ve made it up to Section IV.B of the paper, so I’m making progress. I do want to ask one more follow up question, which may be answered in the section of the paper I haven’t reached yet. But I want to make sure I have this clear, so that in my response, I don’t end up shadow boxing.

If I follow what has been said in response to the concerns of several folks here, you grant that you as well as we use our private judgment and reason to determine which communion we should submit to through the study of Scripture, church history, the Fathers, etc. Correct, so far?

The epistemic difference, then, according to you, would be that since you’ve discovered apostolic succession, you are submitting to a church with final interpretive authority, but we are only submitting to a church with derivative authority, which then means that we retain the right to disagree with (or leave) that church if it teaches or does something contrary to our individual interpretation of Scripture – which itself is practically solo scriptura? Am I understanding you correctly?

There are two phases, then, in your understanding: the determination phase and the submission phase. Is that right?

It seems to me that the issue of infallibility is an important factor in the discussion (in addition to the obvious importance of clarifying what we mean by “church”). If Communion A claims some type of infallibility and Communion B does not, then one will be placed in a different condition depending on which communion he or she submits to. If someone submits to Communion A and truly believes the claims of Communion A, then that will make some type of difference. Correct?

A major question, then becomes how to adjudicate between the claims of Communion A and B (not to mention C,D, and F and so forth), and does the way we do this imply solo scriptura? What I found, and still find a bit confusing, Bryan, is your comment in post 13, where you said: “the person becoming Catholic bases his determination of the nature and location of the Church fundamentally on what those having the succession from the Apostles say is the nature and location of the Church.”

In order to base your determination on “what those having the succession from the Apostles” say, you have to know who “those having succession from the Apostles” are. How do you already know this in the determination phase – prior to submission? This is where the argument appears circular to me.

Perhaps, I can illustrate it in this way:

You based your determination of the nature and location of the church on what those having the succession from the Apostles say, and submitted to Rome.

Frank Schaeffer based his determination of the nature and location of the church on what those having the succession from the Apostles say, and submitted to the Orthodox Church.

Which one of you submitted to the one true church Christ established, and what criteria do you use to determine the answer to that question?

I’m hoping your answer to this will help me get a clearer understanding of exactly what you see as the epistemic difference submission to Rome makes.

Thanks again.

Keith

P.S. Richard, I did see post #94 and will attempt to answer the question in my response.
retro satana November 9th, 2009 10:49 am :
Bryan Cross,
I was skimming through your exchange with user “JJS”, and I admit I understand where he is coming from. I have a question based on something you said. if you’ve already answered it, forgive me. I might have missed a few posts.

If the difference with a Roman using private judgment prior to converting is that he judged where the Church was, and then faithfully submitted to her teaching, how did he judge which Church was the true church? He cannot use Scripture, because according to your view, apart from the Magisterium we cannot know which books are inspired. At this point, the Christian scriptures may or may not be reliable, so he cannot appeal to them to find the true church. If he cannot appeal to the Scriptures, then how does he know there is such a thing as a “church”, let alone a “true” one? If he has to search, study, etc to determine the Magisterium is the ultimate authority, then whatever he appeals to will be the ultimate authority, not the Magisterium. How exactly does one judge the Magisterium to be the one true church, without running into a self-defeating, circular mess?
Thanks, be blessed!
Paige Britton November 9th, 2009 11:25 am :
I notice that Bryan & Neal’s article, as well as much of this discussion, seems to be considering only two interpretive options: 1) the infallible and authorized interpretation of the Magisterium, and 2) the absolute interpretive uncertainty presented by solo/sola Scriptura (i.e., it’s all individualized, so there is no ultimate interpretive authority to appeal to).

I don’t know from what perspective Keith Mathison is writing, so I don’t know if he addresses this idea, but there is a third option that Reformed people work with – the idea that we may know sufficiently, but not exhaustively, the meaning of the biblical texts, especially through study & discussions with others. This still leaves unanswered the claims about apostolic succession, and it will not satisfy those who hope for absolute interpretive certainty. But it is for many of us a livable epistemic condition. Was this not mentioned because Mathison’s own premise is that “sola Scriptura” is a means of interpretive certainty?
Tim A. Troutman November 9th, 2009 12:28 pm :
Retro – I get where you’re coming from and where JJS is coming from. The tu quoque argument is reasonable and demands a good answer. I feel like I’ve given a good answer for it (as has Bryan) above but I haven’t had any response to what I’ve written. The issue is not the use of private judgment (reason) but whether or not the individual’s reason is used correctly and whether it is based on something objective. As I’ve shown in examples above, two people may both use private reason and yet not be in the same epistemic boat. If we deny that, then it seems to me that we are left with skepticism.

Paige – I’m not sure I’m getting your precise objection. Can you be more specific about what argument you disagree with from the article? It seems like you’re dismissing the conclusions of the article wholesale but without a specified reason. Maybe I’m missing it. Can you be more specific?
mateo November 9th, 2009 3:31 pm :
Tom Brown:

… the Protestant decides [via private judgment] which authority governs him [choosing text over magisterium], and then decides [via private judgment] which beliefs of faith and morals are true, and then decides [via private judgment] which denomination is most in line with his own conclusions.

Which is exactly what a Protestant does when he goes church shopping. But the market that the Protestant shops in contains thousands upon thousands of Protestant denominations that teach anything and everything because of sola scriptura / solo scriptura.

Is there any real submission to a higher temporal authority if I believe that I can church shop until I find a church that agrees with me? The main article argues that doing that is really a subtle form of delusion:

The indirect way of making oneself one’s own ultimate interpretive and magisterial authority is more complicated and subtle. In this case the individual, based upon his own interpretation of Scripture, either establishes or chooses an ecclesial community that conforms to his own interpretation in matters he considers to be essential or important. Then, he ’submits’ to this institution so long as it continues to speak and act in accordance with his own interpretation of Scripture. … Accumulating for themselves this body of persons to whom they ’submit’ allows them to remain under a delusion that they are submitting to the Church.

As long as one believes he has the right to church shop, he will always be making himself the ultimate arbiter of scriptural truth.

Either ecclesial authority has its basis in agreement or approval as determined by the individual’s own interpretation of Scripture, or ecclesial authority has its basis in Christ’s authorization and appointment.

Nathan: And as far as I know, Rome teaches that one’s conscience should not be violated.

The Catholic Church does indeed teach that one must follow one’s conscience. But the Catholic Church does not teach a doctrine of the Primacy of Conscience – that is the foundational Protestant doctrine that makes the individual the ultimate arbiter of scriptural truths.

From a Catholic point of view, since the Catholic Church cannot teach error in matters of faith or morals, the person that states that his conscience disagrees with the moral teaching of the Catholic Church is merely making a statement that his conscience in need of formation. See Catechism of the Catholic Church §1776 – 1802 .

Matthew Anderson: You’ve framed the discussion primarily as if it is between apostolic succession and sola scriptura, and I guess I’m not convinced that is an adequate representation of the Roman Catholic position. It feels to me that this particular formulation obfuscates what is actually the central claim of Roman Catholic theological epistemology, the papacy.

When it comes to the question of the ultimate temporal authority, the Catholic Church teaches a doctrine of the Primacy of Peter, and not a doctrine of the Primacy of Conscience. When the Eastern Orthodox speak about the ultimate temporal authority in matters of dogma, they claim that the dogmas promulgated by valid Ecumenical Councils speak as the ultimate temporal authority for the Church … BUT … the dogmas promulgated by an Ecumenical Councils are not valid unless they are “approved” by the “whole church”. The EO, with their novel “whole church approval” doctrine, are actually claiming an implicit doctrine of the Primacy of the Laity, since the laity are supposedly the final and ultimate temporal authority that “approves” the dogmas solemnly defined and promulgated by the Bishops at an Ecumenical Council.

I don’t think that anyone here is trying to obfuscate the doctrine of Petrine Primacy. Since both Catholics and Orthodox recognize that there have been Ecumenical Councils that are not recognized as valid, there must be some way of making that determination. The different ways that Protestants, Orthodox and Catholics determine the validity of Ecumenical Councils is a topic for another thread, which would, of course, would involve the doctrine of the Petrine Primacy.

One issue that this article addresses is whether the dogmas defined at an Ecumenical Council are binding on Christians, or are they merely opinions of men that I can ignore, because I am the ultimate temporal authority in determining matters of faith and morals.

Mathew, how do you respond to the members of Protestant sects that deny the dogmas of the Trinity defined by the Ecumenical Councils? The Unitarians, Oneness Pentecostals, Church of God Abrahamic Faith, Jehovah Witnesses, etc. all believe they are being “scriptural” when they deny the Trinity.
Bryan Cross November 9th, 2009 8:01 pm :
Keith,

If you post a new article in response, then I can jump in the comments to carry on the discussion if necessary. Sound okay?

That’s fine with me.

If I follow what has been said in response to the concerns of several folks here, you grant that you as well as we use our private judgment and reason to determine which communion we should submit to through the study of Scripture, church history, the Fathers, etc. Correct, so far?

Yes.

The epistemic difference, then, according to you, would be that since you’ve discovered apostolic succession, you are submitting to a church with final interpretive authority, but we are only submitting to a church with derivative authority, which then means that we retain the right to disagree with (or leave) that church if it teaches or does something contrary to our individual interpretation of Scripture – which itself is practically solo scriptura? Am I understanding you correctly?

Yes.

There are two phases, then, in your understanding: the determination phase and the submission phase. Is that right?

There is a searching phase, a discovery, and then submission (or resistance).

If Communion A claims some type of infallibility and Communion B does not, then one will be placed in a different condition depending on which communion he or she submits to. If someone submits to Communion A and truly believes the claims of Communion A, then that will make some type of difference. Correct?

Correct.

A major question, then becomes how to adjudicate between the claims of Communion A and B (not to mention C,D, and F and so forth), and does the way we do this imply solo scriptura? What I found, and still find a bit confusing, Bryan, is your comment in post 13, where you said: “the person becoming Catholic bases his determination of the nature and location of the Church fundamentally on what those having the succession from the Apostles say is the nature and location of the Church.”

In order to base your determination on “what those having the succession from the Apostles” say, you have to know who “those having succession from the Apostles” are. How do you already know this in the determination phase – prior to submission? This is where the argument appears circular to me.

One can find who those having the succession are, without already being in submission. We can do this by reading St. Clement, St. Ignatius of Antioch, St. Irenaeus, and Eusebius. In other words, you don’t need to start the inquiry phase by determining *immediately* who presently holds authority from the Apostles. Rather, we can start this by going back to the Apostles, and then moving forward through the timeline, continually tracing the passing on of Church authority through St. Clement and through the other bishops down to the Council of Nicea and so on. Every time there is a schism, we have to determine which is the Church, and which is the “schism from” the Church, and then we keep tracing forward this handing on of authority, until we reach the present day.

You based your determination of the nature and location of the church on what those having the succession from the Apostles say, and submitted to Rome.

Frank Schaeffer based his determination of the nature and location of the church on what those having the succession from the Apostles say, and submitted to the Orthodox Church.

Which one of you submitted to the one true church Christ established, and what criteria do you use to determine the answer to that question?

Frank submitted to a bishop who has apostolic succession, but is presently in schism from the Church Christ founded. The criterion we use is the principle of unity of the first thousand years of the Church, before the Greek schism. (I briefly discussed here the notion of schism.) We find in the Fathers that the successor of St. Peter holds this role, as the one to whom Christ gave the keys, and made to be the rock upon which He would build the Church. I could write a couple articles just on that subject alone, so it won’t fit into a combox. If you’re interested, read Studies on the Early Papacy, by Chapman, Documents Illustrating Papal Authority: AD 96 – 454, by Giles, and The Early Papacy: To the Synod of Chalcedon in 451, by Fortescue. We will be covering this subject in the future, Lord willing. Our purpose in the present article, is much more focused, simply to show that without apostolic succession, there is no principled difference between sola and solo.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
retro satana November 9th, 2009 9:01 pm :
Troutman (and Bryan, too),
thanks for the response. I completely agree that we can both use private reason (what else could we use? – whether it is logically sound or not), and not be in the same epistemic boat. But the reason we’re not in the same boat is because our fundamental presupposition is different. I presuppose scripture, you presuppose the Magisterium. My question is, how does a non-catholic go about changing his presupposition to the Magisterium w/o first having to presuppose Scripture? I presuppose the claims of Scripture because of Scripture, I believe Jesus is Lord because of Scripture. But where can the non-catholic start to find the true Church?

According to Rome, our epistemology is faulty and unreasonable outside of her walls, because we’re not trusting in the true church. So, any appeal I make to Scripture, to history, to Christ, to anything, is ultimately uncertain, since I’m using my own private criteria rather than Rome’s. Therefore, how can any conclusion I make (i.e. “Rome is true Church”, or “apostolic succession is real,”) be certain? If I start with a false premise, the conclusions will also be false, inconsistent, or uncertain. It sounds like you’re saying: “The protestant presupposes Scripture by his own private judgment and concludes that Scripture is the ultimate source for truth. The Roman presupposes scripture by his own private judgment and concludes that the Magisterium is the ultimate source for truth, thus proving his presupposition of scripture to be false.” But if the latter is true, then the Roman had no real reason to presuppose Scripture, therefore not giving him any certainty that his conclusions FROM Scripture are true. This is where the RC logic gets confusing. It would make more sense if you were being circular: “I presuppose the Magisterium because of the Magisterium.” But I haven’t heard you guys affirm this. You presuppose the Magisterium, by appealing to Scripture and supposed “facts” of history. Scripture or history then become the ultimate authorities, not the Magisterium. But by what standard can I even trust history? When I read RC, EO, or Reformed literature I get 3 different views of history. I wasn’t there. How can I possibly know exactly what happened and what went down for certain? Whose history do I trust and by what criteria?

When it comes to epistemological ultimate authority, you have to have ONE final authority, not multiple. It seems to me the only choices are Sola Scriptura, Sola Ecclesia or Sola Historia. You deny the first two, so I’m just trying to figure out how this works out. Thanks for your time!
Grace and Peace!
Paige Britton November 9th, 2009 9:02 pm :
Hey, Tim (re. #109),
Thanks for trying to understand. I am not casting judgment on the arguments in the article at all. I was merely pointing out that there seem to be two interpretive options under discussion, leaving the impression that there are only two interpretive options or expectations among Christians:

a) the Catholic view, in which the Magisterium provides infallible authoritative interpretation;
and b) the Protestant view as described by Mathison, which devolves into a nonsensical mess because there is no infallible earthly authority to appeal to for interpretation.

The first, if it is true, would be livable. The second would be unlivable, and Richard’s post (#94) characterizes how crazy-making it would be never to be able to adjudicate between competing interpretations, because there is no ultimate infallible interpretive authority to appeal to.

In light of this observation, I have an informational question. I have not read Mathison’s book, so I am curious to find out this: Does he present his positive argument for “sola Scriptura” as a way for people to achieve certainty about interpretations, as the Magisterium offers Catholic believers interpretive certainty? In other words, does Mathison lead one to EXPECT interpretive certainty, as the Magisterium’s claims lead one to EXPECT interpretive certainty?

Or does he speak more reticently about what Protestants may expect with regards to certainty? The “third interpretive option” that I did not see mentioned in the article is the understanding that Reformed folks work with, that we may expect to know “sufficiently but not exhaustively,” which is a phrase from the Westminster Confession. This is not the absolute knowledge of Magisterial certainty, but it is also not the quicksand of absolute uncertainty. (I won’t try to unpack what is more or less “certain” in this view — I’m just mentioning that it exists.)

The reason I bring this up is simply that it has been found by many thoughtful people to be a livable perspective, and is a real third option to Magisterial certainty and crazy-making Protestant uncertainty about interpretations. Whether it is RIGHT or not is not my point — I am just wondering whether Mathison goes here, and it was overlooked — or whether he really does make claims about expecting interpretive certainty that leave one groping for an authority behind them; in which case my “third option” would be extraneous to a response to his book.

Does this make sense? I’m just trying to find out something I don’t know yet, not dismissing anybody’s arguments.

pax!
pb
David November 9th, 2009 11:46 pm :
Bryan,

With reference to your responses to Keith Mathison, you seem to suggest that the crucial issue is not even Apostolic succession per se, but the Universal Fatherhood of the Bishop of Rome. Right? In other words, without affirming not simply primacy of honor but primacy of rule by the Roman Pontiff, the Orthodox Churches cannot be anything but in schism with the one true Church? Right? Have you read Meyerndorff’s work on Roman Primacy?

David
Tim A. Troutman November 10th, 2009 12:10 am :
Retro:

You said:

I presuppose scripture, you presuppose the Magisterium.

But this rests on another presupposition, namely that all viewpoints start with a presupposition (i.e. presuppositionalism). I don’t believe that, but that is a long discussion and we can’t do that here. The short of it is that I do not presuppose the magisterium.

So, any appeal I make to Scripture, to history, to Christ, to anything, is ultimately uncertain, since I’m using my own private criteria rather than Rome’s.

Rome doesn’t think of you that way regardless of what you may have heard from some apologists.

When I read RC, EO, or Reformed literature I get 3 different views of history. I wasn’t there. How can I possibly know exactly what happened and what went down for certain? Whose history do I trust and by what criteria?

This is a difficulty not unique to Christianity. Talk to a southerner and to a yankee and you’ll get a different view of the Civil War. We have to approach history as objectively as we can; it’s not always easy to sort through the mess and psychology of conflicts of interest among historians.

As for Church history, if there is a visible Church, the best one to ask about her history would be herself. She knows it better than anyone else. There’s a multiplicity of ways to approach the question(s) facing the Christian. What is the history of the Church? Ask the visible Church. Is there a visible Church? History tells us that there is. :-) Sometimes it’s just easier to wear a WWJD bracelet and listen to contemporary music on the radio. I know its messy but we Christians dont have anyone but ourselves to blame for it!

When it comes to epistemological ultimate authority, you have to have ONE final authority, not multiple. It seems to me the only choices are Sola Scriptura, Sola Ecclesia or Sola Historia. You deny the first two, so I’m just trying to figure out how this works out. Thanks for your time!

I can see where you’re coming from. There is definitely a sense in which all things terminate (or begin) somewhere. A thing cannot ultimately spring from multiple sources. But taking this truth to an extreme would be like taking “act precedes potency” to the extreme. Act ultimately does precede potency – but practically, as we interact with the world we see that a thing must be potential before it can be actualized. Enough with the philosophy – most of which I barely understand. So here’s the deal… before my wife kills me for taking too long on this blog. If it is true that we must have one and absolutely one source for epistemological certainty, then if we choose sola scriptura, that excludes God Himself from being our source of certainty. So do we trust the Scripture as the final authority even above God? Of course that doesn’t make sense. Eck.. gotta go. Wanted to write more but wife is impatient. Hope you can follow out my train of thought. Otherwise I’ll be back tomorrow to help clean it up.
Nathan November 10th, 2009 12:32 am :
Tim (115), I think it would be fair to characterize what you’re saying about ultimate causes in terms of incarnation. If Christ himself is the first apostle (Hebrews 3:1), and his message was spread by his chosen apostles before any authoritative New Testament writings existed, authority must be rooted in incarnation and apostleship, and only secondarily in scripture, which always points to the source, namely the incarnate Word. At any rate, this is the direction my thinking is being pushed of late.
Bryan Cross November 10th, 2009 1:15 am :
David,

It is not so much primacy of honor or universal jurisdiction that is crucial to see, but the charism of truth and the principle of unity — that See with which one must be in full communion in order not to be in schism from Christ’s Church. I’d be glad to discuss Meyendorff’s book, but that would take us away from the argument in our article. We’re going to address the primacy of Peter in a future article. Our argument in this present article does not depend on universal papal jurisdiction. Our argument is only that without apostolic succession there is no principled difference between sola and solo, because without apostolic succession each individual retains ultimate interpretive authority.

If you asked anyone in the first eight hundred years of the Church, “Where is the Catholic Church?” everyone knew the answer. It wasn’t a difficult question. It has become a difficult question today because we’ve forgotten to ask the question, and forgotten the criteria by which those in the first millennium knew the answer to the question: one, holy, catholic and apostolic. Only the Catholic Church today bears all four marks. The Orthodox Churches are not hierarchically one. Nor are they catholic; they are each national and ethnic. When they separate from each other, that is not a schism from the universal Church that Christ founded, because none of them is the principle of unity of the Church. None of them is by divine establishment the necessary continuation of the Church whenever there is schism. That is why when one of them separates from the others, there is no principled answer to the question: “Which one is the continuation of the Church?” That principled basis for measuring schism can be found only in the unique authority and unitive role of St. Peter, on account of the keys of the Kingdom, which Christ give particularly to him.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Andrew McCallum November 10th, 2009 1:24 am :
One can find who those having the succession are, without already being in submission. We can do this by reading St. Clement, St. Ignatius of Antioch, St. Irenaeus, and Eusebius. In other words, you don’t need to start the inquiry phase by determining *immediately* who presently holds authority from the Apostles. Rather, we can start this by going back to the Apostles, and then moving forward through the timeline, continually tracing the passing on of Church authority through St. Clement and through the other bishops down to the Council of Nicea and so on.

OK Bryan, so you are saying that all we have to do is look to the material succession of the current bishops and this will tell us where the true Church is. Correct? So there should be no debate about whether the bishops of the Renaissance/Reformation or during the present era were and are faithful to the teachings of Clement, Ignatius, etc. Any such discussion is of no value because formal succession has already decided the matter. Is that correct?
retro satana November 10th, 2009 9:04 am :
Tim,
I understand you weren’t able to continue your post, I’m married as well. :) But I hope you can return and help me out a little bit more. Of course, I don’t want to stray too much from the topic at hand, but I’d love for you to briefly explain how/why you deny presuppositionalism. My mind starts jumping to conclusions as to what you believe about our epistemological foundations (blank slate?) but I’d rather wait to hear your explanation before making an assumption. Also, does Rome have an official position on this?

If Rome doesn’t think my appeal to Scripture apart from her authority is arbitrary and uncertain, then why do so many apologists and lay-persons harp on us for not having a standard to decide what the Canon should be? We just like to cherry-pick which books line up with our private interpretations, remember? :) All joking aside, if Rome is indeed the True Church, and her claims of infallibly interpreting the deposit of faith is true, how is it NOT an arbitrary/uncertain position for protestants to put faith in ANY piece of scripture?

I know the issue of history is not unique to church history, but you may have missed my point. Certainty of historical data is limited, apart from divine revelation (whether in Scripture or any other form of revelation). A good historian will try to report all accounts of an event, all viewpoints, and be as objective as possible, but we know that there is always room for error. Two people can see/experience the same event and walk away with two totally different accounts of it. What if a historian reports his interpretation of an event rather than the “cold hard facts”? There are always very limited amounts of certainty when reading the books of history. So, telling a non-Catholic to find the true church by studying history doesn’t help him much. I could easily see someone getting overwhelmed by the amount of data he must process and weigh against each other that he simply becomes skeptical about the whole thing, or just jumps into one he prefers most, having blind faith that his pick is right!

It should be stressed that we all presuppose the existence of the Triune God. We all believe that whatever source(s) of revelation we adhere to come from him, as the F has given the S ALL authority, even scriptural authority and papal authority. That’s a given, so it shouldn’t even be an issue. What we mean when we’re talking about Sola Scriptura vs. Magisterium is what source of revelation is the ultimate authority for our objective use on earth in this current stage of redemptive history.
Tim Troutman November 10th, 2009 10:30 am :
Nathan – thanks for helping tie that together!

Retro – so a follow up with a little help from Nathan. If we can demand a singular source for epistemic certainty by posing a dilemma between Scripture and the Church, then why not between the Scripture and Jesus? Which is your ultimate source, the Bible or Jesus? Clearly that’s a false dichotomy. It is possible that the dichotomy between the Bible and Tradition is also false.

Suppose for a minute that the two actually agree. Sometimes it is hard to convince someone that they do because there are apparent contradictions. But it is hard to convince an atheist that the Scriptures do not contradict themselves. I say all this to establish the possibility that Tradition and Scriptures are, together, the Word of God and both infallible. That is certainly a logical possibility.

How do we determine whether it’s true? Well, one way of making decisions like this is to eliminate alternatives. This article demonstrates why the most convincing alternative (sola scriptura) is reducible to solo scriptura and per Mathison’s own arguments above, it is not a viable option for Christians.
Keith Mathison November 10th, 2009 11:28 am :
One more follow-up. In the original paper you wrote:

“So for the person becoming Catholic, when he recognizes the authority of the Magisterium, he recognizes that his beliefs and interpretation of Scripture must conform to the authoritative teachings of the Church’s Magisterium. “When the Magisterium of the Church makes an infallible pronouncement that a teaching is found in Revelation,” he assents to it by an act of faith, believing this pronouncement to be the teaching of Christ, on account of the divine authority given to the Magisterium through apostolic succession to teach in Christ’s name and with His authority.74 In this way, his faith in Christ is expressed as an act of faith in the infallible pronouncement of the Church’s Magisterium. In those teachings which are not infallible, he also, as an act of faith in Christ, gives religious submission of intellect and will, even while recognizing the fallibility of those teaching.”

I want to make sure I clearly understand the final sentence. From your Roman Catholic perspective:

1. Does the insertion of the category “teachings which are not infallible” under the purview of a Magisterium whose pronouncements are, in your words, “the teaching of Christ” have any effects on the question at hand regarding the epistemological advantage provided by Roman Catholicism?

2. From your perspective, why is it that you are able to submit truly to “teachings which are not infallible” but Protestants are not able to submit truly to teachings which are not infallible?

3. Does the Magisterium teach you infallibly or fallibly which of her teachings are infallible and which are not infallible?

Thanks,

Keith
Tim A. Troutman November 10th, 2009 12:01 pm :
Paige – #113

I think that the tu quoque objection has thrown this conversation off course a bit. The issue is not about absolute certainty as if the Catholic position claims that it puts us in a sort of absolute certainty about all things faith related whereas Protestants are just fumbling around hopelessly in the dark because of their dependence on private interpretation. That’s not what we mean at all.

In fact, what we see in some Protestant branches, such as the Reformed, is an incredible fidelity to the gospel of Christ especially where moral teachings are concerned. There doesn’t seem to be a lack of certainty on what the Scripture teaches.

But what we’re concerned with is whether or not there is a principled difference between sola and solo scriptura. As the article shows, if Mathison is right, and all appeals to scripture are really appeals to one’s private interpretation, and if Calvin and the WCF are right that the Church is defined by those who rightly preach the Scriptures, then an appeal to Church authority is an appeal Scripture and thus to one’s private interpretation thereof and thus to solo scriptura. There is no principled difference between sola and solo scriptura. But if Church is not defined by one’s private interpretation of Scripture, but instead is defined by those whom Christ authorized as Church and their successors by material apostolic succession, then we have an objective touch point that does not rely on private interpretation. This position is not reducible to solo scriptura.

Now again this does not mean that Catholics are absolutely certain about faith whereas Protestants are in the dark. Does this make sense?
Bryan Cross November 10th, 2009 12:17 pm :
Keith,

1. Does the insertion of the category “teachings which are not infallible” under the purview of a Magisterium whose pronouncements are, in your words, “the teaching of Christ” have any effects on the question at hand regarding the epistemological advantage provided by Roman Catholicism?

No it does not. Notice the three-fold categorization in the Profession of Faith:

With firm faith, I also believe everything contained in the Word of God, whether written or handed down in Tradition, which the Church, either by a solemn judgement or by the ordinary and universal Magisterium, sets forth to be believed as divinely revealed.

I also firmly accept and hold each and everything definitively proposed by the Church regarding teaching on faith and morals.

Moreover, I adhere with religious submission of will and intellect to the teachings which either the Roman pontiff or the College of Bishops enunciate when they exercise their authentic Magisterium, even if they do not intend to proclaim these teachings by a definitive act.

That third category of Magisterial teachings are not taught infallibly. That doesn’t mean, of course, that they are false. It means that they are not guaranteed to be protected from error by the Holy Spirit. But they could all be true. These [in this third category] we [Catholics] are required to adhere to with “religious submission of mind and intellect” on account of the authority by which they are given. The ground of their authority is not “agreement with my own interpretation of Scripture”; rather, the ground of their authority is apostolic succession, had by those in communion with the one to whom Christ gave the keys, and upon whom He promised to build His Church.

2. From your perspective, why is it that you are able to submit truly to “teachings which are not infallible” but Protestants are not able to submit truly to teachings which are not infallible?

Because of the difference in the ground of the authority. The ground of Protestant ecclesial authority is not apostolic succession, but is ultimately agreement with one’s own interpretation of Scripture, as we explained in the article. This is why no Protestant pastor has the authority to bind the conscience. The ground of Catholic ecclesial authority, by contrast, is apostolic succession; and this authority can bind the conscience.

3. Does the Magisterium teach you infallibly or fallibly which of her teachings are infallible and which are not infallible?

The criteria by which to distinguish fallible from infallible Magisterial teaching, were given infallibly in the first Vatican Council (Session 4, Chapter 4).

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Tim A. Troutman November 10th, 2009 12:30 pm :
Retro:

I’d love for you to briefly explain how/why you deny presuppositionalism. My mind starts jumping to conclusions as to what you believe about our epistemological foundations (blank slate?) but I’d rather wait to hear your explanation before making an assumption. Also, does Rome have an official position on this?

As far as I know, Rome does not have an official position on this, but I could be wrong. I’m going to email you a reply about this one so we don’t get off on a rabbit trail.. This one could be long!

If Rome doesn’t think my appeal to Scripture apart from her authority is arbitrary and uncertain, then why do so many apologists and lay-persons harp on us for not having a standard to decide what the Canon should be?

Our next lead article will be out in a few weeks and will be on the issue of the canon. I think it will be helpful to get into this more deeply at that point. Briefly, the problem is with a lack of consistency in epistemology. It is inconsistent to trust the Scriptures with absolutely certainty but only trust the Church, who gave us those scriptures, conditionally (upon our interpretation of the Scriptures she gave us.) If the Church is incapable of acting infallibly, then the canon cannot be infallible. I can think of a lot of objections to all this, but can only say for now that we will address those when we address the canon and then a few articles later with Church infallibility.

So, telling a non-Catholic to find the true church by studying history doesn’t help him much.

I gotcha. It’s not always black and white. Depending on the historical source, you get a different understanding of what really happened. I can appreciate that. It’s a process for us all.
JJS November 10th, 2009 1:44 pm :
Tim,

Sorry for vanishing for a couple days, I’ve traveled to Annapolis.

Also, to reiterate, the problem with the Protestant position isn’t that they use reason. We readily admit to using reason also. I’ve tried to show a few examples demonstrating that two positions, both using reason, can be an uneven epistemic ground. I.e. one is more objective and can be known more certainly than the other because it is based on something more objective. I haven’t seen any response to my analogies or arguments. I think I have rubbed Donato the wrong way and maybe you too.

OK, I understand that your position is that, reason aside, the basis for your view is more objective than the basis for mine. Let’s take this a step further, then: As you may remember from when you were a PCA guy, the insistence that there has been an unbroken succession of bishops from the apostles to the college of bishops today (and from Peter to BXVI) sounds to non-Catholics like a fairy tale. If I wanted to “objectively” investigate such a claim, I wouldn’t even know where to start. A Catholic author will insist on it while a Protestant one will deny it.

So how is apostolic succession more sure footing than rolling up my sleeves and studying Scripture? Now if I granted it, I would agree it’s way more objective, but I’m asking how I can objectively know if it’s even true in the first place.
Andrew McCallum November 10th, 2009 2:23 pm :
Tim Troutman from #93:

So if you grant that it is possible for any two positions to differ in regards to objectivity, then we would turn our focus to the question of whether the Catholic position (identifying the Church based on private judgment of historical material apostolic succession) is more objective than the Protestant position (identifying the Church based on private judgment of Scripture).

Tim,

It seems to me that “historical material apostolic succession” is absolutely objective and something that we Protestants can’t possibly argue with. Yes, the current RCC bishops can trace their line to those bishops of the 1st century. But how does “private judgment” play a part here? You are not judging anything, are you? You are just noting that current bishops can trace their lines to previous generations of bishops. Is it maybe more accurate to say that Church tradition is what you are assessing and that and your private interpretation of Church tradition is that material succession is the all abiding principle by which the validity of the Church should be identified?

Protestants and Catholics recognize/discover material succession, but it seems that the Catholic makes more of this discovery than does the Protestant. Perhaps to the Catholic mind there is a necessary logical connection between material succession and faithful material succession? For some reason that is unclear to us, it is inconceivable to the Catholic mind that there could be un-faithful material succession.
Tim A. Troutman November 10th, 2009 2:57 pm :
Jason,

As you may remember from when you were a PCA guy, the insistence that there has been an unbroken succession of bishops from the apostles to the college of bishops today (and from Peter to BXVI) sounds to non-Catholics like a fairy tale.

Yes I distinctly remember the first time I heard of Apostolic Succession, especially regarding the See of St. Peter. I thought it was, in a word, retarded. But it’s hard for me to identify with you exactly and that’s because I didn’t so much reject AS on account of me believing that there was a break somewhere, but because I just didn’t think it mattered if there was or wasn’t.

You bring up a completely legitimate question though; it was one that I had not considered because I hadn’t arrived a place theologically where I thought it mattered. It seems to me, from this reply, that you do think it matters whether or not the Catholic bishops are literally in succession from the apostles. Granted, when I came to believe that they were, and that it mattered, for me it was something like a fairy tale – a fairy tale come true. Maybe this doesn’t help my case with you. :-) At any rate, I don’t want it to seem like I’m dismissing this legitimate question, but we, or specifically I ,will be addressing this topic in detail in the lead article after next on Holy Orders and Apostolic Succession.

So here’s where I think we are now. You agree that given material apostolic succession, the Catholic position would be more objective and not reducible to solo scriptura in the same way that the Protestant position is, but this is entirely dependent upon AS actually being knowable.

So even if a Catholic could claim that he knows AS to be true with a reasonable but not absolute certainty, the Protestant could say “Well I can know my interpretation of Scripture to be accurate with the same degree of certainty. No, I don’t have absolute certainty without the possibility of error, but I do have certainty beyond reasonable doubt that I understand the fundamentals of the gospel.” Therefore, the Catholic position really isn’t better than the Protestant position. Is that an accurate representation of what you’re getting at?
Andi November 10th, 2009 2:59 pm :
Could someone with more knowledge about these things than me, Protestant or Catholic, comment on Mathison’s interpretation of 1 Tim 3:15: his assertion that “[I]f I am delayed, you will know how people ought to conduct themselves in God’s household, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth” means that, in Mathison’s words “she [the church] is the proclaimer and defender of Scripture.” Is that a common interpretation of that passage? And, if so, how does the interpretation follow from the verse?
Richard November 10th, 2009 3:56 pm :
Re # 106 – Thanks Keith, I’ll look forward to it.
Tim A. Troutman November 10th, 2009 3:56 pm :
Andrew (126) –

Let me make sure I’m understanding you. I think you are agreeing that there is no principled distinction between sola and solo scriptura but that the Catholic position is no better not on account of its lack of objective criteria (material apostolic succession) but on account of its criteria being subjectively judged to be the correct way of determining Church authority. Put another way, yes AS can be affirmed objectively, but one must judge subjectively that it is the correct method of determining the true Church much in the same way that one must subjectively judge that the Church is rightfully determined by one’s private interpretation of Scripture. Is this an accurate representation of your argument?
Bryan Cross November 10th, 2009 4:53 pm :
Matthew (re: #84),

Even if in principle they [sola and solo] are the same, in practice they can be different. Sola scriptura would presumably be drawing on the wisdom and experience of the church in its interpretation, whereas solo scriptura may be completely ignorant and indifferent to the practice of the church. So, even if in principle they are identical, I think the difference in practice could be consequential.

See section IV of the article. That’s where we respond to the claim that sola scriptura allows one to appeal to “the church.”

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Bryan Cross November 10th, 2009 6:11 pm :
Retro (re: #107)

If he cannot appeal to the Scriptures, then how does he know there is such a thing as a “church”, let alone a “true” one?

His faith could come by hearing, more specifically, by hearing the preaching of someone speaking for the Church, or by hearing the witness of someone belonging to the Church.

If he has to search, study, etc to determine the Magisterium is the ultimate authority, then whatever he appeals to will be the ultimate authority, not the Magisterium.

That conclusion does not follow, because a lesser authority can testify to a higher authority. We explain this in more detail in section IV.B. of our article, in the paragraph beginning “The pronouncements of the teaching and interpretative authority ….”

How exactly does one judge the Magisterium to be the one true church, without running into a self-defeating, circular mess?

I don’t think I claimed that the Magisterium is the one true Church. The Catholic understanding is that the Magisterium is the teaching office of the one Church that Christ founded. As I said in #111, we can locate the Church by tracing the Church forward through time, from Christ the Head, through the Apostles, to their successors, and so on, to the Ecumenical Councils. In the Creed we find the four marks of the Church: one, holy, catholic and apostolic. None of the sects dared call themselves the Catholic Church. As St. Augustine tells us in his Against the Epistle of Manichaeus Called Fundamental:

For in the Catholic Church, not to speak of the purest wisdom… there are many other things which most justly keep me in her bosom. The consent of peoples and nations keeps me in the Church; so does her authority, inaugurated by miracles, nourished by hope, enlarged by love, established by age. The succession of priests keeps me, beginning from the very seat of the Apostle Peter, to whom the Lord, after His resurrection, gave it in charge to feed His sheep, down to the present episcopate. And so, lastly, does the name itself of Catholic, which, not without reason, amid so many heresies, the Church has thus retained; so that, though all heretics wish to be called Catholics, yet when a stranger asks where the Catholic Church meets, no heretic will venture to point to his own chapel or house.”

The alternative is to determine for oneself (by some inward self-attestation one could justify by attributing Mormon-style to the inward work of the Holy Spirit) what is the canon of Scripture, and then by one’s own interpretation of the books within that canon of Scripture (either on one’s own or as guided by expositors that one deems to be trustworthy by unspecified criteria, or again by brute Montanist appeal to the inner testimony of the Holy Spirit) determine what are the marks of the Church, and then by means of those marks locate in the world those persons (and/or institutions) bearing those marks, and enter into communion with them. The result is as many institutions/denominations/sects as we see today.

As I said in #72, either we can locate the Church by figuring out the gospel from Scripture, and then finding those who hold this gospel, or we can locate the gospel by finding the Church coming down from Christ through history, and then listening to what she says is the gospel. Those are two fundamentally different ways, and the difference between those two ways plays a large part in the present division between Protestants on the one hand, and Catholics and Orthodox on the other hand.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
K. Doran November 10th, 2009 8:03 pm :
Amen to Bryan’s comment #132.
Bryan Cross November 10th, 2009 9:52 pm :
Andrew M, (re: #118)

so you are saying that all we have to do is look to the material succession of the current bishops and this will tell us where the true Church is. Correct? So there should be no debate about whether the bishops of the Renaissance/Reformation or during the present era were and are faithful to the teachings of Clement, Ignatius, etc. Any such discussion is of no value because formal succession has already decided the matter. Is that correct?

So far as I know, nothing about Catholic doctrine, apostolic succession or the Catholic Church entails that “there should be no debate about” x. The charism of infallibility applies to the bishops as a whole, not to individual bishops, the successor of St. Peter excepted. This is why throughout the history of the Church, the Church has had to deal with heretical bishops. But the Church as a whole has never taught a heresy, nor has she ever reversed a dogma, nor does she have the authority to do so. What the Fathers believed and taught (again, not what was unique to a few, but what was taught by the consensus of the Fathers), this the Church has always continued to believe and teach, and still believes and teaches to this day, with the benefit of further development of understanding according to the promise of Christ that the Holy Spirit would continue to guide the Church into all truth. This development is due to the Church being a living organism, because living organisms grow not only in size but organically. This growth takes place also in the Church’s understanding of the faith. For that reason, in the beliefs of the heretical bishops we find sprinkled throughout the history of the Church we may surely find departure from the deposit of faith entrusted to the Church by the Apostles. But in the teaching of the Church in her ordinary or extraordinary Magisterium, there is no departure from the faith of the Fathers; there is rather a continual unfolding of that faith in its deeper fullness, as the living Body of Christ that is the Church continues to develop in her understanding of the deposit of faith once entrusted to the saints.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
retro satana November 10th, 2009 9:58 pm :
Bryan,
Lesser authorities can testify to higher authorities, but the question is what validates the lesser authorities? The higher authority does. You can’t get away from the circularity, which is why I don’t understand how you guys can deny presuppositionalism. You say we find the Church by following history from Christ through the apostles, but this only begs the question more because the Magisterium is the one that tells me who Christ is, what he taught, which church he founded, and which version of history is true. If the Magisterium is the determining and interpreting guide to all of God’s revelation, both written and oral, then it has to be the highest authority (with the exception of the Godhead, of course). How else do you not subject yourself to an infinite regress of appeals? I’ll anxiously await Tim’s email on presuppositionalism before I continue more on that subject. But for future reference, I’d love for you to read this presuppositional refutation of Sungenis’ Not By Scripture Alone, perhaps even reviewing it on your site: https://www.erikwait.com/index.cgi?location_id=2&subject_id=6.
Be blessed!
p.s. I understand the Magisterium is only one part of the Church in RCC, my apologies for misspeaking. My intended point still stands: How does one judge the Magisterium to be the final source of doctrine and faith w/o running into a circular mess? I believe you are presupposing the Magisterium, the inconsistency is that you deny it.
Bryan Cross November 10th, 2009 10:30 pm :
Retro,

Allow me to intersperse my comments.

Lesser authorities can testify to higher authorities, but the question is what validates the lesser authorities? The higher authority does.

If by ‘validates’ you mean “gives authority to”, then I do not disagree. But if by “validates” you mean “shows us directly the authority had by the lesser authorities,” then you have not shown that higher authorities must ‘validate’ lesser authorities in that sense. Keep in mind the distinction between the order of authority (the hierarchy of authority in the ontological sense) and the order of knowing (in this case the order through which we come to know the higher authority). The two orders (ontological and epistemological) are not necessarily the same; generally they are the inverse of each other.

You can’t get away from the circularity, which is why I don’t understand how you guys can deny presuppositionalism.

You have merely asserted (but not demonstrated) that we “can’t get away from circularity”. If you wish to see the post I wrote arguing against presuppositionalism, you can go here. I hope you understand that this present thread is not intended for the discussion of presuppositionalism. But, feel free to discuss presuppositionalism on that thread.

You say we find the Church by following history from Christ through the apostles, but this only begs the question more because the Magisterium is the one that tells me who Christ is, what he taught, which church he founded, and which version of history is true.

How, exactly, does it beg the question to locate the Church by tracing it forward from its beginning?

If the Magisterium is the determining and interpreting guide to all of God’s revelation, both written and oral, then it has to be the highest authority (with the exception of the Godhead, of course).

It does not have to be the highest authority per se; but it has to be the highest interpretive authority. Just because the Apostles had the authority from Christ to preach and teach in His Name, this does not entail that they were as high or higher in authority than Christ. They had the highest interpretive authority of anyone on earth, but of course Christ had a higher absolute authority than did the Apostles.

How else do you not subject yourself to an infinite regress of appeals?

You have not shown that the Catholic position is subject to an infinite regress. In our article we do have a section on how we avoid the infinite regress. If you haven’t read the article, that might answer your question.

I’ll anxiously await Tim’s email on presuppositionalism before I continue more on that subject. But for future reference, I’d love for you to read this presuppositional refutation of Sungenis’ Not By Scripture Alone, perhaps even reviewing it on your site:

See my link cited above for my post explaining what’s wrong with presuppositionalism.

My intended point still stands: How does one judge the Magisterium to be the final source of doctrine and faith w/o running into a circular mess?

By starting with the evidence from history, and locating the Church at its inception, and then tracing it forward and determining (from the record of history) where its authority was located.

I believe you are presupposing the Magisterium, the inconsistency is that you deny it.

How am I presupposing the Magisterium?

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Paige Britton November 10th, 2009 10:38 pm :
Tim — #122
Thanks for taking time to respond to my thoughts. I do realize that individual Catholics are not “absolutely certain about faith whereas Protestants are in the dark,” as you put it. But I also see that Catholics have what Protestants do not – an earthly infallible authority to go to for interpretation. Many Protestants do behave and speak as if we have access to the same sort of absolute interpretive certainty apart from a Magisterium; and it seems to me that whether they are operating under “solo” or “sola” Scriptura, those who mistakenly believe that this is their epistemic situation are indeed headed for “hermeneutical chaos & anarchy.”

On the other hand, thoughtful Protestants who are aware that they are operating without an earthly Magisterium may be quite certain of their beliefs, as you note – but their certainty is SUFFICIENT and RELIABLE, not absolute; and they realize that, for this reason, their sources of certainty, including their interpretations of Scripture, must be subject to checks and balances (e.g., the text of Scripture, the fruitful labor of past scholars and councils, and one another). In the best cases, there’s humility as well as conviction, and careful weighing, evaluating, and discussion with others past and present. This is a picture that is missing from the article above, leaving the impression that all is either submission to the Magisterium, or epistemic and hermeneutical chaos. I just thought to ask whether an evaluation of Mathison’s presentation had noted and taken into account any claims he might have made regarding the degree of certainty that he was describing. I understand that the main question is about Apostolic Succession and the authority to which we are submitted, but I regretted that a fuller picture of the way Protestants deal with the epistemic situation they’ve accepted didn’t emerge in the article.
Andrew McCallum November 11th, 2009 1:12 am :
Let me make sure I’m understanding you. I think you are agreeing that there is no principled distinction between sola and solo scriptura….

Tim,

In Section IV of the article Bryan/Sean speak of sola scriptura from the standpoint of the individual. And I agree that if we are only looking at the individual there is no difference between the person who makes a theological judgment based on his own private interpretation of Scripture and the person who comes to the same decision but filters it through his choice of a church that agrees with his interpretation of Scripture. And while we see both of these phenomena in even Reformed churches I think I’m being fair in saying that most of the folks who join the Reformed Churches are not doing either of these things. I’ve done a fair amount of interviewing of people coming into our church and I really do think it’s accurate to say that they are trusting in the ecclesiastical community to determine statements of faith that they should submit to. And we try to educate them that this community is not just comprised of our congregation but also the extended system of congregations in the Presbytery, and further the whole PCA including our sister denominations, and further all the Reformed Churches today and extending back to the Reformation, and further all of the Church of Christ extending back to the Apostles and Prophets. Of course I know you will take issue with the last sentence but the idea here is that we look to the extended ecclesiastical community to make judgments concerning the faith. And sure, there are plenty of theological cowboys even in Reformed communities doing their own thing but that’s not in line with a Reformed understanding of sola scriptura. And I would agree that it’s much more likely that someone in a Reformed than a Catholic congregation would run around trying to find a congregation that fits into their understanding of Scripture. But this is not the norm for us.

So, my point here is that it is this ecclesiastical community to which sola scriptura applies. I believe that Keith Mathieson says something like this in his book. And that’s why I think it is difficult to compare Jones’ concept of 1) solo scriptura which is properly applied to the individual with 2) sola scriptura which is primarily applied to the ecclesiastical community existing today and in history. This does not mean that there are no implications of sola scriptura for the individual but this is another topic I think. Fundamentally sola scriptura applies to the ecclesiastical community. It is the principle that stipulates that as the Church dwells upon the truths passed down from the Prophets and Apostles that her final rule of authority for determining what they said is (or should be) the Scriptures.

….but that the Catholic position is no better not on account of its lack of objective criteria (material apostolic succession) but on account of its criteria being subjectively judged to be the correct way of determining Church authority. Put another way, yes AS can be affirmed objectively, but one must judge subjectively that it is the correct method of determining the true Church much in the same way that one must subjectively judge that the Church is rightfully determined by one’s private interpretation of Scripture….

I’m glad to hear you saying that it is not just enough to claim material succession as proof of the fidelity of the RCC. If I understand you correctly you are also saying that there is a subjective evaluation that this is THE correct method of determining the fidelity of the RCC. And there is also a subjectively as we Reformed judge our ecclesiastical communities. Where I think our differences lie in general is not that Protestants are judging by our own interpretation of Scripture while Catholics are judging the correct method for determining the Church. To me it seems we are both making the same sort of subjective judgments and these focus on our respective ecclesial communities. But we have different expectations of how our respective communities will make their judgments. You assume that your ecclesiastical community will judge using tradition (which of course includes Scripture) as it’s final bar of authority while we expect that our ecclesiastical community will judge using the Scripture as it’s final bar of authority. To me this where the difference over sola scriptura lies.
herbert November 11th, 2009 7:36 am :
Bryan, you said (in post #100) that CS Lewis understood what submission to the Magisterium would entail based upon the alleged quote cited by Matt. However, I have a hard time believing that CS Lewis really said that. The statement is illogical, is it not? A Catholic doesn’t submit to the Church with the fear that one day She will go astray. A Catholic submits to the Church precisely because he believes that She WON’T go astray. Lewis, then, would be unjustified in his fear of being taught incorrectly had he really understood the essence of what it means to become Catholic. How could one fear being led astray by the very Church Christ founded and to which He granted indefectibility?

And I’m still curious, how does the presentation of the argument in this article NOT demand some sort of perpetual “rediscovery” of Magisterial authority? Doesn’t the possibility exist of a person legitimately discovering the Magisterium and then subsequently determining that his previous ascription of divine authority to the Church was ill-founded?

Let me provide a brief hypothetical: A man discovers the Magisterium and becomes Catholic. His wife’s doctors then announce that any future pregnancy would be life-threatening. He’s not comfortable with NFP or any non-surgical means of BC. He then determines that despite Church teaching, he’s getting a vasectomy. He realizes that, though he thought he was truly Catholic, he’s not really Catholic afterall- because when push came to shove, he placed his determination above that of the Church.

It seems like this is a legitimate challenge to the reasoning presented in the article. But if I’m just confused and am detracting from this thread, maybe somebody wouldn’t mind emailing me privately at wrongford@gmail.com
retro satana November 11th, 2009 9:02 am :
Bryan,
Thanks for the response! I understand this thread is not about presuppositionalism, and I want to respect your wishes to not stray away from the topic. It confuses me when you speak of finding the Church by “starting with the evidence from history” as if there are objective history books that accurately interpret the events that took place. As I tried to express earlier, there are as many different “histories” as there are historians! Which one do I trust? If you say, “the Bible is an objective history book that accurately interprets the events” then I’d certainly agree. But then you’d be presupposing the authority of Scripture as a first principle in order to begin your search for your perception of what/where the Church should be, which puts you back on the same epistemic plane as the protestant, yadda yadda yadda. Ha! I’ll read your link and perhaps continue the discussion over there. Until next time, grace and peace!
Tim A. Troutman November 11th, 2009 11:01 am :
Andrew:

I think I’m being fair in saying that most of the folks who join the Reformed Churches are not doing either of these things.

The question is how they came to join the Reformed church in the first place. Your answer “they trusted the church” (basically) is self referential and doesn’t solve the problem. How do we know that the Reformed churches are truly the Church or part of it?

If I understand you correctly you are also saying that there is a subjective evaluation that this is THE correct method of determining the fidelity of the RCC.

I was asking if that was your argument. Somewhere along the line in every decision we make, something is subjective. But that doesn’t make the decision as a whole subjective.
JJS November 11th, 2009 2:10 pm :
Tim,

So here’s where I think we are now. You agree that given material apostolic succession, the Catholic position would be more objective and not reducible to solo scriptura in the same way that the Protestant position is, but this is entirely dependent upon AS actually being knowable.

I think that given the weight that the Catholic places on AS (which is much more than that placed on it by the Protestant who may grant that AS is historically factual), yes, his position hinges on something more objective than one’s private interpretation of Scripture.

So even if a Catholic could claim that he knows AS to be true with a reasonable but not absolute certainty, the Protestant could say “Well I can know my interpretation of Scripture to be accurate with the same degree of certainty. No, I don’t have absolute certainty without the possibility of error, but I do have certainty beyond reasonable doubt that I understand the fundamentals of the gospel.” Therefore, the Catholic position really isn’t better than the Protestant position. Is that an accurate representation of what you’re getting at?

There are two issues involved here (and this is where Andrew’s and my comments sort of dovetail). The first issue is, “Is apostolic succession actually true?” Andrew seems to grant it, I am not so sure. But either way, there is also the second question: “If apostolic succession is true, what does this mean as far as church authority is concerned?” I mean, if Caiaphas could trace his succession back to Aaron, did that mean he was infallible? Of course not. So is it possible that something like apostolic succession was appealed to initially as a kind of historical convenience (since the early fathers lives not too long after the apostles), but was never intended to become what it has now become?

Another way of asking this is, Why did so many bishops at Vatican I (historians no less) argue against papal infallibility? If the early fathers made the leap from apostolic succession to the absolute interpretive authority of the Magisterium and pope, then why the need to urge the Church to NOT proclaim papal infallibility as a dogma at Vatican I? It seems like those who argued against it did so precisely because they did NOT place the same weight on the historical fact of apostolic succession as you are placing on it.
Bryan Cross November 11th, 2009 2:38 pm :
Herbert,

A Catholic doesn’t submit to the Church with the fear that one day She will go astray. A Catholic submits to the Church precisely because he believes that She WON’T go astray. Lewis, then, would be unjustified in his fear of being taught incorrectly had he really understood the essence of what it means to become Catholic. How could one fear being led astray by the very Church Christ founded and to which He granted indefectibility?

Of course. The point is that Lewis grasped the stakes. He didn’t fear “being led astray by the true Church”. His a priori concern was the potential negative consequences of wrongly identifying the Catholic Church as the Church Christ founded. There is a unique relinquishing of the reigns, when becomes Catholic. Those are reigns that one retains as a Protestant. That’s the point of our article.

how does the presentation of the argument in this article NOT demand some sort of perpetual “rediscovery” of Magisterial authority? Doesn’t the possibility exist of a person legitimately discovering the Magisterium and then subsequently determining that his previous ascription of divine authority to the Church was ill-founded?

As I pointed out earlier, once you know something to be true, you don’t need to relearn it, unless you forget it. For example, once a person knows that Christ is the Son of God, then apart from amnesia of some sort, one can come to disbelieve that only by culpably suppressing what one already knows to be true. And the same is true regarding discovering that the Apostles handed on authority to their successors, as a perpetual means of handing down ecclesial authority to each succeeding generation.

Let me provide a brief hypothetical: A man discovers the Magisterium and becomes Catholic. His wife’s doctors then announce that any future pregnancy would be life-threatening. He’s not comfortable with NFP or any non-surgical means of BC. He then determines that despite Church teaching, he’s getting a vasectomy. He realizes that, though he thought he was truly Catholic, he’s not really Catholic afterall- because when push came to shove, he placed his determination above that of the Church

The same kind of example could be constructed by replacing the word “Magisterium” with “Apostles” or even with “Christ”. In all three cases, the man either has not yet understood what divine authority means or that he is dealing with divine authority, or he is culpably suppressing the truth in unrighteousness, by knowingly rejecting divine authority. “The one who listens to you listens to Me, and the one who rejects you rejects Me; and he who rejects Me rejects the One who sent Me.” (Luke 10:16)

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Bryan Cross November 11th, 2009 2:53 pm :
Retro,

It confuses me when you speak of finding the Church by “starting with the evidence from history” as if there are objective history books that accurately interpret the events that took place. As I tried to express earlier, there are as many different “histories” as there are historians! Which one do I trust? If you say, “the Bible is an objective history book that accurately interprets the events” then I’d certainly agree. But then you’d be presupposing the authority of Scripture as a first principle in order to begin your search for your perception of what/where the Church should be, which puts you back on the same epistemic plane as the protestant

The unjustified assumption is that if a judgment involves a subject (and in that sense is subjective), then that judgment cannot also be objective, or we cannot know whether the claim made in that judgment is objectively true. Of course history books are written from a certain point of view. But that does not mean that we cannot determine what objectively happened in history. The subjective should not be construed as obscuring or hiding the objective, but as that by which we attain the objective, whether it be our own observations or the observations of others, eyewitnesses and those who hand on their accounts.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Tim A. Troutman November 11th, 2009 3:40 pm :
Jason,

“If apostolic succession is true, what does this mean as far as church authority is concerned?” I mean, if Caiaphas could trace his succession back to Aaron, did that mean he was infallible? Of course not.

I agree both that succession is not, in itself, a guarantee of a successor’s infallibility in regard to the mission or vocation of the person from which he is in succession, and that consequently Caiaphas was not infallible. This is not an accurate model of how we view Church infallibility, as you know, but I assume you were simplifying it for the sake of brevity and your point still stands – a valid succession of the leaders of Israel as a whole, would not, de facto, make them infallible. But it would (and it did) make them the rightful leaders of Israel. Jesus commanded the people to do what they taught precisely because they sat in the seat of Moses.

So I think we need to separate the two issues (rightful authority / infallible authority ) in some way. Ultimately, to prove our rebuttal, we need to show infallible authority but there is some distinction of these (albeit) related issues. The thing that makes the Catholic Church the rightful authority of a Christian is not the same thing, per se, that makes her infallible although they have the same source (Christ). Apostolic Succession, if true, makes the CC the rightful authority. As for infallibility, there is a long argument to make here, and it would exceed the scope of this combox. We have an upcoming paper on Church Infallibility but it will be some time before that. We will also show, in the paper on A.S. that even without infallibility, the Church – specifically the Catholic Church, as per above, is the rightful authority over a Christian. The point here is to separate the two. An authority can be rightful without being infallible. I know you agree with this because this is what you believe regarding your church. But the point of this article is that you (generally speaking) have decided your church is ‘rightful’ based on a private interpretation of Scripture (solo scriptura) whereas the Catholics have decided their church is correct based on the more objective criteria of A.S. arguing that only the specific visible Church that Christ founded is rightfully authoritative and not, for example, the one founded by J. Gresham Machen even if the one Machen founded more closely resembles our private interpretation of Scripture.

So the Church is Visible per our earlier article. Denying God’s providential guidance of the Church is Ecclesial Deism per the following article. The Catholic Hermeneutical approach avoids pitfalls caused by solo scriptura per Matt’s article before this one. There is no distinction between sola/solo scriptura per this article. In the future we will demonstrate the critical nature of the canon, followed by a demonstration that A.S. is not only historically provable, but is the theologically sound method for determining the Church. Later we will demonstrate that Church infallibility is a divine gift given by Christ to His Church.

I realize I’m leaving several of these key points unproven in this comment. Of course, these are complex issues. I hope you’ll be able to step back, and humor the absurd idea for a moment, that all of the things in our subsequent articles mentioned above can actually be reasonably demonstrated. (I assume you have no major objections to the prior articles, particularly the first two mentioned, or else I would expect you to raise the objection there. The argument here is built on premises laid out in those articles. )

So with all this craziness in mind, and I realize I’m asking a lot of you, let us return to the issue at hand. Sola scriptura is no different, in principle, to solo scriptura. When I submit so long as I agree…

Now whether my unproven claims above are correct or not, the only objection that anyone has raised to this article is the ‘tu quoque’ argument. But tu quoque is being used fallaciously. That is, even if it’s true that Catholics are in the same epistemic boat, sola scriptura remains solo scriptura unless there is a valid objection that hasn’t been raised yet. Right now, the objections are merely pointing the finger back, but haven’t shown why it’s not true to begin with. Now one Protestant guest above is convinced by the argument and grants that there is no principled distinction albeit a practical difference in how some Protestants approach Church authority (with which everyone at CTC would agree). But he doesn’t see this as a problem. I think you, on the other hand, would see the non distinction between sola and solo as a serious problem if it’s true.

But if our defenses of the tu quoque argument are correct, which again will take some time to demonstrate, then not only does it show sola scriptura to be the same as solo scriptura (which has already been demonstrated without refutation) but will show that the Catholic position is not subject to the same criticism and is therefore objectively more likely to be the true Church.

So is it possible that something like apostolic succession was appealed to initially as a kind of historical convenience (since the early fathers lives not too long after the apostles), but was never intended to become what it has now become?

This is a complicated question. Prima facie, absolutely it is possible. I think that you will agree with me that the American government has become something the fathers didn’t intend. It’s possible that something like that happened with the Church. It’s also possible, prima facie, that God intended the Church to become exactly what she has become. This is an important possibility to wrestle with, and to be honest, I don’t think Protestants entertain that question very seriously. I know I didn’t. But what if God wanted His Church to be exactly like the Catholic Church is now? What sorts of things in history would we expect to see leading up to it? Well… exactly the sorts of things that we did see.

But again to return to the crux of this post; the Protestant ecclesiological method reasons from Scripture that, based on the biblical evidence, God would want the Church to look like x and then either joins a church that looks like x or starts one. But the Catholic ecclesiological method reasons that God, while He walked among us, started a Church, here it is and so this is apparently what He wants it to look like and I will conform. It’s not what I would have designed as far as a Church goes… but then again, I don’t think I would have made mosquitos, and I think if I ordered the solar system, like C.S. Lewis, I’d put the planets in ascending order of size.

Another way of asking this is, Why did so many bishops at Vatican I (historians no less) argue against papal infallibility?

The issue of papal infallibility is stretching this already complicated thread but a quick correction. Only two bishops out of 435 voted against papal infallibility in the final vote. I think Madrid’s book “Pope Fiction” deals with some common misconceptions and historical embellishments and I think his book includes Vatican I issues.
Matthew Anderson November 11th, 2009 5:08 pm :
Bryan and Tim,

Do you think any Christian tradition outside of the Roman Catholic Church has a viable ecclesiology in relationship to these questions of authority and interpretation? For example, would you say that the Eastern Orthodox tradition, or even the Anglo-Catholic tradition, or any of the more “catholic” traditions (Coptic, Syrian Orthodox, etc.) have a viable ecclesiology? If so, what are the necessary ingredients in your mind to a tradition having a viable ecclesiology with the ability to bind a person’s conscience? Is it really just apostolic succession?

Matthew Anderson
Bryan Cross November 11th, 2009 5:31 pm :
Matthew,

We aren’t asking (or arguing) anything about “viability,” which, strictly speaking, means capable of living. If you mean ‘capable of surviving,’ then quite possibly there are ‘ecclesiologies’ that could characterize sects or institutions capable of surviving for many years. The ‘Church’ that the heretic Marcion started in the second century (with its own bishops, priests, and deacons) lasted hundreds of years, until the early middle ages. We [here at CTC] are talking about the Church that Christ founded, i.e. the original Church founded by Christ, to which He refers in Matthew 16 and Matthew 18. If an organization or institution has the ability to survive for some length of time, this does not mean that it has any authority, of that it can bind the conscience. The only institution having the divine authority to bind the conscience is the one Church that Christ founded (since He founded only one Church, the one mentioned in Matthew 16, and 18). And the four marks of that Church are: one, holy, catholic and apostolic. Only the Catholic Church can claim all four marks, for the reasons I explained in #117.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Tim A. Troutman November 11th, 2009 5:55 pm :
Matthew,

(Bryan correct me if you disagree) – What Bryan is saying is not that no other community has any authority at all except the Catholic Church but that the final binding authority for a Christian is the Catholic Church in communion with the See of Peter. The Orthodox Churches, and all Churches that retain valid Holy Orders, have apostolic authority (although not the fullness of apostolic authority since they lack the authority of the office of St. Peter). They, as apostolic heirs, have the authority to “bind and loose.”

Other ecclesial communities do also have some authority over their members, but not apostolic authority. For example, I can’t imagine that a PCA member, bound to his presbytery, whose conscience does not know otherwise, is free to disobey his church elders without fault. Suppose he wanted to open a brewery but first decided to ask the elders of his church. They decide no, this is not in keeping with our standards and it would give occasion for scandal. I think he would be in sin for disobeying them.

But if that same man, having come to the conviction that the Catholic Church is the true Church, has bound his conscience to the fullness of the apostolic Church carrying with her the mediated authority of Christ, then he is no longer subject to the authority of his ecclesial community which he now leaves in favor of submitting to the Roman Pontiff. Many people are ‘excommunicated’ by their former communions when they become Catholic, but these excommunications would carry no weight since a non-apostolic community does not have the authority to excommunicate any one from the Catholic Church.
Bryan Cross November 11th, 2009 7:19 pm :
Tim & Matthew,

The state is a natural society; the Church is a supernatural society. Authority in the natural order is divinely established, as the New Testament teaches. For this reason, kings, princes, presidents and mayors are to be obeyed, unless they command us to violate the natural law, or to violate the divine law revealed in the supernatural society, i.e. the Church. Voluntary civic societies also can have internal laws, and hence dutifully appointed leaders. Anyone who wishes to participate in such societies must be subject to these leaders and laws. This is true of sporting leagues, philanthropic organizations, educational organizations, etc. But the authority had by the leaders and laws of voluntary civic societies is still natural authority, i.e. on the natural order. It is divine only in the providential sense, not in the supernatural sense. It remains at the level of nature, in the ‘grace vs. nature’ sense of nature. Hierarchy and authority are natural to human society, whether that society be the immediate society into which we are born (i.e. the family), the larger society into which we are born (e.g. USA), or voluntary societies which we form or enter (e.g. Rotary Club).

The Church is a supernatural society because it was founded by God directly, not merely providentially, but through the miracle of the hypostatic union, God becoming man. The authority of the Church is Christ’s own authority, given to the Apostles, and passed on to their successors to this present day. This is a supernatural authority, not a natural authority. This is not a bottom-up authority of the natural order, from mere men to mere men. This is from-heaven-to-earth authority, from God to men, and for this reason this authority is supernatural. This supernatural authority, once one knows it to be such, binds the conscience in an unqualified sense, just as once one knows who Christ is, then His words bind our conscience in an unqualified way.

This divine authority is found only in the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church that Christ founded, i.e. this supernatural society. Those persons having apostolic succession, but in schism, retain the sacramental capacity to consecrate the Eucharist, remit sins, and ordain bishops and priests. But they have no divine teaching authority, i.e. no supernatural authority to bind the conscience of anyone in an unqualified way. Otherwise, their disagreement with the Church [from which they are in schism] would entail that God is contradicting Himself, because men with divine authority would be contradicting other men with divine authority. But God can never contradict Himself. Therefore, no one in schism has supernatural teaching authority.

However, sects in schism from the Church (whether or not they retain apostolic succession) can maintain natural authority, just as the leaders and laws of voluntary civic societies have natural authority over those who wish to be members of such societies. This sort of authority, however, can never bind the conscience in an unqualified way, but it can bind the conscience regarding what one must do if one wishes to participate in that sect or civic society. Persons who do not know of the supernatural authority Christ has established, or believe this sect to be possessing it, are bound by their misinformed conscience.

Whenever supernatural authority is in conflict with natural authority, we must always give way to supernatural authority. “We must obey God rather than men.” (Acts 5:29) So if, for example, one is a Mormon, and one discovers that Christ’s authority has been handed down through apostolic succession to the Magisterium of the Catholic Church, then one need not get permission from one’s Mormon authority to leave the Mormons. The Mormon authority is a merely natural authority, not a supernatural authority. And Christ calls all men to enter His Church and submit to the supernatural authority He has established there. Hence no natural society, whether family or state or voluntary civic society or religious sect, can bind the conscience of any man to prevent him from seeking to enter the Catholic Church.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Paige Britton November 11th, 2009 9:38 pm :
Hey, Jason —
I think I am the “Protestant guest” that Tim is referring to in his note to you (#145), so if you think I have gone off the deep end email me and we’ll make sure we’re on the same page with the sola scriptura stuff.

Tim —
um, you guessed wrong — I’m a female “Paige”! :) (No offense taken — I think it’s funny. ;)
Andrew McCallum November 11th, 2009 10:01 pm :
Tim,

I think we have to decide whether the Reformed churches are part of the Church Christ established the same way we would decide whether the RCC is part of the Church that Christ established. At a minimum I hope that we would want to determine if the four historical marks of the Church are present. And if they are not, do we still decide that yes, the ecclesiastical entity under consideration is part of the Church based solely on material succession? This is not a hypothetical question either at the point of the Reformation or today. But I think I am asking you something that strikes at the heart of the Catholic way of thinking. For the RC there is no such thing as un-faithful material succession. There cannot be. The simple fact of material succession guarantees fidelity, correct? But this is something that we Protestants cannot get our minds around.

Jason – When I “grant” apostolic succession I am granting that there is evidence that the current bishops of the RCC can trace their lineage to the 1st century. I would also grant that the Jewish high priest Ananias and his fellow priests could trace their lineage back to Aaron. But as you point out, the real question is what do we make of these facts?
Paige Britton November 11th, 2009 10:43 pm :
Tim — Oops, I am an idiot, now I think you were referring to Andrew. never mind!! :)
Tim A. Troutman November 12th, 2009 1:14 am :
Andrew>

I think we have to decide whether the Reformed churches are part of the Church Christ established the same way we would decide whether the RCC is part of the Church that Christ established.

I agree that we need to use the same criteria for both.

For the RC there is no such thing as un-faithful material succession. There cannot be. The simple fact of material succession guarantees fidelity, correct? But this is something that we Protestants cannot get our minds around.

If you could wrap your mind around that, something would be wrong with your mind! We don’t believe that every bishop or priest with valid orders is faithful to Christ. Not even every pope is faithful in all respects.
Teri November 12th, 2009 9:34 am :
Tim and Bryan,

I gave Patrick (Madrid) the link to this great article and the conversation that follows. I had wondered if Pat had read Dr. Matthison’s book since he (Matthison) quotes him in several places throughout his book, “The Shape of Sola Scriptura”. He (Pat) gave me a comment that I could post here:

Of all the recent Protestant books on SS, Matthison’s is by far the most substantial and well-reasoned.
I still think he gets the issue wrong, but I do respect his scholarship on this subject.

I just think this gives a lot of credibility to the conversation here at Called To Communion.
To dialogue on this book in particular is crucial to understanding what still divides us.

Keep up the excellent work. It’s not an easy task to discuss a volatile subject with charity. But those who represent the Body of Christ can do no less than he would if they are truly part of His Body.

In the peace of Christ,
Teri
rfwhite November 12th, 2009 5:04 pm :
Bryan Cross and Neal Judisch: how would you describe the principled differences between the outworking of Mathison’s sola scripture position and the formation of consensus at an ecumenical council?
Andrew McCallum November 13th, 2009 12:00 am :
We don’t believe that every bishop or priest with valid orders is faithful to Christ

Tim – In #151, I was referring to the whole Church and thus all the bishops, not just one or some. It seems that the Catholic wants to draw a logical connection between material succession of the bishops collectively and the fidelity of all of the bishops collectively. We see the formal connection between current bishops to the early centuries of the Church, but we don’t see there is anything necessarily to be drawn from this in terms of fidelity of the bishops as a whole. Now I understand that after one becomes a Catholic he accepts the indefectability of the RCC as part of the larger corpus of Catholic teaching, but I don’t see how one comes to such a conclusion as he looks at the Church from the outside.
Tim A. Troutman November 13th, 2009 1:17 am :
Andrew, Church infallibility is hard issue. I’ve got a very dear friend, the most well-read Presbyterian I know. He was on the verge of converting to the Catholic Church, just a day away from entering RCIA, and he told me that this was his main issue. He did not enter RCIA for reasons unknown to me but anyway, I appreciate the difficulty of the issue for non-Catholics.

It seems that the Catholic wants to draw a logical connection between material succession of the bishops collectively and the fidelity of all of the bishops collectively.

Jason implied the same thing above. In 145, I explained why that is not the case. Although the issues are related and the final source is the same, we do well to draw some distinction between what, per se, makes the Catholic Church infallible, and what, per se, makes her authoritative. I said it about as well as I can in the comment above. Much remains to be demonstrated, specifically the infallibility of the Church, but suffice it to say that I agree with you and Jason that material succession does not logically necessitate infallibility.
Lucien Syme November 13th, 2009 12:40 pm :
I hate to keep sounding like a brown-noser here but this article was very profound, clear and well worth the three days it took to get through it; and this apostolate is simply amazing.

Apostolic succession is the key to everything that has been passed on to us as Christians. If the Holy Spirit is not being passed on by “the laying on of hands”, as properly understood in ordination with reference to the Magisterium, then we are truly just following the precepts and doctrines of men. The Bible itself would have no real meaning if the Church that declared the books inspired, were not inspired herself.

We should encourage our Protestant brothers and sisters to read this book by Keith Mathison; I have the feeling this might start many of them down the path towards Rome. The distinction he attempts to make, as presented in this article, between Sola and Solo Scriptura will not satisfy the intellect for too long. And his clear exposition of how Solo Scriptura is wrecking Christianity would make the profound point that their own personal interpretation of Scripture is not infallible; most people tend to think it is and never consider the alternative.
K. Doran November 13th, 2009 4:29 pm :
Hey CTCers,

While we’re mentioning infallibility/irreformability:

What would be a good resource that would explain the interplay throughout the Church’s history between various claims of irreformability made by Popes, councils, etc. and queries in favor of reformability by exponents of various heresies (usually within the Church, at least marginally)? What I’m imagining would be a book that explains why very short and very early statements of divine authority (“Let each obey the Bishop as Jesus Christ obeyed the Father” 107 A.D.) were gradually insufficient over time, such that later statements asserted explicitly that no one can change such-and-such a decision ever again. Since much of this development seems to me to have occurred in the first millennium, even in the first 350 years, it would be good to have a resource or resources that start then and continue through Vatican I and beyond. Does anyone know of some? In particular, I am hoping that the book or books would connect this development with the stresses the Church experienced in responding to violent and persistent heresies — or instead show that this connection was not relevant (as I am guessing it was).

Sincerely,

K. Doran
Bryan Cross November 13th, 2009 8:11 pm :
rfwhite,

how would you describe the principled differences between the outworking of Mathison’s sola scripture position and the formation of consensus at an ecumenical council?

The outworking of the sola scriptura position, as we explain in the article, is that there are as many (or more) different ecclesial institutions as there are general interpretations of Scripture. That is because given sola scriptura, what counts as the Church and its marks rests ultimately on the individual’s interpretation of Scripture. One accepts the teaching / interpretation / discipline only of those persons who generally share one’s own interpretation of Scripture, particularly regarding what one considers to be essential or important regarding the Christian faith. If one believes that one’s denomination has not sufficiently preserved what one (based on one’s own interpretation) believes to be essential or important, then one leaves and joins or forms a new denomination. In that respect, under sola scriptura the highest authority of one’s denomination cannot bind one’s conscience, nor is the decision of the highest authority [e.g. the general assembly] of one’s denomination authoritative for all Christians. No excommunication is excommunication from the Church, only from a branch of the Church.

On the other hand, the outworking of the consensus forming process that takes place among the bishops in an ecumenical council is a decision of some sort. If this decision has to do with faith and morals, and this decision is definitive, then it is binding on the whole Church, whether recognized as such by individual Christians or not. If one knows that these bishops are the successors of the Apostles and in communion with the successor of St. Peter, and thus that they are the rightful leaders of the Church, then one cannot justifiably reject their decisions in ecumenical council. To do so is formal heresy. One cannot (in good conscience) appeal to one’s own interpretation; one’s conscience is bound, because their decision is the authoritative standard for one’s interpretation. If one is excommunicated by the successors of the Apostles, one is excommunicated not from a branch of the Church, but from the Church simpliciter. To separate from them is to be in schism from the Church.

I do not know whether that answers your question or not, but perhaps it helps clarify the difference between the two positions.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Paige Britton November 13th, 2009 9:42 pm :
In scanning the footnotes I came upon n.55, in which the authors quote Kevin Vanhoozer. He observes three possible Protestant responses (and he proposes a fourth) to the problem we face re. interpretation, since “God’s word is infallible, [but] human interpretations are not.” The four responses are:

1) hermeneutical relativism (which Bryan and Neal identify as solo scriptura);
2) Head to Rome, for safety in numbers;
3) determine a “right reading” according to a local interpretive community (which Bryan and Neal identify as sola scriptura);
4) careful study with attention to others past and present, praying for the Spirit’s illumination and humility (which is what I was suggesting above, re. a “thoughtful” Protestant expectation of sufficient & reliable, though not infallible, interpretation).

So my impression that the article failed to mention the approach of thoughtful Protestants was incorrect – although I see that Bryan and Neal would like to think that Protestants who take the fourth path will inevitably end up on the road to Rome. (How close is Vanhoozer?)
Andrew McCallum November 13th, 2009 11:51 pm :
Much remains to be demonstrated, specifically the infallibility of the Church, but suffice it to say that I agree with you and Jason that material succession does not logically necessitate infallibility.

Tim,

You did state this very nicely to Jason and I missed it so sorry to make you repeat it. But I’m glad to hear you say this. I will be interested to see how you demonstrate infallibility without reference to material succession.

And I’m still hoping that Dr. Mathieson will pop in again. This would be interesting to get the perspective of the author of the article that was under investigation here.

Cheers for now….
mateo November 14th, 2009 4:26 pm :
Paige Britton : … the authors quote Kevin Vanhoozer. He observes three possible Protestant responses (and he proposes a fourth) to the problem we face re. interpretation, since “God’s word is infallible, [but] human interpretations are not.”

1)
2)
3)
4) careful study with attention to others past and present, praying for the Spirit’s illumination and humility (which is what I was suggesting above, re. a “thoughtful” Protestant expectation of sufficient & reliable, though not infallible, interpretation).

Re: option 4. Among the thousands upon thousands of Protestants sects that now exist on the face of the earth, wouldn’t the active members of most of these sects think that they meet the criteria of option 4? Where are the sincere Protestants that don’t think that they are guided by the “Spirit’s illumination”?

In spite of the sincerity with which Protestants accept the doctrines taught by the innumerable sects, it is also an undeniable fact that there is “widespread ‘hermeneutical chaos and anarchy’ caused by the existence of conflicting interpretations of Scripture.”

My question is this, why would Jesus found a Church and then leave us with no way of knowing with certainty what he actually taught?

Paige, how would you answer Terri’s post # 56?
Richard November 15th, 2009 7:46 am :
Paige, do you believe that there is a true meaning in the text and if so how do I know which it is?
lojahw November 15th, 2009 11:58 pm :
The conclusion that apostolic succession itself guarantees correct interpretation of Scripture is refuted by the experience of the fourth century church, in which Jerome’s famous quotation bears witness to the vast number of priests and bishops throughout the empire who embraced the Arian heresy. Apostolic succession by itself does not avert false teaching according to the irrefutable evidence of Church history.

Since most people seem to be ignorant of how the Council of Nicea resolved the problem, the following quotes, preserved in Theodoret’s Church History, should be instructive:

From Constantine’s opening address to the Council: “For the gospels, the writings, and the oracles of the ancient prophets, clearly teach us what we ought to believe concerning the divine nature. Let, then, all contentious disputation be discarded; and let us seek in the divinely-inspired word the solution of the questions at issue.” (Church History 1.6).

“The bishops, having detected their deceitfulness in this matter [the Arian heresy], collected from Scripture those passages which say of Christ that He is the glory, the fountain, the stream, and the express image of the person … likewise, ‘ I and the Father are one.’ They then, with still greater clearness, briefly declared that the Son is of one substance with the Father; for this, indeed, is the signification of the passages which have been quoted.” (Church History 1.7)

And … “And since no passage of the inspired Scripture uses the terms ‘out of the non-existent,’ or that ‘there was a time when He was not,’ nor indeed any of the other phrases of the same class, it did not appear reasonable to assert or to teach such things.” (ibid. 1.11)

The solution to heresy is not an infallible interpretive Church office, but rather, in the Apostle Peter’s words, interpreters who do not distort Scripture because they untaught and unstable. It is really as simple as “it is written, it is not written” – does it agree with Scripture or does it not? All truly stable and trained Christians should have no issues with the regula fidei declared by the Council of Nicea.

Blessings.
Bryan Cross November 16th, 2009 12:59 am :
lojahw,

The conclusion that apostolic succession itself guarantees correct interpretation of Scripture

The Catholic position is not that apostolic succession, simpliciter, guarantees correct interpretation of Scripture. Individual bishops, though having Holy Orders in succession from the Apostles, may fall into heresy, as history shows. So the fact that many fourth-century bishops were Arians is fully compatible with the Catholic understanding of apostolic succession. But the successor of St. Peter, who retains the keys of the Kingdom, necessarily remains the rock upon which the Church rests, and bears Christ’s infallible prayer that his faith would fail not, and bears Christ’s infallible promise that the gates of hell will not prevail over it while resting on that rock which is Peter. So long as the bishops are in full communion with the successor of St. Peter, they (as a group with the pope) are protected from error in any definitive teaching on faith and morals. What does St. Jerome say to that?

“Simon Peter, son of John, of the province of Galilee, of the village of Bethsaida, brother of Andrew the apostle, and himself chief of the apostles, ….”

“Christ is not alone in being the Rock, for He granted to the Apostle Peter that he should be called ‘Rock’.”

“For what has Paul to do with Aristotle? Or Peter to do with Plato? For as the latter (Plato) was prince of philosophers, so was the former (Peter) prince of Apostles: on him the Lord’s Church was firmly founded, and neither rushing flood nor storm can shake it.”

“Since the East, shattered as it is by the long-standing feuds, subsisting between its peoples, is bit by bit tearing into shreds the seamless vest of the Lord…. I think it my duty to consult the chair of Peter, and to turn to a church whose faith has been praised by Paul. I appeal for spiritual food to the church whence I have received the garb of Christ. The wide space of sea and land that lies between us cannot deter me from searching for “the pearl of great price”… Yet, though your greatness terrifies me, your kindness attracts me. From the priest I demand the safe-keeping of the victim, from the shepherd the protection due to the sheep. Away with all that is overweening; let the state of Roman majesty withdraw. My words are spoken to the successor of the fisherman, to the disciple of the cross. As I follow no leader save Christ, so I communicate with none but your blessedness, that is with the chair of Peter. For this, I know, is the rock on which the church is built! This is the house where alone the paschal lamb can be rightly eaten. This is the ark of Noah, and he who is not found in it shall perish when the flood prevails. But since by reason of my sins I have betaken myself to this desert which lies between Syria and the uncivilized waste, I cannot, owing to the great distance between us, always ask of your sanctity the holy thing of the Lord.”

“The church [here, i.e. Syria] is rent into three factions, and each of these is eager to seize me for its own. …. I meantime keep crying: “He who clings to the chair of Peter is accepted by me… Therefore I implore your blessedness, by our Lord’s cross and passion, ….. to give an apostolic decision. Only tell me by letter with whom I am to communicate in Syria.”

“The Church was founded upon Peter: although elsewhere the same is attributed to all the Apostles, and they all receive the keys of the kingdom of heaven, the strength of the Church depends upon them all alike, yet one among the twelve is chosen so that when a head has been appointed, there may be no occasion for schism.”

St. Jerome clearly did not think that merely looking at Scripture was sufficient to resolve interpretive disputes. He himself looked to the authority held by the successor of St. Peter.

The solution to heresy is not an infallible interpretive Church office, but rather, in the Apostle Peter’s words, interpreters who do not distort Scripture because they untaught and unstable. It is really as simple as “it is written, it is not written” – does it agree with Scripture or does it not?

Where is it written in Scripture that the solution to heresy is not an infallible interpretive office, or that the deposit of faith is limited to what is written? The fact is, it isn’t. So your prescription fails its own test. If you want to appeal to the method of the ecumenical council as binding on us, then it seems that you need also to accept the definitive decisions of the ecumenical councils [on matters of faith and morals] as binding. In the Catholic understanding, the definitive decisions of ecumenical councils on matters of faith and morals are definitive and irreversible. Otherwise, an ecumenical council would merely be a survey of the present mood in the Church, and couldn’t be the means by which the Holy Spirit resolved once and for all a doctrinal dispute. (cf. Acts 15:28 “It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us”) If the Holy Spirit was not operative in the council’s decisions, then the particular debate in question could simply be raised again at the next ecumenical council, perpetually. But if the Holy Spirit is guiding the Church into all truth, then the Holy Spirit is guiding the Church when she in ecumenical council makes a definitive determination of a doctrine of faith or morals for the whole Church. And then such decisions cannot be reversed, because they are of God, who is Truth, and who does not change. Infallibility is what preserves doctrine. The Catholic Church has no authority to reverse or nullify any of her dogmas. But I wouldn’t bet a dime on any particular Protestant denomination retaining its doctrines two hundred years from now. Without infallibility, every single doctrine always remains up for abrogation.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
herbert November 16th, 2009 11:29 am :
Paige, re #163. It seems to me that there’s plenty of disagreement among Catholics, too. It’s just that we disagree with each other and work things out WHILE IN COMMUNION with one another because we value unity more than we value what our current understanding of a doctrine may be…

There will always be a certain degree of disagreement/misunderstanding. There’s a natural tension there through which the Holy Spirit may work. Becoming Catholic doesn’t make that go away, as you well know. However, the unity to which we’re called allows us to put aside our differences and come to the Altar of God, hopefully awaiting the completion of the work the Son is doing through His Church. just 2 cents.
lojahw November 16th, 2009 11:29 am :
Bryan, Thank you for your kind reply. A couple of observations and questions:

1. The Council of Nicea unquestionably demonstrated the use of the practice now called Sola Scriptura.

2. The successor of St. Peter was not present nor did he contribute to the findings of the council.

Questions:

1. Was the process followed by the Council of Nicea an exemplar or an anomaly for the Church on the “faith which was once for all delivered to the saints”? Please explain.

2. How do you respond to Augustine’s teaching on the infallibility of Scripture and the fallibility of *all* bishops and ecumenical councils?

“But who can fail to be aware that the sacred canon of Scripture, both of the Old and New Testament, is confined within its own limits, and that it stands so absolutely in a superior position to all later letters of the bishops, that about it we can hold no manner of doubt or disputation whether what is confessedly contained in it is right and true; but that all the letters of bishops which have been written, or are being written, since the closing of the canon, are liable to be refuted … either by the discourse of someone who happens to be wiser in the matter than themselves, or by the weightier authority and more learned experience of other bishops, by the authority of Councils; and further, that the Councils themselves, which are held in the several districts and provinces, must yield, beyond all possibility of doubt, to the authority of plenary Councils which are formed for the whole Christian world; and that even of the plenary Councils, the earlier are often corrected by those which follow them” (On Baptism, Against the Donatists, 2.3.4)*

*To preclude the obvious question about Augustine’s inclusion of the deuteros in the canon, please note that he did not exclude himself from refutation and correction. The deuteros fail to meet his own criteria: “we can hold no manner of doubt or disputation whether what is confessedly contained in it is right and true.” Yet the book of Judith identifies Nebuchadnezzar as the king of the Assyrians, ruling from Nineveh. And who does not question Sirach’s assertion: “better is a man’s wickedness than a woman’s goodness” (42:14)? Indeed, Augustine and the Council of Trent erred. By Jesus’ definition, “Thy Word is Truth” – there is no place for error in God’s Word.

Blessings,
Lover of Jesus and His Word (lojahw)
TurretinFan November 16th, 2009 12:50 pm :
Answer Bryan Cross’ comments at #166, Pastor King has responded (Link to Pastor King’s Response)
Teri November 16th, 2009 1:06 pm :
I live in an area of the country where there are many sincere and godly people living their faith out with the principle of Sola Scriptura, but it is no different than Solo Scriptura. Yesterday, in a large chain bookstore, I counted more than six long rows of book and Bibles for “Christians” only.

From Joel Osteen’s latest bestseller to “Bishop” T.D. Jakes and Joyce Myers…everyone and his brother has a book or a study to help you understand what God’s word wants you to know. This doesn’t include the dizzying array of “Bibles” to help you understand God’s word according to the author of the commentary.

Which would be considered Sola Scriptura and not Solo Scriptura? Is the Lutheran Study Bible (ESV edition) the Sola Scriptura since Martin Luther had first claim on it? What about the ESV Bible with commentary by the best Reformed scholars today? Is that Sola Scriptura?
Is Solo Scriptura more when it’s has one man’s name on it such as the Macarthur, Charles Stanley, Scofield, or Ryrie?
What about the The Spirit Filled Bible for Charismatics?

Does anyone think that the Bible, that is supposed to be clear to understand by even the most simple man, has built a huge industry around the fact that it is NOT clear – speaks to this issue of Sola Scriptura?

If you ask most of the people in the area in which I live their opinion, they will tell you without hesitation that the ONLY Bible that is Sola Scriptura is The King James Bible…and it was authorized by God. Those people think Luther found it hidden by the “evil” Catholics and he took it and had it printed by permission of the wonderful King James and as Forest Gump would say: That’s all I have to say about that.

I truly believe that the truth was spoken by St. Peter to Our Lord when he stated, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have believed and have come to know that you are the Holy One of God”. This was in John 6.
As Taylor Marshall states in The Crucified Rabbi, “Despite the subsequent failures of Peter and the Popes after him, the papacy has successfully protected this misunderstood doctrine for two thousand years.”

In the peace of Christ,
Teri
Bryan Cross November 16th, 2009 2:40 pm :
lojahw,

Sola scriptura is a theological position denying that the Magisterium has the highest interpretive authority. (Our article argues that there is no principled difference between solo and sola, because according to sola scriptura the individual retains the highest interpretive authority.) So the Council of Nicea shows us their use of Scripture, but it does not demonstrate that they held sola scriptura; their very action, in definitively resolving the Arian dispute for the whole Church, by establishing what is the orthodox interpretation of Scripture viz-a-viz the deity of Christ, is incompatible with sola scriptura.

The successor of St. Peter was not present nor did he contribute to the findings of the council.

His legates were present, and he ratified it. That is true for all the first seven ecumenical councils.

Was the process followed by the Council of Nicea an exemplar or an anomaly for the Church on the “faith which was once for all delivered to the saints”?

In order to answer that question adequately, I would need to know what all you have packed into the word ‘process’. But, speaking generally, while some things pertaining to the council were accidental (i.e. not essential), the process of the council was not an anomaly, but an exemplar.

Regarding the quotation of St. Augustine, we affirm it. We only understand that by ‘correct’ St. Augustine meant not ‘contradict’ or ‘refute’ but ‘develop’ i.e. ‘perfect’, just as Constantinople in 381 perfected the Creed that had been determined at Nicea in 325.

The deuteros fail to meet his own criteria: “we can hold no manner of doubt or disputation whether what is confessedly contained in it is right and true.” Yet the book of Judith identifies Nebuchadnezzar as the king of the Assyrians, ruling from Nineveh. And who does not question Sirach’s assertion: “better is a man’s wickedness than a woman’s goodness” (42:14)? Indeed, Augustine and the Council of Trent erred. By Jesus’ definition, “Thy Word is Truth” – there is no place for error in God’s Word.

St. Augustine’s statement “we can hold no matter of doubt …” is not a description but a prescription. He is not stating that everything in the Bible is self-evident, or verifiable by human reason. That would be rationalism. If you think St. Augustine is talking about description [there cannot be any verse in the Bible that people doubt or cannot verify to be true], then the problem is that there are many verses in the Protestant Bible that many people doubt and do not find self-evident or verifiable. So the criterion would leave the Protestant Bible torn to shreds, and hence it obviously cannot be descriptive. So he is making a prescriptive statement. As for defending the Apocrypha, that would take us off-topic, so let’s save that discussion for a post on the Apocrypha.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
K. Doran November 16th, 2009 3:46 pm :
TurretinFan,

You cited Pastor King’s response to Bryan’s claims about Jerome.

Ah yes, the protestant approach to Jerome’s papal views. It goes, roughly: “I can’t believe that Jerome was a (gasp) papist, but I can believe that this saintly man was sectarian and uncatholic. I’ll believe the latter about a saint so that I can avoid having to confront the former.”

I recommend Chapman’s work on Jerome. Jerome was not a protestant, and I think only God knows when this tired Protestant error will finally die:

https://www.bringyou.to/apologetics/num53.htm

Chapman goes through all the usual objections. You’ve been subjected to lies, TurretinFan. Even at the end of his life, when he was (I believe) living far from Rome in the holy land, Jerome stayed true to Rome’s authority, wiriting to Demetrias at nearly age 70:

“I had nearly left out what is most important. When you were a child, and Bishop Anastasius of holy memory ruled the Roman Church, a fierce storm of (Origenist) heretics from the East tried to sully and destroy the simplicity of faith which was praised by the mouth of the Apostle. But that man of richest poverty and Apostolic solicitude straightway smote the noxious head and stopped the mouth of the hissing hydra. And because I am afraid, nay, I have heard the rumor, that these poisonous shoots are still alive and vigorous in some, I feel that I ought with the deepest affection to give you this advice, to hold the faith of holy Innocent, who is the successor and son of that man, and of the Apostolic See, and not to receive any foreign doctrine, however prudent and clever you may think yourself to be.” (Ep 130 [al 8], 992[1120])

He stayed loyal in spite of regular Roman claims to doctrinal supremacy over the whole Church. Either he agreed with these claims or he was a coward, a kiss-up, and a liar. You decide. I believe he was a Saint. A bad tempered one, sometimes. . . but not a coward, a kiss-up, and a liar. Check out the Chapman link.

Sincerely,

K. Doran
TurretinFan November 16th, 2009 4:08 pm :
K. Doran,

Your rough paraphrase isn’t remotely close to the approach outlined in the article from Pastor King that I linked. I wonder whether you didn’t read it, or whether you read it and then decided not to represent it accurately?

You note “Jerome was not a protestant, and I think only God knows when this tired Protestant error will finally die,” but Pastor King doesn’t claim Jerome was a Protestant. Your remarks sound like stock replies that are given out in anticipation of what you imagine are the usual objections. Perhaps you should either read or more carefully read Pastor King’s article.

You assert, “You’ve been subjected to lies, ” which may well be true, but not lies from Pastor King.

-TurretinFan
K. Doran November 16th, 2009 4:58 pm :
I’ll quote him exactly then:
“With a true sectarian spirit, Jerome writes off all three of these rival bishops as being of “Antichrist.” Jerome makes the same youthful mistake of judgment that any of us are liable to make.”

In any event, I recommend that you apply the principle of maximum likelihood to your analysis of Jerome’s views. Here’s how it works.

First, you write down two models:

Model A: Jerome was a papist in fourth century garb. He viewed Rome as the center of communion, and managed his own choice of who to be in communion with based on what the Bishop of Rome declared. His belief in this bishop’s authority was based on the chair that this bishop occupied, not merely on the personal relationship that he had with a particular occupant of that chair. This was a mature belief that he maintained throughout his life.

Model B: Jerome really liked his old pastor from Rome, even when he lived far away. But he in no way believed that it was necessary to be in communion with the occupants of that chair, or that he who “does not gather with you scatters” in general. He just trusted his good ol’ pastor. This trust was partially based on his youth — he grew up later!

The second step is to look at the data. Why don’t you read the Chapman link, which contains much more data, and much better context, then the link that you offered?

The third step is to see which model would be more likely to produce the data that is actually there. The fact is, a person who believes Model A is simply much more likely to say: “As I follow no leader save Christ, so I communicate with none but your blessedness, that is with the chair of Peter. For this, I know, is the rock on which the church is built! This is the house where alone the paschal lamb can be rightly eaten. This is the ark of Noah, and he who is not found in it shall perish when the flood prevails. But since by reason of my sins I have betaken myself to this desert which lies between Syria and the uncivilized waste, I cannot, owing to the great distance between us, always ask of your sanctity the holy thing of the Lord” than a person who believes model B.

The rest of the evidence from his life is even more damning to Model B. Why did he continue to preach the same doctrine to Demetrias (see my post #172 above) at the end of his life if his earlier letters were a result of youth? Why did he continue to preach the same doctrine when a new Bishop was the Pope of Rome (again, see the letter in post #172 above), if the only reason he preached it before was because the old Bishop of Rome was his friend and mentor?

Do you see how to apply the principle of Maximum Likelihood to your data? It simplifies things tremendously. Model A is more likely to produce the data that we actually see. Model B would have rather produced the following data: when Jerome was young, he would say: “Dear Damasus: I need advice about where to receive the Eucharist. I know that I need to find a new pastor now, but I just wanted to ask you some advice, in case you know anything about the situation over here.” When Jerome was old, he would say: “What’s the new Bishop of Rome to me? I’m in the holy land, I don’t know what’s going on over there — Demetrias, just listen to my advice, and you’ll be fine. The old Bishop was a good man and I knew him personally, but the new one certainly doesn’t have a special protection against error just because the old one was a good man!”

In general, the model that is more likely to produce the data that we do see, is itself more likely to be the truth. This is true in science and statistics, and its true in patristics too.

Sincerely,

K. Doran
Sean Patrick November 16th, 2009 5:03 pm :
TurretinFan,

I read Pastor King’s blog entry. I wonder why Pastor King starts off by calling another man arrogant and/or ignorant? Does Pastor King know Bryan? Such talk does nothing to serve his argument nor does it help the conversation.

At any rate, I do not follow the point of Pastor King’s argument. Is he arguing that Jerome was a Presbyterian or something? Is Pastor King out of communion with the successor to Peter because he thinks that Jerome was out of communion with the successor to Peter and thus he is justified in being out of communion with the Pope? Pastor King does not see the Catholic Church in the writings of Jerome even though Jerome expressly writes about being in communion with Peter’s successor. Fair enough, but I cannot see what other church Pastor King sees in the writings of Jerome. The PCA? The RCA? The PCUSA maybe? Or maybe the CREC?

“And to Timothy he says: ‘Neglect not the gift that is in thee, which was given thee by prophecy, with the laying on of the hands of the presbytery.’… For even at Alexandria from the time of Mark the Evangelist until the episcopates of Heraclas and Dionysius the presbyters always named as bishop one of their own number chosen by themselves and set in a more exalted position, just as an army elects a general, or as deacons appoint one of themselves whom they know to be diligent and call him archdeacon. For what function excepting ordination, belongs to a bishop that does not also belong to a presbyter? Jerome, To Evangelus, Epistle 146:1 (ante A.D. 420).

What bishop ordained Pastor King?

Pastor King ends by saying that Catholic claims cannot be taken seriously from a historical or theological perspective. His statement is unfortunate because genuine dialog would entail that all sides take the positions of others seriously.
lojahw November 16th, 2009 5:59 pm :
BTW – you say that you affirm Augustine’s statement that *all” bishops and councils are liable to be refuted and corrected? He did not exempt the bishop of Rome.

Blessings.
TurretinFan November 16th, 2009 6:00 pm :
K. Doran,

You wrote: “The fact is, a person who believes Model A is simply much more likely to say: “As I follow no leader save Christ, so I communicate with none but your blessedness, that is with the chair of Peter. For this, I know, is the rock on which the church is built! This is the house where alone the paschal lamb can be rightly eaten. This is the ark of Noah, and he who is not found in it shall perish when the flood prevails. But since by reason of my sins I have betaken myself to this desert which lies between Syria and the uncivilized waste, I cannot, owing to the great distance between us, always ask of your sanctity the holy thing of the Lord” than a person who believes model B.”

I don’t see how you conclude that, which is not surprising since you don’t present much by way of reasons for this conclusion. Let’s consider:

1) Communicating exclusively with the bishop of Rome isn’t something that papists (adherents to the papacy, no indignity intended by the term) generally do. In fact, if communicating primarily or exclusively with the bishop of Rome is a good indicator of someone being a papist, then even if one gains Jerome as a papist, one may have to be prepared to lose most of the other church fathers.

2) Flattering one’s mentor by gilding the lily is something that’s fairly normal, particularly for a rhetorically skilled man like Jerome (check out the content of his letters here: link – example from Letter 7: “Those whom mutual affection has joined together, a written page ought not to sunder. I must not, therefore, distribute my words some to one and some to another. For so strong is the love that binds you together that affection unites all three of you in a bond no less close than that which naturally connects two of your number. Indeed, if the conditions of writing would only admit of it, I should amalgamate your names and express them under a single symbol. “).

I think that model B actually works better than A to explain that data, because the letter better shows a protege speaking good things about his mentor than “Joe Papist” identifying his rule of interpretive authority.

You claim “The rest of the evidence from his life is even more damning to Model B.” Well, the “model B” is an explanation for what Jerome says as a relatively young man to his mentor. We expect Jerome to change and his audience to change over time, and we would consequently expect to have to use something of a different model later in life as he continues correspondence with the city that he still seems to view as home despite his Palestinian residence.

But frankly, even if we were left choosing between the flat model you give as option B and the model A being that Jerome was a papist, I think we find Jerome speaking rather unexpectedly. He writes (toward the end of his life, in the last quotation from Jerome that Chapman gives: “I had nearly left out what is most important. When you were a child, and Bishop Anastasius of holy memory ruled the Roman Church … ” did you read that? He says not “the Catholic Church” but “the Roman Church.” Doesn’t that strike you as just the least bit odd for someone who viewed the bishop of Rome as the head of the universal church?

While Jerome may have been kind to the bishops of Rome that he personally knew, he was not quite so fond at least one other, in a portion of less convenient evidence that Chapman appears to have omitted:

Jerome (347-420): Liberius was ordained the 34th bishop of the Roman church, and when he was driven into exile for the faith, all the clergy took an oath that they would not recognize any other bishop. But when Felix was put in his place by the Arians, a great many foreswore themselves; but at the end of the year they were banished, and Felix too; for Liberius, giving in to the irksomeness of exile and subscribing to the heretical and false doctrine, made a triumphal entry into Rome. E. Giles, ed., Documents Illustrating Papal Authority: A.D. 96-454 (Westport: Hyperion Press, reprinted 1982), p. 151.

Latin text: LIBERIUS XXXIV Romanae Ecclesiae ordinatur episcopus, quo in exsilium ob fidem truso, omnes clerici juraverunt, ut nullum alium susciperent. Verum cum Felix ab Arianis fuisset in sacerdotium substitutus, plurimi pejeraverunt, et post annum cum Felice ejecti sunt: quia Liberius taedio victus exsilii, et in haereticam pravitatem subscribens, Romam quasi victor intraverat. S. Hieronymi Chronicon, Ad Ann. 352, PL 27:684-685.

(thanks to Pastor King for providing this quotation)

Notice as well the “Roman Church” distinction provided even in this example. That’s how he thought about the Roman church, as a part (and perhaps a very important part) of the Catholic church, but not as the Catholic church itself. Its clerics, even its bishop, could err on matters of doctrine and did in the instance of Liberius.

With all due respect, Jerome was not a papist.

-TurretinFan
Bryan Cross November 16th, 2009 6:16 pm :
lojahw,

St. Augustine does not state any exception here, but we need to be careful to avoid the argument from silence. His ‘all’ may not have been intended to include the successor of St. Peter.

That being said, let’s keep the discussion on-topic, particularly, on the article.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Keith W. Thompson November 16th, 2009 6:22 pm :
Bryan,

This is an attempt to boil down the whole matter, so please correct me if I am wrong in my assessment of the issue at hand.
It seems that Rome claims to have “infallible interpretive authority” of Scripture based upon Rome’s understanding of Apostolic Succession and as a result, all interpretations outside of the Magesterium are therefore “illegitimate” and therefore not binding on anyone. Reformed councils claim authority via true succession of “Apostolic teaching” and also claim that all churches and councils are subject to error and have erred, and therefore they are only binding upon individuals who consensually submit to Reformed dogmas.
I think that the issue is not epistemic at all, but rather dealing with the scope of authority. If Rome is right, her councils are binding on everyone both inside and outside of the Church. If the Reformed position is correct, then Reformed dogmas and confessions are only binding on those who are members in Reformed churches.
The issue then, is which is correct. Since this is an epistemic debate, at this point, I must point out that every individual must examine the evidence and the truth claims of both camps and make a conscientious individual choice of which to follow. One cannot have infallible knowledge that either position is true without presupposing that it is so. So it seems that on the epistemic level, both positions are equally reliant upon the SOLO position which you have attempted to pin on protestants. But your reasoning seems to place you in the same camp. How can you know that Rome possesses the authority which she claims to possess without making an individual decision based upon your own private interpretation of Scripture (& Church history, etc.)?

Sincerely,
Keith WT
TurretinFan November 16th, 2009 6:30 pm :
Sean Patrick:

As for the charges of ignorance and arrogance, my understanding is that they were not intended specifically for Mr. Cross.

“Is he arguing that Jerome was a Presbyterian or something?” No. That’s not his argument.

“Is Pastor King out of communion with the successor to Peter because he thinks that Jerome was out of communion with the successor to Peter and thus he is justified in being out of communion with the Pope?” No. Pastor King is not attempting to justify behavior based on Jerome, he’s criticizing inaccurate historical depictions of Jerome. As with Jerome, with Pastor King, “There is no argument that is so forcible, as a passage from the Holy Scriptures.” (Jerome, Commentary on the Prophet Zacharias)

“Pastor King does not see the Catholic Church in the writings of Jerome even though Jerome expressly writes about being in communion with Peter’s successor.” Pastor King doesn’t read modern Roman Catholic views into Jerome from Jerome saying nice things about his contemporaries who were bishops at Rome.

“Fair enough, but I cannot see what other church Pastor King sees in the writings of Jerome. The PCA? The RCA? The PCUSA maybe? Or maybe the CREC?” Uh … that would be just a different anachronism.

“What bishop ordained Pastor King?” Presbyterian ecclesiology differs somewhat from that of Jerome’s church: Roman ecclesiology today differs too. There was no “college of cardinals” to select the bishops of Rome in Jerome’s day.

“Pastor King ends by saying that Catholic claims cannot be taken seriously from a historical or theological perspective. His statement is unfortunate because genuine dialog would entail that all sides take the positions of others seriously.” I don’t think Pastor King meant we should just laugh, but rather that there isn’t much merit in the anachronistic claims he’s debunked.

– TurretinFan
Sean Patrick November 16th, 2009 6:36 pm :
TFan.

This thread is not about Jerome and whether or not he was a Catholic. The article is about Sola Scriptura and Solo Scriptura and interpretive authority.

Maybe one day we’ll have an article about Jerome’s eccliesiology. In the meantime, the link that K Doran posted actually includes much related to the argument Pastor King is making (and similar ones). I must say that for all the ink spilled by Reformed bloggers about how Jerome was not a Catholic there is very little written by Reformed bloggers in regards to which church Jerome actually belonged.

Further, I’d be interested in your thoughts on the actual article we have presented.
TurretinFan November 16th, 2009 6:55 pm :
Sean Patrick wrote: “This thread is not about Jerome and whether or not he was a Catholic.” Understood. While one imagines that Jerome’s testimony on the papacy might seem to be relevant to a discussion of interpretive authority, where some folks are setting forth a scheme centering around the papacy, if that is ruled out of bounds by the folks running the show here, I’ll certainly play by the rules you’ve set.

Much of the article, as such, is directed at arguments that are presented as though specific to Mr. Mathison and his presentation. I understand Mr. Matthison plans a response. Some of the arguments attributed to Mr. Matthison (I don’t render a judgment as to whether or not such attribution is accurate) are arguments I’d never use to defend the Scriptural doctrine of Sola Scriptura.

Obviously, Matthison is correct to note that some “Protestants” act as though the church does not have a role in the interpretation of Scripture, and such a view is mistaken. That said, private judgment is simply an inescapable reality of human existence. To suggest that the church is the “ultimate” interpreter of Scripture seems to be somewhat askew – though perhaps that’s not quite what Matthison meant.

-TurretinFan
K. Doran November 16th, 2009 7:40 pm :
Well, TeurretinFan, I encourage you to try a little harder to apply the principle of maximum likelihood to your analysis of a writer’s motivations. No one can do this thinking for you. Not me, not the CTCers, not your pastor. Try the principle out on passages written by your friends for which you can clarify the writer’s meaning with a question that you ask later. You will find that it works well. Then think about how likely various early Christians would have been to offer — not general praise — but specific statements of rights and duties to the bishop of Rome. Think about how likely they were to demand specific requirements for the succession of bishops, and to demand of all Christians that they must meet under the auspices of such a bishop, with no exception. Think about it with the principle of maximum likelihood in mind. . . compare the model of (1) obedience to bishops, apostolic succession necessary for a bishop, and the center of communion as the roman bishop, with (2) the model of none of these things being necessary. Then think about what would be more likely to produce the data that you see. Don’t think about what could merely “explain” the data. This kind of thought will always produce a dozen different “explanations,” relying on assumptions, conjectures, hidden variables, naivete, youth, ignorance, etc. Rather, think about what best explains the data — what would most likely produce the data that you see. Your pastor’s explanation of Jerome’s youth is falsified by his continuance in the same doctrine at the end of his life, when he was in the Holy land, permanently far from Rome. This is the kind of thinking you need to do to see past the lies that centuries of anti-Catholic hatred have produced. Your pastor is not a liar. Neither are you. But some people lied in the past, and the lies have been passed down the generations. You need to have a sound analytical method to see through them. I recommend maximum likelihood.

Sincerely,

K. Doran

p.s. I also recommend reading what the Popes of the fourth and fifth centuries said about their duties; then read about who was in communion with them in spite of their making these claims. . . then think about how people like Saint Jerome responded when someone claimed a doctrine that was false. . . far from passively accepting it, he was always ready to call a spade something worse . . . as were other great saints of that era in communion with the bishops of Rome!
p.p.s. I will say no more, in deference to the topic of the thread.
TurretinFan November 16th, 2009 7:48 pm :
Nor will I respond, in deference to the topic of the thread, however tempting it may be.
Bryan Cross November 16th, 2009 8:22 pm :
Hello Keith T,

Welcome to CTC. Interpretations that are contrary to what has already been definitively declared by the Magisterium are ‘illegitimate’ and are not binding on anyone. But that does not mean that we may not hold differing interpretations on matters regarding which the Tradition or Magisterium have remained silent.

Reformed councils claim authority via true succession of “Apostolic teaching” and also claim that all churches and councils are subject to error and have erred, and therefore they are only binding upon individuals who consensually submit to Reformed dogmas.

In other words, it is only ‘binding’ on you if you agree with it. As we pointed out in the article, whatever is only binding if you agree with it, is not a genuine authority.

One cannot have infallible knowledge that either position is true without presupposing that it is so.

Infallibility is rightly predicated of things capable of operation, e.g. persons capable of avoiding error in some operation. Knowledge is not capable of operation, so it is not rightly described as infallible. So the properly formed claim would be:

One cannot know that either position is true without presupposing that it is so.

But that claim is not true. We can come to know that Christ is the Son of God without presupposing that Christ is the Son of God. Christ’s being the Son of God is the best explanation of all the evidence, even though it is something no one can come to see without the operation of the Holy Spirit. Faith is a gift of God, but that doesn’t make fideism true. Faith is not irrational; it is supra-rational. That’s why everything falls into place rationally when one acquires faith. Faith perfects reason. So likewise, one cannot come to know the truth of the other items of the Creed [excepting God’s having created the world, and our facing final judgment] without the aid of the Holy Spirit. But that doesn’t mean that one must presuppose the other contents of the Creed in order to know them. When we see their truth, we see how it perfectly explains all the data. Faith here too perfects reason. Grace builds on nature. Presupposing a truth would not perfect reason; it would be merely hypothetical reasoning. But reason is aimed at the truth about reality; reason is not content with merely hypothetical truths. So presupposing x as a foundation would not allow us to know the truth of anything we would build on the presupposition of x. Everything epistemically built on a mere hypothetical remains merely hypothetical. But faith is not hypothetical. We believe the faith to be true, on the authority of God who cannot lie, who speaks to us through His Word as explicated to us by His duly-appointed shepherds.

We do not have to be infallible in order to come to know that Christ is infallible. We can know by reason alone that God exists and is infallible. So, if by the help of the Spirit we are granted to know that Jesus is the Son of God, we can know by deduction that Jesus is infallible. This shows that we can come to know that something is infallible, even though we are ourselves are not infallible. So likewise, we do not have to be infallible in order to come to know that that the Church is infallible under specified conditions. By external and historical evidence we can come to identity the Church. From this Church we learn who Jesus is, what He taught, which books are sacred and inspired, which interpretations are authentic, and how we are to be saved.

We understand that just as those who lived in the time after Jesus believed in Him through trusting the preaching and teaching of the Apostles, so those who came after the Apostles rightly understand their [i.e. the Apostles’] teaching and preaching through those whom the Apostles appointed to succeed them. In this way, faith in Christ includes faith in the Church as His appointed means through which we truly come to know Him. Jesus speaks of this in John 17:20, when He speaks of those who will come to believe in Him through the Apostles’ word. This is why no one can have God as His Father who does not have the Church as his mother. Through this same Church through which we learn of Christ, we learn the nature of the Church. The same one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church that authoritatively declared the deity of Christ at Nicea in 325 also later declared the Church to be divinely protected from error under certain conditions. We don’t need to be infallible to know that, but we do need faith to trust Christ through trusting His Church, the same Church by which we know all that we know by faith about Christ.

So it seems that on the epistemic level, both positions are equally reliant upon the SOLO position which you have attempted to pin on protestants. But your reasoning seems to place you in the same camp. How can you know that Rome possesses the authority which she claims to possess without making an individual decision based upon your own private interpretation of Scripture (& Church history, etc.)?

Solo scriptura is the notion that each person has and retains ultimate interpretive authority. But, as explained earlier in the comments, the Catholic position is not the solo scriptura position, because when a person discovers the Church and her Magisterium, he recognizes that he no longer retains ultimate interpretive authority. The initial necessity of the use of one’s own reason and judgment in the discovery of a higher interpretive authority than oneself, does not entail that one must therefore always retain highest interpretive authority. That was true during the time of the Apostles (after Christ’s ascension) and it remains true to this day.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Neal Judisch November 16th, 2009 10:45 pm :
Hi, T-fan.

Mathison does mean to say that the Church is the ultimate interpretive authority, though he takes pains to distinguish this claim from the idea that “the Church” possesses an authority that is equal to Scripture on the one hand, or that, on the other, “the Church’s” authority derives by some means other than or additional to interpretive fidelity (approximating truth on the essentials) to Scripture. (He also provides an escape clause, citing Turretin, which specifies that Christians whose consciences disallow them to agree with whatever “the Church” might say on some particular theological topic are able licitly to detract from “the Church” and to remove themselves from it.)

We appreciate the fact that not all (Reformed) Protestants will agree with everything Mathison says, straight down the line. At the same time, we find that Mathison’s work is very frequently cited by Protestants (like you) who wish to distance themselves from solo-scriptura-private-judgment-individualism. And, for my part (and I believe I can speak for Bryan here as well), I think that Mathison probably offers the most sophisticated and nuanced version of sola scriptura currently on the market. Putting to one side its eloquence and intrinsic interest, that’s pretty much why we decided it would be best to focus on Mathison’s development and defense of sola scriptura.

From your remarks, it sounds as though you haven’t read through Mathison’s book just yet. I encourage you to do so. It’s a good and lucid read. In the meantime, if you’d like to register your own (or any other similarly developed) view of sola scriptura, here or elsewhere, we’d be very interested to have a listen.

All best,

Neal

PS: Your remarks about the inescapability of ‘private judgment’ are important and apposite, but I don’t think they appropriately engage with Mathison’s thesis or with our particular disagreement with Mathison’s version of sola scriptura. You’re definitely right to note that we all have to excercise ‘private judgment’ at some level; but I think you’re failing to distinguish as between first-order judgments (concerning specific theological doctrines) and second-order judgments (concerning the question who does or might have authority to answer definitively first-order doctrinal questions). Mathison sees the distinction, and argues that we ought not lodge final interpretive authority in ourselves, but that we should look instead to ‘the Church’/regula fidei/true bishops, etc. We quite agree with this; that is the starting point for our discussion with Mathison. Hope that helps to clarify things a bit, at least with respect to our aims in this particular article and thread.
Tim A. Troutman November 16th, 2009 10:55 pm :
This thread has really gotten off course. I want to make a quick observation. After 184 comments, no one has refuted, or attempted to refute, the arguments laid out in this article. Saying “yea but you too,” even if valid, is not a refutation.
Neal Judisch November 16th, 2009 11:24 pm :
“yea, but you too.”

I notice, as well, that no one has taken up the “suggestive analogy” I offered above, concerning what a presuppositionalist might say to some critic who alleges that C.V.T. is quite as autonomous a thinker as Bertrand Russell, since they’ve both got to use their brains to figure out whether they should accept Christianity in the first place. I note, too, with some disappointment, that no one has engaged or questioned or discussed the conditions on authority (content independence and preemption) that I previously suggested really ought to be discussed if we want to get a clearer grasp on the notions of epistemic authority and autonomy — “philosophical” topics, to be sure, but “philosophical topics” that in fact guide, influence, and even determine “theological stances” on the topic at issue in this thread. These conditions seem to me pretty plausible, plausibly satisfiable on Catholicism, and plausibly not satisfiable on Reformed Protestantism.

So it seems to me. I’m open to correction. There’s a paucity of developed work on epistemic authority and epistemic autonomy. But I think that’s where this debate has really got to focus. I’d love it if someone would pipe up and say something about this.

Neal
lojahw November 17th, 2009 1:14 am :
Well, Tim, it is problematic when, as Keith observed, there is an epistemic gulf between the positions represented. If, as Bryan, claims, that Rome’s interpretation is the only correct one, then all arguments for opposing interpretations are dismissed – a priori – simply because they do not agree with Rome. What can be said?

Augustine wrote that Scripture is in an absolutely superior position to the writings of *all* bishops and church councils. I agree with him, but Bryan says that I have no way of knowing that “all” really means all. And why does he say that? Because he’s already made up his mind that it cannot mean all because he “infallibly knows” that the office of Peter’s successor is a granted a supernatural and perpetual exception. Wow! And which words of Jesus definitively teach that?

If, on the other hand, Scripture is in such an absolutely superior position to all other authorities as Augustine said, the implication is that no human can say it better than God already has. And if the human interpreter introduces ideas that *demand* more than a customary reading of the text supports – he’s distorting it. Jesus never promised that none of Peter’s successors’ faith would fail. That’s demanding more than the text reasonably supports. The truth is that God doesn’t need an infallible interpreter, he just needs a competent interpreter, like the Bereans in Acts 17. Wow! What a concept!

The problem that I have with both Bryan’s and Gary’s positions is that they imagine that competent interpreters cannot rightly understand what Scripture says. Why? because they pay too much attention to the many ways the untaught and unstable distort it. On the other hand, they posit the necessity of infallibly interpreting even the ambiguities God left in His Word to keep us humble. It is the height of arrogance to claim anyone can infallibly interpret what God has made ambiguous. If you don’t think so, just ask Job!

Blessings.
Bryan Cross November 17th, 2009 2:55 am :
lojahw,

I agree that there is an epistemic gulf, and what we need to do to resolve it is find common ground. Let me address a few of your concerns. You wrote:

If, as Bryan, claims, that Rome’s interpretation is the only correct one, then all arguments for opposing interpretations are dismissed – a priori – simply because they do not agree with Rome. What can be said?

Other interpretations are not dismissed a priori. Rather, the difference between us is not fundamentally and primarily at the level of interpretation (i.e. who has the correct interpretation?) but at the level of interpretive authority. So because that is the fundamental point of disagreement, that is where we need to determine whether Christ established teaching/interpretive authority in His Church, and how we determine who holds it.

Then you wrote:

Augustine wrote that Scripture is in an absolutely superior position to the writings of *all* bishops and church councils. I agree with him, but Bryan says that I have no way of knowing that “all” really means all. And why does he say that? Because he’s already made up his mind that it cannot mean all because he “infallibly knows” that the office of Peter’s successor is a granted a supernatural and perpetual exception. Wow! And which words of Jesus definitively teach that?

That misrepresents my words and my position. In #176 you wrote:

you say that you affirm Augustine’s statement that *all” bishops and councils are liable to be refuted and corrected? He did not exempt the bishop of Rome.

In #178 I replied:

St. Augustine does not state any exception here, but we need to be careful to avoid the argument from silence. His ‘all’ may not have been intended to include the successor of St. Peter.

Now in #189 you claim that I said that we have no way of knowing whether for St. Augustine Scripture is in an absolutely superior position to the writings of *all* bishops and church councils. Of course I never said anything of that sort. The question you asked me was not about the superiority of Scripture, but about whether all bishops are liable to be corrected. Do you see how you took my answer to your question and twisted it to make it say something I did not at all say?

Then you proceed to try to read my mind:

And why does he say that? Because he’s already made up his mind that it cannot mean all because he “infallibly knows” that the office of Peter’s successor is a granted a supernatural and perpetual exception.

That’s not true. We need to be careful when interpreting the ‘all’ in “that all the letters of bishops which have been written, or are being written, since the closing of the canon” first because it does not say “all bishops”, but “all the letters of bishops”, and second because there is much other evidence in the Fathers indicating that the office of St. Peter is given the charism of truth and divinely protected from error. Even St. Augustine himself says:

You know what the Catholic Church is, and what that is that is cut off from the Vine; if there are any among you cautious, let them come; let them find life in the Root. Come, brethren, if you wish to be engrafted in the Vine: a grief it is when we see you lying thus cut off. Number the Bishops even from the very seat of Peter: and see every succession in that line of Fathers: that is the Rock against which the proud Gates of Hell prevail not.”

Therefore, in our interpretation of St. Augustine we should not force him to be saying something contrary to the position of the other Fathers, or to himself. That is the principle of hermeneutical charity.

Then you wrote:

If, on the other hand, Scripture is in such an absolutely superior position to all other authorities as Augustine said, the implication is that no human can say it better than God already has.

That would imply that the Bible should never have been translated into any other language, and that every sermon should consist only of the reading of Scripture in its original language. Is that what takes place in your Sunday morning services?

And if the human interpreter introduces ideas that *demand* more than a customary reading of the text supports – he’s distorting it.

Who made you the Magisterium to set the rules for what counts as properly interpreting Scripture and what counts as distorting it? By setting the rules for what counts as properly interpreting Scripture, you are arrogating to yourself Magisterial authority, and begging the question about who has it. (In my opinion you have no Magisterial authority, because you do not have Holy Orders.)

The truth is that God doesn’t need an infallible interpreter, he just needs a competent interpreter, like the Bereans in Acts 17.

The question is not what God needs. The question is what Christ did when He established His Church. That’s because if Christ established an interpretive authority in His Church, then He believes that the Church needs it. And His belief about what His Church needs is what matters.

Of course God doesn’t need an infallible interpreter; God needs nothing at all. But God knew that His Church would need to be protected from error when she made definitive decisions pertaining to the various doctrinal challenges that have arisen during the history of the Church; otherwise each man would be left to do what is ‘right in his own eyes’, according to his own interpretation of Scripture, according to his own determination of the canon of Scripture.

The problem that I have with both Bryan’s and Gary’s positions is that they imagine that competent interpreters cannot rightly understand what Scripture says. Why? because they pay too much attention to the many ways the untaught and unstable distort it.

Would you set yourself up to be the determiner for the whole Church of the necessary and sufficient conditions for competence in the interpretation of Scripture? If so, that raises a dilemma. What would you do when those you have deemed to be competent in the interpretation of Scripture disagree with each other, or with you? Would you then deselect from the class of competent interpreters all those who disagree with your interpretation? If so, at that point how have you not just pulled the pope out of his papal chair and taken his seat? But if you would submit to them, even when you disagree with them, then why not submit to the divinely appointed successors of the Apostles?

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Tim A. Troutman November 17th, 2009 10:43 am :
Lojahw, even if what you said is true, the article still stands. As I mentioned, no one has attempted to show why sola and solo are distinct in principle. When a truth seeker’s position is refuted, he will either defend it or change his position. No one here has done either of them. The separate question of whether the Catholic position is, in fact, any better has already been dealt with at length in this thread and no one has challenged any of our defenses. Instead, since (apparently) no one knows how to deal with the arguments presented here, they bring up other issues like what Augustine believed or what Jerome believed.
Keith W. Thompson November 17th, 2009 12:20 pm :
Bryan,

I could interact with much more of your response, but I will attempt to keep things boiled down and simple:

You wrote (#185):
Solo scriptura is the notion that each person has and retains ultimate interpretive authority. But, as explained earlier in the comments, the Catholic position is not the solo scriptura position, because when a person discovers the Church and her Magisterium, he recognizes that he no longer retains ultimate interpretive authority. The initial necessity of the use of one’s own reason and judgment in the discovery of a higher interpretive authority than oneself, does not entail that one must therefore always retain highest interpretive authority. That was true during the time of the Apostles (after Christ’s ascension) and it remains true to this day.
My Response:
Solo scriptura is the notion that each person has and retains ultimate interpretive authority. But, … the REFORMED POSITION is not the solo scriptura position, because when a person discovers the REFORMED CHURCH & CONFESSIONS, he recognizes that he no longer retains ultimate interpretive authority. The initial necessity of the use of one’s own reason and judgment in the discovery of a higher interpretive authority than oneself, does not entail that one must therefore always retain highest interpretive authority. That was true during the time of the Apostles (after Christ’s ascension) and it remains true to this day.
What am I missing?
If using one’s autonomous and non-authoritative reason (perfected by faith) to interpret Scripture in order to “arrive at Rome” is somehow NOT the SOLO position your are sticking on us; why then, when Reformed believers use autonomous and non-authoritative reason (perfected by faith) to interpret Scripture in order to “arrive at Geneva,” this suddenly IS the SOLO position?

This seems to me to be way too simple for all of the Catholics in here to be getting tripped up on, so I am assuming that I am missing something key… Please, what is the difference?

Confused,
Keith WT
p.s. – How do I upload a cool little picture like you have? ;)
TurretinFan November 17th, 2009 12:45 pm :
Neal:

You mention, seemingly as an aside: “(He also provides an escape clause, citing Turretin, which specifies that Christians whose consciences disallow them to agree with whatever “the Church” might say on some particular theological topic are able licitly to detract from “the Church” and to remove themselves from it.)”

But the article cites Matthison repeatedly saying things like: “The adherents of solo scriptura dismiss all of this claiming that the reason and conscience of the individual believer is the supreme interpreter.” and “When each individual’s conscience becomes the final authority for that individual, differences of opinion will occur. When men feel strongly enough about their individual interpretations, they separate from those they believe to be in error. In the world today, we have millions of believers and churches convinced of thousands of mutually contradictory doctrines, and all of them claim to base their beliefs on the authority of Scripture alone.” and “Solo scriptura results in the autonomy of the individual believer who becomes a law unto himself. Scripture is interpreted according to the conscience and reason of the individual. Everything is evaluated according to the final standard of the individual’s opinion of what is and is not scriptural. The individual, not Scripture, is the real final authority according to solo scriptura. This is rebellious autonomy, and it is a usurpation of the prerogatives of God.”

But then there is the part that you mentioned, where Matthison acknowledges: As Turretin explains, although the corporate doctrinal judgment of the Church is not infallible and does not have an authority equal to that of Scripture, it does have true authority over those who are members of the visible communion of the Church. What then is the relationship between private judgment and this corporate judgment? What is an individual Christian to do if he believes the corporate judgment found in the creeds and confessions to be in error? Turretin explains,

“Hence if they think they observe anything in them worthy of correction, they ought to undertake nothing rashly or disorderly and unseasonably, so as to violently rend the body of their mother (which schismatics do), but to refer the difficulties they feel to their church and either to prefer her public opinion to their own private judgment or to secede from her communion, if the conscience cannot acquiesce in her judgment. Thus they cannot bind in the inner court of conscience, except inasmuch as they are found to agree with the word of God (which alone has the power to bind the conscience).”

I don’t see how that doesn’t undo the previous critical comments that Matthison made.

The problem (from where I stand) with Solo Scriptura is that it leaves no role for the church, not that it permits the exercise of conscience.

Another, lesser, issue that I would have with Matthison’s approach is with his comment: “It renders the universal and objective truth of Scripture virtually useless because instead of the Church proclaiming with one voice to the world what the Scripture teaches, every individual interprets Scripture as seems right in his own eyes.” That kind of comment doesn’t seem to be consistent with a Reformed view of Sola Scriptura whether or not it could be made consistent with Matthison’s own private (ha!) view of the subject.

-TurretinFan
Sean Patrick November 17th, 2009 1:14 pm :
T Fan,

Thanks for your thoughts on Matthison. We all agree that not every Reformed person agrees with Matthison but appreciate you outlining how you disagree with him. Hopefully he does come back and offer a response to the article.

You said,

“It renders the universal and objective truth of Scripture virtually useless because instead of the Church proclaiming with one voice to the world what the Scripture teaches, every individual interprets Scripture as seems right in his own eyes.” That kind of comment doesn’t seem to be consistent with a Reformed view of Sola Scriptura whether or not it could be made consistent with Matthison’s own private (ha!) view of the subject.

I would say that Matthison’s comment here is just an observation and not an attempt to say what the Reformed view of Sola Scriptura would say. The fact is that there is an infinite number of voices about what scripture proclaims is simply an observation of a truth. Matthison argues that to avoid this and to have Christians speak with one voice to the world we must let the church interpret the scriptures and not each and every individual in a ‘me, my bible and Jesus’ way. The problem, as Bryan outlines, is that Matthison’s definition of ‘church’ makes his distinction a non-distinction.
Bryan Cross November 17th, 2009 1:36 pm :
Keith T,

You wrote:

the REFORMED POSITION is not the solo scriptura position, because when a person discovers the REFORMED CHURCH & CONFESSIONS, he recognizes that he no longer retains ultimate interpretive authority…. If using one’s autonomous and non-authoritative reason (perfected by faith) to interpret Scripture in order to “arrive at Rome” is somehow NOT the SOLO position your are sticking on us; why then, when Reformed believers use autonomous and non-authoritative reason (perfected by faith) to interpret Scripture in order to “arrive at Geneva,” this suddenly IS the SOLO position? … What am I missing?

(I slightly re-ordered your objection, to improve it.) That’s exactly the right question and objection. In other words, you are asking for the principled difference between the Catholic position, and sola scriptura. That’s the other way of posing the tu quoque objection we addressed in section V.A. in the article. And we also addressed this objection earlier in the comments (which, given their current length, is understandable if you didn’t read them).

The principled difference is that the reason why someone would claim that “the Reformed Church” (if such an entity is more than a mental construct) is the Church Christ founded, is ultimately on the ground that Reformed doctrine agrees with his own interpretation of Scripture, according to his own determination of the canon of Scripture. There is no other reason to pick “the Reformed Church” as the true Church, over “the Lutheran Church” or “the Baptist Church” or “the Anglican Church” or “the Methodist Church” or “the Pentecostal Church” or the “Seventh Day Adventist Church”, or the “Catholic Church.” It is a decision ultimately based on form, i.e. doctrine, as determined by one’s own interpretation of Scripture, according to one’s own determination of which books belong to the canon.

By contrast, the reason why Catholics claim that the Catholic Church is the Church Christ founded, is not fundamentally on the ground of agreement of form (i.e. not based on one’s interpretation of Scripture, or agreement with one’s interpretation of Scripture), but based on tracing magisterial authority from the Apostles, through the bishops whom they ordained to succeed them, and through the bishops whom those bishops ordained to succeed them, and so on, down to the present day, noting along the way what these bishops said about the basis for ecclesial authority, what they said about the essential marks of the Church (i.e. one, holy, catholic and apostolic), what they said and did in identifying where the true Church continued in the event of schism. We do then (subsequently) find perfect agreement of form (between the teaching of Scripture as informed by the Church, and the doctrine of the Church), but our basis or ground for picking out the Catholic Church as the true Church is not agreement between our interpretation of Scripture and the doctrine of the Catholic Church, but on possession of magisterial authority from Christ, through the Apostles whom He authorized, and their authorized successors, down to the present day.

And that is why the Catholic who discovers the Magisterium as the divinely authorized authority cannot remain the ultimate interpretive authority of Scripture or the ultimate determiner of the canon of Scripture. He has encountered living persons having divine authority that he does not have. The Reformed person (or any Protestant), by contrast, necessarily remains the ultimate interpretive authority because the basis or ground by which this group of persons (i.e. various communities of persons sharing Reformed beliefs) counts as the true Church for him is not apostolic succession, but precisely the agreement between the doctrine believed and taught by these persons and his interpretation of Scripture.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
TurretinFan November 17th, 2009 1:45 pm :
Troutman wrote: “Instead, since (apparently) no one knows how to deal with the arguments presented here, they bring up other issues like what Augustine believed or what Jerome believed.”

a) Isn’t Matthison preparing a response?

b) Is the historical practice of Christianity irrelevant to the question of interpretive authority?

-TurretinFan
Neal Judisch November 17th, 2009 2:09 pm :
Hi again, T-fan.

Thanks for the response. You say: “I don’t see how that [the Turretin quote and the position it represents] doesn’t undo the previous critical comments that Matthison made.” I agree with you that there is a tension in his position here. Mathison would want to agree with you that there must be *a* role (an eliminable interpretive role) for the Church, and so far as I can tell he tries to work out how that role should be understood in a way that (a) clearly avoids the problems with solo scriptura and (b) upholds the (best of the) Reformed tradition. It sounds like you’ll disagree with Mathison on some of the details, and perhaps also disagree that Mathison is accurately representing the Reformed tradition. (Actually, I don’t think the Reformed tradition is monolithic on this point. So disagreement’s to be expected.)

Perhaps your own view will have an easier time accommodating the point that an individual’s conscience can’t be bound by anything other than the Word of God, but in the absence of an articulated proposal it’s a little hard to say. At most, I can say that I agree with you that Mathison doesn’t obviously dispel the apparent tension, but I also sympathize with Mathison’s motivations for trying to hold all of these things together.

Best,

Neal
Sean Patrick November 17th, 2009 3:07 pm :
b) Is the historical practice of Christianity irrelevant to the question of interpretive authority?

Of course not. Church history is relevant in this discussion. But there is a proper way to do church history. Hopefully we’ll have time down the road to really open up a broad sweeping study of church fathers on this issue. I can attest that as a Reformed Presbyterian who started reading the Church Fathers I wasn’t drawn closer to Geneva.

On the very question of interpretive authority both fathers we have discussed in this thread, Jerome and Augustine, never divorced interpretation from the church.

“My resolution is, to read the ancients, to try everything, to hold fast what is good, and not to recede from the faith of the Catholic Church.”
Jerome, To Minervius & Alexander, Epistle 119 (A.D. 406).

“But those reasons which I have here given, I have either gathered from the authority of the church, according to the tradition of our forefathers, or from the testimony of the divine Scriptures, or from the nature itself of numbers and of similitudes. No sober person will decide against reason, no Christian against the Scriptures, no peaceable person against the Church.”
Augustine, On the Trinity, 4,6:10 (A.D. 416).

One thing I have noticed is that often patristic quotes supporting the material sufficiency of scripture are propped up in support of sola scriptura. However material sufficiency of scripture is not sola scriptura. This article is helpful in describing in what sense we do affirm the material sufficiency of scripture but reject, as did Augustine and Jerome, SOLA (or O) Scriptura.
Keith W. Thompson November 17th, 2009 3:23 pm :
Bryan responding to 195),

Ok, I think I got it (finally). If I understand you correctly, Reformed believers rely on their own private interpretation of the infallible Word of God (and their fundamental belief in the perspicuity of Scripture) to guide them to a “true church,” which you are calling Solo Scriptura. Roman Catholics rely on their own private interpretation of fallible human history of the visible church to guide them to a “true church,” which has not been yet been given a pejorative name on par with Solo Scriptura, how about “Solo Church Historia…” (I don’t know Latin, so feel free to tinker with that name.)

So we both rely on private interpretation to lead us to an authority outside and above our individual self, and the difference is in what we are interpreting. If that is the gist of it, then I totally agree with you on that point. I am guilty as charged with THIS brand of Solo Scriptura, but I still do not see how that is somehow contrary to Sola Scriptura, and I still have qualms about whether or not this “necessarily” means that I somehow remain the ultimate interpretive authority of Scripture, especially since I confess the opposite… but I suppose that we can take that up at a different time.

I much prefer Solo Scriptura to Solo Church Historia, and it is strange to me that you don’t.

In Him,
Keith W.T.
Keith W. Thompson November 17th, 2009 3:33 pm :
I was also thinking about the source of authority. It seems that the source of church authority for Reformed believers is that Scripture gives rightful authority to ordained elders. It also seems that the source of authority for Rome is a claim of an inherited authority from the Apostles. I think it strange that since the Apostles themselves were not infallible except when writing Scripture under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, that the elders (presbuteros) who succeeded them somehow have a greater authority… unless it can be somehow substantiated that the Holy Spirit inspires Rome (in certain circumstances) to issue certain infallible dogmas. (Which if this is the case, why does not Rome canonize the creeds and confessions?) I’m sure my understanding of Roman practice in this area is woefully uninformed, but who better to ask for information than an informed Catholic? ;)
I’m enjoying this thread, and learning a lot.

In Him,
Keith WT
lojahw November 17th, 2009 3:44 pm :
Thank you, Bryan, for your thoughtful responses.

As stated elsewhere, what Augustine or Jerome or any other early church father said about the interpretive authority in the Church doesn’t prove anything. I was just agreeing with two points Augustine made: 1) the superiority of Scripture to all other authorities; and 2) the observation that the writings of *all* later bishops are liable to refutation and the decisions of all church councils are liable to correction. The point is that the assumptions underlying Sola Scriptura were voiced more than 1000 years before the Reformation. Likewise, the quotations I gave from the Council of Nicea demonstrate that the practice of careful reliance on the authority of Scripture both to affirm doctrine as well as to deny heresy doctrine has excellent historical precedence.

Your claim is that the successor of Peter has the charism of infallibility is refuted by empirical evidence. Peter’s successors have been inconsistent. Truth is not inconsistent with itself.

The Fourth Ecumenical Council praised Pope Leo I thus: “Peter has spoken thus through Leo.” This same Pope taught:

“For the entire human race there was but one remedy … that one of the sons of Adam should be born free and innocent of original transgression, to prevail for the rest both by His example and His merits. Still further, because this was not permitted by natural generation, and because there could be no offspring from our faulty stock without seed… is it not Thou who art alone?'” (Sermon 28.3)

But Pope Pius IX contradicted Pope Leo I by declaring that Jesus was not “alone” born free and innocent of original transgression – that his mother, Mary, was likewise sinless from conception. Either Pope Leo I handed down an incorrect interpretation that wasn’t corrected for 1500 years, or Pope Pius IX taught error. Which is it? Jesus cannot “alone” be sinless if Mary also was “free and innocent of original transgression.”

Likewise, self-governance of each locality (and later, each province) was clearly taught by the Apostle Paul, by Clement of Rome, by Ignatius of Antioch (to Polycarp of Smyrna, whose bishop is Christ!), by the Didache [Teaching of the Twelve Apostles], by the Apostolic Traditions of Hippolytus, and by the first four Ecumenical Councils. The decisions and canons of all four Ecumenical Councils were accepted by the current bishop of Rome in their times. Yet, almost 1000 years after the First Ecumenical Council declared the territorial limits of bishops within their respective provinces, Pope Boniface VIII, wrote:

“We declare, say, define and pronounce, that it is absolutely necessary for the salvation of every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff” (Pope Boniface VIII, Bull Unam Sanctam).

The Roman Pontiff cannot both be limited to a province and demand the subjection of every human creature. Which interpretation is correct? And which Scripture was Pope Boniface infallibly interpreting?

Actually, the truth is that RC’s don’t even agree among themselves how many and which “infallible” teachings the Popes have made. But if God set up such an office: 1) why has it been inconsistent; 2) why has it been used so infrequently; 3) and which Scriptures did these “infallible interpretations” cover?

If this office is so important, why after 2000 years has it been exercised only a few times? RC’s make a big issue about how Protestants know what the canon of Scripture is, but they cannot even tell us which Scriptures have the benefit of infallible interpretations! Furthermore, with such a miniscule portion of Scripture covered, it would seem that either a) the office is irrelevant to the life of the Church; or b) the office has severely neglected its duty.

Your proposal, Solo Papa, doesn’t make sense. It, like the abuses of Sola Scriptura, boils down to Solo Sua (God’s Word is secondary, self is primary).

Blessings.
Bryan Cross November 17th, 2009 4:37 pm :
Keith T,

You wrote:

I much prefer Solo Scriptura to Solo Church Historia, and it is strange to me that you don’t.

Your last line is quite telling, especially the word ‘prefer’. For the Catholic, personal preference has nothing to do with determining the identity and nature of the Church. The question is an historical investigation, and our preferences had better stay out of the investigation, lest we simply ‘find’ what we want to find. That’s not the way a truth-seeker seeks. He wants the truth, even if it is contrary to his ‘preferences’. But when personal preference is the fundamental driving principle, we find the source of today’s ecclesial consumerism and the massive quest for the itching of one’s ears.

So we both rely on private interpretation to lead us to an authority outside and above our individual self, and the difference is in what we are interpreting.

That is not an accurate redescription of what I said. The principled difference is not that the Protestant is interpreting one book, and the Catholic is interpreting another. The Protestant approach starts from [Protestant] Scripture, determines what seems to oneself to be the gospel, and then designates as ‘Church’ those who believe and teach according to one’s interpretation of Scripture. The Catholic approach is to locate an entity (i.e. the Church) in the first century, then trace that entity forward to the present day, and then listening to what she says is the gospel. Both involve the initial use of private judgment, but one picks out persons as leaders of the Church on the ground of agreement with one’s own interpretation of Scripture, while the other picks out persons as leaders of the Church by tracing the handing down of authority from the Apostles to the present day, and from these authorized persons learning the gospel. That difference entails that the Protestant (as Protestant) retains ultimate interpretive authority, and explains why the Catholic (as Catholic) does not retain ultimate interpretive authority.

I am guilty as charged with THIS brand of Solo Scriptura, but I still do not see how that is somehow contrary to Sola Scriptura

Then read the first two sections of our article, in which we present Keith Mathison’s arguments against solo scriptura.

It seems that the source of church authority for Reformed believers is that Scripture gives rightful authority to ordained elders. It also seems that the source of authority for Rome is a claim of an inherited authority from the Apostles.

There is a difference between the authority that comes from knowing a subject well (e.g. the authority of an expert) and the authority that comes from being authorized to represent someone and speak on his behalf. Books can give the former type of authority, but they can’t give the latter type of authority. Without apostolic succession then, Protestantism is left only with the kind of authority had by an expert, and this is why Protestantism cannot bind the conscience regarding the deposit of faith. But because the Magisterium of the Catholic Church has its authority by way of apostolic succession, it is not limited to academic-type authority, but holds the authority to speak and teach on Christ’s behalf, as His authorized representatives. Even heretics could claim to have academic-type authority or expertise, but only the Church has the authority of the keys, the authority to open and close the gate of the Kingdom of Heaven to any man, and to declare definitively as Christ’s authorized representative what is the truth concerning Christ and His gospel.

I think it strange that since the Apostles themselves were not infallible except when writing Scripture under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, that the elders (presbuteros) who succeeded them somehow have a greater authority

That would be strange. But that’s not what Catholics believe. We believe that the Apostles when speaking all together with one voice, were protected from error by the Holy Spirit. We see this in Acts 15 “It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us.” This proto-ecumenical council indicates the Apostles’ belief that the Holy Spirit was guiding them in their decisions on behalf of the whole Church. And the bishops in ecumenical council later on retained that same belief about the operation of the Holy Spirit in protecting the bishops from error when in ecumenical council and teaching definitively on matters of faith or morals, for the whole Church.

(Which if this is the case, why does not Rome canonize the creeds and confessions?)

There is a difference between being divinely inspired, and being inerrant. The Scriptures are divinely inspired and inerrant. The dogmas declared in ecumenical council are inerrant, but not divinely inspired. Hence, the dogmas cannot be ‘canonized’ because they are not Scripture.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Nathan November 17th, 2009 5:20 pm :
Keith T.,

The Nicene Creed (and the canons of the Ecumenical Councils) are canonized, that is they are a part of canon law. I think this is why Bryan distinguishes between inspiration and infalliblity, because scriptures and councils are all together canons of the Church and unalterable, yet there is a distinction between them.
Bryan Cross November 17th, 2009 5:30 pm :
lojahw,

As I pointed out earlier, the use of Scripture by the Council of Nicea is perfectly consistent with the Catholic understanding of the interdependence and interrelation of Scripture and the Magisterium. Nothing about the Council’s use of Scripture indicates either that the individual retains ultimate interpretive authority or that the definitive decisions of the Church’s Magisterium are not protected from error by the Holy Spirit. The “assumptions” underlying sola scriptura were voiced by heretics, but not by the Church Fathers. That is because the Church Fathers never believed that the individual retained ultimate interpretive authority, or that the individual armed with his own personal Bible could stand in judgment upon the definitive decision of an ecumenical council regarding matters of faith or morals.

You wrote:

Your claim is that the successor of Peter has the charism of infallibility is refuted by empirical evidence. Peter’s successors have been inconsistent. Truth is not inconsistent with itself.

The Fourth Ecumenical Council praised Pope Leo I thus: “Peter has spoken thus through Leo.” This same Pope taught:

“For the entire human race there was but one remedy … that one of the sons of Adam should be born free and innocent of original transgression, to prevail for the rest both by His example and His merits. Still further, because this was not permitted by natural generation, and because there could be no offspring from our faulty stock without seed… is it not Thou who art alone?'” (Sermon 28.3)

But Pope Pius IX contradicted Pope Leo I by declaring that Jesus was not “alone” born free and innocent of original transgression – that his mother, Mary, was likewise sinless from conception. Either Pope Leo I handed down an incorrect interpretation that wasn’t corrected for 1500 years, or Pope Pius IX taught error. Which is it? Jesus cannot “alone” be sinless if Mary also was “free and innocent of original transgression.”

You’ve created a contradiction where there is none. And this shows why you need the Magisterium in order properly to understand both Scripture and the teachings of the Church. Mary is not one of the “sons of Adam.” So what Pope Leo says does not pertain to her. Pope Leo was surely not unaware of what earlier Church Fathers had written:

He [Jesus] was the ark formed of incorruptible wood. For by this is signified that His tabernacle [Mary] was exempt from defilement and corruption. (Hyppolytus, A.D. 235)

You alone and your Mother are more beautiful than any others, for there is neither blemish in you nor any stains upon your Mother. Who of my children can compare in beauty to these? (Ephraim the Syrian, A. D. 361)

Come, then, and search out your sheep, not through your servants or hired men, but do it yourself. Lift me up bodily and in the flesh, which is fallen in Adam. Lift me up not from Sarah but from Mary, a Virgin not only undefiled but a Virgin whom grace had made inviolate, free of every stain of sin. (St. Ambrose of Milan, A.D. 387)

He was conceived by the virgin, who had been first purified by the Spirit in soul and body; for, as it was fitting that childbearing should receive its share of honor, so it was necessary that virginity should receive even greater honor. (St. Gregory Nazianzen, A.D. 390)

We must except the Holy Virgin Mary, concerning whom I wish to raise no question when it touches the subject of sins, out of honor to the Lord; for from Him we know what abundance of grace for overcoming sin in every particular was conferred upon her who had the merit to conceive and bear Him who undoubtedly had no sin. (St. Augustine, A.D. 415)

These help us be careful not to read into Pope Leo’s statement what he does not say.

You then wrote:

Likewise, self-governance of each locality (and later, each province) was clearly taught by the Apostle Paul, by Clement of Rome, by Ignatius of Antioch (to Polycarp of Smyrna, whose bishop is Christ!), by the Didache [Teaching of the Twelve Apostles], by the Apostolic Traditions of Hippolytus, and by the first four Ecumenical Councils. The decisions and canons of all four Ecumenical Councils were accepted by the current bishop of Rome in their times. Yet, almost 1000 years after the First Ecumenical Council declared the territorial limits of bishops within their respective provinces, Pope Boniface VIII, wrote:

“We declare, say, define and pronounce, that it is absolutely necessary for the salvation of every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff” (Pope Boniface VIII, Bull Unam Sanctam).

The Roman Pontiff cannot both be limited to a province and demand the subjection of every human creature. Which interpretation is correct?

Your mistaken assumption here is that the authority of the Apostolic See was always and only limited to the diocese of Rome. Self-governance of each diocese is fully compatible with subordination to the authority of the successor of St. Peter holding the keys of the Kingdom, on the long-standing Catholic principle of subsidiarity. This is indicated even in St. Clement’s rebuke of the Church at Corinth — as explained very well in this lecture: “St. Clement of Rome: First Known Exercise of Papal Primacy.”

You then wrote:

Actually, the truth is that RC’s don’t even agree among themselves how many and which “infallible” teachings the Popes have made.

I agree that some Catholics don’t fully understand Catholic theology. But the ignorance of some Catholics about Catholic theology does not falsify Catholic theology or demonstrate that the Catholic Church and/or her Magisterium does not know which doctrines are de fide. There are set, objective criteria for distinguishing the dogmas taught infallibly from those matters that are not infallibly taught.

But if God set up such an office: 1) why has it been inconsistent; 2) why has it been used so infrequently; 3) and which Scriptures did these “infallible interpretations” cover?

It has not been inconsistent; it has been consistent over 2000 years. It has been in use since the first century. As for your third question, see below.

If this office is so important, why after 2000 years has it been exercised only a few times?

It has been exercised many, many times. Your notion that it has only been exercised a few times is incorrect.

RC’s make a big issue about how Protestants know what the canon of Scripture is, but they cannot even tell us which Scriptures have the benefit of infallible interpretations!

The Magisterium’s infallible teachings generally do not explicitly specify a particular interpretation of Scripture; they provide the doctrinal framework within which Scripture may be properly interpreted (e.g. the deity of Christ, the Three Persons of the Trinity, the two natures of Christ, etc.)

Furthermore, with such a miniscule portion of Scripture covered, it would seem that either a) the office is irrelevant to the life of the Church; or b) the office has severely neglected its duty.

See above. You’ve misunderstand the manner in which the Magisterium infallibly guides the Church’s interpretation and understanding of Scripture. It does not do so, generally, by pointing to a particular verse and stipulating explicitly how that verse must be interpreted.

Your proposal, Solo Papa, doesn’t make sense. It, like the abuses of Sola Scriptura, boils down to Solo Sua (God’s Word is secondary, self is primary).

Given your gross misunderstanding of it, no wonder you think it doesn’t make sense. If I thought it was what you think it is, I would say the same as you. Before you criticize something (especially with such vehemence and confidence) it would be prudent first to seek to understand it.

All these things are things you can learn on your own by reading the Catechism or other basic books explaining the teaching and theology of the Catholic Church. The purpose of CTC is not to discuss such things; we’re not Catholic Answers, and we have no intention of being such. The purpose of this combox is to discuss our article. So, let’s keep the discussion on-topic. If you have questions about other things pertaining to Catholicism, there are many other online resources and books explaining the answers to such questions.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
lojahw November 17th, 2009 6:36 pm :
Bryan, Re: your ECF quotes about Mary, as everyone on this thread has agreed: they don’t prove anything because none of them had the charism of infallibility.

Re: Leo I’s teaching on Mary:
For the earth of human flesh, which in the first transgressor, was cursed, in this Offspring of the Blessed Virgin only produced a seed that was blessed and free from the fault of its stock. And each one is a partaker of this spiritual origin in regeneration; and to every one when he is re-born, the water of baptism is like the Virgin’s womb; for the same Holy Spirit fills the font, Who filled the Virgin, that the sin, which that sacred conception overthrew, may be taken away by this mystical washing. (Sermon 24.3)

Here Leo explains that the curse of “the earth of human flesh” was overthrown through “that sacred conception.” Mary, like the rest of humanity, was not cleansed of original sin apart from Christ’s sacred conception.

I maintain the inconsistency.

You wrote: “Self-governance of each diocese is fully compatible with subordination to the authority of the successor of St. Peter holding the keys of the Kingdom, on the long-standing Catholic principle of subsidiarity.”

The canons of the first Four Ecumenical Councils beg to differ. There is no “subordination to the authority of the successor of St. Peter” in the following:

Council of Nicea, Canon 6: Let the ancient customs in Egypt, Libya and Pentapolis prevail, that the Bishop of Alexandria have jurisdiction in all these, since the like
is customary for the Bishop of Rome also. Likewise in Antioch and the other
provinces, let the Churches retain their privileges. And this is to be
universally understood, that if any one be made bishop without the consent
of the Metropolitan, the great Synod has declared that such a man ought not
to be a bishop.

The “like is customary for the Bishop of Rome also” indicates provincial authority. It is the Metropolitan in each See that has subsidiary authority, not Rome. There is not one hint of subsidiary authority to Rome of the provinces listed. [Your explanation seems to stem from Rome’s one-time confusion of the canons from Sardica, which was in Rome’s jurisdiction, with those of Nicea. History tells us that Rome’s mix-up of their records was resolved when an authentic copy of the canons of Nicea was produced.]

Similarly, the Second Ecumenical Council decreed: “If the letter of the canon about dioceses is kept, it is clear that the provincial synod will manage affairs in each province, as was decreed at Nicaea” (Canon 2).

I’ve noticed that RCs like to “read into” texts lots of things that the rest of us don’t see there, particularly when it supports their partisan interpretations.

Blessings.
Andrew McCallum November 17th, 2009 7:12 pm :
I note, too, with some disappointment, that no one has engaged or questioned or discussed the conditions on authority (content independence and preemption) that I previously suggested really ought to be discussed if we want to get a clearer grasp on the notions of epistemic authority and autonomy….

Neal – I assume you are speaking of statements that you make in post #61 such as:

We find that a good number of the arguments aimed at distinguishing solo from sola, and which aim at justifying the conclusion that Catholicism amounts to its own version of solo scriptura (‘sola ecclesia’), either do not work or contain suppressed premises that, after some consideration, we find ourselves unable to discover. We notice that a number of these tensions disappear if we drop sola scriptura in either of its permutations and adopt a position that would justifiably allow us to treat external interpretive authority as de facto irreformable and infallible,….

From what I can see in your and Bryan’s article you are attempting to determine whether or not sola and solo scriptura can be collapsed together as effectively coming down to the same sort of authoritative decision. And as I said to Tim, yes they certainly can given the assumption that we are focusing on the epistemic questions of judgments of the individual. And your whole article from what I see speaks from this standpoint. But now here you are raising a different issue when you direct your epistemic sights on the object of authority rather than the subjective assessment made by the individual on that authority. And it is just this question that I brought up earlier but nobody commented back to me as if they understood my point. So I am glad to see you bringing this up particularly since historically the focus of the concept of sola scriptura is this matter of the epistemological authority of the ecclesiastical entity under investigation rather than the question of our subjective judgment of this entity.

But since you have brought it up I think I can feel comfortable asking obvious question: What tensions appear (and/or disappear) if we assume the external internal authority to be potentially fallible? And then as a matter of practical historical application, what if after a study of (for example) the Sub-apostolics we conclude that at this point in time there was no conception of an infallible interpretive tradition outside of the Scriptures. If we were to come to this conclusion would we be forced philosophically to bring into question their ability to judge the ecclesiastical matters that we find recorded in their writings?

I have not really wrapped my mind around your presuppositional analogy. I can go back if you think I should and think about it a little more.
Neal Judisch November 17th, 2009 8:13 pm :
Hi, Andrew.

Thanks for responding. Actually, the thing I was talking about, when I mentioned that nobody has “engaged” a particular point I made, was the conditions on authority I borrowed from Joseph Raz and suggested should be applied or at least could be applied, so as to tighten up the discussion. I wasn’t referencing the summary of the argument or line of thought that you subsequently quote from me.

Unfortunately, I don’t think I understand what you mean when you say that “here I am, raising a different issue” or changing the subject by talking about the nature of epistemic authority, and arguing that the magisterium/Church constitutes an epistemic authority in a way that the Church does not on Reformed Protestantism. It seemed to me that that was precisely the issue people were most interested in raising in the thread, or at least was intrinsically connected to it. As to your follow up questions, I’m not sure what you mean by an “external internal authority.” I think the tensions that appear under the fallibilist assumption (if I understand you here) are quite close to or are identical with the problems we discuss with reference to Mathison; and as for the historical questions you raise, if you’re wanting to get into a sophisticated debate on the patristics, you’ll have to find a different discussion partner than me.

Last, the presuppositionalist analogy I thought was totally straightforward: the idea is just that both of those guys are using their own autonomous reason along the way, but the presuppositionalist would not thereby infer that presuppositionalists are therefore all autonomous thinkers, just as much as any atheist. Mutatis mutandis in the Catholic/Protestant case. The analogy was directed at the first set of recurrent criticisms: “you Catholics use private judgment/are solo scriptura individualists just as much as we are,” etc.

Best,

Neal
Andrew McCallum November 17th, 2009 10:57 pm :
Hello again Neal,

Whoops – “external internal authority” should have been “external interpretive authority,” which was phrase that you used.

There are two possible discussions we could be having when we speak of sola scriptura. We could be talking about A) the standard that the individual uses to judge theological matters, or we could be speaking of B) the standard by which ecclesiastic entities use when they render judgments. It seems to me that in your article that you are speaking of A, but not B. Take for example IV.A. of your article where you discuss the lack of principled difference between sola and solo. In the second paragraph you say:

But there are two ways to make oneself one’s own ultimate interpretive and magisterial authority. One is a direct way and the other is an indirect way. The direct way is to subject all theological questions directly to the final verdict of one’s own interpretation of Scripture. That is the solo scriptura position. Because it is direct, the nature of the position is quite transparent; we can see clearly in such a case that the individual is acting as his own ultimate interpretive authority.

The discussion goes on in this vein. You are talking about two different possibilities but they are both within the context of A. From what I can see you do not specifically address B in the article. But then in #61 you (rightfully and properly) raise the issue of the “external interpretive authority” which is at least the start of discussion B in my scheme. That’s great, it’s just what I wanted to discuss! The question is then obviously whether this “external interpretive authority” is using an infallible standard which is confined to Scripture alone or whether the infallible standard extends to something beyond (but of course including) Scripture. This is the B question and the one that Protestants are generally speaking to when we speak of sola scriptura. Too often our Catholic friends are speaking to A when we are speaking to B, so the conversation does not travel too far.

And no, I did not want to get into a detailed discussion of patristic epistemology. I just wanted to make the simple point that if there was no evident infallible standard beyond Scripture during the early few centuries of the Church, then the ECF’s at this point were acting with proper authority but without any infallible tools beyond the Scriptures. Now maybe an infallible tradition later developed (very problematic to my mind but conceptually possible), but I think it’s fair to note that before this time, assuming there was no such extra-biblical infallible standard we can point to, there should be no reason to posit such an infallible standard as a philosophical necessity.

On your presuppositionalist analogy, you are utilizing an example that is meant to further demonstrate that sola and solo collapse together. So maybe this is not having any resonance with me because I already agree with you. But I would qualify my agreement by saying that you were utilizing this example in an A rather than a B context.
Paige Britton November 17th, 2009 11:26 pm :
Richard (#164) & Mateo (#163) asked me some questions a while back, and I haven’t been around to answer them. These came up because I quoted Bryan and Neal’s footnote (n.55) re. Kevin Vanhoozer (who was describing different interpretive approaches that Protestants take since we believe we have an infallible Word but fallible interpreters). I’ll try to respond briefly here. (I’m answering out of courtesy, but I apologize for taking the space, as I know you guys want to move on to more challenging things.)

Mateo (#163) wrote: “My question is this, why would Jesus found a Church and then leave us with no way of knowing with certainty what he actually taught?” – which is the big question behind your other questions. I would respond by observing that those in a “thoughtful” Protestant category, whom I believe Vanhoozer was describing in his approach #4 (see my post #161), have accepted that this is close to the case, whether or not they can answer WHY. (Though I should qualify this a little – in this position, it is ABSOLUTE certainty of interpretation that is beyond us. But on this view, SUFFICIENT certainty is already enough to die for, and live for.)

If such Protestants are right, and there is no Magisterium with infallibility and authority in interpretation, then they are correct to aim for / expect interpretation that is “sufficient and reliable,” not infallible. Having accepted a certain epistemic situation as God’s will, they make use of what they have been given – biblical texts, intellect, past and present thinkers, and dependence on the Holy Spirit (which may be the key to the humility they need to avoid getting stuck in intellectual pride). I am not here arguing that all this is RIGHT – only pointing out that some Protestants have found this a livable approach in the absence of a Magisterium, and all is not epistemic chaos.

Certainly plenty of sincere Protestants think they are guided by the Spirit’s illumination. Where I see a difference, and where I think Vanhoozer sees a difference, is between Protestants who insist they have THE right answers across the board (via Spirit or study or whatever) and Protestants whose convictions are strong and hard-won, but who don’t make the mistake of insisting they have a “magisterium” of any shape or size that precludes their ever being wrong.

And I agree with you, Mateo, that there is widespread hermeneutical chaos and anarchy in Protestantism. But I think a lot of it has to do with the mistake of thinking we can know infallibly. I also think it is possible for Protestants to have differences of opinion about certain matters of praxis and exegesis while still sharing communion at a basic level.

Mateo also asks how I would respond to Terry’s post (#56): (to paraphrase:)“Would the Bridegroom leave his “bride” w/o a protector to guide her into all truth?” I would gently say that if the Lord did not leave a Magisterium arrangement, then his perfect and loving will is that we expect sufficient, not infallible, understanding. I only mean to point out that some Protestants seem to get this idea, and others seem to miss it. (And the ones who “get it” seemed not to have appeared in the article above, till I noticed them in that footnote.)

Richard — you ask whether I think there is A true meaning in the text and how to find it. Yes, I believe God intended to communicate to his Church, and used human words to do so. The meaning of the text is HIS meaning. Did he leave us with a Magisterium to help us infallibly know the correct interpretation, or not? If so, then listen to it. If not, then this is his loving will for us: expect to be able to know sufficiently, enough to live for him, and don’t get hung up aiming for infallibility of interpretation. Work hard to understand, stay humble, keep learning.
lojahw November 17th, 2009 11:46 pm :
BTW, Bryan,

You misinterpreted the quote from Pope Leo I’s Sermon 28.3: “born free and innocent of original transgression. … because this was not permitted by natural generation … is it not Thou alone?” means that a human being conceived by “natural generation” could NOT be “born free and innocent of original transgression.” Only Christ qualified because He was the only human born without natural generation – without a human father. This explanation of Christ’s sinlessness has often been used throughout Church history.

Regarding salvation:
Consider Pope Damasus’ teaching on salvation (following a series of anathemas for those who disagreed with his points):

“This is the salvation of the Christians, that believing in the Trinity, that is in the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, and being baptized into the same one Godhead and power and divinity and substance, in Him we may trust.”

And, in contrast, Boniface VIII: “We declare, say, define and pronounce, that it is absolutely necessary for the salvation of every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff” (Bull Unam Sanctam).

Even without appealing to the obvious disconnect between Boniface’s “infallible declaration” on salvation and what Scripture teaches about it, I submit that the above two statements are inconsistent, especially from a RC viewpoint since “This is … ” carries such literal weight in your interpretations!

Your speculative beliefs about your infallible teaching office are refuted by the inconsistencies of their teaching. Your arguments are really no more than special pleading.

You have failed to prove your assertion that the successors of Peter are infallible.

Blessings.
lojahw November 17th, 2009 11:59 pm :
Paige said:

“you ask whether I think there is A true meaning in the text and how to find it. Yes, I believe God intended to communicate to his Church, and used human words to do so. The meaning of the text is HIS meaning. Did he leave us with a Magisterium to help us infallibly know the correct interpretation, or not? … If not, then this is his loving will for us: expect to be able to know sufficiently, enough to live for him, and don’t get hung up aiming for infallibility of interpretation. Work hard to understand, stay humble, keep learning.”

[Note: I excised the “If so…” answer because I believe it has been empirically refuted.]

A hearty AMEN!
Bryan Cross November 18th, 2009 12:46 am :
lojahw,

Here Leo explains that the curse of “the earth of human flesh” was overthrown through “that sacred conception.” Mary, like the rest of humanity, was not cleansed of original sin apart from Christ’s sacred conception

Correct. That’s fully consistent with the Catholic understanding of the Immaculate Conception.

I maintain the inconsistency.

You are free to maintain any inconsistency you want. But you have not demonstrated any inconsistency. You seem to want to try to find an inconsistency, just as certain atheists seem to want to try find reasons not to believe in God, and certain critics want to find contradictions in Scripture. You don’t seem to be a charitable interpreter of the Church’s history and documents.

The sixth canon of Nicea does not deny the universal authority of the Apostolic See. It is not addressing that question. It is addressing local ecclesial government by province. If you understand subsidiarity, you understand that there is no either/or with respect to local and universal government. The canons of the Council of Nicea became authoritative over the whole Church only at the moment they were approved by the Apostolic See. In that way the authority of the canons presupposes the universal authority of the Apostolic See.

I’ve noticed that RCs like to “read into” texts lots of things that the rest of us don’t see there, particularly when it supports their partisan interpretations.

Without the fuller context, I’m sure it appears that way. But when we bring in the fuller context, the apparent discrepancy dissolves.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Bryan Cross November 18th, 2009 1:16 am :
lojahw,

You misinterpreted the quote from Pope Leo I’s Sermon 28.3: “born free and innocent of original transgression. … because this was not permitted by natural generation … is it not Thou alone?” means that a human being conceived by “natural generation” could NOT be “born free and innocent of original transgression.” Only Christ qualified because He was the only human born without natural generation – without a human father. This explanation of Christ’s sinlessness has often been used throughout Church history.

The “not permitted by natural generation” does not mean that it is impossible with God, but that it was the default in the fallen condition. Pope Leo isn’t saying that it is impossible for God to bring a sin-free human being into the world through natural generation between a fallen man and a fallen woman. He is speaking of the natural condition of man in his fallen state, how procreation in the fallen condition does not allow the passing on of sanctifying grace to the offspring. But that ordinary limitation does not preclude God from bestowing sanctifying grace on a naturally conceived human being at the moment of conception. He is not speaking about Mary’s conception (or ruling out her immaculate conception); he is speaking about the ordinary condition of natural generation in the fallen condition, a condition that is not beyond the power of God to overcome.

Regarding salvation:
Consider Pope Damasus’ teaching on salvation (following a series of anathemas for those who disagreed with his points):

“This is the salvation of the Christians, that believing in the Trinity, that is in the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, and being baptized into the same one Godhead and power and divinity and substance, in Him we may trust.”

And, in contrast, Boniface VIII: “We declare, say, define and pronounce, that it is absolutely necessary for the salvation of every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff” (Bull Unam Sanctam).

Even without appealing to the obvious disconnect between Boniface’s “infallible declaration” on salvation and what Scripture teaches about it, I submit that the above two statements are inconsistent, especially from a RC viewpoint since “This is … ” carries such literal weight in your interpretations!

The two statements are fully compatible. Pope Damasus isn’t denying the necessity of the other parts of the Creed. He is not saying that believing in the Church, and resurrection of the body, etc. is all now optional. So you are misunderstanding Pope Damasus’s statement, by [falsely] assuming that he means that this statement is the exhaustive extent of the articles of faith. But if he had meant it that way, he would have been a heretic for denying the necessity of the other parts of the Creed. So, again the principle of charity demands that we do not unnecessarily make someone out to be an idiot or a heretic. The necessity of belief in the Church, as specified in the Creed, is more fully specified by Pope Boniface. By more fully explaining the doctrine of the Church, Pope Boniface is not contradicting the more concise earlier statements about the Church in the Creed, nor is he contradicting the statement by Pope Damasus.

Your speculative beliefs about your infallible teaching office are refuted by the inconsistencies of their teaching. Your arguments are really no more than special pleading.

You have not yet shown one teaching to be inconsistent, or one of our arguments to commit the fallacy of special pleading. If you disagree, please show the inconsistency, or point out the special pleading.

You have failed to prove your assertion that the successors of Peter are infallible.

Before accusing someone of failing to do something, it is best first to confirm that he or she is trying to do it. Our purpose in writing this article and responding to your comments in this combox discussion has not been to prove that the successors of Peter are infallible, notwithstanding your obvious attempts to turn the discussion into a debate about such subjects.

I hope at this point we can turn our attention back to the article.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
lojahw November 18th, 2009 10:42 am :
Bryan,

This thread has been focused on pathologies of Sola Scriptura, asserting that the abuses seen among Protestants leads one to conclude that there is no principled difference between Sola Scriptura and Solo Scriptura, where the individual is the de facto final interpreter of truth.

What this thread has not explored is how the individual functions under Sola Papa, i.e., under the Roman Catholic infallible teaching office. I submit that there is no principled difference between people regardless of whether they are RC or Protestant: each individual is the de facto final interpreter of whatever source of truth they encounter. Each person filters what they read or hear into his or her own understanding. The main difference between RCs and those who actually practice Sola Scriptura (I’ll grant that many do not), is that RCs put an additional unique filter between themselves and God’s Word. Both Protestants and RCs are taught by pastors trained in God’s Word, but RCs also add an “infallible interpreter” between the individual and God’s Word. However, ultimately, the individual RC functions as the de facto final interpreter of the interpreter of truth.

The manifestations of Protestant abuses and misunderstandings of Scripture are quite visible, as all recognize in the splintered condition of Protestant Churches. However, just because RCs stick together organizationally does not mean that they do not function interpretively the same way that Protestants do. Each RC must still decide for themselves what the teaching of the Pope means.

As you and any honest RC acknowledge, RCs are all over the map in their understanding of the Magisterium and what it has taught or not taught, infallibly or otherwise (cf. CCC 892). I submit that RC’s, with respect to the teaching of the Magisterium, must each decide: 1) what does it mean? and 2) what am I going to do about it? In conversations I’ve had with RCs, Pope Boniface’s Unam Sanctam is interpreted in many different ways. Secondly, RCs respond in different ways to Boniface’s declaration: e.g., 1) they argue that it was not an “ex cathedra” teaching and therefore can be ignored; 2) they argue that it was superceded by Vatican II which affirms the salvation of Christians not in communion with the RCC [Unitatis Redintegratio 1: “it remains true that all who have been justified by faith in Baptism are members of Christ’s body”]; 3) they believe that it is an “ex cathedra” teaching and therefore anyone who is not a member of the visible RCC is damned to hell; 4) they believe that as a good RC they must accept it but they live as if it weren’t true; 5) they express verbal dissent in the RCC and live with the tension between their conscience and what they’ve been told; 6) they cannot reconcile Boniface’s teaching with God’s Word and they leave the RCC. There are of course other responses and the pattern. The same can be said for the papal teaching on contraception and any number of other subjects.

One should not mistake organizational unity for spiritual unity. RCs have as widely diverse beliefs as Protestants – they just don’t show it as visibly as Protestants do. Protestants value visible unity at a local assembly level, understanding that the members of the body are many and diverse, but are all connected to the same head (Christ). The branches of the vine are distinct, yet all are connected to and nourished by the true vine.

So the real question is whether or not the Magisterium of the RCC is infallible – and that is a question that each person must ultimately decide for themselves. For me, the cognitive dissonance between the teaching of the Magisterium and the clear teaching of Scripture is too great.

Peace.
lojahw November 18th, 2009 11:40 am :
Bryan,

Re: special pleading – you appeal to the ECFs to support your viewpoint but you dismiss all references to the ECFs that do not support your viewpoint.

Re: inconsistencies – IN THIS OFFSPRING of the Blessed Virgin ONLY produced a seed that was blessed and free from the fault of its stock. The referent of “only” is “this offspring of the Blessed Virgin.” Only in this offspring (Christ) was there a seed that was blessed and free from the fault of its stock. The referent of “stock” is Mary. Mary indeed was NOT blessed and free from fault; it was her faulty stock referred to which produced the “only seed that was blessed and free from the fault of its stock.”

Peace.
Shawn Miller November 18th, 2009 12:57 pm :
This thread has been most helpful, thank you.

As a theologically trained (modestly) Protestant whose certainly considering the claims of the Catholic Church, and admittedly come to seen those very marks of the Creed in her, I would like to offer an affirmation. My subjective experience definitely attests, to my satisfaction at least, the distinction between asking the question “where is that church that teaches what I already know to be true from the scriptures?” to “where is the Church which would trump my pre-conceived doctrinal conclusions?” It is the same question which Joseph Smith asked—though I couldn’t tolerate the answer being “there is none. Christianity is forsaken.” When either question is the subject of one’s prayers for an extended period, the felt difference is remarkable.

I remember, as a bible-college student, picking up those very readable “5 views on. . .” The type of text which would present an issue, such as Eschatology or Baptism ect., and hear arguments from the leading schools of thought. This, of course, is all fine and good. Yet, I would pick them up so casually, wondering “which am I?” I never lost sight of the fact that I was ultimately my own theological authority.

My current dilemma is so difficult precisely because of the recognition that I would be surrendering a right to interpretive authority (aside from ecclesial authority). In this way catholics, it seems, are married to the Church. One’s membership is not really revocable, only corruptible (as the married man has no power to nullify his marriage). I could not rightfully, at a point in the future, for whatever doctrinal outrage, leave and set up shop down the block. This is, for me, another way to frame the difference contra the repeated allegation that I am reading.

Cheers,
Keith W. Thompson November 18th, 2009 2:56 pm :
Bryan,

In our continuing dialogue:
KEITH: I much prefer Solo Scriptura to Solo Church Historia…
BRYAN: Your last line is quite telling, especially the word ‘prefer’. For the Catholic, personal preference has nothing to do with determining the identity and nature of the Church.

I guess that I didn’t make it clear that I was using the word “prefer” quite intentionally. I have been trying to point out that you are EQUALLY as guilty of beginning your epistemological search for salvation with an individualistic “preference” as we protestants are. (..along with every other human being from every other religion on the face of the earth.) So, for you to identify the point in our epistemology where “private judgment” is used and then say that every epistemic conclusion based upon that is somehow tainted is calling the kettle black. (Also, the doctrine of the Perspicuity of Scripture addresses this supposed “Protestant problem” at length. I would recommend reading that section in Herman Bavink or Louis Berkhof for a reasonable defense of it.)

I suppose I am utterly confused how you can say that for Catholics, “…personal preference has nothing to do with determining the identity and nature of the Church,” while in the next breath you state, “The Catholic approach is to locate an entity (i.e. the Church) in the first century, then trace that entity forward to the present day, and then listening to what she says is the gospel. Both involve the initial use of private judgment…” ??? Is “personal preference” and “private judgment” somehow different? Are you somehow able to use “private judgment” in a way that does not rely on “personal preference?” Are you saying that Catholics have the ability to read human history without any preexisting bias? Are you implying that Roman Catholic historians were free from personal bias when they wrote the history of the church?

Epistemologically, you and I are in the same boat, (floating down different rivers) but again, I prefer to start with the Word of God, which has the power of God to give life than to start with fallible human history written by fallible men which does not have the power to give life, but most certainly has the power to both lie and deceive. I prefer Solo Scriptura to Solo Church Historia. I prefer my boat and I prefer my river.

As to whether or not Apostolic Succession is the exclusive means by which true ecclesiastical authority has been given is a different matter. That is not the thesis of your paper above so I have not gone there yet, but it seems that the thread is rapidly degenerating into a discussion of the validity of Rome’s brand of successionism. This is the same problem that we faced in the previous thread in which I conversed with you, and I think that it is the heart of the matter. One of the inherent weaknesses I see in your article, is that it does not sufficiently address this issue which is THE issue between Reformed catholics and Roman Catholics in desperate need of reformation. (Hey, I never claimed to be unbiased!) It seems to me that you presuppose that true succession necessitates true teaching. This was never the case in the OT & I don’t see why I should believe that it is the case now.

Throughout biblical history, God’s truth was constantly being perverted by his “authorized” priesthood, but God always retained a remnant of true prophets who called for reform in the land. Why should we think that God decided to grant an “infallible button” to the Roman Catholic Church when He never did this in the visible church of the Old Testament? It seems inconsistent. The “TRUE” church in the OT was the remnant faithful to the TEACHING irrespective of their Levitical “true authority based on succession.” Why does legitimate succession of office in the New Covenant somehow change the fact that mankind (including Popes and bishops) is depraved and susceptible to error and the perversion of the truth?

Hoping to learn,
Keith WT
Tom Riello November 18th, 2009 3:29 pm :
Shawn,

The way you put the questions about finding the Church was excellent. Be assured of my prayers as you navigate the waters.

Keith,

When you say that, contra, Catholics, you prefer to start with the Word of God, you assume so much in that statement. For starters, how do you know what the Word of God is? Is it possible to know the Word of God apart from the community to which and through which it was given (e.g. Israel and the Church)?

That being said, I am genuinely surprised that many of the rebuttals to the Catholic position have been “you use personal judgment, therefore, you are no different than the Protestant” etc… Why is it surprising that Catholics use personal judgment? Part 3 Articles 3, 4, and 6 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church make it very clear about the personal responsibility that we have to make a morally informed choice.
Ken Temple November 18th, 2009 3:32 pm :
One sentence from the Louis Bouyer quote:

If it was possible for the first to come from the second, it must somehow have been contained therein.

“somehow” SolO was “contained therein” (in SolA) is a massive assumption. The assumption is that the first (SolO Scritpura) came from the second (SolA Scriptura) as a necessary consequence or causal relationship. We could say the same thing, that somehow SolA came from the RCC. The RCC caused SolA Scriptura in a reactionary way from:
1. the failure to preach the gospel and teach the Scriptures properly
2. the harsh treatment of heretics and schismatics (Nestorians, Monophysites, Wycliff, Lollards, Jan Huss) all through history, from the principle of the marriage of the church and state of Emperor Theodosius in 380 AD to Justinian in 530s-550s AD to the Crusades and Inquisitions to the Reformation. Without the political freedoms of separation of church and state of the Germans (Fredrick the Wise) and the German Princes agreed to the Augsburg confession, the RCC would have burned Luther at the stake. The proliferation of SolO type churches was made possible more by the political freedoms of separation of church and state ( Magna Carta – US Constitution, Declaration of Independence, etc.) .
wilkins November 18th, 2009 3:43 pm :
Keith T,

have you read section V of this article? have you read the Liccione recommendation from comment 4? i’m not trying to be combative, just genuinely curious.
Bryan Cross November 18th, 2009 3:56 pm :
lojahw,

You wrote:

I submit that there is no principled difference between people regardless of whether they are RC or Protestant: each individual is the de facto final interpreter of whatever source of truth they encounter. Each person filters what they read or hear into his or her own understanding. The main difference between RCs and those who actually practice Sola Scriptura (I’ll grant that many do not), is that RCs put an additional unique filter between themselves and God’s Word. Both Protestants and RCs are taught by pastors trained in God’s Word, but RCs also add an “infallible interpreter” between the individual and God’s Word. However, ultimately, the individual RC functions as the de facto final interpreter of the interpreter of truth.

We addressed this objection in section V.A. in our article, in which we pointed out the distinction (that you are here glossing) between the two senses of final. See the paragraph that begins “This objection can also take the following form.”

RCs are all over the map in their understanding of the Magisterium

There is undoubtedly a deficiency among many Catholic lay-persons in understanding the Catholic faith. That is the result of poor catechesis. But that does not entail that in Catholicism the individual retains ultimate interpretive authority. The Catholic who is relatively ignorant of the Catholic faith does not thereby become his own ultimate interpretive authority. So the point that “many Catholics do not understand the Catholic faith” does nor refute our argument or show that the Catholic position is equivalent to solo scriptura.

RCs have as widely diverse beliefs as Protestants – they just don’t show it as visibly as Protestants do.

The principled difference is that there is in the Catholic Church one definite faith, defined by the Magisterium. Any Catholic who deviates from it is ipso facto heterodox. But in Protestantism, there is no Magisterium to set the standard for what is orthodox and what is heterodox. So the “diversity” of theological doctrines among Protestants is not deviation from an established and defined orthoxody, whereas the “diversity” of doctrinal beliefs among Catholics is deviation from an established and defined orthodoxy, excepting those beliefs concerning which there has been no teaching given by the Magisterium, in which matters we have freedom. The reason Catholics can affirm the saying, “In Essentials, Unity; in Non-essentials, Liberty; in All Things, Charity” is because in virtue of the Magisterium we have a principled distinction between essentials and non-essentials. But in Protestantism there is no principled distinction or ground for a principled distinction between essentials and non-essentials.

Re: special pleading – you appeal to the ECFs to support your viewpoint but you dismiss all references to the ECFs that do not support your viewpoint.

I have not dismissed any quotation from the ECFs. I have explained how a Catholic understands the ECF quotations to which you have have referred.

Re: inconsistencies – IN THIS OFFSPRING of the Blessed Virgin ONLY produced a seed that was blessed and free from the fault of its stock. The referent of “only” is “this offspring of the Blessed Virgin.” Only in this offspring (Christ) was there a seed that was blessed and free from the fault of its stock. The referent of “stock” is Mary. Mary indeed was NOT blessed and free from fault; it was her faulty stock referred to which produced the “only seed that was blessed and free from the fault of its stock.”

Here again is the quotation from Pope St. Leo I:

In this nativity also, Isaiah’s saying is fulfilled, “let the earth produce and bring forth salvation, and let righteousness spring up together (Isaiah 45:8) .” For the earth of human flesh, which in the first transgressor, was cursed, in this Offspring of the Blessed Virgin only produced a seed that was blessed and free from the fault of its stock. (Sermon 24.3)

The word ‘only’ there is an adverb modifying the word ‘produced’. It doesn’t mean that only Christ was sinless. Pope St. Leo is saying that in Christ’s conception, the earth composing human flesh only produced a blessed seed, i.e. did not also produce a corrupt seed. So there is no inconsistency between what Pope St. Leo I says here, and the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
mateo November 18th, 2009 4:26 pm :
Paige Britton: Mateo (#163) wrote: “My question is this, why would Jesus found a Church and then leave us with no way of knowing with certainty what he actually taught?” – which is the big question behind your other questions. I would respond by observing that those in a “thoughtful” Protestant category, whom I believe Vanhoozer was describing in his approach #4 (see my post #161), have accepted that this is close to the case, whether or not they can answer WHY. … If such Protestants are right, and there is no Magisterium with infallibility and authority in interpretation, then they are correct to aim for / expect interpretation that is “sufficient and reliable,” not infallible.

If one cannot know with certainty what Jesus actually taught, one can never know with certainty that their beliefs are either “sufficient” or “reliable”!

I once encountered a Baptist man that argued along the lines that you are advancing. Basically he said this: We are saved by faith alone, but no one can know with certainty what we are supposed to believe. To be saved, we need to have sincere faith in things that may or may not be true.
Bryan Cross November 18th, 2009 4:48 pm :
Keith T,

You wrote:

Is “personal preference” and “private judgment” somehow different?

And here, perhaps, we’re starting to get to the heart of the divide. Yes, personal preference and private judgment are not the same thing. Personal preference is what people use when they are standing at the ice cream counter at Baskin Robbins, trying to make a decision about which flavor to order. Are they also using private judgment? Yes. They are using both. Contrast that with the accident reconstruction project of Flight 1549. That task is also accomplished by private judgment, but not governed by personal preference. It is not that we can go about reconstructing an accident any way we might happen to feel or prefer. There is a way to go about it that leads to the truth about what happened, and that way is what it is, regardless of our preferences for other ways.

Are you saying that Catholics have the ability to read human history without any preexisting bias?

Humans are able to discover the truth about what happened in the past. We can trace the Church through history, from the time of the Apostles to the present.

I prefer to start with the Word of God, which has the power of God to give life than to start with fallible human history written by fallible men which does not have the power to give life, but most certainly has the power to both lie and deceive.

How do you know that [it, i.e. the Protestant Bible] is “the Word of God”? You are implicitly relying on the Church, in order even to know that there is a Word of God written, and which books belong to it. Otherwise, your starting point would be entirely arbitrary and fideistic. Preference should not even be in our discussion, if truth is what we are trying to find. If we are after the truth, and not seeking our own preferences, then the question is: Which method leads us to the Church Christ founded, and how did the early Christians understand how the Church was to be discovered. The one method in question here is picking up a Protestant Bible, coming up with one’s own interpretation of what it says about ‘the gospel’, finding those persons who believe and teach that gospel, and designating them as “the Church”. The other method is locating that entity bearing the name Church (or ‘Catholic Church’ according to St. Ignatius of Antioch) in the first century, and then tracing it forward through history to the present day.

One of the inherent weaknesses I see in your article, is that it does not sufficiently address this issue which is THE issue between Reformed catholics and Roman Catholics in desperate need of reformation. (Hey, I never claimed to be unbiased!) It seems to me that you presuppose that true succession necessitates true teaching. This was never the case in the OT & I don’t see why I should believe that it is the case now.

I think the reason you “don’t see why” you should believe divine protection accompanies apostolic succession is because you ‘start’ with [Protestant] Scripture, and hence try to understand what qualities and properties the Church has (and even who or what the Church is) from your interpretation of [Protestant] Scripture, instead of from the Church herself. If you located the Church first, and then sought to understand from her what is the truth about Christ, the truth about the canon of Scripture, the truth about the nature of the Church, etc., then you would understand why divine protection accompanies apostolic succession. The assumption you are starting with is that Scripture can properly be understand and interpreted entirely apart from the covenant people to whom it was written and in which it was written. What if that assumption is false?

Why should we think that God decided to grant an “infallible button” to the Roman Catholic Church when He never did this in the visible church of the Old Testament? It seems inconsistent.

That would make every significant difference between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant into an “inconsistency.” There was no “visible Church” in the Old Testament; the Church was born on Pentecost. That’s why Jesus preached that the Kingdom of Heaven was at hand. He was inaugurating the Kingdom, something not present in the Old Covenant. The New Covenant is far better than the Old Covenant. Baptism now saves, as Peter tells us, but circumcision did not. The passover lamb of the Old Covenant did not give eternal life. But the Eucharist under the New Covenant gives eternal life (John 6:54-58) In every way the promises of the New Covenant are better. So you shouldn’t be surprised that what Christ inaugurated, and to which He gave the keys to Peter, would be far greater and indefectible compared to what we find in the Old Covenant. With a mere sola scriptura approach that’s much more difficult to know, because you don’t have the benefit of what the Church herself has definitively taught about herself through the ages.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Keith W. Thompson November 18th, 2009 4:51 pm :
Wilkins,

I appreciate your gentle manner of asking your question. Yes, I have read section V. of the above article. (I just finished rereading it to be sure I didn’t forget something.)

The problem I still have, is that the contrast being stated throughout the article is a good comparison between mainline evangelicalism and Roman Catholic church authority. However, this contrast is not by any means a faithful engagement of Reformed churches. My church and most other Reformed churches hold to a high view of church authority and submission to the teaching of that authority. In many cases, when the above authors criticize “protestants” for their lack of any church authority, I stand up and applaud… but then I find that they are criticizing Reformed churches and I sit down and scratch my head. Their critiques are similar to my own critiques of most protestant churches. I myself have preached sermons on numerous occasions strongly criticizing the lack of submission to rightful church authority in matters of doctrine, faith, and life which is prevalent in mainline evangelicalism (i.e. the Billy Graham movement).

I suppose that ultimately, the above authors, in my humble opinion, have no idea what Reformed churches teach concerning church authority, and they lump us into the “protestant” chunk of churches without really thinking about the difference between a Reformed church and a non-reformed church.

Point in case: In section V. above, the author(s) state, “The Protestant, by contrast, in joining a Protestant community does not find the Magisterium. That is because he does not find something that can bind his conscience regarding the canon of Scripture, the interpretation of Scripture, and the identity of orthodoxy and heresy. This is why in his Protestant community he perpetually retains final interpretive authority, because no decision of that community has the authority to bind his conscience.”

I will take it line by line to illustrate my point:

1. The Protestant, by contrast, in joining a Protestant community does not find the Magisterium.

This is true. In a Reformed church, a believer does not find “the Magisterium,” but that does not imply a vacuum of all authority. Our structure of authority simply goes by a different name. In an evangelical church, they find nothing resembling authoritative teaching whatsoever.

2. That is because he does not find something that can bind his conscience regarding the canon of Scripture, the interpretation of Scripture, and the identity of orthodoxy and heresy.

This is true of mainline evangelical churches, but completely false of Reformed churches. Our confessions are authoritatively binding upon the conscience in regards to each and every one of these matters, and I have witnessed numerous examples of certain individuals who have come under church discipline for failing to submit to rightful church authority in these areas.

3. This is why in his Protestant community he perpetually retains final interpretive authority, because no decision of that community has the authority to bind his conscience.”

This is pragmatically true of mainline evangelicalism again, but not so with Reformed churches. The individual does not possess final interpretive authority. I can understand why a Catholic would say that a Reformed session, or synod, or elder board etc. does not “have” the authority to bind the conscience of believers, but obviously we disagree. Authority comes from God himself and to state this is to presuppose that God himself instituted the mechanism of Apostolic Succession as the means by which every elder (bishop) of the church would be ordained. But this presupposes the conclusion rather than arguing for it.

I suppose that ultimately, I would like to see the moderators interact with actual Reformed positions on church authority rather than simply building argument after argument aimed at mainline evangelicals and then inserting the word “protestant” (which includes Reformed churches) in front of the target.

Hopefully this explains some of my angst.

In Him,
Keith WT
wilkins November 18th, 2009 5:04 pm :
lojahw,

seriously, when i read your explanations of what Catholicism is and what it teaches and what its texts mean, and so on, i’m reminded of Valentine Cunningham’s criticism of postmodernist literary critics who push and shove and force their way through Western literature determined to make their arguments and cut certain people (and ideas) down to size even if it means reading poorly and arguing without tact.

i look back at Mathison’s interaction here, for example, and compare his careful comments with some of the other comments here, and really the difference in approach is remarkable. Mathison’s comments exhibit a lot of what Cunningham calls ‘tact’: Mathison does not present himself as an expert on Catholicism—does not attempt to dismiss specific Catholic positions by a general appeal to “clear teachings of Scripture.” Where he is confused about something, Mathison assumes he has either misunderstood or needs additional information. He says so, then asks for additional information. His confusion isn’t used as an opportunity to attack people or ideas, nor does he use his confusion as a platform for lecturing Catholics about what Catholicism teaches.

You may not intend this, but your interaction comes off as hostile. For example, your explanation for why Bryan is ‘special pleading’ reads like an additional accusation and not an explanation: i haven’t seen Bryan dismiss any ECF or ECF reference. i don’t recall Bryan dismissing anything, in fact. When he points out an error, he also provides a very clear reason for the error (eg, “…by [falsely] assuming that statement is the exhaustive extent…”). Your response doesn’t address Bryan’s very clear evaluation of your interpretation but foists on us, instead, another accusation.

…which only keeps us all distracted from the article that we’re supposed to be charitably discussing together. About that article, section V addresses your comment 214, paragraph 4. Have you read section V of this article? How has it failed to answer your objection?

sincerely,
wilkins
Neal Judisch November 18th, 2009 5:19 pm :
Andrew,

Thanks. I have to be brief here, and in fact won’t be very active in the combox this week. But just briefly: I see the distinction between the A question and the B question, and would just note that we were discussing both of them in the article because Mathison was discussing both of them in his book and, in our article, we’re discussing the position in Mathison’s book. I don’t think these issues are being confused, exactly, and I don’t think it’s very hard to tell who is talking about what when. Sorry if I gave the impression of confusion; in any case, it seems to me that we (collectively) have been discussing both of these issues at various points throughout this thread, and that it’s reasonably clear in context which of the two topics are being treated.

As to the presuppositionalist analogy: maybe it’s best to just forget it. It was supposed to be illuminating or suggestive, but I think I must have just been unclear about it. It was not at all supposed to argue once more, or in another way, that sola collapses to solo. It was supposed to respond to the allegation, made by some Protestants, that because Catholic converts have to use their own judgment when they decide to be Catholics, therefore, after they become Catholics, they are quite as reliant on private judgment as they were when they were Protestants. That’s the charge I was responding to. It’s not an attempt to show that sola reduces to solo; it was an attempt to respond to some of the concrete ‘tu quoque’ remarks that some of our Protestant friends were offering in the early days of this thread. Again, if you’re not seeing how it connects or how it provides a parallel (and similarly deficient) argument to the one that some of our Protestant friends were giving, then we should probably just drop it.

Now: got to take my mischievous middle daughter to ballet.
Bryan Cross November 18th, 2009 5:35 pm :
Keith T,

You wrote:

My church and most other Reformed churches hold to a high view of church authority and submission to the teaching of that authority.

In section IV.A. of the article, we argue that there is no principled distinction between this “high view of church authority” (sola scriptura in the Reformed sense) and the evangelical position, because the former is merely an indirect form of the latter. If you find our argument (in that section of our article) faulty, where, exactly, do you think it goes wrong?

This is true of mainline evangelical churches, but completely false of Reformed churches. Our confessions are authoritatively binding upon the conscience in regards to each and every one of these matters,

On this point you seem to be in disagreement with Mathison, who claims that only the Word of God can bind the conscience. On what grounds or basis is a Reformed confession “binding upon the conscience” of anyone? Why are Protestants bound in conscience to Protestant confessions when Protestantism itself presupposes that Luther was not bound in conscience to the teaching of the Catholic Church?

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
wilkins November 18th, 2009 5:37 pm :
Keith, 224.

i have to read this stuff many times for the same reason, except that i always find i’ve forgotten something, lol. i write ‘lol’ but what i mean to say is something like, ‘dangit’. anyway, that’s a very good explanation, helps me very much understand where you’re coming from. tied up at just this moment – hope i can catch up with you more later tonight.

peace,
w
Keith W. Thompson November 18th, 2009 6:31 pm :
Tom,

You wrote,

When you say that, contra, Catholics, you prefer to start with the Word of God, you assume so much in that statement. For starters, how do you know what the Word of God is? Is it possible to know the Word of God apart from the community to which and through which it was given (e.g. Israel and the Church)?

Yes Tom, that is exactly what I am saying.

“The authority of the Holy Scripture, for which it ought to be believed, and obeyed, dependeth not upon the testimony of any man, or Church; but wholly upon God (who is truth itself) the author thereof: and therefore it is to be received, because it is the Word of God.

We may be moved and induced by the testimony of the Church to an high and reverent esteem of the Holy Scripture, and the heavenliness of the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine, the majesty of the style, the consent of all the parts, the scope of the whole, (which is to give all glory to God) , the full discovery it makes of the only way of man’s salvation, the many other incomparable excellencies, and the entire perfection thereof, are arguments whereby it doth abundantly evidence itself to be the Word of God; yet, notwithstanding, our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth, and divine authority thereof, is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit, bearing witness by and with the word in our hearts.”
~Westminster Confession of Faith 1.4; 1.5.

Why is it surprising that Catholics use personal judgment?

It is not surprising at all. We’ve known it all along.

The reason we responding this way is because you (collectively) seem to be criticizing us for exercising personal judgment. We see you doing the same thing, so we are confused as to your semantics here. If it is not a bad thing when you do it, why is it so bad when we do? Bryan recently posted a reply to me stating that there is a difference between “personal preference” and “private judgment.” I see his point, and realize that I need to work harder to overcome the semantic difficulties. Largely, both sides have been talking past each other because we both fail to fully understand the other side’s point.

In Him,
Keith WT
lojahw November 18th, 2009 7:22 pm :
Keith, I would beg to differ on the question of the beliefs and practices of mainline evangelical churches. The ones I’m familiar with are typically elder ruled [Baptists call them deacons, but their function is the same as elders] and members are required to sign doctrinal statements. Also, the doctrinal statements I’ve seen from Baptists, EV Free, Bible Churches, Reformed, Anglican, etc. all are in agreement on the essentials as defined by the Council of Nicea. The differences usually relate to things like the significance and mode of baptism, which was not mentioned in the original creed, and continues to be debated. Having said that, I’ve never seen a Protestant church that did not practice baptism – it was, after all, commanded by Christ.

Peace.
Neal Judisch November 18th, 2009 7:24 pm :
Keith,

Not to “gang up,” on you, but just to reiterate Bryan’s second remark, it does seem that you are in conflict with Mathison and the other Reformed folks here. Note, too, that Mathison’s work (as I’m sure you know) is very often referenced by smart and respected Reformed thinkers, as providing a great touchstone for what historical Reformed theology says about sola scriptura. (As I mentioned above, I don’t think the Reformed tradition is monolithic here, but I think Mathison can make the case that he is faithfully representing Reformed thought as well as any other, perhaps better than some.) Finally, it is noteworthy that Mathison, and Mathison’s many Reformed supporters, have complained about precisely the same thing that you do: namely, that critics of Reformed theology misfire, since they assume what’s believed and taught is solo scriptura as opposed to sola scriptura. He then presents himself as providing the corrective, and giving critics and reformed Protestants alike the historic Reformed view, with all its nuances. So we engage Mathison, since we want to deal with the best stuff here. And when we engage with Mathison’s presentation, we are then accused (by you) of engaging with mainline evangelicalism as opposed to “really real” Reformed theology! (On the other hand, just to add another possibility to the mix, Turretin fan accuses Mathison of failing to represent “really real” Reformed theology for precisely the opposite reason from yours: he’s putting *too* much authority in the hands of men, and not securing *enough* room for liberty of conscience, according to T-Fan.)

I think that Reformed theology is perhaps a bit of a moving target, and that this is to be expected given that it isn’t a monolithic movement. So that’s not a criticism of Reformed theology. But here’s what I’ll ask you. Given the amount of disagreement among you, Turretin fan, and Keith Mathison — all of whom are claiming to represent really real Reformed theology, and who are suggesting that their Catholic critics aren’t “getting” Reformed theology but are criticizing evangelicalism instead — I might ask you to consider the possibility that we’re at least *trying* to engage with real Reformed theology, but that, since Reformed Christians differ so much about what Reformed theology really is, it will inevitably appear to some of them that we’re talking about some other view instead. So when we try to respect Mathison by engaging “real Reformed theology” as understood by him, it isn’t necessarily the case that we’re ignoring Reformed theology and thinking about something else, even if you’re right that Mathison’s just wrong about what Reformed theology is.

At the same time, to lay my cards on the table from what I’ve read, I don’t think your claim — that it is merely ‘evangelical’ but not ‘Reformed’ to hold that presbyters and confessions do not have power to bind the conscience, but that only God’s Word itself has such power — will find much historical support, or contemporary support from Reformed folks either. What you can find support for is the claim that the local session and the presbytery, etc., do possess genuine authority regarding disciplinary matters and so forth; but there is a distinction between allowing that, and claiming that such persons have a divinely bestowed authority directly to bind the consciences of the Christian Faithful. (Only *my* Church gets to do *that*. :-)) I’d encourage you to take a look at Mathison’s book, or the references in which we discuss the distinction as he lays it out.

Best,

Neal
Paige Britton November 18th, 2009 8:12 pm :
Keith,
I have sensed a difference in these discussions — and in experience — between the authority that is claimed by the Magisterium, and the authority that is claimed by, for example, the elders of my (PCA) church. If we drew a Venn diagram of the two, there would be some overlap, but when it comes down to specific interpretations of Scripture, it seems that the Magisterium trumps everything from our Session to the GA. This is not to say that the PCA doesn’t have standards of orthodoxy, but that there is much less control over the people in the pew in terms of biblical interpretation in our system. As a member, I am conscience-bound to submit to my elders because of the vow I have taken; as a sometimes-teacher, I am also conscience-bound to convey to others only what is in keeping with our doctrinal standards. But unlike the elders, I may harbor private reservations about something like infant baptism; and other laypeople may enjoy membership without knowing or accepting anything more theological than the Apostle’s Creed. The binding of the conscience in this area only goes so far in the Reformed system, whatever its permutation; it goes very, very deep in the Catholic.

p.s. — I liked your metaphor about the epistemological boat, but how can two people be in the same boat going down two different rivers? Is that like, “you can’t step in the same river twice?” :)
Paige Britton November 18th, 2009 8:34 pm :
Mateo,
Well, you’re right, that would be unlivable, wouldn’t it! And what a woefully silly impression you received about Protestant epistemology. But look, all I’m saying is that IF there were no Magisterium to lean on, God would still be good, and what he would give us as far as certainty goes would be reasonable enough to live on. Don’t you think this is a reasonable expectation? (I’m even downplaying it a bit, because I actually think it’s QUITE livable, not just some mediocre existence.) I don’t know with 100% certainty that I can trust my husband in all things, but the certainty I have is quite enough to make for an excellent marriage. Human language, especially translated and received at a distance of several thousand years, isn’t going to communicate to me today 100% effectively. There are things I can do, though, to increase its communicative effectiveness, and some things will come across more clearly than others. It’s not like we’re shut up to only two options, a Magisterium on the one hand or dizzying doubt about meaning on the other. (But of course, I did say IF; so I could be completely wrong…) :)
Tap November 18th, 2009 9:23 pm :
You mean to tell me lojahw and Ken Temple aren’t the same guy?
Tom Riello November 19th, 2009 12:38 am :
Keith,

And there lies the difference. At the end of the day you do not sense this indebtedness to the Church for Scripture and Scripture’s organic relationship to the Church. A Catholic, however, recognizes, with our brothers and sisters of antiquity, that Scripture comes forth from the heart of the Church and the Church is the guardian of the Sacred text.
Andrew McCallum November 19th, 2009 1:07 am :
and would just note that we were discussing both of them in the article because Mathison was discussing both of them in his book and, in our article, we’re discussing the position in Mathison’s book.

Yes, Mathison does hit the B issue hard. But I don’t see it in your article. At least, it does not seem to be mentioned in the discussion in IV.A when you are looking at individual interpretive authority in in its sola and solo scriptura manifestations. Perhaps when and if you have some time you could point it out in this or another thread.

Yes, ballet, that’s good for girls. I have all boys so no ballet for us (I am quite sure they will never ask to be involved in ballet which is just fine with me).

Cheers….
Neal Judisch November 19th, 2009 9:42 am :
Hey, Andrew,

Sorry you don’t quite see it. You mention above that when “external interpretive authorities” are brought in, then we’re discussing B (means by which ecclesial authorities determine interpretive questions) as opposed to A (how individuals do the same). I don’t think there is any real reason to use the language this way, since of course the ‘ecclesial authorities’ in question might not be relying upon any ‘external interpretive authorities’ at all, and the individual may of course rely upon a collective of people he considers to have expert status, etc. So it might be that you’re seeing the phrase “external interpretive authority” as a flag for some important shift in specific topic or something, whereas I don’t think it’s intended that way.

Anyway, thanks for your remarks. I’m not sure I’ve understood precisely what your criticism of our main argument (sola reduces to solo) is, but I appreciate the interaction.

Neal

PS: I’ll definitely be non-comboxy today: got to teach ancient/medieval in the morning, then have advising hours, then will be teaching my grad seminar in the evening. After that, I intend to do nothing but go home, build a fire, eat yummy food, and watch the Office.
TurretinFan November 19th, 2009 10:22 am :
I noted this:

On the other hand, just to add another possibility to the mix, Turretin fan accuses Mathison of failing to represent “really real” Reformed theology for precisely the opposite reason from yours: he’s putting *too* much authority in the hands of men, and not securing *enough* room for liberty of conscience, according to T-Fan.

My basis for thinking that Matthison is presenting something different from the Reformed position was especially Matthison’s comment:

It renders the universal and objective truth of Scripture virtually useless because instead of the Church proclaiming with one voice to the world what the Scripture teaches, every individual interprets Scripture as seems right in his own eyes.

This is more or less the Roman Catholic (and majority contemporary Eastern Orthodox) criticism, not the Reformed view. It is telling that Matthison states of this section of his own book:

In one sense this section has already been covered by virtually every published Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox critique of what they term sola scriptura. These published critiques tend to focus only upon Tradition 0 or solo scriptura.

(footnote 21, p. 244)
One reason that this section of Matthison’s work is devoid of citation to Reformed authors is that he’s presenting what amounts to a Roman Catholic critique rather than presenting the Reformed position. Instead, his one citation in the section is to Bruce Metzger’s work on the recognition of the canon (which Matthison characterizes as “the canonization of the New Testament”).

Yes, Mathison got a nice dust jacket blurb from R.C. Sproul, and that is to his credit. But at least in the section from pages 244-53, Matthison has gone rogue, representing essentially the Roman Catholic position, as he essentially has conceded.

It is also telling that Matthison explicitly targets Reformed systematician Robert Reymond at page 241 of the book. Ironically, Matthison essentially accuses Reymond of being a Trinitarian heretic, despite the fact that “the church” (at least as it is viewed in Reformed circles, something I’m not sure Matthison accepts) has not found Reymond to be heretical.

Matthison has accepted too many of the false accusations of Roman Catholic critics (indulge me in simply stating this for the moment, rather than trying to prove it). As a result, the position he presents is not the classical Reformed position, which is why he is unable to cite Reformed authors that agree with him.

That doesn’t mean Matthison’s book is worthless, of course. Much of Matthison’s book may present the necessary and important criticisms of positions other than sola scriptura. After all, sola scriptura is a negative doctrine that rejects other ultimate authorities than Scripture.

But that may not persuade you that Matthison’s Chapter 8 is off the Reformed reservation.

Consider this:

The authority of the holy Scripture, for which it ought to be believed and obeyed, dependeth not upon the testimony of any man or Church, but wholly upon God (who is truth itself), the Author thereof; and therefore it is to be received, because it is the Word of God.
We may be moved and induced by the testimony of the Church to an high and reverent esteem of the holy Scripture; and the heavenliness of the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine, the majesty of the style, the consent of all the parts, the scope of the whole (which is to give all glory to God), the full discovery it makes of the only way of man’s salvation, the many other incomparable excellencies, and the entire perfection thereof, are arguments whereby it doth abundantly evidence itself to be the Word of God; yet, notwithstanding, our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority thereof, is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit, bearing witness by and with the Word in our hearts.

(WCF1:4-5)
Matthison’s view of the canon, expressed in Chapter 8 of his book, appears to be at odds with these sections of the Westminster Standards.

Furthemore:

The Supreme Judge, by which all controversies of religion are to be determined, and all decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men, and private spirits, are to be examined, and in whose sentence we are to rest, can be no other but the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture.

(WCF1:10)
Matthison’s view of councils and the Early Church Fathers appears to be at odds with this section of the Westminster Standards.

Of course, the Savoy Declaration and the London Baptist Confession say essentially the same thing. I could, if required, show the same or similar expressions from the other Reformed confessions and creeds, such as the 39 Articles and the like.

-TurretinFan

P.S. I would take issue with the claim “I think that Reformed theology is perhaps a bit of a moving target, and that this is to be expected given that it isn’t a monolithic movement.” The vast bulk of what would be viewed as the “Reformed Community” in the English speaking world holds to the 39 articles, the Westminster Confession of Faith, the London Baptist Confession of Faith, or the Three Forms of Unity. All of those express essentially the same view of sola scriptura, though they don’t say what Matthison says in chapter 8 of his book.
Neal Judisch November 19th, 2009 10:55 am :
Hey, T-Fan.

Cool. We should’ve got you to write an addendum to the article! (I.e., I think that removing what Mathison says and calling it nonReformed really does make the position [sola scriptura] more vulnerable to attack — indulge me just to register that conviction for the moment.)

I know that Sproul Sr. endorses the book, and it isn’t surprising that he should do so. But I hope you don’t think I’m equating Sproul Sr.’s judgments (still less his dustjacket blurbs) with “what Reformed theology says.” I know better ‘an dat. But I don’t at all think that the warm reception Mathison’s book has received is limited to a brief sentence from R.C. Sproul. And, what you regard as “telling” (viz., Mathison’s point that a number of the Catholics’ criticisms he agrees with are “really directed” at solo evangelicalism as opposed to sola Reformed theology, under the mistaken impression that the latter just is the former), is sort of what I was trying to point out. Very frequently, in my experience, one of the first impulses of the Protestant we’re critiquing is to say, “You have not understood real Reformed theology, but are mistaking some strawman for it.” What is curious, and what makes discussion a little hard, is that when two or more Reformed guys are in the discussion at the same time, they will both register the “you don’t understand Reformed theology” charge, not only toward us, but toward each other. (This doesn’t, of course, mean there’s no such thing as Reformed theology, but it does mean it’s pretty hard to host a discussion with a plurality of Reformed folks all at once!)

For my part, I’d be really very interested to see what Mathison (or other Protestant readers) have to say about your assessment of this aspect of his thesis, that it is not really Reformed, and that this can be demonstrated succinctly by recourse to the forms of unity/confessions you’ve cited. One thing I’d say on his behalf is this: I think you’re misreading his footnote, the one that notes that Catholic apologists have presented arguments quite similar to the ones he lays out in the section of interest. He is not “in effect conceding” that he’s gone Roman Catholic (or Reformed ‘rogue’) here. He’s in fact alleging that Roman Catholic critics of sola scriptura aren’t understanding what sola scriptura “really says,” are not really understanding “the Reformed position.” They’re attacking solo scriptura, an unbiblical ahistorical evangelical view instead, and mistakingly thinking that Reformed people hold that view. So, when Mathison endorses their criticisms, he is just finding a common enemy with them: he’s saying they’re right about evangelicals, but wrong to saddle Reformed folks with the evangelical (solo) view. In your view, on the other hand, Mathison is wrong about this and has in fact gone Catholic: he’s wrong about sola scriptura, and the Catholics are right — at least about its content, if not its truth value. But this is, again, what I was talking about, when I mentioned that it is hard for Catholics not to be charged with “failing to understand real Reformed theology.” If I understand real Reformed theology a la T-fan, Mathison will saddle me (has saddled Catholics) with the “you don’t get Reformed theology” charge. If I understand it a la Mathison, on the other hand, T-fan will saddle me with that charge. That’s the thing I was mentioning to K. above.

All best,

Neal
TurretinFan November 19th, 2009 11:22 am :
Neal wrote:

What is curious, and what makes discussion a little hard, is that when two or more Reformed guys are in the discussion at the same time, they will both register the “you don’t understand Reformed theology” charge, not only toward us, but toward each other.

We know the feeling – we get it when Roman Catholics argue with each other over whether the RC position is that Scriptural is materially sufficient or not.

I note your comment: “I think that removing what Mathison says and calling it nonReformed really does make the position [sola scriptura] more vulnerable to attack” and without debating that (simply to avoid that tangent, not because I agree with you), I want to clarify that viewing Matthison’s analysis as non-Reformed does not mean the following:

1) It does not mean saying that the church has no authority in doctrinal matters.

2) It does not mean saying that truth is subjective.

3) It does not mean buying into relativism.

4) It does not mean viewing things like the Westminster Confession of Faith as essentiallythe same as any one of my blog posts.

5) In short, it does not mean buying into the solo scriptura that is so widespread in “Protestant” circles.

To his credit, Matthison has correctly identified that the Roman Catholic criticisms he outlines are not proper criticisms of the Reformed position, but he has not correctly identified the reasons. One might say it is as though he has attacked the minor premise of the RC argument rather than the major premise.
Ken Temple November 19th, 2009 11:30 am :
Tap wrote:

You mean to tell me lojahw and Ken Temple aren’t the same guy?

No, we are not the same person.
Keith W. Thompson November 19th, 2009 12:29 pm :
Bryan,

You wrote in IV. A.:

The Protestant, by contrast, in joining a Protestant community does not find the Magisterium. That is because he does not find something that can bind his conscience regarding the canon of Scripture, the interpretation of Scripture, and the identity of orthodoxy and heresy. This is why in his Protestant community he perpetually retains final interpretive authority, because no decision of that community has the authority to bind his conscience.

I disagree with this line of reasoning. First, I grant that he does not find “the Magisterium,” which presides over Scripture. However, he does find a wealth of rich teaching about Scripture which is itself authoritative. Our confessions are binding upon their conscience in so far as they proclaim the truth contained in God’s Word. If a person came in to a Reformed community the confession of faith to which that church subscribes is authoritatively binding upon him (or her) “….regarding the canon of Scripture, the interpretation of Scripture, and the identity of orthodoxy and heresy.”

To say that “no decision of that community has the authority to bind his conscience” is not accurate. If, for example, someone came to our church and became a member and then started teaching that he or she believed that Jesus was fully man, but not God incarnate, based upon his or her private interpretation of Scripture, we would point to the confession which authoritatively teaches that this is false and he or she would be bound to submit to the authoritative teaching “of Scripture” which is taught in the confession.

So, to answer your point that I was disagreeing with Mattheson when he states that “the individual conscience cannot be bound by anything other than the Word of God,” I would say that I should have qualified my statement in that I agree with Mattheson here. When I say that the confessions are binding, I am assuming that the confessions themselves are working within the framework of Sola Scriptura and that they are not creating doctrines which are not found in Scripture. I would reference the Westminster Confession 1.6 at this point:

The whole counsel of God, concerning all things necessary for His own glory, man’s salvation, faith and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture: unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit, or traditions of men.

You go on in section IV. A:

And since, for Mathison, “All appeals to Scripture are appeals to interpretations of Scripture,”77 it follows that the individual conscience cannot be bound by anything other than his own interpretation of Scripture.

This again is false. The interpretation of Scripture which has been set forth in the confessions and also the interpretations of ordained elders are more binding than the interpretation of each and every individual in the congregation. This is why elders in Reformed churches exercise such caution so as to NOT bind the conscience of individuals in the congregation on points of interpretation which are inconsequential or, in some cases, weaker brother issues. It is a great responsibility to be ordained and to be given the charge to interpret and disseminate of the Word of God without adding to it.
There are some cases where I think that one church or another goes too far in this respect. For example, some churches practice exclusive Psalmnidy because the elders are convinced that the songs, hymns, and spiritual songs contained in Holy Scripture are fully sufficient and more perfect than any hymn written apart from direct inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Now, I like singing the Psalms, but I also like singing Amazing Grace. I do not think that singing uninspired hymns in the context of corporate worship are sinful, but if I were a member of a church that taught this, I would have to submit to the authority of the elders on this matter. Further, if I taught contrary to the elders according to my interpretation of Scripture, I would be teaching against the authorized and ordained officers of the church, and doing so, EVEN IF MY INTERPRETATION IS CORRECT, would be sinful, as I am failing to submit myself to their rightful authority over me.

By contrast, the person who becomes Protestant, finds nothing outside himself that binds his conscience viz-a-viz the canon of Scripture and the interpretation of Scripture.

Further, regarding the canon, the confessions give a list of canonical books. (e.g. WCF 1.2) If I were to assert that the book of Tobit ought to be included in the canon or if I asserted that James ought not to be included (shame on Luther!) I would be asserting my personal private judgment over and above the established orthodox teaching of the Reformed church, and would be in sin.

Speaking of Luther, you quoted the famous phrase which may or may not have been uttered by him at Worms:

Unless I am convicted by Scripture and plain reason — I do not accept the authority of popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other — my conscience is captive to the Word of God.

Unfortunately, a great many protestants have adopted this line themselves in order to assert their autonomy over and against the church in matters such as the legality of divorce, for example. They use it to assert Solo Scriptura. However, Luther’s situation was different in that the places where his interpretation of Scripture differed from the Magesterium (of that time period) were of fundamental and primary importance to the essence of the gospel itself. If you recall, Luther DID recant a portion of his writings and confess that he wrote them in sin and insubordination to the Church. But he could not recant Sola Fide because he saw it so clearly taught in Scripture that he was forced to submit to either Scripture or to the church, but he cold not submit to both.
Now, I know this situation is still riddled with problems. I think that Luther was sinning when he refused to recant because he was refusing to submit to the authority of the church. But unfortunately, he was placed in a situation where he had to sin against the Church or sin against the inspired Word of God… he had to make a choice, and he utterly agonized over that decision.
I know you see that situation differently for a number of reasons, one of which is that Luther’s interpretation of Scripture is opposed to your personal private interpretation of Scripture ;-), but I suppose what it comes down to is whether or not the Church’s declaration that she has true divine authority from God based upon Apostolic Succession is actually true. If it is, then Luther and all subsequent protestants remain outside the fold of the True Church of Christ. If it is not, and if Rome overstepped her charge by Christ when she proclaimed that she never errors (in some circumstance) and if Rome oversteps her charge when asserting doctrines which are “added to” Scripture and not contained within Scripture, then the truth of the matter could very well be, as I believe it to be, that the Roman church wrongly assigned herself the authority which belongs to Christ alone and has done great damage to Christ’s True Church as a result.

As to whether or not we have a high view of church authority, I would offer you this quote:

“[L]et us learn from her (the visible church) single title of Mother, how useful, nay, how necessary the knowledge of her is, since there is no other means of entering into life unless she conceive us in the womb and give us birth, unless she nourish us at her breasts, and, in short, keep us under her charge and government, until, divested of mortal flesh, we become like the angels (Matth. Xxii. 30). …Moreover, beyond the pale of the Church no forgiveness of sins, no salvation, can be hoped for, as Isaiah and Joel testify (Isa. Xxxvii. 32; Joel ii. 32). …[B]y these words the paternal favor of God and the special evidence of spiritual life are confined to his spiritual people, and hence the abandonment of the Church is always fatal.”
~Calvin, Institutes 4.1.4.

Obviously, there is much more contained in section IV. A that I could interact with, but I think that this is a god starting point. Much of what follows in your argument remains dependent upon what I am trying to show you is a false representation of our view of church authority. I look forward to your reply.

In Him,
Keith WT
lojahw November 19th, 2009 1:37 pm :
Please accept my apologies for jumping into CTC like a bull in a china shop. In hindsight, I realize that I neglected to address an area of the article that might be more useful than the one I latched onto (the question of whether apostolic succession actually solves the problem posed by the authors). Specifically, I think that my fairly broad Protestant experience might offer a perspective that is missing in both the article and in the posts here on the relationship between Sola Scriptura and the fragmentation of Protestants in general and the mobility of Protestants between Churches.

By way of background, I grew up in the Episcopal Church (which practices apostolic succession). It was my vow at confirmation to “follow Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior” that led me to leave that Church in the early 70’s because of the widespread apostasy I encountered in every Episcopal church I attended. Although the Episcopal Church formally ascribed to the orthodox 39 Articles of Religion crafted in the 16th century, its priests and bishops were increasingly ignoring them – a trend that continued to deepen until the present situation in which whole parishes and dioceses have left the Episcopal Church and organized a new province within Anglicanism, the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA). The ACNA, in a nutshell, is committed to the Scripture as the ultimate authority in all matters of faith and practice, the historic sacramental heritage of the Church, and the celebration of the power of God’s Spirit at work in the Church and in the world. It is this Church which has drawn me back to Anglicanism after many years in other Protestant settings. I might add that I my perspective on evangelicalism is largely shaped by such Anglicans as John Scott and J. I. Packer and my experience over the years with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship.

After I left the Episcopal Church, I visited MANY different churches, including Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Disciples of Christ, Church of Christ, and even the Unitarian and the Reorganized Church of Latter-Day Saints. Over the years I also spent significant time in a Disciples of Christ church, some independent Bible Churches, a “charismatic-light” Bible Church, and the Evangelical Free Church.

With that background, let me say that my observation of the fragmentation of Protestants is mostly driven by social and cultural issues, rather than doctrinal. As I indicated previously, the doctrinal statements of the various Protestant Churches are substantially identical. My observation of Protestants who switch churches is that it is seldom for doctrinal reasons (except in cases like mine). Some churches adopt particular social agendas which make some of their members uncomfortable (like the gay agenda). By and large, any doctrinal issues are due to the same failing observed in the RCC: poor catechesis (of both pastors and members). The fault is not with Sola Scriptura, but with faulty people.

Sola Scriptura simply declares the Bible itself to be the regula fidei. All doctrines and practice must be consistent with God’s Word, recognized as such by the Church from the beginning. The proposed alternative, apostolic succession, assumes that the Bible is inadequate as the regula fidei and must be supplemented with a specific body of interpretation that took centuries to develop and guarded solely by the successors of St. Peter. It just seems to me that the “faith which was once for all delivered to the saints” as recorded in the Bible, from which the Council of Nicea directly derived its Creed, was sufficient before the body of interpretation by the Magisterium (which I call Sola Papa) was amassed over the centuries.

In practical terms, both Sola Scriptura and Sola Papa acknowledge the authority of ordained presbyteroi / episcopoi who have been trained to interpret God’s Word. From my perspective, the article would be more valuable if it had done more to comparatively evaluate the different models of interpretive authority: local vs. hierarchical and/or synodal, and fallibility vs. infallibility. As one who subscribes to Sola Scriptura, I believe the Bible is God’s infallible Word and all interpretations are, as Augustine said, liable to refutation and/or correction.

Blessings.
TurretinFan November 19th, 2009 1:39 pm :
Just so you know that this is not just what TurretinFan is saying.

Paul E. G. Cook provided the following comments (among others) on Mathison’s book:

To deny the individual Christian the right to read and interpret Scripture for himself, and to bring the judgments of ‘the church’ to that bar, is to elevate the teachers of the church into a theological elite whose conclusions are not to be questioned by the ordinary church member. The individual believer can read and understand Scripture for himself because the Scriptures are perspicuous as far as the main body of truth is concerned; and the Spirit within a believer bears witness to that truth ― the testimonium internum. The Scriptures encourage him to honour preachers and teachers within the Church who are called and gifted of God, but not to give them so much honour that their teaching cannot be questioned by the individual Christian in the light of Scripture.

This reviewer regards the analysis of Oberman, developed by McGrath, and popularly presented by Mathison, as a subtle departure from the historic doctrine of Sola Scriptura. Its subtlety makes it all the more dangerous. A better title for this book would be ‘A Reshaping of Sola Scriptura’

As printed in, The Banner of Truth, Issue 490, July 2004, p. 26.
Bryan Cross November 19th, 2009 2:06 pm :
Keith T (re; #242),

You wrote:

However, he does find a wealth of rich teaching about Scripture which is itself authoritative. Our confessions are binding upon their conscience in so far as they proclaim the truth contained in God’s Word.

As someone who went through seminary training in the PCA, took a class devoted entirely to the WCF, and prepared for ordination, I can tell you that candidates for ordination in the PCA all are required to present their list of exceptions they take to the WCF. But if you were correct that all of us are bound in conscience to believe all that is in the Reformed confessions, then no one could take an exception to the WCF, without violating his conscience. But then a very large percentage of candidates for ordination in the PCA would be violating their conscience by taking exceptions to the WCF. So if PCA pastors can take exceptions to the WCF without violating their conscience, why can’t laypeople do so?

You seem to be saying that the Reformed confessions are binding on the conscience because they are true. But a truth is not binding on one’s conscience until it is, in some way, known to be true by that person. A proposition that, for all I know may be true or may be false, is not binding on my conscience. By knowing the proposition without knowing its truth-value, I’m not thereby bound to believe it to be true, or to believe it to be false. So, if a person does not believe some of the statements in the Reformed confessions to be true, and his not believing that they are true is not the result of culpable doubt or rejection of what he knows to be true, but rather is the result of study in which he concludes that those who composed the Reformed confessions misinterpreted Scripture, he is not bound nevertheless to believe these statements in the Reformed confessions to be true. In other words, he is not bound by any part of the confessions unless he believes that part to be true.

If, for example, someone came to our church and became a member and then started teaching that he or she believed that Jesus was fully man, but not God incarnate, based upon his or her private interpretation of Scripture, we would point to the confession which authoritatively teaches that this is false and he or she would be bound to submit to the authoritative teaching “of Scripture” which is taught in the confession.

The person would only be conditionally bound. That is, he or she would be bound to submit to your denomination’s doctrine if he wished to remain in your denomination. He would not be bound to remain in your denomination or to submit to its leaders. Your denomination does not claim to be the Church Christ founded as necessary for salvation for all men, having the keys of the Kingdom of heaven, and capable of forgiving men’s sins and retaining men’s sins. To leave your denomination is not ipso facto to leave the Church. But to leave the Catholic Church is to leave the one and only Church Christ founded. There is no other Church. Excommunication from the Catholic Church is excommunication from the Church, period, not from one denomination or a branch of the Church.

Neal and I wrote: And since, for Mathison, “All appeals to Scripture are appeals to interpretations of Scripture,” it follows that the individual conscience cannot be bound by anything other than his own interpretation of Scripture.

You replied: This again is false. The interpretation of Scripture which has been set forth in the confessions and also the interpretations of ordained elders are more binding than the interpretation of each and every individual in the congregation.

Why? If the first Protestants could reject the decision of all the bishops in ecumenical council (i.e. the Council of Trent), then why can’t a Protestant reject a decision of all the “ordained Protestant elders” if he decides that they are contrary to his interpretation of Scripture?

This is why elders in Reformed churches exercise such caution so as to NOT bind the conscience of individuals in the congregation on points of interpretation which are inconsequential or, in some cases, weaker brother issues. It is a great responsibility to be ordained and to be given the charge to interpret and disseminate of the Word of God without adding to it.

So the individual reserves the right to determine whether the elders’ interpretation contained in a Reformed confession “adds” to or detracts from the Word of God? If so, then if he judges that their interpretation adds to or detracts from the true interpretation of Scripture, he is free to reject their interpretation.

Further, if I taught contrary to the elders according to my interpretation of Scripture, I would be teaching against the authorized and ordained officers of the church, and doing so, EVEN IF MY INTERPRETATION IS CORRECT, would be sinful, as I am failing to submit myself to their rightful authority over me.

What is it that makes their authority “rightful” and the authority of the Council of Trent wrongful if not that you agree with the former’s interpretation of Scripture and reject the latter’s interpretation of Scripture?

Further, regarding the canon, the confessions give a list of canonical books. (e.g. WCF 1.2) If I were to assert that the book of Tobit ought to be included in the canon or if I asserted that James ought not to be included (shame on Luther!) I would be asserting my personal private judgment over and above the established orthodox teaching of the Reformed church, and would be in sin.

Again, what makes the “Reformed church” “orthodox” and the Catholic Church “unorthodox” except that you agree with the interpretation of the former and reject the interpretation of the latter?

However, Luther’s situation was different in that the places where his interpretation of Scripture differed from the Magesterium (of that time period) were of fundamental and primary importance to the essence of the gospel itself. If you recall, Luther DID recant a portion of his writings and confess that he wrote them in sin and insubordination to the Church. But he could not recant Sola Fide because he saw it so clearly taught in Scripture that he was forced to submit to either Scripture or to the church, but he cold not submit to both.

So here’s the great but ‘fatal’ exception. All your Reformed confessions are binding, unless anyone’s own individual interpretation of Scripture deems them to be inaccurate in matters of fundamental and primary importance pertaining to the gospel itself. (Where you get this exception clause, and what is its basis, you do not say.) Fair enough. That’s pretty much the point of our article. You are bound to submit, unless you think the authority is wrong in its interpretation of Scripture in matters that you deem to be of fundamental importance, and pertain to the gospel. But if you sufficiently agree with your denomination’s interpretation of Scripture regarding ‘the gospel’, then you are bound to submit to your denomination. In short, when you agree on what you deem to be the important stuff, then you bound to submit on what you deem to be the unimportant stuff. And when you disagree on what you deem to be the important stuff, then you aren’t bound to submit at all. But that suffers from the maxim: When I submit (only when I agree), the one to whom I submit it me.

But unfortunately, he [Luther] was placed in a situation where he had to sin against the Church or sin against the inspired Word of God… he had to make a choice, and he utterly agonized over that decision.

You cast it as though he’s either sinning against the Church, or sinning against Scripture. You leave out the possibility that he was interpreting Scripture, and hence misinterpreting Scripture. That’s a very significant omission. That he agonized over his decision is nice, but the question is whether what he did was right or wrong.

I know you see that situation differently for a number of reasons, one of which is that Luther’s interpretation of Scripture is opposed to your personal private interpretation of Scripture ;-), but I suppose what it comes down to is whether or not the Church’s declaration that she has true divine authority from God based upon Apostolic Succession is actually true.

Agreed.

If it is, then Luther and all subsequent protestants remain outside the fold of the True Church of Christ. If it is not, and if Rome overstepped her charge by Christ when she proclaimed that she never errors (in some circumstance) and if Rome oversteps her charge when asserting doctrines which are “added to” Scripture and not contained within Scripture, then the truth of the matter could very well be, as I believe it to be, that the Roman church wrongly assigned herself the authority which belongs to Christ alone and has done great damage to Christ’s True Church as a result.

Agreed.

“[L]et us learn from her (the visible church) single title of Mother, how useful, nay, how necessary the knowledge of her is, since there is no other means of entering into life unless she conceive us in the womb and give us birth, unless she nourish us at her breasts, and, in short, keep us under her charge and government, until, divested of mortal flesh, we become like the angels (Matth. Xxii. 30). …Moreover, beyond the pale of the Church no forgiveness of sins, no salvation, can be hoped for, as Isaiah and Joel testify (Isa. Xxxvii. 32; Joel ii. 32). …[B]y these words the paternal favor of God and the special evidence of spiritual life are confined to his spiritual people, and hence the abandonment of the Church is always fatal.” ~Calvin, Institutes 4.1.4.

It is a great quotation. The problem is that in this quotation ‘visible church’ just means ‘those who agree with my interpretation of Scripture regarding what is important and fundamentally pertains to the gospel.’ Once again, “When I submit (so long as I agree), the one to whom I submit is me.” As I wrote elsewhere:

“Unity is achieved not when we all make ‘Church’ in our own image (i.e. in the image of our own interpretation), but when we all conform to her image. Unity as one of the four marks of the Church (“one, holy, catholic and apostolic”) and as the most intimate expression of the desire of our Savior’s sacred heart revealed in St. John 17, requires being incorporated into something greater than a structure made in our own image, or the image of our own interpretation.”

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Tim Troutman November 19th, 2009 2:36 pm :
Lojah – I love the bull in the china shop analogy. Great imagery. It doesn’t work here though because it implies that something was left broken.

Is there a reason why you disagree with the major premise of the article? Particularly, why do you think there is a principled difference between solo and sola scriptura and what is it? (Your answer shouldn’t refer to the Catholic Church… )
lojahw November 19th, 2009 2:59 pm :
Bryan wrote: “Your denomination does not claim to be the Church Christ founded as necessary for salvation for all men, having the keys of the Kingdom of heaven, and capable of forgiving men’s sins and retaining men’s sins.”

Bryan, the above claim as taught by your Church has never been accepted by the whole Body of Christ, starting with the East long before the Protestant Reformation.

In the words of Ignatius of Antioch: “Wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church.” (Smyrnans, 8; and quoted by your catechism: CCC 830).

Jesus said, “For where two or three have gathered together in my name, there am I in their midst.” (Matt. 18:20)

Vatican II recognizes all baptized Christians as members of Christ’s Body (UR 1).

Ergo, the Church of Jesus Christ, which He heads, is comprised of all members of His Body, and every branch that is connected to Him, the true vine. Can any member of the Body be lacking what is essential as long as it is connected to the Head?

Even if you do not recognize those who have not retained a formal apostolic succession, don’t forget the EO and the Anglican Communion have. There is no command of Christ that requires a specific form of ordination for His words in John 20:23 to be effective. Certainly, Paul expected the rights and privileges of presbyteroi / episcopoi to be passed on according to his instructions: “And the things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, these entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also.”

Blessings.
lojahw November 19th, 2009 3:11 pm :
Tim: peace, on the china shop – I certainly didn’t intend to break anything!

What I am saying is that there is no principled difference between a hierarchical interpretive authority and the interpretive authority of legitimate ordained clergy in Protestant churches. Individuals respond to both types of interpretive authority in the same ways.

What is your point?

Blessings.
Andrew McCallum November 19th, 2009 3:32 pm :
Sorry you don’t quite see it. You mention above that when “external interpretive authorities” are brought in, then we’re discussing B (means by which ecclesial authorities determine interpretive questions) as opposed to A (how individuals do the same). I don’t think there is any real reason to use the language this way, since of course the ‘ecclesial authorities’ in question might not be relying upon any ‘external interpretive authorities’ at all, and the individual may of course rely upon a collective of people he considers to have expert status, etc.

Neal – Well sure they could, but that does not speak to my point. When I brought up my case study of what the ECF’s of the 1st/2nd century used as their infallible standard, I did so because this is a question which touches at the center of the Reformed understanding of sola scriptura. Either the ECF’s used 1) only Scripture or 2) Scripture + tradition as an infallible standard. This is the heart of the matter. Now In your article you speak of how the individual Protestant judges theological matters. But on what basis I or you make theological judgments is a different discussion than what the Church used (or should use) as the basis for her official pronouncements. Do you see the difference? We can talk about the infallible standard of the ECF’s without ever touching on the question of the subjective evaluations that an individual makes. And so you could be entirely correct in your assessments of sola vs. sola as you state them in IV.A but be entirely incorrect about what judgments the Church used (or should use) to make her judgments. And it’s the later here that the Reformers were speaking of when they used the term sola scriptura.

I hope you don’t think I am beating this poor tired old mare to death with my persistency here. I just don’t think you are yet on the same wavelength with those who coined the term sola scriptura.

I hope you can unplug tonight – have a glass or two of red wine. I’m no doctor but that’s my prescription if you want to relax.
Bryan Cross November 19th, 2009 4:20 pm :
lojahw, (re: #247)

You wrote:

Bryan wrote: “Your denomination does not claim to be the Church Christ founded as necessary for salvation for all men, having the keys of the Kingdom of heaven, and capable of forgiving men’s sins and retaining men’s sins.”

Bryan, the above claim as taught by your Church has never been accepted by the whole Body of Christ, starting with the East long before the Protestant Reformation.

On the contrary, it has always been recognized by the whole Body of Christ. The whole Body of Christ is and has always been the Catholic Church, i.e. those in communion with St. Peter and his successors. That does not mean that it has always been recognized by every individual member of the Body of Christ. But it was well known in the first millennium of the Catholic Church, and remains the doctrine of the Church to this day. The role of the Pope, however, is not the subject of this article. So bringing it up would take us off-topic.

In the words of Ignatius of Antioch: “Wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church.” (Smyrnans, 8; and quoted by your catechism: CCC 830).

Of course. But that does not mean that all those present where Jesus is are in full communion with the Catholic Church.

Jesus said, “For where two or three have gathered together in my name, there am I in their midst.” (Matt. 18:20)

Christ’s being present when two or three Catholics have gathered together in His name is fully compatible with what I said above. Christ isn’t in this verse promising to be present even when schismatics or heretics “gather in His name”. Those who do so in invincible ignorance are in a different situation. But cases of invincible ignorance do not set the visible bounds of the Church Christ founded, or the extent of membership in His Church. Membership is visible, because the Church is visible.

Vatican II recognizes all baptized Christians as members of Christ’s Body (UR 1).

No it didn’t. That’s a very common misunderstanding, because it fails to recognize the other conditions necessary for membership. To be a member in Christ’s Church, you need to meet three conditions:

Actually only those are to be included as members of the Church who have been baptized and profess the true faith, and who have not been so unfortunate as to separate themselves from the unity of the Body, or been excluded by legitimate authority for grave faults committed. (Mystici Corporis Christi, 22)

The Protestant, even though having a valid baptism, by his denial of the true faith, and by his separation from the unity of the Body, is not a member of the Church. Vatican II did not change that twenty years later after Pope Piux XII wrote it. Rather, Vatican II affirmed in addition that the Spirit of God can and does work even outside the Church, through the Church’s sacrament of baptism and her Sacred Scriptures, bringing grace and gifts to non-Catholic Christians, thereby bringing them into an imperfect communion with the Catholic Church, a communion which impels toward full communion, and toward membership in His Body. But the possibility of salvation as a Protestant has to be understood in view of what the Church teaches about invincible ignorance regarding the identity and necessity of the Catholic Church. The Catechism teaches:

Hence they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or to remain in it. (CCC 846)

You wrote:

Even if you do not recognize those who have not retained a formal apostolic succession, don’t forget the EO and the Anglican Communion have. There is no command of Christ that requires a specific form of ordination for His words in John 20:23 to be effective.

According to the Catholic Church, Anglican orders are invalid, and the reason is explained by Pope Leo XIII in Apostolicae Curae. We agree that the Orthodox have all seven sacraments, including the sacrament of penance. But they are in schism from the Church, as were the Donatists of the fourth century.

All of this, though important, is quite entirely off the topic of our article, and we have addressed it elsewhere in other articles and posts here on CTC. Let’s keep the discussion on-topic.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Tim Troutman November 19th, 2009 4:29 pm :
Lojah – I gotcha on the china shop example.

Previously I asked:

Particularly, why do you think there is a principled difference between solo and sola scriptura and what is it?

Since you did not offer a principled reason between the two, I’m assuming that you agree that there is none. If so, then I agree with you so far. You go on to say that the Catholic position is not any better, so we can discuss that, but my main point was that the article’s major premise is still unchallenged (hence the tongue-in-cheek objection to the china shop.. “well by George….if a bull’s been in this china shop, he must have been a very well behaved bull because the china is still in tact… heck it’s not even dirty.”)
lojahw November 19th, 2009 5:22 pm :
Tim: I think you misunderstand me on the distinction between Solo Scriptura and Sola Scriptura. Sola Scriptura recognizes the authority of Scripture which itself clearly states: “But know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.” (2 Pet. 1:20-21).

Whoever does not follow this clear teaching of Scripture is not following Sola Scriptura. As Augustine said,

“But who can fail to be aware that the sacred canon of Scripture, both of the Old and New Testament, is confined within its own limits, and that it stands so absolutely in a superior position to all later letters of the bishops, that about it we can hold no manner of doubt or disputation whether what is confessedly contained in it is right and true; but that all the letters of bishops which have been written, or are being written, since the closing of the canon, are liable to be refuted … either by the discourse of someone who happens to be wiser in the matter than themselves, or by the weightier authority and more learned experience of other bishops, by the authority of Councils; and further, that the Councils themselves, which are held in the several districts and provinces, must yield, beyond all possibility of doubt, to the authority of plenary Councils which are formed for the whole Christian world; and that even of the plenary Councils, the earlier are often corrected by those which follow them” (On Baptism, Against the Donatists, 2.3.4)

One’s interpretation of Scripture is always subject to testing within the Body of Christ by those who are competent to do so.

Blessings.
Tim A. Troutman November 19th, 2009 5:30 pm :
Lojah, I’m not misunderstanding you; you’re not answering the question. What is the principled distinction between sola scriptura and solo scriptura?
TurretinFan November 19th, 2009 5:45 pm :
“What is the principled distinction between sola scriptura and solo scriptura?”

According to the article’s definition the “solo” position rejects “the true but subordinate authority of the church and the regula fidei.” The is distinguishable from a position that accepts the “the true but subordinate authority of the church and the regula fidei.”

Is the question simply a request to identify this distinction?
lojahw November 19th, 2009 6:15 pm :
TurretinFan’s observation is correct. In Solo Scriptura the Body of Christ has no interpretive authority over the individual’s interpretation, but as I explained in my previous posts, Sola Scriptura requires individuals to yield their person interpretations of Scripture to those in the Body of Christ who are more competent to interpret the Scripture (pastors, teachers, etc.) . Insisting on one’s own interpretation is contradictory to both 2 Peter 1:20-21 and the definition of Sola Scriptura given in the article.

As I stated, Sola Scriptura is simply incompatible with Solo Scriptura because the latter denies the authority of 2 Peter 1:20-21. I don’t know how to state the difference more clearly.

Blessings.
Tim A. Troutman November 19th, 2009 7:15 pm :
Lojah & TurretinFan – you’ve both merely restated the definition as explained by Mathison. I thought it would be abundantly clear that I wasn’t asking you to restate Mathison’s position.

The article demonstrates why Mathison’s position (i.e. that there is a principled distinction between solo and sola) is false. If you disagree with the article, then you should refute it. What you have been doing, instead, is trying to refute the Catholic position which is in no way related to the question of whether sola scriptura is reducible to solo scriptura.

If you’re unconvinced by the arguments in the article, that’s one thing. But let’s be clear that we’re not actually interacting on the issue when after 250+ comments, you’re just repeating the very thing in question.

As TurretinFan mentioned, Mathison is preparing a rebuttal. I’m looking forward to reading it; I’m just pointing out that no one has attempted to refute the article’s major premise.
TurretinFan November 19th, 2009 8:28 pm :
Troutman:

The argument for a lack of principled distinction (which could either be an argument that the distinction is not principled or that there is no distinction) is explained in the article thus:

However, as we shall argue below, there is no principled difference between sola scriptura and solo scriptura with respect to the locus of “ultimate interpretive authority:” sola scriptura, no less than solo scriptura, entails that the individual Christian is the ultimate arbiter of the right interpretation of Scripture.

But that doesn’t actually address the definition of Solo Scriptura.

Recall that the definition was that the “solo” position rejects “the true but subordinate authority of the church and the regula fidei.”

Saying that (in some sense) the individual is the “ultimate arbiter” does not on its face appear to be a rejection of “the true but subordinate authority of the church and the regula fidei.” Furthermore, the article appears to simply assume that if there is any sense in which the individual is the “ultimate arbiter” then the challenge of demonstrating that the distinction is unprincipled (or that there is no distinction) has been met.

Finally, as has been pointed out a few times, there is no alternative system (whether in “Protestantism” or within Eastern Orthodoxy or Roman Catholicism) in which it is not the case that the individual is the “ultimate arbiter” in some sense. The article itself doesn’t provide a principled distinction between the sense in which the sola scriptura advocate makes the individual the ultimate arbiter and the sense in which the {insert your description of the proffered alternative to sola scriptura here} advocate makes the individual the ultimate arbiter.

Thus, even if we leave aside the portions of the discussion where Mathison seems to be off-base, it doesn’t seem that the article is able to accomplish the mission it sets for itself. The best it can do is show that there is some sense in which the individual in sola scriptura is an ultimate arbiter, but this is not enough to demonstrate that the individual in sola scriptura rejects “the true but subordinate authority of the church and the regula fidei.”

-TurretinFan

N.B. Incidentally, identifying the regula fidei as something other than the inspired Scriptures is plainly contrary to WCF1:2, which states of the canonical books: “All which are given by inspiration of God, to be the rule of faith and life.” In the discussion above, I’m glossing over that issue, which otherwise creates more of the “you’re not addressing the classical Reformed position” problem, which we are trying to minimize for the sake of interacting with this article and the Mathisonian position it is critiquing.
Teri November 19th, 2009 9:03 pm :
You may moderate this appropriately, but I think the fact that the Reformed responses don’t agree with Matthison, who I thought was Reformed, is telling in and of itself.

They can’t agree on what the Reformed position should be regarding Sola Scriptura. I’m honestly not trying to be argumentative – but this was one of the things that made me, as a Protestant, start looking at what the early church looked like. If the “Gospel” is the “faith handed down once for all the saints”, why does everyone disagree on how it looks in reality using Sola Scriptura?

Sola Scriptura doesn’t even speak to how a worship service should be conducted actually. We have St. Paul trying to correct abuses at Corinth, but was the service centered around the preaching of the gospel? Did they have singing or chanting? No music or some music. Sounds silly but, it’s caused Church splits.

The Reformed position would appear much more admirable if they could agree among themselves on what it “is”.

PAX,
Teri
lojahw November 19th, 2009 10:33 pm :
Tim: apparently you don’t think the following has been addressed:

In this case the individual, based upon his own interpretation of Scripture, either establishes or chooses an ecclesial community that conforms to his own interpretation in matters he considers to be essential or important. Then, he ’submits’ to this institution so long as it continues to speak and act in accordance with his own interpretation of Scripture.

You assume a lot in the above statement. You assume that the reason people change churches is because they disagree with the doctrine of the church where they attend. I previously said that is not the case, but … your idea doesn’t match reality, because to be a member they must sign a doctrinal statement indicating that they affirm the doctrine that church teaches.

OK, so maybe they change their minds about a major Scriptural interpretation while attending. What are they to do? According to Sola Scriptura: “Obey your leaders, and submit to them for they keep watch over your souls, as those who will give an account” (Heb. 13:17). If they have an honest disagreement over the interpretation of Scripture, they are to go to their pastor and/or elders and explain their position. Most likely they will be shown the error in their understanding because their leaders are: “holding fast the faithful word which is in accord with sound doctrine and [able] to refute those who contradict” (Tit. 1:9). If they leave the church anyway at this point, they are not following Sola Scriptura.

OK, so what if the leaders of the church change their interpretation of Scripture that contradicts their doctrinal statement? Same procedure: those who disagree are to go to their leaders and follow the same procedure above. If the leaders are truly in heresy as demonstrated by reasoning from the Scriptures by the member (cf. Acts 17:2, 11), the members have to choose to: 1) leave the church (as I did); or 2) stay and pray for the leaders to return to orthodoxy. In actual practice, however, most members are not trained to refute error themselves, so they may need some help from others who are well-trained in the Scriptures.

However, there are also many minor areas of difference between Protestant Churches that apply to any of the above scenarios. In those cases the following dictum applies: “In the essentials, unity; in the non-essentials, liberty, and in all things, charity.” Because Protestants have a more inclusive view of the Church, moving to another church for social or minor interpretation differences (such as modes of baptism) is not a reason to break communion (yes, most Protestant Churches practice open communion).

But all of the above are rare in practice (other than growing heresy in some of the mainline churches). Far more common, as I’ve said in previous posts, are social reasons: e.g., marriage to someone from a different tradition, or a move to another city and trying to find a church that one fits into socially, or, sadly, a falling out with people in their church. In the latter case, I always counsel people to follow Matt. 18 to be reconciled, rather than leave. If they leave without trying to be reconciled, they are simply disobeying Sola Scriptura.

As far as establishing a new church for the sake of a particular emphasis, there’s nothing wrong with that as long as the core doctrines are orthodox. If every member of the body were an eye, where would the body be? However, if one starts a church, like Joseph Smith did (LDS), that is heretical – that’s a cult.
I don’t doubt the above will raise more questions, because one can’t cover the gamut in one combox post!

Blessings.
Devin Rose November 19th, 2009 11:26 pm :
Perhaps off-topic, feel free to moderate:

lojahw wrote “In Solo Scriptura the Body of Christ has no interpretive authority over the individual’s interpretation, but as I explained in my previous posts, Sola Scriptura requires individuals to yield their person interpretations of Scripture to those in the Body of Christ who are more competent to interpret the Scripture (pastors, teachers, etc.) . Insisting on one’s own interpretation is contradictory to both 2 Peter 1:20-21 and the definition of Sola Scriptura given in the article.”

Who are those persons in the Body of Christ who are more competent than I to interpret the Scriptures?

Luther certainly thought that he was more competent than others, eventually coming to disdain others interpreting the Scriptures (for example, peasants and the Radical Reformers and even Zwingli). He wrote his catechisms to provide his own interpretive guidelines for how Christians should interpret the Bible. Calvin did the same thing in his Institutes. Zwingli was another educated man who believed strongly in his interpretations, yet all three of these magisterial Reformers differed in their interpretations of the Bible, sometimes in significant ways on essential matters (the Eucharist, for example, sola fide and baptism, etc.)

So should I be listening to Luther’s descendants, Calvin’s, Zwingli’s, or someone else? Who are the competent (Protestant) teachers to look to when the founders of Protestantism disagreed from the very beginning of the Reformation?

Why should I follow sola Scriptura and accept another person’s interpretation of Scripture over my own when these pastors and teachers have never agreed on what the Scriptures teach? This fact seems like another reason why sola Scriptura boils down to solo Scriptura.
lojahw November 20th, 2009 12:18 am :
Devon, As Bryan explained to me the Magisterium does not interpret specific passages of Scripture as Luther, Calvin, et al. did. So I guess there is no infallible interpretation of any particular passage of Scripture?

I’ve quoted Augustine many times on this subject: all bishops and church councils are liable to refutation and correction. We can only do the best we can with what we have. “Thy Word is Truth” is the best place to start…

On the other hand, the Symbol of Nicea, hammered out from the Scriptures in AD 325 has stood the test of time. “In the essentials, unity; in the non-essential, liberty; in all things charity.” I would suggest that the AD 325 Nicene Creed covers the essentials. The rest we can keep debating…

Blessings.
lojahw November 20th, 2009 7:41 am :
Teri wrote: “You may moderate this appropriately, but I think the fact that the Reformed responses don’t agree with Matthison, who I thought was Reformed, is telling in and of itself.”

Teri, please understand that the Reformed position is just one viewpoint within Protestantism. I do not consider myself to be Reformed, so my answers may not entirely agree with Mathison. Nevertheless, we both agree to the principle of Sola Scriptura, and that the church is a subordinate authority to Scripture. The differences in terminology, emphasis, and practice are inconsequential.

In the essentials, unity; in the non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity.

Blessings.
T Ciatoris November 20th, 2009 8:05 am :
lojahw,

You wrote:

As far as establishing a new church for the sake of a particular emphasis, there’s nothing wrong with that as long as the core doctrines are orthodox.

Here you’ve touched on, I think, one of the central differences between Catholic and Protestant ecclesiology. For Catholics, it’s nonsense to speak of “establishing a new church” for the sake of anything. The Church was established once by the self-giving charity of Christ in His paschal mystery. His sacred side was opened once and His Bride was formed once of the blood and water flowing from His side. Individual Christians are born from Mother Church. The Church is the logically prior reality. We in the West are so formed in our modern political theory that we’ve imported it into our ecclesiology, so that Christianity is seen as fundamentally an individual phenomenon, and we think the church is “established” by the mutual agreement of individuals whose “core doctrines are orthodox.” “We the people who have individual relationships with God through Christ, in order to form a more perfect union…”

You can claim, of course, that you still see the Church as the fundamental, logically prior reality, but that that reality is not embodied in any particular, identifiable, concrete, institutional reality. But that’s ecclesiological docetism, and thus a failure in incarnational Christology. It suggests that the Body of Christ is really no “body” at all, but a disembodied set of doctrines that can be bodied forth by any group of individuals who chooses so to do. This is precisely related to other heresies throughout Christian history. In the early middle ages, iconoclasts and those who denied the Real Presence in the Eucharist regularly claimed that Christ had given up His humanity at the Ascension. So He was no longer incarnationally circumscribable and could not be depicted in an icon. And of course His body and blood could not be present in the Eucharist, because He no longer had a body or blood. But we, of course, deny that the Word has ceased to be hypostatically united to His human nature, and so His “body” is not and cannot be an indeterminate, disembodied set of truths waiting to be incarnated by a group of individuals based on their own will. The Holy Spirit has made Christ incarnate in the flesh He took from Mary and in His Body the Church. That’s his job, not ours.

On the other hand, the Symbol of Nicea, hammered out from the Scriptures in AD 325 has stood the test of time. “In the essentials, unity; in the non-essential, liberty; in all things charity.” I would suggest that the AD 325 Nicene Creed covers the essentials. The rest we can keep debating…

The Nicene Creed did not define the status of the Holy Spirit (the Creed you’re probably thinking of is properly called the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, and it’s from 381, not 325). It did not rule out Nestorianism or Monophysitism. It did not inform us whether we may use sacred images in Christian worship, or whether we may believe that the Eucharist is merely symbolic. These were covered later. Do you really think these are non-essential matters? And on what basis would you argue that these are non-essential matters while those matters covered at Nicaea are essential? I’m having trouble seeing a principled difference between you and an Arian who might say, “Look, guys, we all agree that Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior of the world through His cross and resurrection. He’s the Son of God, the perfect image of the Father, indeed he is God – just not in the same way the Father is, you know, not consubstantial. You’re all obsessing about non-essentials when you insist on this silly homoousios language. It’s not biblical – we Arians stick with biblical language – and I’m not going to let these bishops try to tell me that their reading of Scripture is guided by the Holy Spirit.” What’s the difference, lojahw? Why draw the line in the fourth century? Why pick on all those poor Bible-reading Arians but give a free pass to the Bible-reading reformers of the 16th century?

One more thing: the 16th century schism took place primarily over a soteriological issue: justification by faith alone. Where is that in Nicene Creed? If it’s not there, then your claim that the reformation was justified is in conflict with your claim that all the essentials were established in the 4th century.

in Christ,

TC
T Ciatoris November 20th, 2009 8:34 am :
lojahw,

A couple more things.

I think you’ve misunderstood what Bryan’s saying with respect to the Magisterium as interpreter of Scripture. It’s true that the Magisterium rarely pronounces that verse X means Y, full stop. When the Magisterium does say something like that, it never presumes to exhaust the meaning of the inspired text, which precisely as inspired always carries an overplus of meaning. But sometimes the Magisterium does assert that verse X means at least Y. More often the Magisterium defines that verse X does not mean Z. The Magisterium’s job is not to provide the Church with a comprehensive, authoritative commentary on Sacred Scripture, but to set boundaries, a framework for orthodox interpretation of Scripture. Thus, the Council of Nicaea prevents Christians who would be orthodox from interpreting Prov 8:22, Col 1:15, or John 14:28 as the Arians did. This does not slam the door on Christian interpretation of these texts, claiming to have definitively exhausted the meaning of these inspired texts. Instead, it provides an authoritative guideline for reading them in an orthodox fashion.

With respect to your oft-repeated quote from St Augustine, I have two comments. First, it’s highly ironic that you’re quoting from de baptismo, a work Augustine wrote against the Donatists. Donatism was more nearly a schism than a heresy. The Donatists were Nicenes with, basically, orthodox theology. But they were in schism from the Catholic Church. On your principles, Augustine had no business bothering them at all, much less writing long treatises like de baptismo against them, not to mention refraining from communion with them. Second, you’re not accounting for the difference between inspiration and infallibility. The inspiration of Scripture guarantees that the words of Scripture are not subject to revision of any sort. The words of Scripture are the words the Holy Spirit intended. The infallibility of the Councils and Popes, on the other hand, is a negative authority: it’s infallibility. That is, Councils and Popes are guarded from error, but there is no guarantee that they will express themselves clearly or completely at any given moment. Thus, for example, the Council of Nicaea actually proscribes talk about God subsisting in three hypostases, because the Nicene Fathers took “hypostasis” to be a technical equivalent of “ousia.” Of course, the philosophical language employed by Christians in exploring the mysteries of our faith developed in the following decades, and so nobody claims that orthodox language about three hypostases is in violation of the faith of Nicaea. In this respect even the findings of an ecumenical council are subject to “reform.” But the Council of Nicaea is still infallible.

in Christ,

TC
Andy November 20th, 2009 9:42 am :
lojahw

What are the essentials? Protestantism’s disunity has come from the fact that many of these denominations cannot agree, using only the Scriptures, what exactly is an essential belief. First with regards to faith (Baptism, the Eucharist, Justification, Once saved always saved..or not, etc). Then with morals (Birth Control, Divorce, Abortion in all cases, etc). And each denomination attempts to justify their position using the scriptures. Are we really left to discover the Truth by relying on one’s intellect? Of course I believe you would even say no to that question. I imagine you would say we should rely on the guidance of the Holy Spirit. I would agree. Now the question would be whether or not the Spirit has reserved an institution, as a sort of avenue of certainty, to specifically guide the Church into the truth of the essentials, one that has authority to obligate us to confess a certain point as true regardless of what we previously held as our private belief on the point. This is what the reformed protestant churches do not posses. They cannot obligate us, by their authority, to believe a point that is contrary to our own private opinion. So we are really the judge of the point. This is why no matter how one formulates sola/solo scriptura they are still left with a church that really has no dogmatic authority that obligates (meaning it would be a sin to refuse their command) us to believe what they say is the truth.

But the Scriptures say the Church is the pillar and ground of Truth. If they are then we have to submit to what the leaders proclaim as the truth. Now how are we to know who are these leaders? Well their authority would have to be from Christ and would have a recognizable feature. Christ gave authority to the apostles. The apostles gave authority to their successors. This is evident in both the scriptures and in history. So the feature would have to be an apostolic succession. This is what the creed means by the apostolicity of the church. This succession is critical to unity because it links who we are to follow on something that is recognizable and traceable. Anything outside this chain would be an anomaly and should be avoided. This is what the reformation was, introducing ideas that were never taught universally within the borders of the apostolic church.

I am not Catholic, by the way. I was raised protestant but this issue of sola scriptura has me believing that I cannot continue to be protestant much longer.

Andy
mateo November 20th, 2009 2:25 pm :
mateo: I once encountered a Baptist man that argued along the lines that you are advancing. Basically he said this: We are saved by faith alone, but no one can know with certainty what we are supposed to believe. To be saved, we need to have sincere faith in things that may or may not be true.

Paige Britton: Well, you’re right, that would be unlivable, wouldn’t it! And what a woefully silly impression you received about Protestant epistemology.

Protestant epistemology has lead to the creation of thousands upon thousands of divided Protestant sects that cannot come together and agree on a single point of doctrine. What is the source of that Protestant doctrinal chaos if it is not the doctrine of sola scriptura? Does the Baptist man I mentioned really believe anything different than the tens of millions of Protestants that also claim to believe that the Protestant Bible is the ONLY source of infallible authority for a Christian? Protestant pastors, elders, deacons, presbyters, educated theologians – whatever man or woman that that a Protestant may recognize as having some sort of authority in religious matters – those religious authorities can never teach infallibly according to the doctrine of sola scriptura. That makes it impossible for anyone who believes in sola scriptura to claim that they know with certainty what they must believe to be an orthodox Christian.

Paige Britton: As a member, I am conscience-bound to submit to my elders because of the vow I have taken; as a sometimes-teacher, I am also conscience-bound to convey to others only what is in keeping with our doctrinal standards. But unlike the elders, I may harbor private reservations about something like infant baptism …

You believe that you have the freedom to “harbor private reservations about something like infant baptism”? What you believe on this point of doctrine will either make you either heterodox or orthodox. If you believe that the Protestant Bible is your only source of infallible authority, you can never know with certainty whether infant baptism is something that you should accept or reject by appealing to the Bible alone. Whatever you believe on this point of doctrine, you are just like the Baptist man I mentioned – you might think that your faith is orthodox, but you can never know that it is.

Paige Britton: … look, all I’m saying is that IF there were no Magisterium to lean on, God would still be good, and what he would give us as far as certainty goes would be reasonable enough to live on. Don’t you think this is a reasonable expectation?

Well no, I do not think what you are saying is reasonable. I reject the doctrine of sola scriptura because it is an extremely unreasonable doctrine. Sola scriptura doctrine implicitly claims that it is itself an infallible doctrine while at the same time it explicitly claims that the Protestant Bible is the ONLY source of infallible doctrine. Sola scriptura is self-refuting because there are no scriptures in a Protestant Bible that teach that the Protestant Bible is the ONLY infallible source of authority. It is wholly unreasonable for me to believe in sola scriptura since it is full of self-refuting contradictions. Even God with His omnipotence and omniscience cannot believe in things that are full of internal contradictions. God cannot expect me to do what He is incapable of doing!

If Christ expects me join the Church that he established and to believe what is true about matters of faith and morals (which He does), then it is wholly reasonable for me to believe that Christ would have people in the Church that He founded that are vested with the authority to teach infallibly about matters of faith and morals. That there exists a living magisterium in the Church founded by Jesus is an extremely reasonable thing for me to believe, and that is why I don’t struggle with the idea. If all Christ left me with is a book that no one can know with certainty what it actually teaches, then it is most unreasonable for God to expect me to have a faith that is “reliable”. How can I possibly know if my faith is reliable if I can’t know with certainty that any doctrine taught by His Church is actually true?

Paige Britton: It’s not like we’re shut up to only two options, a Magisterium on the one hand or dizzying doubt about meaning on the other.

With sola scriptura there is only one option – doubt about all things religious, because the scriptures have to be interpreted to be understood.

When I was a kid, I had a Magic 8-Ball toy – I could ask Magic 8-Ball a yes or no question, and then turn it over to see an answer to my question float up to a window. If a Protestant Bible is my ONLY source of infallible authority, it needs a feature like the Magic 8-Ball toy if the Bible is going to interpret itself infallibly. As a minimum, I need to be able to ask my Bible a question about whether a particular interpretation is correct and then have my Bible respond back with a yes or no answer. But since Bibles don’t have that feature, if sola scriptura is true, I can’t ever have infallible knowledge that a particular interpretation is correct, and neither can anyone else.

Many Protestants claim that interpretation isn’t a problem because scriptures are perspicuous, but if that is true, how does one explain the fact that there are thousands upon thousands of Protestant denominations that are bitterly divided over doctrinal matters?

Paige Britton: I don’t know with 100% certainty that I can trust my husband in all things, but the certainty I have is quite enough to make for an excellent marriage.

I think that I understand your analogy – just as you can have a good marriage without believing that your husband is an infallible authority, you can have a good relationship with the authorities in your Protestant church without believing that they are infallible authorities. I don’t doubt that at all. But I think that your marriage analogy is faulty since the relationship that the members of the Church have with Jesus is like that of a bride and bridegroom. Jesus doesn’t want a good marriage; He wants a perfect marriage.

A woman spoke in our church recently to promote a program called Marriage Encounter, and without intending to, she said something that I thought also applied to the Church as the Bride of Christ. Speaking about the benefits of Marriage Encounter, she said that there was a time when she felt that she personally had no need for Marriage Encounter because she already had a good marriage. It was true that she had a good marriage, and she was comfortable with that. What struck me was her statement: “a good marriage can be the enemy of the best marriage”.

For whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. Matt 16:25
lojahw November 20th, 2009 5:11 pm :
TC, thank you for your comments. I would quibble a little on Augustine’s statement that the word “refuted” is not limited to further elaboration, but includes potential denial of what was taught. Also, as I read Augustine, he sided with Cyprian in favor of communion with the Donatists:

“To this is added the testimony of Cyprian, showing clearly that he remained in communion with them, when he says, “Judging no man, nor removing any from the right of communion if he entertain a different opinion.” (On Baptism, Against the Donatists, 7.2.3).

The above suggests to me that Augustine considered certain beliefs and practices to be “non-essential,” and thus not barriers to communion.

The Church was established once by the self-giving charity of Christ in His paschal mystery.

No argument. When I said “establish a new church” I was speaking of a new member of the One Body of Christ, not of a new Body of Christ; or a new branch on the true vine. The Church visible cannot all meet in one place this side of heaven, so physical divisions are necessary. And according to the analogy of the Body, not all members are an eye. For there to be different members, there is distinction between them. The eye is not physically connected to the hand, but each are connected to the head. For there to be many branches, each grows from the true vine from a separate and distinct connection with the true vine. These are not Docetic pictures of the Church, but those given by Christ and His Apostles.

Do you really think these are non-essential matters?

I agree with you that the Symbol of Nicea (and yes, I really did mean the AD 325 version) was not exhaustive, but since Sola Scriptura teaches that the Bible IS the regula fidei, any contradiction of Scripture is considered heresy (cf. John 10:35). Some heresies are more serious than others. Heresy about God and His nature is always serious.

I’m having trouble seeing a principled difference between you and an Arian

How so? If one is committed to Sola Scriptura, one confirms or refutes his beliefs according to the Scriptures, just like the bishops at Nicea refuted Arius and confirmed their faith:

“The bishops, having detected their deceitfulness in this matter [the Arian heresy], collected from Scripture those passages which say of Christ that He is the glory, the fountain, the stream, and the express image of the person … likewise, ‘ I and the Father are one.’ They then, with still greater clearness, briefly declared that the Son is of one substance with the Father; for this, indeed, is the signification of the passages which have been quoted.” (Theodoret, Church History 1.7)

And … “And since no passage of the inspired Scripture uses the terms ‘out of the non-existent,’ or that ‘there was a time when He was not,’ nor indeed any of the other phrases of the same class, it did not appear reasonable to assert or to teach such things.” (ibid. 1.11)

The point is that according to Sola Scriptura, the Scriptures cannot be broken. According to Sola Scriptura, the church, as it was at Nicea, is a subordinate authority to Scripture.

It is interesting that you bring up later theological debates, since Pope Honorius fell into the Monotheolite heresy and was condemned for it by the Sixth Ecumenical Council. Again, Scripture provides the corrective: “Not My will but Thy will be done.”

Re: the Reformation, you gloss over the historical context: was it necessary to buy indulgences for forgiveness, for justification, before God? Luther and others argued that this contradicted the teaching of, e.g., Romans 4:1-6 (“… For what does the Scripture say? “And Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.” … But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is reckoned as righteousness.”). If the Scriptures cannot be broken, then it cannot both be true that one must buy an indulgence for justification and that one can be justified by faith without works.

Blessings.
lojahw November 20th, 2009 5:13 pm :
Andy,

Within the framework of Sola Scriptura one identifies the essentials by beginning with what Jesus taught as recorded in Scripture:

1) “Only one thing is necessary” (Luke 10:42). What is that? To be His disciple, as was Mary, the sister of Martha. Jesus defined this in John 10:27-28, “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me; and I give eternal life to them, and they shall never perish; and no one shall snatch them out of My hand.” One becomes Jesus’ disciple as St. John taught: “As many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name…” (John 1:12; cf. John 3:16, 18, 36; 5:24; 6:29, 40, 47; 7:38; 11:25-26; 20:31). St. Paul affirmed this truth: “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you shall be saved” (Acts 16:31).

2) Jesus taught His disciples to “observe all that I have commanded you,” and to make disciples of all the nations, teaching them to do the same. What did Jesus command? In brief: Love God and love your neighbor (upon which all the Laws and the Prophets depend, Matt. ); believe in Him (John 3:18; 10:26) love one another (a new commandment; John 13:34-35); seek first God’s kingdom and His righteousness (Matt. 6:33); be baptized in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit; “Do this in remembrance of Me” (share the bread and cup of the Lord’s table until He comes again); and do not contradict the Scriptures (cf. John 10:35). This last teaching eliminates all heresy. You might identify other commands, but these seem obvious to me.

3) Paul wrote this about essentials: “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also receive, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures” (1 Cor. 15:3-4). Those who say that everything is equally important contradict the Scriptures.

The Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15 is also instructive on essential practices: “For it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay upon you no greater burden than these essentials.” In keeping with the Apostle’s decision in Acts 15, we should expect a short list of essential practices for future generations of Christians (e.g., from the above list).

Back to the article, Sola Scriptura does NOT boil down to Solo Scriptura. The Scriptures are the unchanging, sufficient and infallible regula fidei of the “faith which was once for all delivered to the saints.” It did not take centuries for Christians to develop a guide for what was always necessary for salvation. The institutional model you suggest requires one to say that what was true and sufficient for the first generation of Christians is no longer true and sufficient, because the institution was slow to figure it all out. That contradicts Scripture (e.g., Jude 1:3).

According to Sola Scriptura, the Church is a subordinate (and fallible) authority under Scripture. The Holy Spirit did guide Jesus’ Apostles into all the truth, and they passed it down for all posterity. That doesn’t mean that God made everything clear; but I believe He made the essentials clear in His Word.

In the essentials, unity; in the non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity.

Blessings.
Devin Rose November 20th, 2009 5:14 pm :
lojahw,

Thank you for your reply, but if I am trying to be a sola Scriptura Protestant, I still don’t know who to obey:

I originally asked: “So should I be listening to Luther’s descendants, Calvin’s, Zwingli’s, or someone else? Who are the competent (Protestant) teachers to look to when the founders of Protestantism disagreed from the very beginning of the Reformation?” I don’t have an answer, so I cannot yield my interpretation to anyone yet. What is the basis for knowing to whom I should yield my interpretation?

Should I listen to (some particular subset of) pastors from the PCA, PCUSA, Orthodox Presbyterian Church, ACNA, AMiA, Anglican Communion, TEC, Lutheran Missouri Synod, ELCA, or some other set of pastors and teachers that are part of the Body of Christ and identify themselves in continuation with three of the original Protestant movements (Reformed, Anglican, and Lutheran)?
lojahw November 20th, 2009 5:55 pm :
Devon,

Who’s interpretation of the Trinity are you referring to that contradicts another?
Who contradicts another on the necessity of faith for salvation?
Or the necessity of baptism and celebrating the Eucharist?

The question is: in which doctrine essential to salvation do you see a conflict? (my post on the essentials to Andy is in queue)

The assumption of Sola Scriptura is that what Jesus didn’t say or what He and His Apostles left ambiguous is not essential to our salvation.

My short answer is: go to the founding fathers of the faith, the ones who gave us the Scriptures. If they don’t explain it clearly, don’t make a dogma out of any particular interpretation.

Blessings.
Nathan November 20th, 2009 7:40 pm :
lojahw,

You seem to be blithely unconcerned with a key point Matthison makes when he says, “All appeals to Scripture are appeals to interpretations of Scripture.” For this reason, scripture itself cannot be the regula fidei, because it must be interpreted. You seem to be assuming that scripture is self-interpreting and forms a wholly self-contained context (i.e. independent of the church): both of those assumptions are utterly false.

Moreover, saying, “If they don’t explain it clearly, don’t make a dogma out of any particular interpretation” simply allows you claim that something is not clear and therefore should not be dogmatic. By that standard, Arianism should be perfectly valid, because the Arians would have said the exact same thing. Again, that view cannot escape subjectivism, because what is clear to one person is not to another.
Devin Rose November 20th, 2009 9:03 pm :
lojahw,

Based on your response, which seems to be implying that sola Scriptura Protestants all believe substantially the same thing on “the essentials” like the Trinity, faith, baptism, and the Eucharist, I would turn it around on you and ask that if they all substantially agree on the important matters, why are they all fractured apart from one another? Shouldn’t they all leave aside their small differences on those non-essentials and worship in communion with each other?

But since they do not, to follow sola Scriptura, I have to choose a set of Protestant pastors and teachers to yield my personal interpretations to. But they are all divided from one another, so I don’t know whom to choose.

Finally, Zwingli, Luther, and Calvin each differed from one another on the Eucharist.

Luther and Calvin had subtle but very significant differences in what they believed and taught about sola fide and its relationship to baptism and both of those to salvation. (Search for Philip Cary Luther and read Dr. Cary’s two papers on Luther and Calvin on this matter (he is an Anglican professor).)

So even on those essentials, the founding fathers of Protestantism differed substantially. Which of them is right? And who are their descendants which I should follow?
Andy November 20th, 2009 11:01 pm :
lojahw

I do not believe you sufficiently answered what I presented as a problem with sola scriptura. In fact it seems that you proved my point by picking out from scriptures what you believe to be the essentials. The point I am making is that even the scriptures you quote beg the issue I brought up. What does it mean to love God and neighbor and how does one do it? What did Paul mean by saved and did he mean by believing alone or are works necessary for justification as James states? And can one lose this salvation? When should one be baptized and does this baptism really remit sins as Peter exclaims in Acts? What was all that Jesus commanded? Did everything he command get written down in the Scriptures or were there more things that Jesus did as John (traditionally understood as the last the gospel writer) states in his gospel? Do you believe that the only moral essentials are abstaining from meat that was sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what has been strangled and from sexual immorality? Is this what they are teaching or is what they say supposed to be placed within the context of the dispute that called the council together, namely should gentile converts be circumcised which reflects a practice of the works of the old law. And what is sexual immorality? Does it include divorce, remarriage, polygamy, the use of birth control? All these points and more are central to the many divisions within protestantism and they all accept the your fundamental starting point of authority. Where in the bible does it teach that the scriptures were the only sufficient and infallible reguala fide? Do you really believe that such an essential belief, namely the framework of sola scriptura as the rule of faith, was not necessary to be included in those scriptures which you say are the only sufficient infallible rule of faith?

The early church fathers did have all that was necessary to know the essentials for their salvation. Read those fathers, they appeal to the church as the way they knew these things and they based their authority on receiving it from the apostles. They did not have an possession a canon of scriptures from the beginning and what were the inspired books was one of the disputes. I encourage you to really study the anti-nicene fathers. As a protestant I was in a foreign land.

The Catholic Church is subordinate to the divinely revealed truths. They are its servants and they claim it comes from both the Scriptures and also from Tradition. But according to them we are subordinate to both these modes of communication of divinely revealed truth and to their interpretation. And this is the only case where we would no longer be the judge of what is true. For if I was a Catholic no matter what I believed about Mary privately, I would be obligated by their authority to submit to what they proclaim as truths, from the the modes of communication of divine revelation, about Mary. Protestant churches do not possess this obligatory right. Therefore they do not possess dogmatic authority. Therefore knowing the truths of God would come down ultimately to our own private opinions, trying to discern where the Spirit is leading us. Now if all that we have is the Scriptures and the Spirit to guide us, then based on the historical fact of denominationalism, is the Spirit guiding us in different directions and into contradictions with one another? This can’t e be the case, but this is whats happening using sola scriptura as the only infallible and sufficient rule of faith.
Tap November 20th, 2009 11:03 pm :
Any of you here in contact with Mathison, know if he’s response will come soon.? No one so far has been able to answer that Sola Scriptura always reduces to Solo Scriptura.
lojahw November 20th, 2009 11:44 pm :
Tap, I explained why Sola Scriptura does NOT default to Solo Scriptura in posts # 258 & 265.

Nathan,

So what’s different about interpreting Scripture and interpreting the writings of your Magisterium? The difference is that God chose the words in the first and your Pope chose the words in the second. Is your pope a better word-smith than God? And how many interpretations are there of your infallible interpreter?

“We declare, say, define and pronounce, that it is absolutely necessary for the salvation of every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff” (Boniface VIII, Bull Unam Sanctam).

I’ve personally heard RC’s give at least 6 different interpretations.

And how many interpretations are there of Acts 4:10-12 which begins: “by the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene” … and ends: “there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men, by which we must be saved.”

Devin,

Please go back and read post #249. Most Protestant churches ARE in communion with each other. There are many reasons for different churches, just as Paul says that the Body of Christ is made of many members: if all were an eye, where would the body be? The main differences are cultural, ethnic, styles of worship, styles of leadership (Baptists call their lay leaders deacons; Presbyterians call theirs elders; etc.) different ministry focuses (some church plants are focused on particular demographics, like youth at universities or the poor, etc.). Many Protestant churches were split by the Civil War: hence, the Southern Baptists vs. Northern Baptists. However, this does not mean that they are not now in communion with one another. Many splinters recently are over liberal vs. conservative, in which case the liberals have abandoned the historic faith and have abandoned Sola Scriptura (the RCC also is not immune to theological liberals).

Mateo,

You really don’t know what you are talking about. Just because you talked to one Baptist man doesn’t mean he knew what his Church teaches (just as most RC’s I’ve talked to don’t know what your Church teaches). Go on the web and look up the doctrinal statements below before you make any more rash statements about how none of them can agree on even one point:

The Evangelical Free Church, https://www.efca.org/about-efca/statement-faith
The Southern Baptists, https://sbc.net/bfm/bfm2000.asp
The Presbyterian Church in America, https://www.pcanet.org/general/beliefs.htm
United Church of Christ, https://www.ucc.org/beliefs/statement-of-faith.html
The Methodist Church https://archives.umc.org/interior.asp?mid=1648
The Reformed Church, https://www.crcna.org/pages/beliefs.cfm
The Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod, https://www.lcms.org/pages/internal.asp?NavID=112
The Anglican Church in North America, https://www.anglicanchurch-na.org/about/theology.html

Note: I have filtered out the liberal branches of the above traditions that no longer subscribe to Sola Scriptura and have openly become practitioners of Solo Scriptura (really Solo Sua).

Peace.
lojahw November 21st, 2009 1:17 am :
Andy, You and I see things differently. I sincerely believe that #1 encapsulates the plan of salvation – that each person who is a disciple of Jesus Christ has eternal life. How one practices being a disciple involves being taught and “observing all that I have commanded.”

I have read the ECFs extensively, from Clement and Ignatius of Antioch, forward and I simply don’t see any claims that Christ commanded things that are not found in the Scriptures. Have you found any? Indeed, Irenaeus in the second century wrote:

“We have known the method of our salvation by no other means than those by whom the gospel came to us; which gospel they truly preached; but afterward, by the will of God, they delivered to us in the Scriptures, to be for the future the foundation and pillar of our faith.” (Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 3:1)

If you want to appeal to liturgical traditions, such as multiyear catechesis prior to baptism with triple immersion in the nude (Hippolytus), I make three observations: 1) detailed liturgical practices were not described nor etched in stone from the Apostles; 2) such practices, changed over time like all traditions; and 3) the Apostolic Constitutions and a few other ECF writings that imply learning the faith before baptism appear to be consistent with Matt. 28:19, which says to make disciples … baptizing them. The referent for “them” is “disciples.” It is disciples that Jesus commanded to be baptized, not those who have yet to come to faith in Him. [BTW – Acts 16:31 in the Greek is clearly: “(You, plural) believe in Jesus Christ, and (you, plural) will be saved, you (singular) and your (singular) household.” So Paul is consistent with Jesus, disciples, or those who believe in Him, are to be baptized.]

As regards all that Jesus did and said not being written down, the Apostle John concludes: “But these HAVE BEEN WRITTEN that you MAY BELIEVE that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing, you may have life in His name.” In other words, what has been written is sufficient for one to gain life, and in the context, it is clear that John is talking about eternal life (cf. John 3:36, and the many other references in his Gospel).

Does being baptized remit sins? Acts 2:38 says forgiveness comes not from baptism alone, but from its combination with repentance. It would be absurd to require infants to repent, so why baptize them? I trust God with infants as well as those who never had the opportunity to respond to the Gospel. God is not unjust, and I trust in His love for the world.

What does it mean to love God and our neighbor and how does one do it? The Bible gives many examples for our instruction of what love is and how it behaves. Love cannot be taught in a formula, so don’t look for one.

What Paul means by saved: the same thing Jesus meant in John 3:15-17 – have eternal life (fully realized in a changed body in the resurrection. Read 1 Cor. 15 to see Paul’s description.)

Is there a contradiction between Paul and James? No, Paul says one may boast of his works, but not before God (Rom. 4:2). James is describing works as the expected fruit of faith: if one says he has faith, but his actions don’t show it, then his boast of faith before men is worthless. Paul says that one may boast of his works before men, so he’s in agreement with James.

As for the security of the believer, how do you interpret John 10:27-29? “No one can snatch them from My Father’s hand.” Would any human claim himself more powerful than God (do you think if God is holding onto you that you can really pull free?) I don’t pretend to understand God’s sovereign election that Paul teaches in Romans, or the perseverance of the saints, but both are taught by Jesus and the Apostles.

Re: The Acts 15 “essentials” – I did not claim to believe those were the only moral requirements, but rather that the judgment illustrates the principle that Jesus’ yoke is easy, His burden is light – unlike the heavy burden of the Pharisaic traditions built up over centuries.

What is sexual immorality? The Greek word, porneia, is where we get the word pornography. Its usage in the Bible seems to relate broadly to sexual sin, which includes both extramarital and homosexual liaisons, as well as bestiality (all worthy of the death penalty in the OT). The Bible teaching related to remarriage is too complex for this post, and I have not found clear teaching on birth control (other than infanticide).

I am willing to submit my interpretations above to the church’s judgment, with the stipulation that all discussion must be consistent with Scripture and follow accepted rules of hermeneutics (including reference to linguistic, literary, cultural, and historical information relevant to the original writers).

So you claim these points divide Protestantism and therefore Sola Scriptura is discredited? I’d say these points divide people in every faith tradition, including Roman Catholicism. So does that discredit every faith tradition? Let’s keep a level playing field here. Sinful and fallible people are sufficient to explain what divides us within the One faith. But on the positive side: we all do call on Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, right? We all agree to the Triune God described in the Nicene Creed, right? Let’s appreciate what is good.

My issue with certain RC traditions is that they are not found (and even explicitly opposed) by the ECFs, e.g., veneration of images (another topic). Lacking continuity from the Apostles, I cannot recognize them as handed down by the Apostles, and therefore cannot legitimately claim to be part of the “faith which was once for all delivered to the saints.”

Blessings.
Andy November 21st, 2009 2:30 am :
lojahw

I still don’t believe you have addressed the point of my posts. For each of your explanations of scripture there are many protestants that would have serious disagreements about them. And this is what is expected in the case of sola scriptura, each person or groups of persons using their intellect claiming to be guided by the Spirit, choose to emphasize one passage of scriptures to interpret another passages of scriptures. For instances if one believes that when Paul says you are justified by faith apart from works of the law, he may interpret that to mean justification by faith alone. Now with that belief established he then will attempt to interpret James as meaning something different by justification then Paul, in order to make the statement” one is justified by his works and not by faith alone” harmonize with his already established belief. Whereas another will state that Paul and James mean something different by works. Who is to say who is right? I am not trying to get in a discussion on these passages as that would stray from the article. I am just pointing out that the differences in opinions are great within protestantism and this should not be surprising given the absent of a living, vocal authority to correct us on these essentials. The protestant churches cannot be this authority because again we are not obligated to submit to what they say is true, based on their authority. We would only submit to what they believe, if we believe it, which really is not what is meant by submission. For submission requires that you give something you possessed or believed you knew to a higher authority for their correction. This is what I believe the Catholic does when he gives up what he previously held privately on a certain issue up to the higher authority in order for them to correct once they universally declare something to be true.

How do you know what is the correct hermeneutical process? Do the scriptures declare it? Are we expected to believe the correct interpretive process based on what is most accepted by a majority? What if they are wrong? Again the protestant will only submit to an authority based on some stipulations that he can judge this authority on privately, therefore leaving no authority but his own private beliefs. This is a hard thing to really see because even I who would have a much easier life as a protestant, cannot help but see this problem. What makes it hard to see, even for me for awhile, is that protestants claim scripture is their only infallible authority but this authority would be contingent on our own interpretations of the Scriptures, if there is not an institution guided by
the Holy Spirit to constantly correct our errors in a way that is visible and vocal.

thanks for the responses
andy

By the way, correct me if I am wrong, but I believe when St. Ignatius of Antioch was martyred his bones were collected by early Christians and were venerated by them.
JoeyHenry November 21st, 2009 11:38 am :
The problem with this dilemma is that it ignores the qualitative ontological distinction between persons and books, and so it falsely assumes that if a book needs an authoritative interpreter in order to function as an ecclesial authority, so must a living person. A book contains a monologue with respect to the reader. An author can often anticipate the thoughts and questions that might arise in the mind of the reader. But a book cannot hear the reader’s questions here and now, and answer them. A living person, however, can do so. A living person can engage in genuine dialogue with the reader, whereas a book cannot. Fr. Kimel talks about that here when he quotes Chesterton as saying that though we can put a living person in the dock, we cannot put a book in the dock. In this respect, a person can do what a book cannot; a person can correct global misunderstandings and answer comprehensive interpretive questions. A book by its very nature has a limited intrinsic potency for interpretive self-clarification; a person, on the other hand, by his very nature has, in principle, an unlimited intrinsic potency with respect to interpretive self-clarification. This unlimited potency with respect to interpretive self-clarification ensures that the hermeneutical spiral may reach its end. A book cannot speak more about itself than it does at the moment at which it is completed. A person, by contrast, remains perpetually capable of clarifying further any of his previous speech-acts. (Section V, Solo Scriptura, Sola Scriptura, and the Question of Interpretive Authority)

——————————————

I think, the counter argument does not answer the problem posed by the “infinite regress” argument pointed out by Protestants. The heart of the Protestant argument is that “communication”, in any form (written, oral, visual, etc.), is subject to the fallible interpretation of the receiver. Thus, there is no real advantage of having an infallible interpreter because the infallible interpretation is still subject to the fallible interpretation of the receiver.
Granted, that persons can self-clarify what he means by his “message”, the clarification still is liable to fallible interpretation. The potency of self-clarification in the communication process does not remove the possibility of erroneous interpretation. Plus, self-clarification can only be useful if the person clarifying is at the same time clear in his process of communication through the medium that he uses to convey his clarifications. Thus, there is no qualitative ontological difference between books and persons that will remove the possibility of “infinite regress” if RCs demands that an infallible interpretation is needed for to gain understanding of divine revelation. A person to person communication can either increase or decrease the possibility of erroneous interpretation depending on how the communication process was carried out by the sender and receiver of the message. Thus, it seems overly simplistic when the argument speaks of the advantage of “unlimited potency with respect to interpretive self-clarification” that “ensures that hermeneutical spiral may reach its end”.
Secondly, the scenario being forwarded in this argument is not in sync with the real situation of Roman Catholicism. Majority of individual Roman Catholics are not in direct contact with the Pope (who as far as I understand Catholic Theology is the only person granted with infallibility in the hierarchy). At most, the Roman Catholics are in direct contact with priests or bishops who are also fallible in their understanding and interpretation of dogmatic statements from the Magisterium. The clarifications of these priests or bishops of their speech-acts may consist of clarifications from an already erroneous interpretation of a certain dogma. Thus, it seems to me that, the portrayal of the Catholic advantage of having a “fallible person-to-infallible person” dialogue where the infallible person clarifies each time the fallible person gets it wrong or asks a query, is an illusion.
T Ciatoris November 21st, 2009 12:08 pm :
lojahw,

Thanks for your response. Out of respect for the topic of the thread, after this comment I’m going to try to discipline myself to only respond to things that have at least some bearing on the issues pertinent to the article. Feel free to respond to what I say here about side-topics – I’m not trying to make a grab at getting the last word – but I won’t be responding to these issues again myself. We need to save fuller discussion of the papacy, indulgences, etc., for more appropriate threads.

You wrote:

I would quibble a little on Augustine’s statement that the word “refuted” is not limited to further elaboration, but includes potential denial of what was taught.

In de baptismo 2.3.4, regarding the writings of bishops, Augustine uses reprehendi. I agree that the writings of an individual bishop are subject to refutation. So do all Catholics. Regarding “plenary” councils, Augustine uses the softer emendari. We’ve never claimed that there is any particular bishop (including popes) in Church history all of whose writings are infallible. Ecumenical councils and popes speaking under very particular conditions are infallible. And, if you continue reading from where your quote leaves off, the condition for “emending” or “improving” the findings of an ecumenical council is cum aliquo experimento rerum aperitur quod clausum erat et cognoscitur quod latebat, not a countervailing biblical prooftext that had somehow been previously overlooked. I would submit that this precisely matches what happened with respect to the term “hypostasis” between 325 and the later fourth century. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if Augustine had this very example in mind. We know from de trinitate and elsewhere that he kept up on Trinitarian lexical issues. So how is Augustine’s statement in tension with the distinction I proposed to you between Scripture’s positive authority (inspiration) and councils’ and popes’ negative authority (infallibility)?

Also, as I read Augustine, he sided with Cyprian in favor of communion with the Donatists: “To this is added the testimony of Cyprian, showing clearly that he remained in communion with them, when he says, “Judging no man, nor removing any from the right of communion if he entertain a different opinion.” (On Baptism, Against the Donatists, 7.2.3).

You’ve taken this quote out of context. The “different opinion” had to do with how to deal with penitent traditores in the wake of a persecution. The Donatists took a rigorist approach, and so they were the ones who opposed Cyprian’s dictum here and became schismatic. For the conditions of returning to communion with the Catholic Church, see the previous chapter (de baptismo 7.1.1): “heretics or schismatics, who have received baptism already in the body from which they came, should be admitted with it into the communion of the Catholic Church, being corrected in their error and rooted and grounded in the faith.” This teaching is upheld, incidentally, at the Council of Trent (Seventh Session, Canon 4 on Baptism).

The above suggests to me that Augustine considered certain beliefs and practices to be “non-essential,” and thus not barriers to communion.

Agreed. And as a Catholic, Augustine had a principled way to discern what was essential and what was non-essential. Where, exactly, do you get your list of essential doctrines? How would you respond to, say, a (real) friend of mine who accepts the authority of Scripture, believes in Jesus, but rejects the Trinity? He doesn’t condemn those who believe in the Trinity, but he doesn’t think it’s an “essential” doctrine. He thinks the Gnostics and the Arians should have remained in communion. Why should he listen to the Church in the fourth century when she tells him that the Trinity is an essential doctrine but not listen to the Church in subsequent centuries? NB: I’m not asking you how you would scripturally “demonstrate” the doctrine of the Trinity. I’m asking how you would convince him that this particular doctrine is essential, and why he should believe you. You say later in your post that “Heresy about God and His nature is always serious.” Well, why? I mean, does that apply all the way down the line? Intra-Trinitarian relations? Divine simplicity? Predestination? Mode of hypostatic union? These all pertain precisely to God’s nature as well. Any list of essentials you come up with is going to be non-binding and totally non-authoritative as long as it’s coming out of your own personal interpretation of Scripture. I won’t say it’s arbitrary, because you clearly have developed some of your own criteria for determining what’s essential and what’s not. And it’s an intelligent set of criteria, reflecting the deep thought you’ve obviously devoted to this question. But I don’t see why anyone would be bound to agree with you.

When I said “establish a new church” I was speaking of a new member of the One Body of Christ, not of a new Body of Christ; or a new branch on the true vine. The Church visible cannot all meet in one place this side of heaven, so physical divisions are necessary. And according to the analogy of the Body, not all members are an eye. For there to be different members, there is distinction between them. The eye is not physically connected to the hand, but each are connected to the head. For there to be many branches, each grows from the true vine from a separate and distinct connection with the true vine. These are not Docetic pictures of the Church, but those given by Christ and His Apostles.

Okay, I’m going to grant for the sake of argument the application of “members” of the Body to particular churches or parishes rather than to individual Christians (which is, I think, clearly the primary scriptural referent). But I’ll grant it, because it’s true that different parishes, dioceses, and particular churches bring different gifts to the Catholic Church. But to maintain the coherence of the somatic imagery, you have to have some way of demonstrating the organic (and not simply doctrinal) connection between the various “members” who, according to Rom 12:5, “are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.” The only connection you’ve established between, say, AMiA, the OPC, and the church that maybe I’ll start in my living room next week is agreement on “essential” doctrines (with you as the arbiter of what counts as “essential”). This is precisely why I’m claiming it’s a docetic ecclesiology. It’s an ecclesiology that thinks that particular churches are constituted by a group of individuals who enter into a moral agreement regarding the truth of a set of “essential” disembodied doctrines. Any group who adopts the right set of doctrines then says, “We’re the church, or at least a branch of it. We’re a member of the body.” This is not the picture of the Church I see in the Gospels, nor in Paul, nor in the catholic epistles. Nor is it the picture of the Church I see in Clement, Ignatius, or Irenaeus. What kind of organic mutual responsibility obtains among AMiA, the OPC, and the church I’m starting in my living room? Do you see why I find this conception docetic?

With respect to your reading of the Arian controversy, a few comments. First, if the Bible is sufficient for a clear explication of Christian doctrine, why did the bishops deem it necessary to introduce the non-biblical term homoousios? St Athanasius tells us why: because the Arians “wrest the whole of the divine oracles into accordance with” their Christology (Discourse I against the Arians 12.52). And so an extra-biblical formal principle is needed to prevent the “whole of the divine oracles” from being misinterpreted. This does not mean that the Nicene Fathers have introduced another material principium fidei into the conversation, but it does mean that they recognized the need for a Spirit-guided, authoritative framework of interpretation. If Scripture were perspicuous on the consubstantiality of the Son, why would they need the term homoousios? We have to get past a naïve, triumphalistic reading of the Arian heresy. The Arians did read their Bibles, thoroughly and carefully. They were not idiots, and they were not exceptionally depraved persons. But they were heretics. Why? Because their interpretation of Scripture fell outside that established at the Council of Nicaea, which was divinely guarded from error, and many of them persisted in resistance of the Church’s teaching authority (translation: Magisterium). On your understanding, all the orthodox bishops should have needed to do was give the Arians a few well-chosen prooftexts. Problem was, the Arians already knew them all, and believed them all, only according to their own interpretation. The Council provided parameters of orthodox meaning for the Scriptures. In the case of the debates at Nicaea, Scripture was materially sufficient, but it was not formally sufficient.

In a way, and I don’t mean to be provocative or belligerent here, your refusal to admit that the ecumenical councils have actually given us infallible parameters for reading Scripture that we wouldn’t have without their findings strikes me as a kind of ingratitude. Do you genuinely think (I don’t know, maybe you do) that you, armed only with a Bible and a community of friends who also accept the Bible, would come up with orthodox Christology and Trinitarian theology without the benefit of the ecumenical councils? Because if you couldn’t or wouldn’t (and I don’t think I could or would), but you do in fact accept classical orthodox Christology and Trinitarian theology, then you’ve admitted that these provide you with a formal principle not found in Scripture alone.

I have no idea how the Sixth Ecumenical Council pertains to our current discussion, unless you introduced it simply to take a shot at the papacy (thinking maybe that the Vatican I Fathers didn’t know about the famous case of Pope Honorius? They did.). But for what does pertain to this thread, I’ll just point out again that you, living in the 21st century, have the benefit of the findings of the Sixth Ecumenical Council when you so casually quote “Not My will but Thy will be done” as a “prooftext” that Monothelitism is a heresy. I agree that your interpretation of that verse is correct, but that’s because we both accept the Sixth Ecumenical Council. Do you really think that all the Monothelites either (a) had not read that verse, (b) intentionally resisted the “obvious” meaning of that verse, or (c) were just stupid? This prooftexting method of yours can be easily turned around. As I mentioned in the last post, an Arian could quote Prov 8:22, John 14:28, or Col 1:15, just as casually and blithely as you quote verses, and think he’d settled the whole matter. How do you know that we should interpret John 14:28 in light of John 10:30, and not vice-versa? Because Nicaea gives you an authoritative interpretive framework that requires you to.

Re: the Reformation, you gloss over the historical context: was it necessary to buy indulgences for forgiveness, for justification, before God? Luther and others argued that this contradicted the teaching of, e.g., Romans 4:1-6 (“… For what does the Scripture say? “And Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.” … But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is reckoned as righteousness.”). If the Scriptures cannot be broken, then it cannot both be true that one must buy an indulgence for justification and that one can be justified by faith without works.

Indulgences can’t be bought. But abusus non tollit usum. There’s nothing about the proper use of indulgences that contradicts St Paul, or anything else in Scripture. With respect to their abuse: nobody denies that the Church needed reformation in the 16th century. And a reformation she got: the Catholic Reformation. Unfortunately, she got an enormous and perduring schism as well.

As I said above, please feel free to respond to any or all of the points I’ve just made, but from now on I’m only going to interact with comments that pertain to Bryan and Neal’s article.

in Christ,

TC
1 Cor 16:14
Tom Brown November 21st, 2009 12:52 pm :
lojahw,

It has been my experience that telling that they really don’t know what they are talking about is unproductive in a conversation the goal of which should be the mutual pursuit of truth. It also lacks charity, and important element (especially over this fairly impersonal medium).

I thought this comment of yours was interesting:

I have filtered out the liberal branches of the above traditions that no longer subscribe to Sola Scriptura and have openly become practitioners of Solo Scriptura

What was the source of these two criteria you applied in making this culling?

Peace in Christ,
Tom
TurretinFan November 21st, 2009 3:07 pm :
Tap wrote: “Any of you here in contact with Mathison, know if he’s response will come soon.? No one so far has been able to answer that Sola Scriptura always reduces to Solo Scriptura.”

Actually, I answered that at #257 above.
Paige Britton November 21st, 2009 3:41 pm :
Re. #266, Hi, Mateo,

I think you have not caught on that I am not arguing the relative merits of Protestant epistemology vs. Catholicism. I am just trying to be descriptive of an aspect of Protestantism, and I am using a hypothetical situation to try to communicate my description to you. I agree that having an infallible interpreter handy would be preferable to not having one. You, as a Catholic, believe the Magisterium meets this requirement. We, as Protestants, do not, and ought to be living out the implications of that assessment, if we are going to be consistent. But what are the implications, really? Total chaos? Not necessarily! If you could bend your mind around to imagine a world that does NOT have access to infallible interpretation, but where God is still good and still intends to communicate to us, and where responsible interpretation aims for what is sufficient and reliable, then you are glimpsing what I am trying to describe of a “thoughtful Protestant” perspective. Not all Protestants have this perspective in the absence of a Magisterium, and they don’t read the texts carefully and so end up with shallow theologies that range all across the board. The “thoughtful Protestant” assumption is that since (as they believe) there is no infallible and authoritative Magisterium, they should be very, very careful how they interpret the biblical texts, making use of checks and balances as they go. Differences will still turn up, but not at the core. Maybe (as you would say) such people are self-deceived and wrong at a basic level, because they are not recognizing the Catholic Church (or the true texts) – but it would be empirically wrong to say that they are operating at such a level of uncertainty that they can’t agree with each other on a single point of doctrine (to say the least!). (In fact we agree with YOU on more than a single point of doctrine!)

I used the analogy of marriage not to speak of my relationship with leaders in my church, but to illustrate that a lack of 100% certainty across the board does not preclude excellent understanding, even on a basic human-to-human level.

You write, “If Christ expects me join the Church that he established and to believe what is true about matters of faith and morals (which He does), then it is wholly reasonable for me to believe that Christ would have people in the Church that He founded that are vested with the authority to teach infallibly about matters of faith and morals. That there exists a living magisterium in the Church founded by Jesus is an extremely reasonable thing for me to believe, and that is why I don’t struggle with the idea.”

I think that the criteria you express here (for accepting the Magisterium) are way too simplistic for me – even if your conclusions are ultimately right, your criteria for that infallible interpreter seem to rest in your idea of what is reasonable or preferable, rather than in any authoritative source. (I think even Bryan noted above that personal preference should NOT guide our conclusions about the True Church, and I would think this should apply in both directions!)

From where you are standing, it seems incomprehensible and dangerous to mess with the idea of interpreting the Bible in the absence of a Magisterium. But what if God really had set it up differently? What might we expect? That’s all I’m trying to communicate.
Devin Rose November 21st, 2009 3:51 pm :
lojahw,

I just drove by the enormous (Southern) Baptist church that my dad attends and couldn’t help but notice the enormous church of Christ literally right next to it along the road. They do not worship together, do not receive communion together; some churches of Christ would even say that the Southern Baptists “aren’t saved” and vice-versa (a relative of mine talks about how Christ “saved his wife out of the church of Christ”).

Protestant Communities were fractured from the very beginning, not over semantics or trivialities but rather essentials of the Faith like baptism, the Eucharist, church authority, and so on. You have so far ignored my arguments along these lines as well as my evidence that Luther and Calvin themselves had substantial differences over what sola Fide meant with regard to baptism (and hence salvation).

Protestant Communities have continued fracturing, not over whether they should have a piano or organ in the church, though that does happen sometimes, but over substantive differences in what they consider essentials of the Faith.

Leaving all of that aside and assuming your statements that all (traditional as defined by your interpretation of Scripture) Protestant churches are in communion with each other and teach the same thing on the essentials, I would then infer that you answer my original question by saying that I should follow sola Scriptura by yielding my own interpretation of Scripture to any of the pastors of these Protestant Communities (whether some traditional strain of Baptist, Presbyterian, Anglican, Methodist, Lutheran, Evangelical Free, and so on). Since you have not answered my question directly, is my inference here a fair assumption of what your answer would be?
Tim Harris November 21st, 2009 4:28 pm :
There are a number of problems with this essay, some of which are also endemic to the Mathison quotes as well.

1. Who says that this big grab bag of “sects” all have to be owned by a Protestant as Protestants? How about if I divide the world between Presbyterians and Datholics, the latter being the “false church” consisting of Catholics, Methodists, Baptists, and other such sectarians? To use “fellowship with the pope” as the genus definer is question-begging.

2. If apostolic succession is the key, then what about the Church of England, where succession is claimed and is also recognized (so far as it goes) by many Catholics. Yet they are Protestant. Now if someone denies they are Protestant, than see (1), but on the other hand, the 39 Articles assert justification by faith alone (XI), denies works of supererogation (XIV) and denies Transubstantiation (XXVIII), among other things.

3. It appears to me at least that there is as much variation of belief within Catholicism, albeit claiming a single umbrella, as there is amongst the different settlements of the magisterial Reformation (e.g. Lutheran, Reformed, Presbyterian, Anglican). Probably more in fact. For example, can someone please tell me which single millennial view all Catholics must subscribe to? or is latitude here allowed? How about the death penalty? It is my “private interpretation” that the Magisterium has condemned capital punishment, but I also hear on my talk radio that there are plenty of Catholics who are publicly for capital punishment, yet are not disciplined for it. How about Predestination? Has that doctrine been completely stamped out, and if so, would Augustine and Aquinas still be allowed to teach in the Catholic Church today? On other issues, such as abortion, the RC has been solid in rhetoric, yet that position is moot since Catholic politicians not only support abortion rights, but by their votes bring it about causally that abortions occur that otherwise would not. Yet they are rarely if ever excommunicated. So in any practical way, even something as life-and-death important as abortion has really not been settled. The umbrella accepts the whole range of beliefs and practices here.

4. Mathison says, and the author of this post approves, “All appeals to Scripture are appeals to interpretations of Scripture.”

Perhaps, but then all appeals to the pope are appeals to interpretations of the pope.

Do you not need someone to interpret the decrees of the pope or Councils?

Ultimately, it is an infinite regress.

If language is so difficult that God cannot communicate directly to individuals using sentences, then neither can any pope or Council.

Unless it comes down to bare and irrational exertion of force.

The logical conclusion of the Catholic theory is, that one simply does, says, and believes whatever one wants, until and unless the force of the pope/church comes down on his head. Even then, one would not even know that it was the true pope or true church, for that would require interpretation. One would only know that force had been exerted.
mateo November 21st, 2009 4:37 pm :
lojahw: Mateo,
You really don’t know what you are talking about. Just because you talked to one Baptist man doesn’t mean he knew what his Church teaches … Go on the web and look up the doctrinal statements below before you make any more rash statements about how none of them can agree on even one point:

The Evangelical Free Church, The Southern Baptists, The Presbyterian Church in America, United Church of Christ, The Methodist Church,
The Reformed Church, The Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod, The Anglican Church in North America …

Note: I have filtered out the liberal branches of the above traditions that no longer subscribe to Sola Scriptura and have openly become practitioners of Solo Scriptura (really Solo Sua).

My total experience with Baptists is not just one conversation with one man. When I lived in the South, I used to go to with my Southern Baptists friends to listen to their preachers at their church services and revivals.

Do Southern Baptists agree with every point of doctrine with those in the Reformed Church? Not by any means – there are deep divisions between Southern Baptists and most Calvinists, e.g. The Lordship salvation vs. Non-Lordship salvation controversy .

I will grant you that among the select list of Protestant denominations that you gave that there are a few points of doctrine upon which they all agree. But my point was not that. I said this: “Protestant epistemology has lead to the creation of thousands upon thousands of divided Protestant sects that cannot come together and agree on a single point of doctrine.”

Instead of your select list, include instead ALL Protestant denominations, i.e include, the United Pentecostal Church, Unitarian Universalist Church, Seventh Day Adventists, Church of God Abrahamic Faith, World Wide Church of God, Iglesia ni Cristo, The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, Church of Christ Scientist, Swedenborgians, The Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity, Children of God, Igreja Internacional da Graça de Deus, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the home grown Chinese Bible Churches in mainland China … include all the thousands upon thousands of Protestant sects that have sprung up because of the private interpretation of the Bible.

If one includes every Protestant denomination that exists and not just a cherry picked list of Protestant denominations, one will find exactly what I said – that the “thousands upon thousands of divided Protestant sects that cannot come together and agree on a single point of doctrine.”

If sola scriptura doctrine and the concomitant private interpretation of the Bible is not the source of Protestant doctrinal chaos, what is the source of the doctrinal chaos within Protestantism?
David Thrall November 21st, 2009 5:51 pm :
Bryan and Neal,

Your article clearly presents that “solo” and “sola” are virtually the same position.

However, I see problems in Mathison’s statement, “All appeals to Scripture are appeals to interpretations of Scripture,” which leads to, “when I submit (so long as I agree), the one to whom I submit is me.”

First, the claim the 3 of you are making is that no individual can make an ultimate, correct “solo” interpretation of Scripture. But, in fact, in making this claim, this is exactly what you have done (this fallacy is often called a Universal Negative). It is self-refuting because you are claiming authoritatively that there is at least one ultimate correct interpretation that you as individuals are making: that is, you have arrived at an ultimate interpretation that no individual can arrive at an ultimate interpretation of Scripture. You have just done what you claim that nobody can do. You have refuted yourselves.

For an example of a Universal Negative, consider what people often say today, “You should not impose your morality on others.” The statement is self-refuting. People who say this are imposing their “morality” upon others.

Therefore, it is not true that individual ultimate interpretations or conclusions of Scripture cannot be made. Any correct interpretation is an ultimate interpretation. The issue then is what is a correct interpretation not that no individual can arrive at a correct interpretation. To accomplish this, proper rules of reasoning must be followed. If someone were to object, for example, to the Resurrection, verses could be shown proving the Resurrection to be true. If someone were to object to the trinity, verses could be shown with proper reasoning to prove the trinity.

Therefore, a supernatural authoritative interpreter is not needed. A Divine Authority is needed to reveal objective consistent truth and proper interpretation is achieved by drawing valid inferences (with the guidance of the Holy Spirit).

Since the premise for your article (no individual can make ultimate “solo” interpretations) which you use to substantiate the need for a magisterium is false, there is no need for a magisterium upon this basis or based upon an absence of a supernatural authoritative interpreter of Scripture.

Second, the premise is also a composition fallacy because the magisterium of the Catholic Church is made up individuals. At least one individual has to arrive at a conclusion or “interpretation” before the group can arrive at a conclusion or “interpretation.” If no single individual has arrived at a conclusion, then there is no interpretation or conclusion.

Third, since when does an appeal to an authoritative book always mean an appeal to an interpretation of the book? An appeal to an interpretation can be an appeal to Scripture if the truth of the interpretation is the truth of Scripture. I can say “Christ has risen” and if someone wants to call this an interpretation of Scripture, they may, but certainly it is as much an appeal to Scripture as it is an appeal to an interpretation. It would properly be called an “accurate” or “correct” interpretation. Now if I affirm, for example, the trinity, someone may say that this is my “subjective interpretation.” But, again, if I have followed the rules of proper reasoning, my so-called interpretation is not subjective, it is a valid inference. And the inference is just as true as the Scripture. This is an extremely important distinction to make because when a valid “interpretation” is made, then the conclusion is true. And reasoned truth is just as authoritative as Scripture because truth is truth. The hypostatic union, for example, is a valid and true “interpretation” and just as authoritative as a quote of the 10 commandments.

Fourth, submission to an “interpretation” is not necessarily a submission to myself. If the interpretation is a valid conclusion, I am not submitting to myself, I am submitting to the truth of the valid conclusion. If I do not submit to truth, I am not insubordinate to myself, but to truth.

Finally, there are very serious flaws in reasoning that Roman Catholics have “discovered” the Church which Christ established without making an individual presupposition or “solo” interpretation. How do we know that “the Church” even exists? Or that even Christ established such an organization? We learn this from Scripture either directly or indirectly. We presuppose the truth of Scripture even before beginning the investigation for a Church. We make an accurate “solo interpretation” of the Scripture even to “discover” that there was such a man named Peter who was given keys to a kingdom. If we hear of this truth from others or through history books and believe it, then we have presupposed it to be true. And if we are looking for an authoritative revelation to prove that it is true, we will find that this truth came from the authoritative revelation of the Word of God.

Unless we have authoritative revelation from God, I cannot trust extra-Biblical historical writings as being authoritative revelation from God. How can I or anyone? There is no authoritative basis. So, as I study to discover a succession of prophetic leaders, who can I trust? Why should I believe one author over another? Therefore, since succession is not Special Revelation, I am bound to reject it.

Furthermore, I find the reasoning based upon Scripture that there exists a succession to be invalid. But I understand that that is not the focus of the discussion here.

These are some of my initial thoughts. Thank you for the dialogue. I have certainly enjoyed it.

David
Paige Britton November 21st, 2009 10:03 pm :
Mateo (#285),
Sure, if you are going to list all of the non-Catholic “churches” in the phone book, you can make the case that “Protestants” don’t agree on any single aspect of doctrine. But what about the reality that many deceivers will come and teach in Jesus’ name? Of course, these groups are ALL apostate from the Catholic p.o.v. – but even Catholics have been able to identify those that are less apostate/more orthodox than others (if such a category exists!). I’m not up on all of the joint declarations made by Catholics and others, but surely there had to be some evaluation of doctrine involved before these could occur. (And isn’t it amazing that there WOULD be agreement, since the Protestants in question didn’t have a Magisterium to guide them? How could this be? Do you think it just might be possible to find out true stuff from the Bible without infallible interpretive help? Hmmmm.)
Tim A. Troutman November 21st, 2009 11:48 pm :
TuretinFan-

1. You said:

Saying that (in some sense) the individual is the “ultimate arbiter” does not on its face appear to be a rejection of “the true but subordinate authority of the church and the regula fidei.”

If Mathison’s claim that all appeals to Scripture are appeals to private interpretation, then to say that an authority is subordinate to Scripture is to say that the authority is subordinate to one’s private interpretation of Scripture. Thus to say that the individual is the “ultimate arbiter of the right interpretation” logically leads to the non-principled distinction of one who says “the Church is subordinate to my private interpretation of Scripture” (i.e. the rejection of “true but subordinate authority of the church and the regula fidei” / solo scriptura position) and the one who says, without qualification, “the church is subordinate to the Scriptures” because, again, his appeal to “scriptures” is merely an appeal to his private interpretation. So if you have a disagreement with Mathison that all appeals to Scripture are appeals to Private interpretation thereof, then you need to show why that is false. It has not been shown that the article is incorrect to note the lack of principled distinction between solo scriptura and sola scriptura.

As to the second part of your reply, even if it were true that no other Christian system offered a better alternative, the article would still be true (that there was no principled distinction between sola and solo scriptura). You said that “it has been pointed out a few times,” and you are right that it has, that the individual is always the “ultimate arbiter in some sense.” This objection has been adequately shown to be fallacious both here (above, in the article itself, and see the early comments exposing the weakness of the tu quoque fallacy) and here by Dr. Liccione.
lojahw November 22nd, 2009 12:25 am :
Andy: Briefly, our dialog does not seem to be going anywhere, so I think it would be best to let it go.

Re: hermeneutics, I agree with the rules described in Dei Verbum 3.12 from Vatican II. What I object to is stopping all interpretation of Scripture with the argument: “the Magisterium has spoken.” This is an appeal to the genetic fallacy: assuming the interpretation must be true because of a speculative claim of origin tied to the Apostle Peter.

I recommend that you and others still arguing against Sola Scriptura seriously consider David Thrall’s post.

Peace.
lojahw November 22nd, 2009 12:28 am :
TC:

Thank you for your clarifying comments on emendation of councils vs. refutation of bishops. Re:

We’ve never claimed that there is any particular bishop (including popes) in Church history all of whose writings are infallible.

In response to my quoting Augustine, Bryan seems to have claimed what you deny:

Bryan wrote: “We need to be careful when interpreting the ‘all’ in “that all the letters of bishops which have been written, or are being written, since the closing of the canon” first because it does not say “all bishops”, but “all the letters of bishops”, and second because there is much other evidence in the Fathers indicating that the office of St. Peter is given the charism of truth and divinely protected from error.”

Bryan’s subsequent communication implies that he takes the latter as literally true in all cases of papal teaching. Re: Cyprian, I accept your interpretation. However the following makes no sense:

How would you respond to, say, a (real) friend of mine who accepts the authority of Scripture, believes in Jesus, but rejects the Trinity?

How can one accept the authority of Scripture and deny the Trinity?

Isa. 48:12-16, I am the first and the last. . . . The LORD Yahweh has sent Me, and His Spirit. (cf. Rev. 1:17-18)

Matt. 28:19 . . . baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. (one name, three persons)

Eph. 2:17-18 . . . for through Him [Jesus] we both have our access in one Spirit to the Father.

Why is this essential? Because one cannot deny God’s revelation about Himself AND obey the first and great commandment: to love God with all your heart, and your soul, and all your mind.

I do not follow your docetic arguments. You seem to imply that if members of Christ’s body organize a particular assembly, somehow they become severed from their brothers and sisters in Christ. Why? The new church plants I’ve seen remain in communion with their mother churches (except in cases of outright heresy). I would quickly add that such new churches are not thereby free to abandon Sola Scriptura, including what they have been taught. According to 2 Tim. 2:2, “The things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, these entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also.” Whoever departs from this teaching, departs from Sola Scriptura.

Re: the use of homoousios to describe the combination of attributes of Christ which the bishops of Nicea listed from Scripture is a valid description of His divine nature, just as using the term Trinity is a valid description of the Godhead as taught in Scripture. Sola Scriptura, as David Thrall so eloquently wrote, is totally consistent with valid inferences from Scripture. To imply that Scripture is not perspicuous because the bishops summarized all the attributes with that word is an invalid conclusion. You say that the Arians knew and “believed” all of the relevant passages Scriptures and yet declared that there was a time when Christ was not? Come again? “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” and “All things came into being through Him.” Was this not sufficient to get the point across that there never was a time when Christ was not? The Arians were simply enamored with their misinterpretation of Proverbs 8, thinking it somehow overrode passages such as John 1:1-3.

your refusal to admit that the ecumenical councils have actually given us infallible parameters for reading Scripture … strikes me as a kind of ingratitude.

TC, an adequate response is beyond the scope of this thread. However, I would note that in the context of the Messianic prophecy of Micah 5, we read, “So that you will no longer bown down to the work of your hands.” Since the CF’s for centuries interpreted this and the rest of Scripture to prohibit what the Seventh Ecumenical Council ORDERED and the Council of Trent defended, it would appear that these Councils were not faithful to the teaching handed down by the Apostles.

Re: indulgences, do you deny that priests and bishops of Rome were granting them in exchange for money? You avoid the term “buy,” yet it accurately describes the practice that catalyzed the Reformation teaching of justification by faith.

Blessings.
lojahw November 22nd, 2009 12:30 am :
Mateo, You are falling for the genetic fallacy. You are concluding that because the founders of the churches you list may have had some association with a Sola Scriptura Church, that their churches and teachings are based on Sola Scriptura. Wrong! You cannot use churches that do not follow Sola Scriptura (as I explained previously) to discredit Sola Scriptura.

“The genetic fallacy is a fallacy of irrelevance where a conclusion is suggested based solely on something or someone’s origin rather than its current meaning or context. This overlooks any difference to be found in the present situation, typically transferring the positive or negative esteem from the earlier context.”

Further, your claim that Baptists and Calvinists disagree on the fundamentals of the faith is refuted by the websites I referenced. [BTW – you appear not to realize that many Baptists are staunch Calvinists!] The Calvinists explicitly claim to teach the same faith, yet with an “accent” on God’s sovereignty. This in no way keeps Baptists and Reformed Churches from being in communion with each other.

Re: Protestant churches that are not in communion with each other, all I can say is that it is sad. There are many Hatfields and McCoys.

Peace.
Bryan Cross November 22nd, 2009 1:10 am :
lojahw,

You wrote:

Bryan’s subsequent communication implies that he takes the latter as literally true in all cases of papal teaching.

No, it doesn’t. You seem to be having a hard time avoiding misrepresenting my position. For that reason, let me suggest that in the future, before claiming what you think I believe, please ask me first.

I”d love to be participating more in this thread, but I’m tied down grading papers. I hope we can summarize what has been determined so far (in these comments), especially what are the best objections to our article, objections that have not been answered either in the article or in the comments.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
T Ciatoris November 22nd, 2009 2:13 am :
lojahw,

Thanks again for your response. I know you’ve been bombarded with comments addressed to you, and so I appreciate your patience and persistence in pursuing constructive conversation.

As I mentioned in my last comment, I’m going to impose strict limits on what I respond to this time around. So I’m going to have to pass over your comments about ecclesiology, sacred images, justification and indulgences…their time will come :-)

Regarding my friend who accepts the authority of Scripture and denies the Trinity, I’m not defending his position. That’s why I asked you not to bother doing what you did – to show how you’d demonstrate the doctrine from Scripture (and you did an admirable, concise job!). I don’t think it would get my friend too far though. He has trouble mostly, I think, with the full, co-equal, personal divinity of the Holy Spirit as distinct from Father and Son. He’s not the first Bible reader with this problem, either, which is why, for example, St Basil of Caesarea has to appeal to Tradition in On the Holy Spirit. His opponents, incidentally, were also adherents of the Council of Nicaea. And my friend is not alone these days, either. Check out some of the literature from Oneness Pentecostals. They’re openly modalist, and many of these guys live and breathe Scripture. Without a formal principle extrinsic to Scripture, you and I (who, I repeat, wholeheartedly agree on these Trinitarian matters) are going to have an awful lot of trouble swaying their reading of Scripture. All you’ve demonstrated with your Trinitarian prooftexts is the material sufficiency of Scripture with respect to this doctrine. The fact that Scripture is not formally sufficient is demonstrated by my morally upright and intelligent, Bible-believing, non-Trinitarian friend; by our Oneness Pentecostal modalist friends; by Basil’s appeal to Sacred Tradition; and by Athanasius’s complaint, not that the Arians had outright ignored some passages of Scripture that would have set them right straightaway, but that they had attempted to “wrest the whole of the divine oracles” to their interpretation.

I don’t want to play heretic’s advocate. I agree with the Nicene interpretation of John 1:1-3, which you share. But, again, the Arians had read this passage and any other you care to name. How do you know, for example, that “in the beginning” actually means “from eternity without beginning”? Why could that not possibly mean what the Arians thought it meant? They were very careful not to say “There was a time when he was not” but “There was when he was not” (ἦν ὅτε οὐκ ἦν). They knew they were pushing the boundaries of language, but they wanted to find a way to say that the Word both pre-exists temporal creation and yet is himself on the creaturely side of the ontological gap (cf. Col 1:15, for example).

Of course, I don’t buy the Arian arguments (so please, please don’t bother trying to convince me of something we already agree about!). But this is why I said that your posture vis-à-vis the councils seemed ungrateful to me. I don’t think you’re intending to be ungrateful (which is why I probably shouldn’t have said it at all – I genuinely didn’t intend it as an aspersion on your character, but as an objective analysis of your position). It seems to me that you’re claiming the orthodox interpretation of the verses you quote as your own accomplishment: I read them, I understood them thus, and that settles it. Try reading the Gospels as though you knew nothing about traditional orthodoxy. (I actually have tried this.) Read St Paul once through the same way. Or even try reading them as an Arian. Make an honest effort. (Man, I hate acting as heretic’s advocate! Please, nobody become an Arian!) Maybe you’ll see that orthodox Christology and Trinitarian doctrine are not so easily read right off the page. Maybe you’ll see that indeed there is an Arian way of reading John 1:1-3. They were not idiots. They were not outstandingly morally evil. But they were heretics, because they resisted the boundaries set by the Church, guided by the Spirit, for reading Scripture. When I read John 1:1-3 and know that I cannot interpret “in the beginning” as the Arians did, I say “thank you” to the Holy Spirit for His guidance of the Church. I do not say, “Ah, yes, what an obvious text.”

Thanks for the stimulating conversation, lojahw. I look forward to more.

in Christ,

TC
1 Cor 16:14
Andy November 22nd, 2009 2:55 am :
lojahhw

I appreciate the discussion. I am not arguing for the Catholic position, as I am not a Catholic. I have been trying to express my concern with this very big problem within protestantism, namely sola scriptura. There is no difference between sola and solo scriptura. I believe this article makes that clear. I have been familiar with Mathison’s book for awhile now and knew how he was trying to distinguish between the two types of Scripture alone theory. I think he failed to make a distinction. This article demonstrates that very clearly. And I also believe this article gives very good reasons why apostolic succession is the only case where there can be a real dogmatic authority, one that has authority to obligate us to confess what they claim as truth. Because it is an authority that would have its origin in Christ first of all who gave authority to the apostles who then gave authority to their successors. This is ordered and recognizable and testified unanimously in the earliest fathers. Its the only option that does not have us chasing ecclesial anomalies. Not a single protestant has given any adequate reason why these points are not the case. Its hard for us moderns, who are skeptical of hierarchy, to put faith in what another group of people tells us to believe without us first having a point by point or chapter and verse explanation that will satisfy our intellects, because we feel all human beings are epistemically equal. This does not surprise me given our cultures egalitarian nature. Personally this is another reason that the Catholic position is compelling to me. Their ecclesiastical setup seems to reflect the hierarchical structure of both the created material world and the angelic reality. The bottom line is if the Catholic Church has infallible authority then it receives that gift from God, so we would have to fashion our opinions to what they claim is true. If they don’t then we are left with ourselves as our own interpretive authorities of dogma which I cannot help but see this option as a big problem. I personally am still on a journey and hope to arrive in the truth.

Good talking to you
Andy
Irene November 22nd, 2009 3:26 am :
lojahw,

Your use of 2 Tim 2:2 is very confusing if you are trying to assert Sola Scriptura. You write

“According to 2 Tim. 2:2, ‘The things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, these entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also.’ Whoever departs from this teaching, departs from Sola Scriptura.”

From that passage it would seem that the Apostles orally conveyed infallible information outside of things written in the Bible. Obviously, the Bible could not contain all their oral teaching, and therefore that is why the Church relies on both the Oral Tradition and Written Tradition. The Oral Tradition came first of course, as the apostles preached first before they set up churches. Otherwise, there would have been no churches and no Christians to write letters to. It was only when there were problems in the churches did they write letters, the letters that make up the bulk of the New Testament. Clearly, sola scripture was not an idea that existed back then if only for the fact that it would have been logically impossible as there was no “scriptura” as we know it with which they could “sola.” Even in the jewish tradition from which Christianity came, the emphasis was and still is on the oral tradition, for without the oral tradition there could be no written. There are many things for example that the Jews believe about the revelation of God’s Law at Mt. Sinai that is not found in the Bible.
lojahw November 22nd, 2009 11:06 am :
Thank you, Bryan, for your correction.

Some observations about the article:

1) The basic premise that there is no principled distinction between Sola Scriptura (Scripture is paramount) and Solo Scriptura (my own interpretation of Scripture is paramount) is self-refuting:

a) because the practice of Sola Scriptura cannot contradict God’s Word, and Solo Scriptura contradicts 2 Peter 1:20-21 (no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation), as well as the teaching of Scripture about the role of the Church in interpretation (e.g. Heb. 13:17; 2 Tim. 2:1-2).

b) Because, as David Thrall so eloquently explained, the argument itself is based on a universal negative (you as individuals have declared an ultimate interpretation that individuals cannot arrive at an ultimate interpretation), which is self-refuting, and relied on a fallacy of composition (that the Magisterium is exempt from the argument even though its interpretations necessarily derive from an individual’s interpretation).

2. The argument against Sola Scriptura relies on the genetic fallacy by assuming that all derivatives from Protestant churches are true representatives of Sola Scriptura. One cannot assume the fidelity of the derivative to its origin. Each case must be tested.

Mateo blithely lists a bunch of cults and churches which deny the teachings of Scripture which all orthodox Christians agree are non-negotiable. Anyone who denies what God has revealed about Himself disobeys what Scripture affirms as the first and greatest commandment (Matt. 22:27-39). Further, anyone who denies the atoning death and the bodily resurrection of Christ denies what Paul says is of first importance. Anyone who denies Scripture’s teaching on these things has abandoned Sola Scriptura.

Further, as I explained on a number of posts it is wrong to assume that the diversity of (orthodox) Protestant Churches proves that they all interpret Scripture differently. Diversity is the result of many factors having nothing to do with interpretation, e.g., the Civil war, ethnic and cultural differences (e.g., the Chinese Baptist Church), social factors, geographical isolation, etc. Likewise, differences of practice (how and who one church baptizes vs. another, styles of worship, structures of church leadership) do not impinge on the fundamentals of the faith. Further, differences of emphasis, such as the Reformed emphasis on the sovereignty of God, do not imply disagreements about the fundamentals of the faith.

3. The article also relies on the genetic fallacy regarding apostolic succession. It implicitly claims that because the papal office is derived from Christ’s commission of Peter, that all of Peter’s successors must be true representatives of the Apostles’ teaching.

The moderators have requested that I not challenge the fidelity of the papacy on this thread. I will, however, ask what is the principled difference between the Pharisees who said, “it is not permissible for you to carry your pallet,” and the pope who said the feast of Mary’s conception is a holy day of obligation (cf. Ineffibilis Deus)? Both claim divine authority, the former derived from Moses (although his Law had no such rule) and the latter derived from Peter (although Peter declared no such obligation).

4. The authors seem to imply that communion with the pope is the ultimate test of fidelity to the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints. I would caution that the social obligation of communion in itself is not fool-proof. In other words, it is not legitimate for communion to require one to “invalidate the word of God for the sake of your tradition” (cf. Matt. 15:6).

Peace.
lojahw November 22nd, 2009 11:19 am :
Irene,

For2 Tim 2:2 to contradict Sola Scriptura, one would have to identify what Paul was exhorting Timothy to pass on that was not inscripturated. It is a matter of context: when Paul said it, the New Testament was not complete (although most scholars believe that 2 Timothy was the last letter written by Paul). Yes, the Gospel was originally transmitted orally, and it continues to be so transmitted by every preacher and missionary of the Gospel, but in today’s context we have the Scriptures as the full and sufficient revelation of God’s plan of salvation. This was certainly Irenaeus’ understanding in the second century:

“We have known the method of our salvation by no other means than those by whom the gospel came to us; which gospel they truly preached; but afterward, by the will of God, they delivered to us in the Scriptures, to be for the future the foundation and pillar of our faith.” (Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 3:1)

There is no contradiction, therefore, in Paul’s exhortation to Timothy, and Sola Scriptura. The point in 2 Timothy 2 is that we need “faithful men” to pass on what the Apostles taught, and not add to, modify, or delete any of their teaching.

Peace.
lojahw November 22nd, 2009 11:34 am :
TC: Please don’t misunderstand me regarding the church fathers. I do appreciate them, and have learned much from them. They have much to teach the Church today. The point of disagreement is that the pope is an infallible discerner of which interpretations from all of them represent ultimate truth.

It is also true that “a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised (1 Cor. 2:15). The best thing for your friend is to pray for him and continue to try to “explain the way of God more accurately” to him (cf. Acts 18:26). The untaught and the unstable are always prone to distorting the Word of God.

Peace.
Tap November 22nd, 2009 1:05 pm :
lojahw,

You seem to be arguing only to score points, your whole post #297 is an attempt at sophistry. You claim

“one would have to identify what Paul was exhorting Timothy to pass on that was not inscripturated.”

But without answering the actual problem you posed, you immediately jump to a conclusion, that does not even follow while claiming “today’s context”:

“Yes, the Gospel was originally transmitted orally, and it continues to be so transmitted by every preacher and missionary of the Gospel, but in today’s context we have the Scriptures as the full and sufficient revelation of God’s plan of salvation

Thats the reason i’ve been wondering whether or not you’re Ken Temple, because this is the type of arguments he likes making, quite frankly surprised that this stuff is getting through.
T Ciatoris November 22nd, 2009 3:53 pm :
lojahw,

You wrote:

The point of disagreement is that the pope is an infallible discerner of which interpretations from all of them [the Church Fathers] represent ultimate truth.

Oh. I thought we were talking about whether or not ecumenical councils provide a formal principle of orthodoxy extrinsic from Scripture. It’s true that, from my point of view, papal approval is a condition for the authentic ecumenicity of a council, but I don’t see how that has anything to do with our discussion. If what you said above is the case, then do we actually agree about the infallibility of ecumenical councils? I don’t think we do. The Orthodox agree with us in receiving the Seventh Ecumenical Council, though the Orthodox disagree with us about the precise shape and extension of papal primacy. You disagree with both us and the Orthodox about the Seventh Ecumenical Council because its horos does not cohere with your interpretation of Scripture. So I don’t think the papacy is actually the only point of disagreement. This also illustrates Bryan and Neal’s argument that sola Scriptura and solo Scriptura boil down to the same thing. You accept the First Council of Nicaea because it agrees with your interpretation of Scripture. You reject the Second Council of Nicaea because it does not agree with your interpretation of Scripture.

I agree that I should continue to pray for my friend. But on your principles, your application of 1 Cor 2:15 to him begs the question. You think my friend is distorting the Word of God because his interpretation of Scripture does not agree with your interpretation of Scripture. I think my friend is distorting the Word of God because his interpretation of Scripture does not fall within the orthodox parameters established by the ecumenical councils under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. If not because of the infallible statements of ecumenical councils, how do you know that my friend is wrong and you’re right? You’ve appealed before to “valid inferences” as, I suppose, an extrinsic formal principle. But who decides which inferences are valid and which aren’t? Logicians? Lexicographers? Cultural historians? It would be nice to appeal to a vague “common sense,” but the fact is that you and I could probably each name, on the spot, at least a dozen issues on which you and I will disagree about what “valid inferences” can be drawn from Scripture. My friend disagrees with us both about what valid inferences can be drawn from Scripture about the Holy Spirit. You’ll have to take my word for it, but my friend has received orthodox teaching, reads the Bible often and devoutly, and is an extremely well educated person who is capable of thinking logically about “valid inferences.” So again, without an extrinsic formal principle, how do you know that he’s not the one who’s reading the Bible with the Spirit’s aid and you’re not the one who’s deceived?

In the case of Nicene Christology and Trinitarian theology, you and I agree that Scripture is materially sufficient. You still haven’t refuted my argument, however, that Scripture is not formally sufficient in this case. I’d really appreciate it if you would revisit my previous comments and show me where I’m wrong on this score.

You’ve characterized Catholicism before as exhibiting a “solo Papa” principle. I want to suggest an alternative to you, based on Vatican II’s Dei Verbum: Catholicism does not adhere to sola Scriptura but to solo Verbo. Jesus Christ Himself is the perfect revelation of God (Heb 1:1-3). Christ is, in the first place, the living and active Word of God (Heb 4:12). Scripture is only the Word of God insofar as, through the Holy Spirit, we encounter the Word Himself in its words, above all in the sacramental context of the liturgy. The fundamental theological problem with sola Scriptura is that it proposes the Bible as an independent, fixed quantity. If the Bible is separated from the other modes of the Word’s presence in His Body the Church—in the Eucharist, in the poor, and, yes, I believe in the sacerdotal hierarchy, etc.—it runs the risk of becoming a mere book, a dead letter.

Happy Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ the King.

TC
Paige Britton November 22nd, 2009 4:05 pm :
Tim et al.,
I wonder if you think these ideas make sense: I am thinking that the concept of “Private Judgment” might bear more than one meaning for readers, which could add some confusion to this discussion. I’ve noticed three ways that autonomy, or private judgment, has cropped up in these comments:

1. Autonomy of intellect = exercising our human faculties of reason and intellect
2. Autonomy of participation = the reality that we are active agents when we mentally assent to what is taught to us
3. Autonomy of conscience = reserving the right to judge or evaluate what we are told by those in religious authority

I am sure someone else could state these ideas more carefully. But it seems to me that in the Catholic system, #1 and #2 are operative and #3 is relinquished; while in a Protestant system all three are in place. If we think in terms of these distinctions, then TF is right to say that we ALL exercise “Private Judgment” (with reference to #1&2) and Bryan and Neal are also correct in saying that Protestants exercise Private Judgment in a way that Catholics do (or ought) not (as per #3). (Protestants might feel the authors were not exactly delicate in their expression of this aspect of Protestantism, but I think we could agree on the basic definition of #3.)

Do you think I’ve got the right idea?
Teri November 22nd, 2009 4:16 pm :
CTC, as always I trust you to moderate appropriately to the discussion.

For Mr. Lojahw:

I don’t know who you really are, but I pray you are not a member of the group of anti-Catholic bloggers, etc. You don’t seem that way in your response to me. I pray now that you receive this in the manner that I write it – with no malice or desire to exalt myself as being smarter or better. But with true humility to explain what I have found to be Truth.

“Essentials of the faith” for Our Lord was that you be as one, as He and The Father are One. St. Paul echoed Our Lord when He said “let there be NO divisions among you”. Christ’s Body cannot be divided and that is not only essential, it is a statement of fact.
If, as Protestant denominations, you cannot partake of the of the cup and the bread together as “one body”, how can you all join with one another at the wedding supper of The Lamb through all of eternity sharing in the consumate table fellowship?

Understanding the “Oneness” of God in trinity is to understand the mystery of the” Oneness” we have with Christ as our Bridegroom and with “one another” as part of this mystical Body of Christ.

As St. Paul was inspired of The Holy Spirit to write in his letter to the Corinthian Church:

“I speak as to wise men; judge for yourselves what I say.
The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ?
For we, though many, are one bread and one body;
for we all partake of that one bread.

The inspiration of the Holy Spirit shows clearly that everyone can see to be able to “judge for themselves” what this sacred writing is saying. They already knew it was the Eucharist – The Real Presence. They were celebrating this BEFORE they received this letter from St. Paul admonishing them for their sin of divisions, as well as other sins. That is ESSENTIAL to the faith.

For Andy:

If I can help you in anyway to understand the beauty of knowing the fullness of Truth in The Church, please feel free to e-mail me. I’ve gotten anti-Catholic hate-mail recently, but I want to give you my e-mail address anyway – shraders2 ‘at’ gmail ‘dot’ com.
I love Our Lord too much to feel anxiety and not share this with someone who may have questions. I won’t be coming in to the Church until Easter Vigil, but I thank Him everyday for opening my eyes. Maybe I can pray for you or help you in some way in your journey.

May the peace of Our Lord be with you all during this Blessed Season,
Teri
Tom Riello November 22nd, 2009 4:52 pm :
TC,

That was a beautfiul description of the Church’s understanding concerning the Word as per Dei Verbum. Christianity is NOT a religion of the book, but one of the Word of God, namely Jesus Himself, as our Lord Himself says in John 5, “You search the Scriptures thinking that in them you have life, but these testify of Me.” Scripture, like the Church, directs our hearts and minds to Christ and to contemplate Him.

Lojahw, you speak of these fundamentals that all Christians agree on and then list those things in which it is permissable, according to your criteria, in which to disagree, and included in that you list the style of worship, as though how we worship God is up for grabs. Nadab and Abihu learned quickly that how we approach God in worship is not a thing indifferent. Nadab and Abihu were attempting to worship God but how they did it meant all the difference.

With TC, may all have a blessed Feast of Christ the King. I just read recently in our diocese back in the 30’s and 40’s about 25,000 would process the streets of Mobile to bear witness to Christ the King. I was delighted to see this past Friday over 20,000 Catholics, mostly youth, processed the streets of Kansas City, Mo in Eucharistic Procession.
Bryan Cross November 22nd, 2009 5:09 pm :
Joey (re: #278),

Thanks for your comments. Here’s the original dilemma raised by our imaginary Protestant as an objection to our argument:

The follow-up objection to our argument takes the form of a dilemma. The dilemma runs like this. Either the individual needs the guidance of an interpretive authority when interpreting Scripture, or not. If the individual needs the guidance of an interpretive authority when interpreting Scripture, then he will need the guidance of another interpretive authority when interpreting the first interpretive authority. And he will need the guidance of third interpretive authority when interpreting the second interpretive authority. That would lead to an infinite regress. But there cannot be an infinite regress, hence the individual does not need the guidance of an interpretive authority when interpreting Scripture. (From Part V of our article)

The objection is an argument that takes the form of a dilemma in which (it is claimed) we must choose between (1) an infinite hermeneutical regress and (2) no need for an interpretive authority when interpreting Scripture.

Our response to this objection is to show that it is a false dilemma. We do not have to choose between an infinite hermeneutical regress, and not needing an interpretive authority. It can be true that we need a living interpretive authority in order for Scripture to fulfill its function as the authoritative Word of God, without it being true that we are stuck in an infinite hermeneutical regress.

One reason why there is no necessary infinite hermeneutical regress is that with a living Magisterium we can continue to ask clarifying questions, even to the point of saying, “I’m understanding you to be saying [x]. Is [x] what you are saying? Yes or no?” And the Magisterium can respond by saying “yes” or “no”. And at that point, there is no need for an interpretive authority, so long as a person understands the English language and has adequate hearing. Interpreting “yes” and “no” is quite different from interpreting, say, the book of Romans. We do not need an interpretive authority to explain the meaning of ‘yes’ and ‘no’. But we may very well need an interpretive authority to explain the meaning of the book of Romans, or at least to help us avoid misinterpreting it.

Your point, namely, that the individual human interpreter is always fallible, is true, but it doesn’t affect our argument, because our argument does not depend upon the individual being an infallible interpreter.

However, I will take issue your following claim:

Thus, there is no real advantage of having an infallible interpreter because the infallible interpretation is still subject to the fallible interpretation of the receiver.

That’s a non sequitur. That’s like saying that there is no advantage of the Bible being infallible over it being full of errors, since the individual interpreter is fallible. The fallibility of the individual interpreter does not mean that there is no advantage (with respect to arriving at truth) in having an infallible book. Likewise, the fallibility of the individual interpreter does not mean that there is no advantage (with respect to arriving at truth) in having not only an infallible book but also an infallible interpreter of that book.

Then you wrote:

Thus, there is no qualitative ontological difference between books and persons that will remove the possibility of “infinite regress” if RCs demands that an infallible interpretation is needed for to gain understanding of divine revelation.

Our argument does not depend on the impossibility of an infinite regress. Our argument shows that there is a middle position between the necessity of an infinite regress and the non-necessity of an interpretive authority. Nor does our argument demand that an infallible interpretation is needed to gain understanding of divine revelation. It is possible to gain understanding of divine revelation simply by reading the Bible. But, having a divinely authorized and infallible Magisterium to guide the Church in her understanding of the Word of God written is of great help in understanding the deposit of faith rightly, even if the individual layperson is not an infallible interpreter.

Finally you wrote:

Majority of individual Roman Catholics are not in direct contact with the Pope (who as far as I understand Catholic Theology is the only person granted with infallibility in the hierarchy). At most, the Roman Catholics are in direct contact with priests or bishops who are also fallible in their understanding and interpretation of dogmatic statements from the Magisterium. The clarifications of these priests or bishops of their speech-acts may consist of clarifications from an already erroneous interpretation of a certain dogma. Thus, it seems to me that, the portrayal of the Catholic advantage of having a “fallible person-to-infallible person” dialogue where the infallible person clarifies each time the fallible person gets it wrong or asks a query, is an illusion.

The individual layperson does not need to be in direct contact with the Pope in order to benefit from the gift of infallibility given to St. Peter and his successors. The whole Church is in dialogue of sorts, much as the parts of a living organism are in communication with each other and with the head. When a priest or bishop speaks or acts in a way that is contrary to the orthodoxy of the Church, word gets around, and he is (eventually) corrected, censored, removed or replaced. This helps keep the bishops and priests of the Church in agreement with the orthodoxy of the Apostolic See, and in this way the layperson is benefited by the gift of infallibility possessed by the Magisterium, even though the layperson does not have direct contact with the Pope.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Bryan Cross November 22nd, 2009 5:46 pm :
TF (re: #257/#281),

In the article we showed the incompatibility of (1) the individual holding ultimate interpretive authority and (2) the church being a subordinate interpretive authority [under Scripture, but over the individual]. Then, since we showed that even given sola scriptura the individual retains ultimate interpretive authority, we showed in this way that the sola scriptura position reduces the subordinate authority of the church to an illusion, because such ‘authority’ is merely an indirect form of solo scriptura. (See Section IV of the article.)

You wrote:

Furthermore, the article appears to simply assume that if there is any sense in which the individual is the “ultimate arbiter” then the challenge of demonstrating that the distinction is unprincipled (or that there is no distinction) has been met.

Actually, no, our article does not make that assumption or depend on that assumption. (If you disagree, then please show where our argument makes this assumption or depends upon this assumption.)

Next you wrote:

Finally, as has been pointed out a few times, there is no alternative system (whether in “Protestantism” or within Eastern Orthodoxy or Roman Catholicism) in which it is not the case that the individual is the “ultimate arbiter” in some sense. The article itself doesn’t provide a principled distinction between the sense in which the sola scriptura advocate makes the individual the ultimate arbiter and the sense in which the {insert your description of the proffered alternative to sola scriptura here} advocate makes the individual the ultimate arbiter.

As I pointed out in #221, we addressed that objection in section V of our article in the paragraph beginning, ‘This objection can also take the following form”.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Tim A. Troutman November 22nd, 2009 6:06 pm :
Paige – I think you’re going down the wrong road. We have claimed that your boat is sinking and the reply is “so is yours,” but that doesn’t refute the original statement. I’m not dismissing your argument though; the “you too” rebuttal has been repeatedly shown to be fallacious in several ways above in the combox. Sorry I’m pressed for time right now.
Bryan Cross November 22nd, 2009 6:33 pm :
Tim H., (re: #284)

I have some thoughts on your four objections:

1. Who says that this big grab bag of “sects” all have to be owned by a Protestant as Protestants? How about if I divide the world between Presbyterians and Datholics, the latter being the “false church” consisting of Catholics, Methodists, Baptists, and other such sectarians? To use “fellowship with the pope” as the genus definer is question-begging.

Our article does not depend on all the sects that can be traced historically to the Protestant Reformation being treated as belonging to the category ‘Protestant.’ Our argument is fundamentally about sola scriptura. Any sect that would describe itself as adhering to sola scriptura would be subject to the implications of our argument.

Next you wrote:

2. If apostolic succession is the key, then what about the Church of England, where succession is claimed and is also recognized (so far as it goes) by many Catholics. Yet they are Protestant. Now if someone denies they are Protestant, than see (1), but on the other hand, the 39 Articles assert justification by faith alone (XI), denies works of supererogation (XIV) and denies Transubstantiation (XXVIII), among other things.

Anglicanism is a bit different from the other Protestant sects, inasmuch as it attempted to preserve apostolic succession. As for the validity of Anglican orders, I addressed that in #250.

Then you wrote:

3. It appears to me at least that there is as much variation of belief within Catholicism, albeit claiming a single umbrella, as there is amongst the different settlements of the magisterial Reformation (e.g. Lutheran, Reformed, Presbyterian, Anglican). Probably more in fact.

I addressed that objection in #221 where I wrote:

The principled difference is that there is in the Catholic Church one definite faith, defined by the Magisterium. Any Catholic who deviates from it is ipso facto heterodox. But in Protestantism, there is no Magisterium to set the standard for what is orthodox and what is heterodox. So the “diversity” of theological doctrines among Protestants is not deviation from an established and defined orthoxody, whereas the “diversity” of doctrinal beliefs among Catholics is deviation from an established and defined orthodoxy, excepting those beliefs concerning which there has been no teaching given by the Magisterium, in which matters we have freedom. The reason Catholics can affirm the saying, “In Essentials, Unity; in Non-essentials, Liberty; in All Things, Charity” is because in virtue of the Magisterium we have a principled distinction between essentials and non-essentials. But in Protestantism there is no principled distinction or ground for a principled distinction between essentials and non-essentials.

Regarding all the other doctrinal questions in your third objection, that would take us too far afield for the purposes of this article. In some matters, the Church has defined boundaries, and left latitude between them. In other matters, the Church has defined precise dogmas. The issue of the rate of excommunication for those who dissent from various doctrines is a separate question, because it goes to the Church’s way of seeking to bring straying sheep back into the fold — it has nothing to do with whether the matter remains ‘up in the air’ for the Church.

Regarding your fourth objection you wrote:

4. Mathison says, and the author of this post approves, “All appeals to Scripture are appeals to interpretations of Scripture.” Perhaps, but then all appeals to the pope are appeals to interpretations of the pope. Do you not need someone to interpret the decrees of the pope or Councils?
Ultimately, it is an infinite regress.

See #303. If it were an infinite regress, then communication would be impossible. But communication is obviously possible (we’re doing it right now). Therefore, there can’t be an infinite regress.

Finally you wrote:

If language is so difficult that God cannot communicate directly to individuals using sentences, then neither can any pope or Council.

No one has claimed that language is too difficult for God. To imply that this is what our argument does would be to set up a straw man of our argument and our article. The question is not what is too difficult for God (obviously nothing is). The question is this: What has Christ established? Did He or did He not establish a perpetual hierarchy in His Church, consisting of Apostles, and those who would bear their authority perpetually until the end of the age? But for the purpose of our article, the specific question is whether there is any principled difference between solo and sola, and if there is no difference between them, then is any way to avoid solo/sola other than apostolic succession.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Francis Beckwith November 22nd, 2009 7:19 pm :
Bryan writes:

“The objection is an argument that takes the form of a dilemma in which (it is claimed) we must choose between (1) an infinite hermeneutical regress and (2) no need for an interpretive authority when interpreting Scripture.”

I have not the entirety of the comments on this ever-growing entry. So, I apologize if another has raised this point. But it seems to there is another problem with this objection. It assumes Sola Scriptura as the default position. That is, if there is an infinite hermeneutical regress given the Catholic view, the Protestant view is correct. But that does not follow. For could not one first entertain abandoning both Catholicism and Protestantism on the grounds that they former leads to an infinite regress (allegedly) while the latter has been shown to be clearly unworkable since it has led to greater divisions since its inception in the 16th century. That is, Protestantism’s promise has been broken in practice, and we have the past 500 years to prove it. On the other hand, upon reflection, one realizes that Catholicism’s unity and doctrinal purity has been sustained (against amazing odds) with the infinite regress problem having no effect. Thus, one concludes that in practice the infinite regress problem has not really been much of a problem, while the sola scriptura principle has. And consequently, one remains (or becomes) Catholic.
Bryan Cross November 22nd, 2009 7:44 pm :
David, (re: #286)

Thanks for your comment. I’ll intersperse my comments — I don’t like to do that, but there are so many different claims/objections raised that it is the only way I can do it. First you write:

First, the claim the 3 of you are making is that no individual can make an ultimate, correct “solo” interpretation of Scripture.

Actually, none of the three of us (Keith Mathison, Neal or myself) is making that claim, nor does our argument ever make that claim. So, I’ll skip down a bit. Next you say:

The issue then is what is a correct interpretation not that no individual can arrive at a correct interpretation.

We (here I’m not speaking for Keith Mathison) would see that as a false dilemma, because there is a third option. The third option is that there can an authoritative interpretation. We distinguished between truth and authority in section V.B. of our article, in the paragraph beginning “Consider the first reason. If two statements are true, … “.

If you don’t distinguish between truth and authority, then the danger is rationalism, because then you treat a statement as authoritative only if you can verify its truth. But when God speaks, we may not be able to verify (independently) the truth of what He says, but what He says is both truth and authoritative and binding on us, because He is divine. Likewise, when the Church speaks, we may not be able to verify for ourselves the truth of what the Church says, but because of her divine authorization to speak in Christ’s Name, we ought to accept what she says on account of that divine authorization. The existence of authority greater than ourselves means that we are bound to accept claims that exceed the (present) capacity of our rational abilities to confirm or disconfirm. (More on that below.)

Next you wrote:

To accomplish this, proper rules of reasoning must be followed. If someone were to object, for example, to the Resurrection, verses could be shown proving the Resurrection to be true. If someone were to object to the trinity, verses could be shown with proper reasoning to prove the trinity.

This only pushes back the question of Magisterial authority, because someone must set or establish what are the “proper rules” of interpreting Scripture. If the rules for interpreting Scripture were handed down to those to whom the Scripture was entrusted, then they are ones who know how to interpret them. And if these persons were given divine authority to speak in Christ’s Name and with His authorization, then they (and no others) have the divine authority to give the authentic interpretation of Scripture, whether or not some individual laypersons think they need help in interpreting Scripture. (If such laypersons come to different interpretations than the divinely authorized Magisterium, this verifies that these laypersons do need such interpretive help.)

Next you wrote:

A Divine Authority is needed to reveal objective consistent truth and proper interpretation is achieved by drawing valid inferences (with the guidance of the Holy Spirit).

Again, this only pushes back the question of Magisterial authority: Who authoritatively determines who has the Holy Spirit? I addressed that question in my earlier post titled “Play church“.

Next you wrote:

Since the premise for your article (no individual can make ultimate “solo” interpretations) which you use to substantiate the need for a magisterium is false, there is no need for a magisterium upon this basis or based upon an absence of a supernatural authoritative interpreter of Scripture.

The claim that no individual can make “ultimate solo interpretations” is not a premise in our article, nor is it presupposed by our article. So your conclusion (i.e. “there is no need for a magisterium …”) does not follow. Nor have you refuted our argument (because you are criticizing a claim that is not part of our argument).

Next you wrote:

Second, the premise is also a composition fallacy because the magisterium of the Catholic Church is made up individuals. At least one individual has to arrive at a conclusion or “interpretation” before the group can arrive at a conclusion or “interpretation.” If no single individual has arrived at a conclusion, then there is no interpretation or conclusion.

Since the alleged ‘premise’ which commits the “composition fallacy” is not a premise of our argument, therefore this paragraph does not pertain to our argument. Of course individuals in the Magisterium reach interpretations. The issue is not whether individuals reach interpretations; the issue is one of authority, more precisely, interpretive authority, as explained above.

Third, since when does an appeal to an authoritative book always mean an appeal to an interpretation of the book?

Since the first appeal to an authoritative book. :-)

An appeal to an interpretation can be an appeal to Scripture if the truth of the interpretation is the truth of Scripture. I can say “Christ has risen” and if someone wants to call this an interpretation of Scripture, they may, but certainly it is as much an appeal to Scripture as it is an appeal to an interpretation.

Sure; it is an appeal to Scripture, as interpreted by the individual making the appeal.

It would properly be called an “accurate” or “correct” interpretation. Now if I affirm, for example, the trinity, someone may say that this is my “subjective interpretation.” But, again, if I have followed the rules of proper reasoning, my so-called interpretation is not subjective, it is a valid inference.

What you say here presupposes that interpreting Scripture is merely a matter of applying “proper rules of reasoning”. That presupposition begs the question against the position of those who maintain that Scripture was given to a community, and that it belongs only to the community to whom it was given to give the full and authentic interpretation. It also pushes back the question regarding who gets to determine “proper rules”, as I mentioned above.

And reasoned truth is just as authoritative as Scripture because truth is truth.

That’s rationalism (i.e. the opposite error of fideism). It is wrong to kill the innocent; we know this rule by our natural power of reason. But Abraham rightly obeyed God regarding the sacrifice of Isaac, because even though it is true that murdering the innocent is wrong, God’s direct command to sacrifice Isaac is greater in authority. One truth can outweigh another truth in authority. Authority is not reducible to truth (where ‘truth’ means correspondence between a proposition and reality).

Fourth, submission to an “interpretation” is not necessarily a submission to myself. If the interpretation is a valid conclusion, I am not submitting to myself, I am submitting to the truth of the valid conclusion. If I do not submit to truth, I am not insubordinate to myself, but to truth.

Agreed. But if I submit only to those persons with whom I agree, then the person to whom I submit is me.

Finally, there are very serious flaws in reasoning that Roman Catholics have “discovered” the Church which Christ established without making an individual presupposition or “solo” interpretation. How do we know that “the Church” even exists? Or that even Christ established such an organization? We learn this from Scripture either directly or indirectly.

That would be news to the Christians on the day of Pentecost, and to all the Christians who lived before the first book of the New Testament was written. So, it is not true that we only know of the Church through Scripture (either directly or indirectly). We can learn of the Church through the study of history, or through encountering living members of the Church. Even if we do see the Church mentioned in Scripture, that doesn’t mean that it is only through Scripture that we can identify the nature of the Church.

We presuppose the truth of Scripture even before beginning the investigation for a Church.

Only a Protestant can say such a thing, because he can’t even imagine any other way of thinking than a sola scriptura way of thinking. There is no need to presuppose the truth of Scripture when discovering the Church in history. One might discover the Church through history and only then discover that it teaches there is a sacred book containing the Word of God. Or might read them both (i.e. Scripture and Church history) in combination, without presupposing the truth of either, but simply trying to fill in various paradigms (i.e. how would it all look from *this* point of view, and how would it all look from *that* point of view?). All we need for the purposes of the argument in our article is the distinction between tracing the Church forward through history by way of apostolic succession, and trying to locate the Church by finding those who agree with one’s own interpretation of Scripture.

We make an accurate “solo interpretation” of the Scripture even to “discover” that there was such a man named Peter who was given keys to a kingdom. If we hear of this truth from others or through history books and believe it, then we have presupposed it to be true. And if we are looking for an authoritative revelation to prove that it is true, we will find that this truth came from the authoritative revelation of the Word of God.

Not necessarily. These thing were all known to the Church even before the first NT Scriptures were written. Of course the Church Fathers coming after the Apostles referred to the Apostles’ writings to substantiate their [the Fathers’] claims about the teaching of the Apostles. But the deposit of faith was known wherever the Church was located, long before all the books of the NT were present in every particular church. And for that reason, the inquirer in the present day, who wants to find the Church Christ founded, can trace the Church forward from the first century, by studying the writings of the Church Fathers, and locating their principle of unity (i.e. communion with the successor of St. Peter), and what they understood to be the essential marks of the Church (i.e. one, holy, catholic, and apostolic).

Unless we have authoritative revelation from God, I cannot trust extra-Biblical historical writings as being authoritative revelation from God.

You don’t seem to realize that unless you have the Church, you cannot know what is the Bible, and which books belong to it. It is only through the Church that we can know what is the canon. That same authority by which we can know what is the canon is the same authority by which we can know what is the authentic interpretation of those books. If you take away the Church, you not only lose the authentic interpretation of Scripture, you lose the canon of Scripture. If you want the canon, then you run into the contradiction of accepting the Church’s authority to determine the canon while denying its authority to determine the authentic interpretation of the books of that canon.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
mateo November 22nd, 2009 8:05 pm :
Paige Britton : … Sure, if you are going to list all of the non-Catholic “churches” in the phone book, you can make the case that “Protestants” don’t agree on any single aspect of doctrine.

Which was my point – the doctrinal divisions within Protestantism are so great that Protestantism cannot be defined by what doctrines Protestants confess in common.

Paige Britton :But what about the reality that many deceivers will come and teach in Jesus’ name?

Yes, what about that! Since we know that Jesus warned us against false teachers, it stands to reason that there must be some way that we can know whether or not a particular interpretation of the Bible is true or false. But if the Bible is the ONLY infallible source authority for the Christian, how can we ever know with certainty that a particular interpretation is right or wrong? Should we baptize infants, yes or no? The false teacher will give us the wrong answer to that question, and if the Protestant Bible is our only source of infallible authority, we can never know with certainty who is teaching falsely about this point of doctrine.

Paige Britton: Of course, these groups are ALL apostate from the Catholic p.o.v. …

No, that is not the Catholic p.o.v. To commit the sin of apostasy, one must first know and accept the Gospel, and then one must reject the Gospel entirely:

Catechism of the Catholic Church

§ 2089 Incredulity is the neglect of revealed truth or the willful refusal to assent to it. “Heresy is the obstinate post-baptismal denial of some truth which must be believed with divine and catholic faith, or it is likewise an obstinate doubt concerning the same; apostasy is the total repudiation of the Christian faith; schism is the refusal of submission to the Roman Pontiff or of communion with the members of the Church subject to him.”

The Catholic Church does NOT consider most Protestants to be apostates.

Paige Britton : – but even Catholics have been able to identify those that are less apostate/more orthodox than others (if such a category exists!).

Certainly the Catholic Church recognizes that some Protestant sects are more orthodox than others in the doctrines that they teach. The Traditional Anglican Communion is more orthodox in their doctrine than say, Iglesia ni Cristo.

Paige Britton : I’m not up on all of the joint declarations made by Catholics and others, but surely there had to be some evaluation of doctrine involved before these could occur.

The Catholic Church engages in ecumenical dialog with different Protestant sects to both affirm what we hold in common and to dialog about our differences. The Catholic Church doesn’t see ecumenical dialog as an end to itself – the point of the ecumenical dialog is to bring about reconciliation, which is the same goal that CTC has:

What is the Purpose of Called to Communion?

We believe that Christ is calling His Church to be one, as He and the Father are one. This is the prayer and the desire of our Savior’s heart and therefore it is also our desire. Our aim is to effect reconciliation and reunion between Catholics and Protestants, particularly those of the Reformed tradition. We hope to accomplish this by removing obstacles founded upon misunderstandings as well as by engaging in charitable discussion of genuine disagreements, in a context of continual prayer for each other and for the unity of all God’s people. We believe that genuine unity comes through truth and never by forsaking or compromising the truth.

Paige Britton : (And isn’t it amazing that there WOULD be agreement, since the Protestants in question didn’t have a Magisterium to guide them? How could this be?

Why should that amaze me? Protestantism began as a schism from the Catholic Church. The first “reformers” didn’t reject everything that they learned as Catholics!

Paige Britton : Do you think it just might be possible to find out true stuff from the Bible without infallible interpretive help?

Of course it is possible to find truths in the Bible by just picking it up and reading it. But the Bible is not perspicuous, or there would not be books published by Protestants authors such as this one:

Hard Sayings of the Bible

In Hard Sayings of the Bible you will find explanations of over 500 of the most troubling verses faced by Bible readers. Seasoned scholars provide succinct solutions to a wide variety of Bible difficulties and apparent discrepancies.

Paige, you have yet to answer this question: If sola scriptura doctrine and the concomitant private interpretation of the Bible is not the source of the doctrinal chaos within Protestantism, then what is the source of that doctrinal chaos?
Bryan Cross November 22nd, 2009 8:32 pm :
[300+ comment humor break]

Dental version of solo scriptura.

[/ 300+ comment humor break]
Paige Britton November 22nd, 2009 9:11 pm :
Tim T. (#306),
I think you are not reading me very carefully — I am not trying to refute anything, I am trying to understand what is being said and say it back to you. My desire is comprehension here, not to say “you too.” If you look back at my attempt (#301), I noted that there are different ways to understand the concept of “private judgment,” and that this might have confused some Protestant readers as to what Bryan and Neal are trying to communicate. I was just checking to see whether I was right, that the idea of private judgment related to NOT submitting one’s conscience to religious authority (or not suspending one’s “right” to judge or evaluate that authority) is the kind of “private judgment” that separates Protestants from Catholics. (On the other hand, as far as I can tell, you all still use your intellectual faculties and are active participants in receiving religious teaching, as we are.)

Please don’t read this as argument, but as an attempt to understand more clearly your point of view.
Teri November 22nd, 2009 9:49 pm :
# 311

Hi Paige,

Look at # 308 from Dr. Francis (Frank) Beckwith. See if his comment explains some of the questions you were asking. I’m not sure, but I think Tim T. was pressed for time this evening. I’m sure he knows you are honestly seeking answers. You seem very genuine in your love for Our Lord’s truth.
Many Blessings,
Teri :-)

Bryan (# 310)
Humor break was much needed. Now my “sides are hurting from splitting” Wondering if there is a Montes. school for surgeons as well….:-)
mateo November 22nd, 2009 11:25 pm :
lojahw: Mateo, You are falling for the genetic fallacy. You are concluding that because the founders of the churches you list may have had some association with a Sola Scriptura Church, that their churches and teachings are based on Sola Scriptura.

I don’t think that I am making the “genetic fallacy”. I just see that belief in Luther’s novel doctrine of sola scriptura has its consequences.

The article by Bryan Cross and Neal Judisch makes this point: “Philosophies and theologies more fully manifest their nature over time. If there is no principled difference between sola scriptura and solo scriptura, then we would expect the sola scriptura doctrine taught by the early Protestant to come to manifest its true nature over time as outright solo scriptura.”

The history of Protestantism shows that this is true, i.e. that sola scriptura leads to solo scriptura and to ever increasing doctrinal division within Protestantism. Each of these men believed that under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit that they were guided solely by what scriptures taught: R.E. McAlister (Oneness Pentecostals), Charles Taze Russell (Jehovah Witnesses), John Thomas (Christadelphians), Benjamin Wilson (Church of God Abrahamic Faith). Each of these men also denied the doctrine of the Trinity, and every one of them believed that they were interpreting scriptures correctly. For example:

the Church of God of Abrahamic Faith : “

The Church of God of the Abrahamic Faith, much like the Christadelphians, seeks to return to the basic principles and doctrines of the first century church. They perceive that Christianity has been changed dramatically since the death of the Apostles, and believe that the Bible is the only true source of inspired revelation. As a result, both COGAF and Christadelphians place a heavy emphasis on Bible study and understanding . They believe that only through a complete understanding of God and His purpose will one find the path to eternal salvation. ”

lojahw: Further, your claim that Baptists and Calvinists disagree on the fundamentals of the faith is refuted by the websites I referenced. [BTW – you appear not to realize that many Baptists are staunch Calvinists!] The Calvinists explicitly claim to teach the same faith, yet with an “accent” on God’s sovereignty. This in no way keeps Baptists and Reformed Churches from being in communion with each other.

The Handbook of Denominations by Frank S. Mead states: “Twenty-seven Baptist denominations reported an approximate membership of 29 million in 1983”. Twenty-seven different denominations just of Baptists! I am quite aware that some Baptists are also Calvinists. The article that I hyper-linked in my post # 286 was written by John MacArthur : “Theologically, MacArthur is a conservative Baptist, a strong proponent of expository preaching, a dispensationalist and a Calvinist.”

MacArthur is preaching against the non-Lordship antinomianism preached by the Southern Baptists. Even the different flavors of Baptists are divided over doctrine.

Do Calvinists and Baptists preach the same doctrine?

A quick Google search turns up these results:

calvinism vs. arminianism … 921,000 links
arminianism vs. calvinism … 1,470,000 links
arminianism, calvinism … 12,600,000 links
lojahw November 22nd, 2009 11:28 pm :
Teri,

Thank you for your kindness. Actually, I do not like blogs, but the subject matter of this one interested me.

Am I right that you are a “cradle Catholic”? If so it may be difficult for you to understand, but for a person to “cross the Tiber” to Rome requires a lot, since your catechism says that all the teachings of your Magisterium must be adhered to with the obedience of faith (when definitively proposed as divine revelation) or at least with religious assent (CCC 891, 892). Your catechism is also very long and complex. Having read much of your catechism and having heard the teaching of JPII, I cannot in good conscience agree to all that your Magisterium teaches. The reason is that I promised at my confirmation to “follow Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior” and that implies that He alone has my ultimate allegiance. It is therefore my conviction that it would dishonor my Lord for me to pray to Mary and/or to consecrate myself and my family to Mary as JPII exhorted all Catholics to do. The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews wrote that we should be “fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith” (Hebrews 12:2). My first love is Jesus Christ. I could never adopt JPII’s motto: [Mary] “totus tuus ego sum” (Mary, I am totally yours.)

BTW – most Protestant churches (different branches connected to the true vine) are in communion with each other.

I hope you understand.

Blessings.
lojahw November 22nd, 2009 11:43 pm :
Bryan wrote:

…if these persons were given divine authority to speak in Christ’s Name and with His authorization, then they (and no others) have the divine authority to give the authentic interpretation of Scripture

Bryan, your conclusion (exclusive authorization) does not follow from the premise. When did Christ ever say that Peter and his successors and no others had this authority???

The Apostle Paul to Titus, regarding church leaders in Crete (where “all men are liars”): “appoint elders in every city as I directed you … holding fast the faithful word which is in accordance with the teaching, that he may be able both to exhort in sound doctrine and to refute those who contradict” (Titus 1:5-9)

The above is just one of many examples where the Apostles made it clear that the men that followed after them had the authority to faithfully teach and pass on God’s plan of salvation. Indeed this authority was explicitly granted at a local level (“in every city”). This pattern continues to be the norm in Revelation and in the letters of Ignatius of Antioch where he recognizes each bishop as the highest authority in the respective churches.

According to the Apostle Paul, these “backwater” Cretans had the authority and the responsibility to give authentic interpretation of Scripture. No exclusivity here.

Anyone who has read the ECFs knows that they did not write as if only the successors of Peter had authentic authority to interpret Scripture.

“Jerome to the most blessed Pope Theophilus [of Alexandria]. The letter of your holiness has given me a twofold pleasure, partly because it has had for its bearers those reverend and estimable men, the bishop Agatho and the deacon Athanasius, and partly because it has shown your zeal for the faith against a most wicked heresy. … The presbyter Vincent has arrived from Rome two days ago and humbly salutes you. He tells me again and again that Rome and almost the whole of Italy owe their deliverance after Christ to your letters. Show diligence therefore, most loving and most blessed pope, and whenever opportunity offers write to the bishops of the West not to hesitate-in your own words -to cut down with a sharp sickle the sprouts of evil.” (Letter 88)

Who was saving Rome from heresy here? Come again, Bryan?

Blessings.
Andrew McCallum November 22nd, 2009 11:44 pm :
Francis Beckwith – You make an interesting comment here:

On the other hand, upon reflection, one realizes that Catholicism’s unity and doctrinal purity has been sustained (against amazing odds) with the infinite regress problem having no effect.

So you are able to resolve this matter by assessing the relevant facts of history and determining that the Catholic Church is indeed pure and unified in just the same sense as Christians of the first centuries. And of course we have access to the same historical accounts and we see that the Catholic Church of the Reformation (picking this point because this is the start of the schism) could not possibly be considered as equivalent in terms of unity or purity with the Church of the first few centuries. But we are both making the same sort of judgment, are we not?
Nathan November 23rd, 2009 12:46 am :
lojahw (#275),

I don’t have a Pope, and it would not be wise to assume that anyone who rejects sola scriptura has one (false dichotomy). To repeat: solo scriptura entails subjectivism; sola scriptura is no different in principle than solo scriptura, therefore it also entails subjectivism. If you want to say you’re pro-subjectivism, fine, go ahead and say it. But if nobody’s opinion is of higher validity than anyone else’s, why are you even arguing for your point of view? Scripture requires a hermeneutic, and you have not provided any principle by which I can distinguish yours as being superior to anyone else’s.

Andy (#294),

Good luck in your search. There is no neutral way to approach scripture (because the apostles themselves were not neutral), and to presume so will invariably lead us to error. I have come to believe that the true interpretation of scripture requires an apostolic hermeneutic, which can survive in history only by tradition, which itself necessarily entails apostolic succession. However, I am not Augustinian, so that obviously influences where I will look for answers. Vincent of Lérins is good to study, and likewise the rest of the Fathers, for whom scripture, tradition, antiquity, councils, a rejection of novelty, and consensus are all means by which one distinguishes truth from error.
Bryan Cross November 23rd, 2009 12:50 am :
lojahw (re: #316)

You wrote:

Bryan, your conclusion (exclusive authorization) does not follow from the premise. When did Christ ever say that Peter and his successors and no others had this authority???

Again, you have misunderstood me. Let me suggest that you ask me (privately if necessary) if I hold a position, before criticizing it, because you keep (unintentionally, I think) misrepresenting my position. I did not claim or imply that the successors of other apostles (besides Peter) do not have the authority of apostolic succession. If you had read through the comments, you would have known that. However, only those bishops in full communion with the successor of St. Peter (i.e. the one to whom Christ gave the keys of the Kingdom) participate in the exercise of those keys.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Bryan Cross November 23rd, 2009 1:22 am :
lojahw (re: #289)

Regarding this claim of committing the “genetic fallacy”, you wrote:

Re: hermeneutics, I agree with the rules described in Dei Verbum 3.12 from Vatican II. What I object to is stopping all interpretation of Scripture with the argument: “the Magisterium has spoken.” This is an appeal to the genetic fallacy

Many of the informal fallacies are informal fallacies precisely because they aren’t always true. If a person is a habitual liar, then we should be more suspicious of his testimony. And if he is known to tell the truth, we should give his testimony the benefit of the doubt. Likewise, when applied to God, the genetic fallacy is not a fallacy at all but the most perfect truth-verifier. In other words, if the premise is: “Proposition P was spoken by God”, then the right and necessary conclusion is “P is true.” In other words, when the source of the proposition is divine, then the proposition is thereby shown to be true. The genetic ‘fallacy’ is in that case not a fallacy at all; it is a guarantor of the truth of the conclusion. If the genetic fallacy were always a fallacy, then replacing your word ‘Magisterium’ above with ‘Jesus’ would give us the following: “What I object to is stopping all interpretation of Scripture with the argument: Jesus has spoken.” Well, if Jesus has spoken, then since Jesus is God, that should stop all debate. Similarly, if Jesus has authorized the Apostles to speak in His Name and with His authority, then the fact that the Apostles say x should stop debate about x. The genetic fallacy is, in that case, not a fallacy, but a demonstration of the authority and veracity of their words. Likewise, if the Apostles authorized successors to carry on the deposit of faith, guard and preserve it, interpret their words and pass them on to each successive generation, then the fact that their successors say x should stop debate about x. The genetic fallacy works in reverse when divine authority is in operation.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Bryan Cross November 23rd, 2009 2:31 am :
lojahw, (re: #315)

You seem to be taking every rabbit-trail away from our article, so I’ll just use your proclivity to wander as an occasion to clear up serious misunderstandings of the Catholic faith. You wrote:

My first love is Jesus Christ. I could never adopt JPII’s motto: [Mary] “totus tuus ego sum” (Mary, I am totally yours.)

That’s like standing at the altar at your wedding, and telling your bride that because you are a Christian, you cannot be totally hers, but can only give her some level of commitment less than 100%. What is the error here? The groom doesn’t understand that loving God and loving one’s spouse are not incompatible and do not compete; love is not a zero-sum commodity. Loving one’s spouse 100% (and being 100% committed to one’s spouse) is fully compatible with loving God 100% and being 100% committed to God. That is because they are on two different levels: one finite, and the other infinite. If God were finite, then loving God 100% would compete with loving others. But because God is infinite, loving God 100% makes possible loving all other good things 100%. Total commitment to one’s spouse is fully possible only in the context of total commitment to God. Likewise, total commitment to Mary as the mother of Christ and the mother of the Church does not compete with total commitment to Christ. That is because Mary and Jesus do not compete. Her word is: Do whatever He tells you. They are perfectly one, even though she is a mere creature, and He is God made man. But they now possess the perfect unity we (Lord willing) shall have with Christ.

Just as complete commitment to one’s spouse is fully compatible with (and made possible by) complete commitment to Christ, so likewise complete commitment to Mary as Christ’s mother is fully compatible with (and made possible by) complete commitment to Christ. The stumbling block to loving Mary is mistakenly to see her as competing with Christ for attention (and detracting from loving Christ) rather than as leading us to Christ and urging us to love Him and obey Him more perfectly. You can’t love Christ and not love His Mother. You can’t love Mary and not love her Son. That’s because the two of them deeply love each other. To enter into love with one of them is to enter into love with both of them. Christ loves Mary 100%, while loving His Father 100%. But she is loved as creature, while His Father is loved as God. So likewise, since we are to imitate Him, we are to love Mary 100%, as creature, and love the Father 100%, as God. Totus tuus is a demonstration of the Catholic both/and; loving Christ above all things does not prevent us from fully loving His mother with the devotion and commitment due to the Mother of Christ our King.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Teri November 23rd, 2009 7:47 am :
#315
For Mr. Lojahw,
Actually, I’m not a cradle Catholic, but I consider that a compliment. This is another “Rabbit Trail” so Bryan, et all, may choose to moderate for the sake of (wearily) trying to keep the discussion on topic (very much like herding cats, I think).

I am in the RCIA program at my parish and will come into full communion with The Church during Easter Vigil 2010. I grew up in a Disciples of Christ Church (My father’s denomination), but with a Mother and Grandmother who were “old school” Methodists who taught me the fear and the love of Our Lord. After being violently raped as a very naive, innocent girl at age 16 by an older youth pastor ( of a charismatic church I attended with friends), I felt very betrayed by God. I had dedicated my life to Him and I truly loved Him with all of my heart.

In the years since that time I have been in a “Bible Church”, Southern Baptist, Charismatic Fellowship, “Seeker Friendly” Fellowship and lastly Reformed Baptist ( think John Piper not John Macarthur.). I “cut my teeth” on the Bible. I am thankful that I was taught the Bible and read it diligently since early childhood.

I am deeply in love with Our Lord, Jesus Christ. To suggest that I somehow love anyone at all more than Him is to say I’m not worthy of Him. He is everything to me. If The (Catholic) Church taught I must love anyone more than Him, I would not even be here discussing this with you.

Mr. lohahw, I wish you weren’t afraid to really try to understand the truth of The Church for yourself before saying things that you don’t fully grasp. I think if you love Our Lord and His Word as you say you do, (and I have no reason to believe otherwise), you should at least give me the courtesy of asking how I accept this catechism, which looks “foreign” to some and “idolatrous” to most who just read it as a “manual”.

So as not to hijack the conversation and to help Bryan, Tim et all to keep this on Sola Scriptura, Solo Scriptura…. you may e-mail me if you have any questions. If you truly want to understand The Church, the Blessed Virgin Mary, etc., you can e-mail me personally (shraders2@gmail.com).
I don’t choose to converse or debate with anti-catholics who devote their time and their blogs to spreading lies and instigating hate and prejudice against Catholics. But if the love of Our Lord is truly in your heart, you will want only His truth, not your own.

May the peace of Our Lord be with you,
Teri
TurretinFan November 23rd, 2009 9:37 am :
Nathan wrote:

To repeat: solo scriptura entails subjectivism; sola scriptura is no different in principle than solo scriptura, therefore it also entails subjectivism. If you want to say you’re pro-subjectivism, fine, go ahead and say it. But if nobody’s opinion is of higher validity than anyone else’s, why are you even arguing for your point of view? Scripture requires a hermeneutic, and you have not provided any principle by which I can distinguish yours as being superior to anyone else’s.

Nathan reasons improperly, but the first line of this comment would actually help to form a rebuttal to the article. If we determine that subjectivism is a characteristic of Solo Scriptura, we can then contrast that with the lack of subjectivism in Sola Scriptura. But I’m not sure that even the proponents of Solo Scriptura would defend subjectivism, so ultimately the argument collapses.

-TurretinFan
TurretinFan November 23rd, 2009 10:07 am :
Troutman wrote:

We have claimed that your boat is sinking and the reply is “so is yours,” but that doesn’t refute the original statement.

This response misses the point of a uniqueness takeout rebuttal. Perhaps part of the reason it misses the point is the bad choice of analogies. Let me explain.

A uniqueness takeout rebuttal says that the criticism isn’t a valid criticism of a plan of action, not because it’s not true, but because it applies both to the thing being criticized and to the known alternatives to the thing being criticized.

The article does a better job (than Mr. Troutman) of responding to this issue. Although the article calls this (misleadingly in my opinion) a “tu quoque” argument, the article at least attempts to address the argument itself, by attempting to draw a principled distinction between solo Scriptura and the Roman Catholic position.

– TurretinFan
Bryan Cross November 23rd, 2009 10:17 am :
TurretinFan,

You wrote:

Nathan reasons improperly,

See our posting guidelines (under the ‘About’ tab) regarding speaking of participants in the third person.

Also, how does he reason improperly?

Next you wrote:

but the first line of this comment would actually help to form a rebuttal to the article. If we determine that subjectivism is a characteristic of Solo Scriptura, we can then contrast that with the lack of subjectivism in Sola Scriptura. But I’m not sure that even the proponents of Solo Scriptura would defend subjectivism, so ultimately the argument collapses.

The soundness of our argument does not depend on whether proponents of solo scriptura would (or would not) defend subjectivism, or claim that their position is prone to subjectivism. That’s because none of the premises of our argument is: “Solo scriptura proponents would (or would not) defend subjectivism.”

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
TurretinFan November 23rd, 2009 11:09 am :
Thanks for drawing my attention to the “third person” prohibition in your rules. I’ll try to adjust my comments accordingly. No offense to Nathan or to Mr. Troutman was intended.

You asked had Nathan’s reasoning was improper. It is improper because it says:

A involves B,

A is not distinguishable on principle from C,

Therefore C involves B.

That does not follow, because even assuming that principles cannot divide A and C it does not follow that every characteristic of A is present in C.
JoeyHenry November 23rd, 2009 11:16 am :
One reason why there is no necessary infinite hermeneutical regress is that with a living Magisterium we can continue to ask clarifying questions, even to the point of saying, “I’m understanding you to be saying [x]. Is [x] what you are saying? Yes or no?” And the Magisterium can respond by saying “yes” or “no”. And at that point, there is no need for an interpretive authority, so long as a person understands the English language and has adequate hearing. Interpreting “yes” and “no” is quite different from interpreting, say, the book of Romans. We do not need an interpretive authority to explain the meaning of ‘yes’ and ‘no’. But we may very well need an interpretive authority to explain the meaning of the book of Romans, or at least to help us avoid misinterpreting it.

It seems that the scenario pointed out in this response is that individual RC people have access to the “infallible interpreter” and have the opportunity to ask him/them a “yes or no” question. This is, however, an overly simplistic scenario since this is hardly the case for majority of Roman Catholics. I am also surprised that the argument would assume equality of interpreting the words “yes” or “no” with interpreting the book of Romans. The reason why a “yes or no” scenario is overly simplistic is because getting the right understanding of a theological construction or interpreting a biblical book can not be reduced to a “yes” or “no” question and answer with an infallible interpreter.

Another example: questions about the interpretation of Dei Verbum, which is already considered an infallible interpretation, with regards to divine revelation for RCs, can not be resolved by a “yes or no” answer. In reading that document one may ask whether Scripture contain implicitly or explicitly all of Tradition or does Tradition contain a unique revelation not implicitly or explicitly derived from Scripture? If this can be resolved with a simple “yes or no”, then we should have a response by now.

Lastly, understanding the word “yes” or “no” might pose no difficulty without context. The dictionary is pretty clear on the meaning of those words. But, how the question was asked, the degree of difficulty of the topic, in what medium, context, particular words, language used to get a “yes” or “no” answer would largely affect our understanding of those responses (whether in the negative, affirmative, neutral, or any other response). Thus, I am not convinced that infinite hermeneutical regress will not become a necessity, if we demand an “infallible interpreter” to have an authoritative interpretation. The certainty of the individual in getting the “infallible interpretation” right, is always based upon his fallible understanding of that “infallible interpretation”. There is no real advantage on this point with having an “infallible interpreter”.

Your point, namely, that the individual human interpreter is always fallible, is true, but it doesn’t affect our argument, because our argument does not depend upon the individual being an infallible interpreter.

Precisely because the individual is fallible in his interpretation affects the argument being advanced here. I may not have grasped the argument well but it seems to me that the argument implicitly states that there is an advantage of having an “infallible interpreter” because this would give us an infallible interpretation. The advantage, however, is only superficial as the “infallible interpretation” will always be subject to the fallible interpretation of the individual seeking clarification.

That’s a non sequitur. That’s like saying that there is no advantage of the Bible being infallible over it being full of errors, since the individual interpreter is fallible. The fallibility of the individual interpreter does not mean that there is no advantage (with respect to arriving at truth) in having an infallible book. Likewise, the fallibility of the individual interpreter does not mean that there is no advantage (with respect to arriving at truth) in having not only an infallible book but also an infallible interpreter of that book.

The logic however that the response is portraying misses the point. There is an advantage of having an infallible Bible since it means that we have a Divine Revelation in human language which can be understood using proper exegetical and hermeneutical principles. However, to further demand a mediator to this Divine Revelation such as an “infallible interpreter” in order to issue “infallible interpretation” is where the problem starts to surface. The “infallible interpretation” of the “infallible interpreter” will, in the end, be subjected to the fallible exegetical and hermeneutical principles and judgment of the individual seeker. The certainty of the individual of having the correct understanding is only as certain as to his capacity to fallibly interpret the “infallible interpretation”.

Nor does our argument demand that an infallible interpretation is needed to gain understanding of divine revelation. It is possible to gain understanding of divine revelation simply by reading the Bible. But, having a divinely authorized and infallible Magisterium to guide the Church in her understanding of the Word of God written is of great help in understanding the deposit of faith rightly, even if the individual layperson is not an infallible interpreter.

I am thankful for this assertion. It is not necessary to have an infallible interpretation to arrive at a correct understanding of divine revelation. That’s what Protestants are saying. The Protestants would also agree that a divinely authorized leadership would guide the churches in her understanding of Divine Revelation. The difference is that Protestants don’t equate “divinely authorized” with “infallibility”. The protestants don’t demand “infallibility” in order to have a “divinely authorized” teaching office with the purpose of instructing the proper understanding of divine revelation to the catechumen.

The individual layperson does not need to be in direct contact with the Pope in order to benefit from the gift of infallibility given to St. Peter and his successors. The whole Church is in dialogue of sorts, much as the parts of a living organism are in communication with each other and with the head. When a priest or bishop speaks or acts in a way that is contrary to the orthodoxy of the Church, word gets around, and he is (eventually) corrected, censored, removed or replaced. This helps keep the bishops and priests of the Church in agreement with the orthodoxy of the Apostolic See, and in this way the layperson is benefited by the gift of infallibility possessed by the Magisterium, even though the layperson does not have direct contact with the Pope.

The response is portraying a more realistic scenario in saying that individuals have no direct access to the “infallible interpreter”. This would, however, challenge the first paragraph’s scenario in which a “yes or no” question and answer dialogue takes place so that the “infinite regress” aspect is ended. Though the scenario is better, it is also highly optimistic, in that it assumes that bishops and priests who are teaching contrary to the RC dogmas are corrected because “word gets around”. This is not the case at all in many instances. “Word does not get around” as only a handful knows for certain whether his judgments of his priest’s or bishop’s teachings are already contrary to RC dogmas. The benefit of the layperson is anchored on the possibility that someone, who fallibly judges the teaching of his/her bishop or priests and reports it to headquarters, did not err in his judgments and interpretation of his bishop’s teaching. The benefits are in the realm of possibility that may or may not happen at all in his or her lifetime. Such advantage is no real advantage, my opinion.
JoeyHenry November 23rd, 2009 11:44 am :
Dear Dr. Beckwith,

You said: That is, Protestantism’s promise has been broken in practice, and we have the past 500 years to prove it. On the other hand, upon reflection, one realizes that Catholicism’s unity and doctrinal purity has been sustained (against amazing odds) with the infinite regress problem having no effect. Thus, one concludes that in practice the infinite regress problem has not really been much of a problem, while the sola scriptura principle has. And consequently, one remains (or becomes) Catholic.

Response: Your comparison is not well structured. First, you are comparing a single “organization”, i.e. the Roman Catholic Church, with “Protestantism” in claiming that the Catholic Church is more unified in doctrine. I think this is a false comparison since “protestantism” is not a single “organization”. In my opinion, the more accurate comparison is that of “Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church” against the “Roman Catholic Church”. If we allow comparing apples to apples, you will notice that unity in doctrine and teaching that doctrine to its catechumen in the “Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church“ is no different from the unity claimed by the “Roman Catholic Church”. In fact, there are more churches that are more united in their beliefs and stance than the RC Church. What I mean is that, if we look at the individual members of a particular church and asked them their beliefs, we will get a more united stance. However, ask Roman Catholic members and you will get a more diverse stance or understanding of a particular doctrine. The point is that, the problem of disunity within the Roman Catholic Church can be seen outright when individual members are examined. This is largely because of the “infinite regress problem” which, in effect is saying, that since individual members is fallible in understanding “infallible interpretations” from “infallible interpreter”, “Magisteriums” serves no real advantage in achieving “uniformity” and “unity” of understanding within the church. The RC Church is a testimony of this truth.
Nathan November 23rd, 2009 12:35 pm :
TF,

My “improper reasoning” is based on these quotations within the article:

Rather than placing the final authority in Scripture as it intends to do, this concept of Scripture places the final authority in the reason and judgment of each individual believer. The result is the relativism, subjectivism, and theological chaos that we see in modern Evangelicalism today. (Emphasis added.)

In other words, the modern Evangelical denial of genuine creedal authority reduces the doctrinal content of Christianity to mere subjectivism. (Emphasis added.)

So it would seem that Matthison thinks that solo scriptura results in subjectivism, which you apparently disagree with. I don’t seriously expect proponents of either sola or solo to defend subjectivism, however, given the article’s conclusion that the two views are ultimately the same in principle, my logic would seem to be fairly sound.
Tim Troutman November 23rd, 2009 1:13 pm :
TurretinFan @326 – It is true that sometimes a principle of distinction cannot be drawn between two things and yet some difference remain in them such that they can and should be treated differently. But not in this case. I explained why in this post.
Tim Troutman November 23rd, 2009 1:19 pm :
Joey – you are treating Protestantism’s fragmentation and lack of unity as a strength and Catholicism’s institutional unity as a weakness. Because the First (second, or third) Reformed Baptist Church of Phoenix has repeatedly schismed from other Protestants until it formed itself into a small homogeneous group, is it then comparable to the universal Church in terms of unity? Far from it. The Catholic Church was not formed out of schism, and it is not a country club of homogeneous Christian saints, but rather a universal hospital for all of the sinners of the world. Yet in spite of this Catholic mission, she retains her unity and hierarchical structure.
Nathan November 23rd, 2009 1:49 pm :
TF,

If not “every characteristic of A is present in C,” then in this particular case there should be a difference in principle between the two positions, because this is not a superficial characteristic. If subjectivism (i.e. non-transcendence) were only a property of one and not the other, that would certainly constitute a difference in principle. If you can demonstrate that this is the case, I would consider it to be a refutation of the article’s conclusions.
TurretinFan November 23rd, 2009 3:07 pm :
Nathan:

You stated: “If subjectivism (i.e. non-transcendence) were only a property of one and not the other, that would certainly constitute a difference in principle.”

There are certainly some folks in “Protestantism” (broadly defined) that do adhere to subjectivism. There are others who do not – some who specifically and explicitly affirm transcendence.

I’m sure you must be aware of this.

So it would seem that you mean that the first group is internally consistent and the second group is internally inconsistent. Of course, the onus would be on the one asserting internal inconsistency to demonstrate it. With respect to the author(s) of the article, I don’t think the inconsistency has been demonstrated. If you disagree, you could perhaps point me to the part where you believe the inconsistency was demonstrated.

-TurretinFan
mateo November 23rd, 2009 4:01 pm :
Joey Henry: It is not necessary to have an infallible interpretation to arrive at a correct understanding of divine revelation. That’s what Protestants are saying.

If all the Protestants were saying that it is not ALWAYS necessary to have an infallible interpretation of the Bible to arrive at a correct understanding of divine revelation, then the Catholic Church would agree with that. But by leaving out the ALWAYS in that statement, you are implicitly inserting NEVER into the statement, i.e. Protestants that believe that the Protestant Bible is the ONLY source of infallible authority also believe that it is NEVER necessary to have an infallible interpretation of the Protestant Bible to arrive at a correct understanding of divine revelation.

Five hundred years of Protestant history show that it is not true that it is never necessary to have an infallible interpretation of the Bible to arrive at a correct understanding of divine revelation.

How do you explain the doctrinal chaos within Protestantism if there is no real need for an infallible interpretive authority?
T Ciatoris November 23rd, 2009 4:44 pm :
Dear friends,

Some of the contributors to this thread have alleged a basic doctrinal unity among orthodox Protestants as a counterargument to Bryan and Neal’s argument that there is no principled distinction between sola Scriptura and solo Scriptura. I wish to suggest that this contention is based on (1) unacceptably circular reasoning, which results from and is underwritten by (2) a kind of ecclesial amnesia.

As to (1), my point is relatively simple. Proponents of a broad orthodox Protestant doctrinal unity claim that only those groups who maintain “basic orthodoxy” are genuine adherents of sola Scriptura. And only those groups who abide by sola Scriptura maintain “basic orthodoxy.” The set “adherents of sola Scriptura” and “adherents of basic orthodoxy” thus become mutually defining. According to these orthodox Protestants, if a group, such as the Oneness Pentecostals, departs from orthodox Trinitarianism, they are by definition not adhering to sola Scriptura, irrespective of a Oneness Pentecostal’s own account of the foundations and method of his theology (which he would claim is precisely sola Scriptura). The orthodox Protestant will, I imagine, immediately object that Oneness Pentecostals have not employed sola Scriptura but solo Scriptura. But it’s difficult to see how this accusation can get past being merely a bald assertion. Along with Protestants who claim to be sola Scriptura and not solo Scriptura, Oneness Pentecostals can also claim to be “listening to tradition” in discerning their own interpretation of Scripture. With respect to their modalism, they can appeal, for example, to figures such as Sabellius, or certain interpretations of Marcellus of Ancyra, or Michael Servetus, or perhaps even a particular reading of Meister Eckhart. It’s an alternative tradition to magisterial Catholic tradition, but, from a sola Scriptura point of view, so what? According to proponents of sola Scriptura, there is (or should be) nothing irreformable or infallible about magisterial Catholic tradition, whether we’re talking about the fourth century or the sixteenth. So what, exactly, is the principled problem with Oneness Pentecostals appealing to an alternative tradition rather than the magisterial Catholic one, particularly if the only infallible authority they confess is Sacred Scripture?

In fact, what we actually find is a basic doctrinal unity among those Protestants who happen, for whatever reason (though I’m going to propose one below), to adhere to the first four ecumenical councils and their accompanying creeds. While protesting that they adhere to sola Scriptura, these Protestants affirm these councils as definitive for orthodoxy by a certain sleight of hand. Because the Bible is materially sufficient to derive the findings of these councils, uncompromising acceptance of the councils is deemed to satisfy the demands of sola Scriptura. But Scripture isn’t formally sufficient to necessitate the conclusions reached by these councils. The fact of the matter is that “orthodox” Protestants adhere to the first few ecumenical councils by dint of a sort of hangover from Catholic tradition, the normativity of which they no longer formally acknowledge—this is what I refer to above as (2) “ecclesial amnesia.” It’s a forgetfulness of the fact that orthodox dogmatic formulations on questions such as the Trinity are a hard-won gift from the Spirit-guided Church, passed down through the Catholic Church to the magisterial reformers, who in turn handed it down to their descendents. But because the dogmatic formulations determined by ecumenical councils were passed down to Protestants accompanied by the principle of sola Scriptura, the dogmas are no longer recognized as hard-won gifts, but viewed as self-obvious conclusions drawn directly and without struggle from the allegedly perspicuous Scriptures.

Sabellianism, Arianism, Nestorianism, Monophysitism, and so forth, do not seem obviously wrong to orthodox Protestants because of the principle of sola Scriptura. On the contrary, I submit that they only seem obviously wrong to orthodox Protestants because of the gifts of dogmatic traditional formulations of orthodoxy, parameters for reading the biblical text, that they have received from their Catholic heritage. Protestants do genuinely derive these dogmatic formulations from their reading of Scripture. But that’s because they, in fact, adhere to the parameters of orthodox interpretation set by early Sacred Tradition—only they’ve forgotten, apparently, why they do so.

in Christ,

TC
Sean Patrick November 23rd, 2009 6:28 pm :
Teri,

Thanks for your comments in #322. I’ll be praying for you this Easter season. I have several friends that are preparing for Easter 2010 confirmation.
TurretinFan November 23rd, 2009 6:40 pm :
Mr Troutman:

You wrote:

TurretinFan @326 – It is true that sometimes a principle of distinction cannot be drawn between two things and yet some difference remain in them. But not in this case. I explained why in this post.

I can provide a counter-example that defeats your assertion. One practical difference between Solo and Sola is that in the former case, ordained men are not held to a requirement of confessional subscription and their teachings are not scrutinized in light of confessional adherence. This is just one example, of course, but it is an example that has practical value.

-TurretinFan
TurretinFan November 23rd, 2009 6:50 pm :
Nathan:

I notice you also (in a separate comment) stated:

So it would seem that Matthison thinks that solo scriptura results in subjectivism, which you apparently disagree with. I don’t seriously expect proponents of either sola or solo to defend subjectivism, however, given the article’s conclusion that the two views are ultimately the same in principle, my logic would seem to be fairly sound.

I’m not sure whether Mathison thinks that the Solo group is consciously in favor of subjectivism, unconsciously in favor of it, or simply inconsistent. I had the impression that he was arguing that they were consciously in favor of it. Perhaps I had the wrong impression.

-TurretinFan
Teri November 23rd, 2009 7:35 pm :
Thanks Sean!! I am more than thrilled! I really feel like it’s a wedding day…so very sacred and beautiful!

#335 T.C.

Thank you again for typing all of that out so I didn’t have to. Also you made alot more excellent points, as well.

I agree with you, T.C. and we are still counting comments on this subject. As much as I enjoy reading and learning how to have true dialogue and argument using a philosophical approach (rather than what passes for it in some blogs) – NO ONE has told T.C. or me – if we were looking for the interpretation of Sola Scriptura instead of Solo where to go..(as in denomination!)

We seem to be back at square one. So, if Bryan, Tim, Sean and others allow, I would like to ask a simple question.

Let’s not even look over the entire landscape of Protestant denominations to choose from now. Let’s all look back during the period of Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, and throw in King Henry VIII…and whoever the Anabaptist leader was at the time (not the one that died in the St. Bartholmew’s Day Massacre)

Suppose for argument’s sake I can travel to any of these places and find safety in their church. Where should I go for the pure form of Sola Scriptura? Germany and Luther, Calvin and Geneva, Zwingli or whoever after him, and the “radical” Anabaptist…and also England.

Who among those groups “preach the truth of the gospel and rightly administer the sacraments, AND most importantly for the sake of this topic…adheres to Sola Scriptura – the Word of God alone?

If The CTC gentlemen will allow this comment, please, please don’t tell me anything but where to go to find this church that reformed the RCC. Tell me where this Church is located that practices Sola Scriptura and is now the Church – the Body of Christ. I think T.C. wants to know as well, but I’m still called “Protestant” although I’m not officially protesting anything. Sola Scriptura, ladies and gentlemen – Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, etc.

Thank you,
Teri
TurretinFan November 23rd, 2009 7:41 pm :
Brian:

You wrote:

The soundness of our argument does not depend on whether proponents of solo scriptura would (would not) defend subjectivism, or claim that their position is prone to subjectivism. That’s because none of the premises of our argument is: “Solo scriptura proponents would (or would not) defend subjectivism.”

You do quote Mathison, seeminly with approval, as stating:

The result is the relativism, subjectivism, and theological chaos that we see in modern Evangelicalism today.

I have the impression that Mathison is claiming (and you’re adopting) the idea that the practitioners of the “solo” position actually advocate subjectivism and/or relativism (the distinction between those two is not so great, one suspects). Of course, other places, Mathison seems to suggest that subjectivism is simply an implication of giving the creeds no authority – perhaps an unrecognized implication.

It would seem to be the case that if the solo position implies subjectivism and the solo position is defended by solo adherents, then either (1) the defense of the solo position is internally inconsistent or (2) the defense of the solo position involves the defense of subjectivism. Of course, that is a big “if.” Perhaps the solo position itself does not imply subjectivism at all. The article seems to simply assume that it does, perhaps because the article is focused on Mathison. But I digress.

The article does appear to be premised on the idea that the solo position at least implies subjectivism. So, I am not sure what you are trying to point out by noting that you don’t make the following formal premise: “Solo scriptura proponents would (or would not) defend subjectivism.” The question may not itself be a premise, but it is an important question in the determination of whether there is a principled difference between the two positions.

– TurretinFan
mateo November 23rd, 2009 8:41 pm :
Hi, Paige.

Somehow I totally missed your post # 282.

I can certainly bend my “mind around to a world that does NOT have access to infallible interpretation, but where God is still good and still intends to communicate to us”. That pretty much describes my state of my mind after I made the choice for apostasy. When I was in college, I totally rejected the Catholicism that I had been brought up in (and I didn’t just reject the Catholic faith – I rejected Christianity altogether, hence my apostasy).

What did I learn while in that state of mind? After about fifteen years of trying to find the truth on my own terms I became totally lost. During my time as an apostate, God did communicate directly with me in ways that left no doubt in my mind that God is good and He can communicate directly when He wants to do that. One good thing that God brought out my apostasy is the certain knowledge that God reveals himself to us on His terms, not our terms.

When I was an apostate, I had to confront a question that was constantly gnawing at my soul: What was the purpose of life? I got a piece of the answer when I happened to ask a practicing Buddhist what the purpose of life was, and he said that we are here to serve. I was open to that possibility, and God confirmed in an otherworldly way that I was correct to accept this truth. That answer made so much sense to me – if we were all trying to serve one another, then we would all live in a much better world – certainly a world without war. But that answer did not completely satisfy me for long, because I could see a problem. Even if we were all trying to serve one another, we would still be in conflict, because each person would have a different plan about the best way to serve. Even if all the plans were good, we would fight over who had the best plan to bring about the best possible world. The fighting might be extremely polite, but the conflict would be unavoidable.

I realized that the only way to solve this problem would be for everyone to let go of his or her plan and find out what God’s plan was, since He would only have one plan – the perfect plan. I realized right then that I had to totally abandon myself to God’s plan, even if His plan was something that didn’t make any sense to me. It was decision time. I had already hit bottom, so I had no desire at all to keep going down the path where I was the lord of my life. So I said to God, I know that I need to completely abandon my will for your will, even if that means doing the worst possible thing that I could think of doing, which would be to become a practicing Catholic. God immediately confirmed that this was what He wanted me to do. Yikes! “My ways are not your ways” indeed.

I suppose my “testimony” might seem like a pointless digression, but I thought it might help you understand why I disagree with you. You said that the “thoughtful Protestant assumption is that since (as they believe) there is no infallible and authoritative Magisterium, they should be very, very careful how they interpret the biblical texts, making use of checks and balances as they go.” I agree with that. But you then assert that by doing that, “Differences will still turn up, but not at the core.”

I disagree. Differences will not only turn up; they will turn up at the core because the fundamental fault of all human beings is that they want to be the lord of their life. The private interpretation of scriptures allows one to retain ultimate authority about what one accepts as truth. The common Protestant attitude is that if I don’t agree with the scriptural interpretations that my Protestant denomination teaches, then I can go church shopping until I find one that does agree with me.

“When I submit (so long as I agree), the one to whom I submit is me.”

To that maxim, I would add this maxim:

“If Jesus is not Lord of all, He is not Lord at all.”

As evidence that there will be “core differences” if private interpretation is allowed to reign supreme, I ask you to consider the fact that there are plenty of sincere Protestants that deny the doctrine of the Trinity. Have you ever tried to use the Protestant Bible alone to convince a Oneness Pentecostal to change their mind about the Trinity? The Trinity is the number one “core doctrine” of Christianity, and if the Trinity can be denied through the private interpretation of scriptures, then anything can be denied through the private interpretation of scriptures.

Paige Britton: I used the analogy of marriage not to speak of my relationship with leaders in my church, but to illustrate that a lack of 100% certainty across the board does not preclude excellent understanding, even on a basic human-to-human level.

Humans can get an excellent understanding of many things if they study and work hard. How else does one excel at music, math and science without hard work and study? The real question is this, can one have faith in things that are divinely revealed apart from supernatural grace? The Catholic Church teaches no one can believe in divinely revealed truths without the aid of supernatural grace.

Paige Britton: You write, “If Christ expects me join the Church that he established and to believe what is true about matters of faith and morals (which He does), then it is wholly reasonable for me to believe that Christ would have people in the Church that He founded that are vested with the authority to teach infallibly about matters of faith and morals. That there exists a living magisterium in the Church founded by Jesus is an extremely reasonable thing for me to believe, and that is why I don’t struggle with the idea.”

I think that the criteria you express here (for accepting the Magisterium) are way too simplistic for me – even if your conclusions are ultimately right, your criteria for that infallible interpreter seem to rest in your idea of what is reasonable or preferable, rather than in any authoritative source. (I think even Bryan noted above that personal preference should NOT guide our conclusions about the True Church, and I would think this should apply in both directions!)

I certainly agree that “personal preference should NOT guide our conclusions about the True Church”. I became a Catholic because it was the worst possible thing I could think of doing! I knew that becoming a Catholic was going to make me uncomfortable – all that “deny yourself and take up your cross” stuff was the reason why I left the Catholic Church in the first place.

On a scale of things that are believable, I think that believing that there is a Magisterium that keeps the Church that Christ founded from teaching untruth is a very small thing compared to believing in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. But why should I believe the latter? The latter belief is something that can only be believed by divine and supernatural faith, as is the former belief. I certainly don’t expect you to believe in the Magisterium because I have given you a good argument.

I am saying that I don’t believe in sola scriptura because it is an unreasonable thing to believe because it is a self-refuting doctrine that is full of contradiction. That is something that even an unbeliever can know, since there is no verse in a Protestant Bible that claims the Protestant Bible is the ONLY source of infallibly authority. It not only unreasonable to believe that sola scriptura is an infallible doctrine, it is impossible to believe that sola scriptura is an infallible doctrine. I can no more believe in a self-refuting doctrine, then I can believe that it is true that this sentence is false.

Paige Britton: I agree that having an infallible interpreter handy would be preferable to not having one.

What if the ONLY way that you could have an infallible interpreter handy is to become a Catholic?

One thing is certain, you will never have access to an infallible interpreter if you hang around with people that believe that Protestant Bible is the only source of infallible authority!
Paige Britton November 23rd, 2009 9:18 pm :
Mateo (#310)—
Thanks for continuing to converse with me and straighten me out re. the Catholic p.o.v. :) I’m sorry I didn’t see your post till now, or I’d have answered sooner.

You asked: “Paige, you have yet to answer this question: If sola scriptura doctrine and the concomitant private interpretation of the Bible is not the source of the doctrinal chaos within Protestantism, then what is the source of that doctrinal chaos?”

Mateo, I don’t know that there is one source. If the concept of the infallible interpretive Magisterium is true, then we’re all missing the boat, and no wonder we’re floundering around in different denominations. If there is no earthly infallible interpretive authority such as the Catholic Magisterium, then the source is human sin – from the little sin of hasty reading, to the largest sins of lies and deception.
Pax,
pb
Paige Britton November 23rd, 2009 10:14 pm :
Mateo —
p.s. to my other note — in the second case I mentioned, other differences would be attributable to innocuous divergences in emphasis about non-essentials, as within Catholicism.
pb
Paige Britton November 23rd, 2009 10:17 pm :
Teri —
Thank you for your suggestion. I will read the comment you mentioned.
Thanks also for your kind words. I don’t know how I come across here, particularly because I tend to be persistent. But I’m very much interested in understanding things thoroughly, mainly so that I won’t misrepresent other folks’ ideas in my own speech and writing.
pax,
pb
Tim A. Troutman November 23rd, 2009 10:18 pm :
TurretinFan – Feel free to call me Tim.

Your counter example would defeat my argument (not mere assertion) if I had argued that there would be no difference whatsoever, whether practical or otherwise, in a man who explicitly adopted the historical “sola scriptura” position and a man who explicitly adopted the “solo scriptura” position. I have never claimed such a thing and your counter example is a long way from defeating my argument.

There are a couple of ways to see the deficiency in the example.

1. As I argued in the link provided (please do read it, especially if you’re going to claim to defeat it with a counter example), the question of authority is one inherently concerned with principles and not pragmatism; distinction between any two competing theories of authority would need to be principled.

2. The difference in your example is in the behavior of the men who adhere to the competing theories, not in the theories themselves. Even still it is clear, that their behavior has no principle of distinction for the same reasons given above in the article. The solo scripturist does not submit to a confessional standard, but straight to the bible. The sola scripturist submits to a confessional standard, but one of his choosing which must first be subjected to the bible.

So I repeat my original conclusion which has not been defeated by your counter example: Logically then, since Bryan and Neal actually demonstrated there to be no principled difference between solo and sola scriptura, an appeal to a practical difference is insufficient.
lojahw November 23rd, 2009 10:40 pm :
Tim T wrote:

The sola scripturist submits to a confessional standard, but one of his choosing which must first be subjected to the bible.

I don’t recall you responding to my post # 259. Comments?

Blessings.
Paige Britton November 23rd, 2009 10:42 pm :
T. Ciatoris (#335) —
I am curious: You have explained why Protestants have some things right in their doctrine (these things are hand-me-downs from Catholic doctrine, which we have ungratefully appropriated). How do you explain the Reformers’ selectivity in their borrowing? Why did they leave some hard-won doctrines behind?
Tap November 24th, 2009 12:47 am :
Paige,

I don’t know how I come across here, particularly because I tend to be persistent. But I’m very much interested in understanding things thoroughly, mainly so that I won’t misrepresent other folks’ ideas in my own speech and writing.

Thoroughly enjoying your participation here, you seem to be trying to flesh things out, without resorting to sophistry, i don’t expect you mind to change , but your approach is very refreshing.
Tim A. Troutman November 24th, 2009 12:51 am :
Lojah – I didn’t respond to it. I saw that you were engaged in some other items.

You said:

You assume that the reason people change churches is because they disagree with the doctrine of the church where they attend……but … your idea doesn’t match reality, because to be a member they must sign a doctrinal statement indicating that they affirm the doctrine that church teaches.

To put that into a syllogism it would be:

1. To be a member, you must sign a doctrinal statement indicating that you affirm the doctrine that church teaches.
2. Therefore, the reason people change churches is not because they disagree with the doctrine of the church where they attend.

This does not follow.

Can you restate your objection to the article? It will help if you make it simple and general to start with, and then go from there. Example:

Contra the claims of this article, solo scriptura is distinct in principle from sola scriptura per the following arguments:

1. A principled distinction between two things can be demonstrated when the observable consequences of the two things differ in a principled way. That is, if there were no principled difference between two things, no principled distinction could be made in the consequences. But there is a principled difference in the final behaviors (as consequences) of those who profess sola scriptura and those who profess solo scriptura. Therefore there is a principled difference in the positions themselves.

2. The article claims that solo and sola scriptura are, respectively, direct and indirect methods of achieving the same thing: private judgment of Scripture, and that therefore, there is no principled distinction between them. But this assumes a priori that direct and indirect, or immediate and mediate positions on authority or epistemology are necessarily non-distinct in principle. But there is a principled distinction between a man who rejects any authority except for the king, and a man who accepts the rightful authorities, who have mediated authority, so long as they do not contradict the king. Further, there is a principled difference in a teacher who tells his student directly that his work is poor and the teacher who tells his student the same thing indirectly. In fact, there are many examples of such principled distinctions between the direct and the indirect and the mediate and the immediate. Therefore this a priori assumption of the article is false and the argument does not stand. There is a principled distinction between solo scriptura and sola scriptura.

These are just some examples of arguments you might want to use against the article.
T Ciatoris November 24th, 2009 1:45 am :
Dear Paige,

You asked:

How do you explain the Reformers’ selectivity in their borrowing? Why did they leave some hard-won doctrines behind?

What an excellent question! Of course, I am neither capable of nor responsible for speaking for any or all of the magisterial reformers (after all, which of them speaks for them all?), but I can offer a few semi-speculative observations.

First, though, allow me to offer a clarification. You paraphrased me as saying that Protestants “have ungratefully appropriated” some of the dogmatic components of Catholic Tradition. It’s true that, in a past comment (#279), I used language of “ingratitude” on this subject in my interaction with lojahw, and I later regretted it (#293 – lojahw, sorry for my infelicitous word-choice). In comment #335, to which you’re responding, I intentionally abandoned this language. As I tried to make clear in #293, that’s not because I think this language is objectively false; I do think it’s objectively true. But I think it brings unhelpful connotative baggage. I was raised Protestant, and so I know first-hand how incredibly and rightly grateful most Protestants are for the gifts they’ve been given in Holy Scripture (and I know thoughtful Protestants – and you certainly seem to be one – recognize the mediation of the Church in God’s giving the gift of the canon) and in the faith passed on to them by their forebears. I am and will always remain indescribably grateful to my Protestant ancestors. I owe my lifelong relationship with Christ to their faithfulness. This is, in part, why I do not want to paint Protestants as “ingrates”—it would make me one, too!

And so, as a paraphrase of what I said in #335, I’d prefer “unknowingly (because forgetfully) received.” This is in keeping with my claim about “ecclesial amnesia.” What have Protestants unknowingly received? To be clear once more: in the case of the first few ecumenical councils, I do not claim that Protestants have received a material principle of faith. Scripture is, I believe, materially sufficient for the dogmatic findings of these councils. However, I do think that orthodox Protestants have received formal boundaries or parameters for orthodox interpretation of Scripture which constitute a formal principle of Christian faith extrinsic from Scripture. It would take a long, long time to argue this in detail, but I really do think that there are perfectly plausible Arian, Nestorian, Monophysite, etc., readings of Scripture that do not simply ignore “perspicuous” passages. That doesn’t mean I think their readings are more plausible than the orthodox reading, nor even equally plausible. But whatever I think of these readings’ plausibility relative to that of orthodoxy is, I freely admit, no more than my private opinion. It is not why I am confident that Arianism and the rest are heresies. I am confident that they are heresies because they oppose the infallible magisterial statements of the Spirit-guided Holy Catholic Church, “the pillar and bulwark of the truth” (1 Tim 3:15).

With respect to your question itself, I would say first that, though I do not accept the Reformed doctrine of the “perspicuity of Scripture,” some things are more “perspicuous” than others. For example, if someone agreed that the Bible was infallible and then denied the Resurrection, I’d want his head checked. If we were setting up a metrics for this, I actually don’t think a full-blown orthodox doctrine of the Trinity is at the “more perspicuous” end of the scale. But I do think that some articulation of both oneness and threeness (two-and-a-half-ness?) in God is probably more nearly perspicuous than not in the New Testament. And, of course, we have to remember historical circumstances. Trinitarian orthodoxy was not something that got the reformers especially riled up (polemically, anyway—I hope it did devotionally), so I suspect that the doctrine of the Trinity, among others, was received from Tradition without undergoing a great deal of scrutiny. And it had the advantage by the 16th century of sheer hoary antiquity. As for other issues that aren’t the headliner (i.e., justification, of course) and about which the Bible isn’t especially perspicuous, it’s interesting to see how they fare among the magisterial reformers. Sacred images? Disagreement. Eucharistic theology? Disagreement. Auricular confession? Disagreement. Perpetual virginity of Our Lady? Very slow fade out of style (even the Wesleys thought it was a perfectly biblically acceptable and highly fitting, though dogmatically unnecessary, opinion for Protestants to hold).

So, the question of the selectivity of the reformers is an interesting thought experiment. But whatever the experiment’s outcome, does it actually affect the positive points I’ve made?

in Christ,

TC
1 Cor 16:14
David Thrall November 24th, 2009 2:04 am :
Bryan,

(Ref. #309)

At the beginning of your response, you say you have not claimed that no individual can make an ultimate, correct “solo” interpretation. I am unsure why you deny this. In the 2nd sentence of your article,

you wrote:

“The direct implication of solo scriptura is that each person is his own ultimate interpretive authority.”

Because “Sola scriptura is arguably the most foundational point of disagreement underlying the nearly five-hundred year rift between Catholic and Protestant Christians,” you disapprove of Sola and Solo Scriptura. Therefore, you disagree with the position that each person is his own ultimate interpretive authority of Scripture. You are asserting that no person can be his own ultimate interpretive authority of Scripture. This is a Universal Negative fallacy (a self-refuting proposition). In holding to this position, you make yourself the ultimate interpretive authority on Scripture to hold that no one can make himself the ultimate interpretative authority on Scripture. You have to possess ultimate interpretive authority on Scripture to assert this. Your position is self-refuting.

Because your assertion is self-refuting, ultimate interpretive authoritative statements can be made by an individual.

I wrote:

“Second, the premise is also a composition fallacy because the magisterium of the Catholic Church is made up individuals. At least one individual has to arrive at a conclusion or “interpretation” before the group can arrive at a conclusion or “interpretation.” If no single individual has arrived at a conclusion, then there is no interpretation or conclusion.”

To continue: if the leaders reason properly, then their conclusions will be valid. If they reason incorrectly, then their conclusions will be false. If non-leaders reason properly, then their conclusions will be valid. If not properly, then their conclusions will be false. Interpretive conclusions of Scripture are either true or not true. You don’t have to be the Magisterium or some sort of divinely inspired interpreter to arrive at a true interpretation of Scripture. Summaries of Doctrine can therefore be formed based upon proper reasoning.

How does one find out what is true or not true? Using the rules of proper reasoning from and starting with Scripture. This includes following the direction of Scripture to consult other Christians and Christian teachers regarding proper reasoning.

You wrote:

“This only pushes back the question of Magisterial authority, because someone must set or establish what are the “proper rules” of interpreting Scripture. If the rules for interpreting Scripture were handed down to those to whom the Scripture was entrusted, then they are ones who know how to interpret them.”

To say that “they are the ones who know how to interpret them” is a false alternative (your term false dilemma). A third alternative is that the rules are a part of Scripture. Scripture contains the rules for proper reasoning (whether directly or indirectly stated). These are not contrary to truth, but are logical. Therefore, again, this nullifies magisterial authority in the sense of a need for imparting divine interpretation. The rules simply have to be followed.

(To answer your question, “Who authoritatively determines who has the Holy Spirit?”, we are to follow the Scriptures criterion for this determination. Perhaps this moves off topic but I’m certainly willing to discuss it).

You wrote:

“If you don’t distinguish between truth and authority, then the danger is rationalism, because then you treat a statement as authoritative only if you can verify its truth.”

Reasoned truth (from the Scripture) is just as authoritative as Scripture because truth is truth. Truth is authoritative because it comes from God. If it is not true, it is not from God.

You wrote:

“That’s rationalism (i.e. the opposite error of fideism). It is wrong to kill the innocent; we know this rule by our natural power of reason; we know this rule by our natural power of reason. But Abraham rightly obeyed God regarding the sacrifice of Isaac, because even though it is true that murdering the innocent is wrong, God’s direct command to sacrifice Isaac is greater in authority. One truth can outweigh another truth in authority.”

You have committed a false alternative. “Natural power of reason” is not authoritative for morality. Abortionists kill the innocent based upon their own natural power of reason. By identifying the correct starting point for reason or, in other words, the correct presupposition for the authoritative basis of knowledge, rationalism is avoided. Presupposing Scripture validates and provides the authoritative basis for reason. Our own reasoning was never intended to start independent of the objective Word of God. Therefore, morality is based upon Scripture.

In response to the example of Abraham, God, the Author, has the authority to command the taking of life and He has the authority to command the protection of the innocent. Since He is the only Authority in both instances, there is no greater authority.

In response to “One truth can outweigh another truth in authority,” truth must be both objective and authoritative. Once a person has arrived at truth, there does not exist a higher authority level of truth which can negate a lower level of truth. If this were the case, the lower level would not qualify as truth. Truth cannot be true and not true at the same time. Futhermore, the lower level could never be absolute. If truth is not absolute, then it is not truth. It would be speculation. Therefore a true interpretation is a correct interpretation and an authoritative interpretation.

You wrote:

“Authority is not reducible to truth (where ‘truth’ means correspondence between a proposition and reality)”

There are different kinds of authority. But there is no greater authority than the One who reveals absolute truth, or simply truth. Since all truth originates from God, whatever He defines as truth can not be outweighed by another truth. He is not in conflict with Himself. He is the One who defines what truth is.

I wrote:

“We presuppose the truth of Scripture even before beginning the investigation for a Church.”

You responded:

“Only a Protestant can say such a thing, because he can’t even imagine any other way of thinking than sola scriptura way of thinking. There is no need to presuppose the truth of Scripture when discovering the Church in history. One might discover the Church through history and only then discover that it teaches there is a sacred book containing the Word of God.”

This is certainly a possibility and by my statement I meant that once the authoritative revelation of Scripture is discovered, then Scripture must be presupposed in order to arrive at the truth of where the true church exists. Extra-Biblical writings of history are useful but must always be viewed as just that, the writings of men and not divine inspiration. Why should I believe one author over and against another? This is why if the writings of men are not authoritative revelation from God and we are treating them as if they are, then we are bearing false witness of God.

I wrote:

“Fourth, submission to an “interpretation” is not necessarily a submission to myself. If the interpretation is a valid conclusion, I am not submitting to myself, I am submitting to the truth of the valid conclusion. If I do not submit to truth, I am not insubordinate to myself, but to truth.”

You responded:

“Agreed. But if I submit only to those persons with whom I agree, then the person to whom I submit is me.”

If you mean that if given 4 leaders of a church and I only agree with 3 of them and submit only to those 3 persons, then yes this is not Biblical submission.

I wrote:

“We make an accurate “solo interpretation” of the Scripture even to “discover” that there was such a man named Peter who was given keys to a kingdom. If we hear of this truth from others or through history books and believe it, then we have presupposed it to be true. And if we are looking for an authoritative revelation to prove that it is true, we will find that this truth came from the authoritative revelation of the Word of God.”

You wrote:

“Not necessarily. These thing were all known to the Church even before the first NT Scriptures were written. Of course the Church Fathers coming after the Apostles referred to the Apostles’ writings to substantiate their [the Fathers’] claims about the teaching of the Apostles.”

Absolutely and I would add that to the extent the Church Fathers were faithful to the Apostles’ writings and reasoned from them properly, they were correct. To the extent that they reasoned incorrectly, they were wrong. I cannot trust extra-Biblical historical writings as being authoritative revelation from God. Can you prove that those writings are Divinely inspired? Mormons claim divine inspiration, should we believe them?

You wrote,

“You don’t seem to realize that unless you have the Church, you cannot know what is the Bible.”

This is another false alternative. If someone, who never read the Bible before, discovers one and reads it, the Holy Spirit can certainly impart understanding, repentance, and faith to acknowledge the book for what is really is, the Word of God. Scripture is self-authenticating. It claims that it is and it was imparted through the office of the apostles and prophets. Furthermore, it has to be self-authenticating in order to be authoritative otherwise if another party is the judge of authenticity, then that party becomes the authority.

You wrote,

“That same authority by which we can know what is the canon is the same authority by which we can know what is the authentic interpretation of those books. If you take away the Church, you not only lose the authentic interpretation of Scripture, you lose the canon of Scripture. If you want the canon, then you run into the contradiction of accepting the Church’s authority to determine the canon while denying its authority to determine the authentic interpretation of the books of that canon.”

Again, the same false alternative (See the last response). Scripture is self-authenticating.

In summary, the Universal Negative fallacy and the Composition Fallacy of a major premise of the article (no individual can be an ultimate interpretive authority on Scripture) prove that individuals can make ultimate authoritative interpretations of Scripture. By following the rules of proper reasoning, this eliminates any need for divinely inspired interpreters. Interpretation is either true or false. If true, then authoritative.

David
JoeyHenry November 24th, 2009 8:51 am :
Dear Tim,

you are treating Protestantism’s fragmentation and lack of unity as a strength and Catholicism’s institutional unity as a weakness.

I have not made this argument, if you are referring to my response to Dr. Beckwith.
Paige Britton November 24th, 2009 8:51 am :
TC,
Thanks for your thorough and very enjoyable response to my little question. Two-and-a-half, indeed.

I do agree that most Protestants are completely rootless, not even knowing much about their connection to the Reformation in the first place — maybe we think we sprang full-grown from the church in Acts or something! Or we’d sure like to think so. So I am not surprised by your contention that we’ve forgotten from whom we learned the most basic of our doctrinal formulations. Of course, our perspective on the source of those formulations is necessarily different: you identify it as being the continuing Catholic Magisterium, while we see it (if we think about it) as being the Church in history (as defined by what we determine thru our personal interpretation to be orthodox teaching, though not infallible).

Here’s an additional piece to add to the thought experiment: Think of how it was when you moved from Protestantism into Catholicism, and submitted your conscience re. interpretation, faith & morals to the Catholic Church. That’s a HUGE epistemic shift, and I am sure it didn’t happen overnight or smoothly, especially if you were previously a conscientiously cynical North American Protestant. I imagine that at the time of the Reformation (which did not happen in anything like a 24-hour period!) the shift from conscientious submission to autonomy of conscience was a gradual thing, for individuals and for groups of people. So no wonder certain doctrines took time to fade out, and parameters and boundaries took time to be defined. Kind of like the situation of the original doctrinal formulations in the first place, the selective rejection or letting-go of older formulations probably happened almost on a case-by-case basis. Maybe it is still happening.
Paige Britton November 24th, 2009 8:55 am :
Tap –
Thanks for your encouragement. I guess I was absent the day they taught sophistry, because I have no idea how to do it. I’m glad that whatever is coming across here is refreshing. :)
pb
JoeyHenry November 24th, 2009 9:16 am :
Hi Mateo,

How do you explain the doctrinal chaos within Protestantism if there is no real need for an infallible interpretive authority?

I would assume that the question implicitly compares the “unity” of doctrine of within the Roman Catholic Church versus “Protestantism”. Again, I would gently submit that this comparison is not well structured. It seems that the question is portraying “Protestantism” as a single church or organization and then compare it to the Roman Catholic Church.

The first thing that I would submit in the discussion is to state the fact that “Protestantism” is not a single church or organization. To accurately compare whether or not there is doctrinal chaos, one should look at a church or an organization not a “term” or “label” or “movement”. Then compare this with the Roman Catholic Church. Apples to apples comparison.

The second thing that I would submit in the discussion is to examine the Roman Catholic Church the same way we critique a certain church. The question above assumes that the Roman Catholic Church is “united”? In what sense is the RC Church “united”? If by “united” we mean to say that the RC Church have a single confession of faith, then pick another church and try to see whether or not that church have conflicting confessions of faith.

Often times, the comparison that is often utilized is that members of this so called “Protestantism” are not agreeing with each other therefore, the RC church is more united than “Protestantism” is. Yet, if we look at the members of the RC church and ask them fundamental questions, we would soon discover that the views of these members are as diverse as this so called “Protestantism” organization.

My appeal is that make an intellectually honest and right comparison. Then I’ll respect any decision that anybody would make based on the comparison.
Tim Troutman November 24th, 2009 10:04 am :
Joey –

You didn’t say those words explicitly, and it’s not an argument to be made; it is a faulty way to handle the data. Suppose that the Reformers had been right and Scripture actually was perspicuous and that, as Luther thought, once Scripture was unleashed to the people, they’d all believe the same thing. Then once they broke from Rome, they would be one unified body in opposition to the Roman church. Then we would be comparing apples to apples if we looked at the two groups.

But you say we can’t compare Rome to Protestantism because it’s unfair. But it’s unfair because of Protestantism’s inherent weakness of constant fragmentation and schism. That is, we can’t compare the unity of Rome to the disunity of Geneva because of a weakness in Protestantism. If Protestantism had done better and remained unified as Rome has, then we would be comparing apples to apples. Thus you are, as I said, treating Protestantism’s weakness as a strength which is a wrong way to handle it.
lojahw November 24th, 2009 10:22 am :
Tim: Thank you for your kind response and suggestions.

The problem with your syllogism is that it incompletely represents my argument.

From your suggestions:

1) “when the observable consequences of the two things differ in a principled way.” One difference in the observable consequences of Sola & Solo Scriptura which I mentioned is that the former submits personal interpretation to the review of his church leaders where the second does not. This may not be observable to the authors of the article, but it is observable to those involved in the churches to which the article refers. A Solo Scriptura person indeed “submits” nothing to anyone else for correction. A Sola Scriptura person is willing to listen to all Christian testimony and correct his views in order to be more consistent with the whole canon of Scripture (for the purposes of discussion, I assume that the whole canon as commonly recognized by the EO, RCC, and Protestants is sufficient for the fundamentals of God’s plan of salvation).

The article seems fails to recognize: 1) the validity of this mediated authority (which Sola Scriptura demands, e.g., 2 Pet. 1:20-21; Heb. 13:17); and 2) that the causes of changing churches or starting new ones are seldom driven by differences over interpretation of Scripture, as I have stated in a number of posts on this thread. The failure to recognize the latter leads to the post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy: confusion of correlation and cause. By assuming that the proliferation of Protestant Churches is the only observable consequence of Sola Scriptura as well as necessarily the consequence of Sola Scriptura (rather than other causes) are incorrect conclusions.

To say that Solo Scriptura Protestants exist and that their behavior correlates with the proliferation of Protestant Churches does not prove causation of that particular “observable consequence” from Sola Scriptura. For example, I know of at least 30 churches in my locality that would be classified by your reckoning as 30 denominations, yet they are simply daughter churches of a single church.

Blessings.
Teri November 24th, 2009 10:32 am :
#354
Paige,
I was absent the entire semester when we moved past the simple concepts of philosophical logic, etc.
I like Thomas Aquinas for armchair theologians, if that counts :-)
As long as we try to understand what is being said and ask questions, all of the CTC group is great about answering. I know they see your sincerity. You can tell pretty quickly who wants to understand and who doesn’t.

I stumbled upon this yesterday at one of the personal websites of CTC’s Taylor Marshall. One of the commenters left this link in the combox concerning the verses on authority from a Jewish perspective and source-

“Binding and loosing authority“

Maybe you’ve already seen it, but if not, check it out. It always helped me to understand what the inspired Biblical authors meant in some hard to understand sayings. The Jewish encyclopedia is great also in understanding about the Old Testament Canon of the Bible.

Tim, moderate as needed. I promise not too much of a rabbit trail. It goes with the Authority issue, I think :-)
Blessings,
Teri
Tim Troutman November 24th, 2009 11:44 am :
Lojah – I didn’t finish going through the rest of your response because of the fatal error which I pointed out in the first part. I don’t want to sound condescending or dismissive but if you want to engage us here, I’m going to ask that you slow down and think through your arguments more carefully. Also, you should avoid, as one has already suggested, merely trying to score points and win a debate.

As for the other points you brought up, I have already refuted those. See my interaction with TurretinFan particularly in 330 & 345.
Nathan November 24th, 2009 11:51 am :
lojahw (#259),

Many people in fact do change churches because of doctrine (mea culpa). I have a number of blogs I follow that are either narratives of or justification for such changes. And they’re all over the place too: from Dispensationalism to Calvinism(and vice versa, oddly enough), to Rome or the Orthodox Church (and between the two), Emerging, Lutheran, Anglican, on and on. Doctrine is a reason why many people come to my church, and why a few left for the local neo-Calvinist church just down the street (they’ve picked up people from a number of non-Calvinist churches).

It can happen because a non-essential doctrine is treated as essential, or the inverse (who gets to decide what is essential, other than the individual’s interpretation?) or because of the philosophical underpinnings of a particular theological system, or for any number of reasons. It can also happen because of a different interpretation of what is “the church” in Matthew 18 — sola scriptura does not provide an objective definition, so one might consider only confessional protestants to be “the church” and another might include any non-heretical (according to their own definition of heresy) protestants, and in fact it’s not entirely clear what your definition is.

So, in my experience, people do change churches over doctrine, regardless of a signed “statement of faith” (which, by the way, I think is a rather unbiblical practice for churches who claim to follow the bible: the apostles didn’t do anything like that, they just asserted their own authority as apostles). In fact it happens quite frequently. Saying that people leave for the wrong reasons or because of a lack of submission to authority simply begs the question, because neither the statement of faith nor the leadership can claim to have an infallible interpretation, so the individual’s interpretation, always carrying the possibility of being correct, is primary. All of this is the case because the leadership dare not claim the authority of binding and loosing, because they don’t have apostolic succession. It strikes me as odd that so many people are in search of “New Testament Christianity,” but aren’t really interested in having New Testament Apostles, who have and exercise authority over the church.
Nathan November 24th, 2009 12:41 pm :
TurretinFan (333),

Thus far your attempt to rebut the claims of this article seems to be simply a restatement of sola scriptura as including a recognition of “the true but subordinate authority of the church and the regula fidei.” The article addresses this by explaining that the proponent of sola scriptura reserves the right to determine from the scriptures what is or is not the Church prior to submitting to its “true but subordinate authority.” This is the inconsistency of the sola scriptura proponent: submission to the interpretation of the church is wholly dependent upon an initial, overriding, non-submitting interpretation. If the identity of the Church cannot be discovered independently of scripture, one’s submission is always predicated upon one’s interpretation.

All of this is explained in IV.A of the article, particularly under No Middle Ground: Solo Scriptura or Apostolic Succession. To say the church has authority begs the question: what is the church? If individuals have authority to define the church then the answer may be derived from scripture (or any other standard one might prefer, such as gnostic writings). But if they do not, the church has a self-understanding and identity which can be seen in history.

If the church’s self-definition is, “one, holy, catholic, apostolic,” there are a few avenues for refuting this definition. You could assert the novelty of the construct (300 years later than the apostles (381), adding the word “one,” which was not asserted in 325), but you run up against the near-universal assent of Christendom to the first two ecumenical councils. This would mean that the church has been universally wrong in her self-understanding, for which reason many might be inclined to question the sanity of one who wants to be a part of such a group, even if one is only “reforming” it.

You can claim that a particular group claiming to be the church is not one (witness the Great Schism, Nestorian schism, etc.), but those schisms have left groups that each claim to be one. You can claim that a particular group that claims to be the church is not holy, which could very well lead you to side with the Donatists. You can claim a lack of catholicity (getting back to the schisms here), however apostolic succession is undeniably catholic (universal) so that should help narrow the field in terms of which groups to evaluate. You could claim that a particular group is not apostolic by falsifying their claims to succession. Another route would be to claim that their ordained minsters somehow have invalid ordinations, but that also tends toward putting interpretation before submission.

If no group matches the historic self-definition of the church, one could easily conclude that the church does not exist (but then, how would I join any church? I would be starting my own). Of course the easiest route is to simply redefine what is meant by “one, holy, catholic, apostolic,” such that it agrees with one’s interpretation of scripture. But either option puts us back at the beginning, where the one who gets to define the criteria for authority really is the authority themselves. The church has her own criteria (one, holy, catholic, apostolic) and we either accept that definition (and not some redefined meaning for it) or we make our own definition, and ourselves the ultimate authority.
Bryan Cross November 24th, 2009 1:38 pm :
Joey, (re: #327)

Individual Catholics do have access to the infallible teachings of the Magisterium. We recite them every Sunday when we recite the Creed. We can also read them in the Catechism, and in the Church’s official documents. We also hear them whenever our priest or bishop teaches about them in the homily during the Mass. The mistake is to assume that one can have access to an infallible teaching only if one receives it in an infallible manner.

Similarly, it would be a mistake to treat the Church in a reductionistic way, just as it is a mistake to treat the human body in a reductionistic way, trying to understand the individual parts apart from their dynamic relation to all the other parts of the body. It is a mistake because it is an artificial abstraction that leaves out the dynamic, organic, and temporal aspect of its existence. The Church is a living Body, and for that reason, all her members have access of some sort to the Magisterium of the Church and to the teachings of the Magisterium, whether that access is mediated in various ways, or direct.

You seem to be worried about an infinite hermeneutical regress. Your worry, if I’m understanding you, is that if we need an “infallible interpreter,” this will entail an infinite hermeneutical regress. But that conclusion does not follow. The Church’s need for an infallible interpreter of the deposit of faith (both written and unwritten) in order to preserve the unity of the faith and the unity of the Church, does not entail that we must choose between an infinite hermeneutical regress or the claim that each Catholic in the pew is an infallible interpreter. That would be a false dilemma. The need for an infallible interpreter does not entail that the individual’s own act of understanding of that infallible interpretation be infallible. The Church needs an infallible interpreter not to make the minds of each Catholic infallible, but to preserve the unity of the Church’s faith. The protection of the Church from error in the content of the faith does not entail that each mind of each Catholic be incapable of error, or incapable of misunderstanding the Church’s teaching. Having a single unified faith as proclaimed by an infallible Magisterium does not require that each individual Catholic become infallible. Every individual Catholic can (and does) remain fallible while benefiting from having an infallible Magisterium, to clarify the deposit of faith written and unwritten. The false assumption underlying your dilemma is that the individual must himself be infallible in order to benefit from having an infallible interpreter of Scripture. But in actuality, a fallible interpreter can, while remaining fallible, benefit from an infallible interpreter, just as he can, while remaining fallible, benefit from an infallible book.

If having a teacher did not benefit learning, then we would send our children to schools in which there were no teachers, but only a book on every desk. But that’s absurd. Having teachers, in addition to having books, is helpful to students, in part because the teacher can answer questions about the content and proper interpretation of the books. Likewise, having an infallible interpreter of an infallible book benefits learning, even if the learner remains fallible. Just as the infallibility of Scripture gives us an advantage in knowing the truth, without requiring that we become infallible agents, so the presence of an infallible Magisterium gives us an advantage in knowing the truth, without requiring that we ourselves become infallible agents.

The protestants don’t demand “infallibility” in order to have a “divinely authorized” teaching office with the purpose of instructing the proper understanding of divine revelation to the catechumen.

Catholics agree. Even when the Magisterium’s teaching is not infallible, this teaching is authoritative, and we are required to assent to it. See comment #123 wherein I explained this in more detail.

Though the scenario is better, it is also highly optimistic, in that it assumes that bishops and priests who are teaching contrary to the RC dogmas are corrected because “word gets around”. This is not the case at all in many instances.

You’re applying an artificial abstraction, as though the starting point for consideration is separated dioceses, each under a separate bishop. Then, (given this artificial abstraction) the diocese learning that its bishop is not orthodox depends on either (1) at least one member of this diocese going to another (orthodox diocese) and recognizing that the doctrine is different, and returning to the diocese in question and spreading the word, or (2) a member of a different (and orthodox) diocese visiting the diocese in question and recognizing that the doctrine is different and spreading the word.

But this kind of constant communication between dioceses has been the nature of the Church since day 1. People are constantly traveling from city to city, and letters and news constrantly travel across dioceses. This is how Pope Clement could know of the problem in Corinth toward the end of the first century. And the new media and technology have only hastened this continual internal communication.

The reason your objection is an artificial abstraction is that there are already orthodox believers in every diocese, and they immediately recognize error and heresy as that which is contrary to what they have been taught and what the Church has always believed. This prompts inquiry on the part of such persons, and then [possibly] on the part of the Magisterium, as people seek to verify what the Church has definitively taught on this subject, and whether or not the bishop in question is teaching something contrary to it. In addition, when a dogma is newly promulgated by the Magisterium, it is published and thus accessible in principle to anyone in any diocese.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Bryan Cross November 24th, 2009 2:31 pm :
Joey, (re: #328)

In reply to Frank Beckwith you wrote:

Your comparison is not well structured. First, you are comparing a single “organization”, i.e. the Roman Catholic Church, with “Protestantism” in claiming that the Catholic Church is more unified in doctrine. I think this is a false comparison since “protestantism” is not a single “organization”.

That’s essentially saying that we cannot compare the degree of unity of a unified thing with the degree of unity of a disunified thing, because the former is united and the latter is disunited. By claiming that the Catholic Church is a unified organization and Protestantism is not, you yourself, by that very claim, are comparing their unity.

If we could not compare the unity of the Church Christ founded with the disunity of the sects, then unity as one of the four marks of the Church (i.e. one, holy, catholic and apostolic) would be worthless. Your objection seems equivalent to something like this: “Hey, you can’t compare the unity of the Catholic Church with the disunity of all the schisms of Protestantism; that’s not a well-structured comparison, because all the schisms of Protestantism are disunitited, while the Catholic Church is unified.” The Catholic response is: Exactly.

In my opinion, the more accurate comparison is that of “Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church” against the “Roman Catholic Church”.

Fine. Let’s see if “Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church” possesses all four marks of the Church. Is it catholic? That is, does it extend all over the world, consisting of people from every language, tribe, tongue and race? Or is it a provincial, local body? Obviously, it is the latter. So, it fails the test of catholicity. Therefore, we need not go on to the mark of apostolicity, and ask whether “Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church” is the Church that the incarnate Christ founded while He was on earth. Since it fails the test of catholicity, it cannot be the Church, because it lacks at least one of the four essential marks of the Church.

In fact, there are more churches that are more united in their beliefs and stance than the RC Church.

Christ only founded one Church. So there cannot be more than one true Church. Which of those other ‘churches’ is the one that Christ founded?

What I mean is that, if we look at the individual members of a particular church and asked them their beliefs, we will get a more united stance. However, ask Roman Catholic members and you will get a more diverse stance or understanding of a particular doctrine. The point is that, the problem of disunity within the Roman Catholic Church can be seen outright when individual members are examined.

You are glossing the distinction between the teaching of the Catholic Church, and the belief of an individual Catholic. If you gloss that distinction, you make the Church herself out to hold contrary doctrines or incompatible doctrines. But the Church has only one faith, and none of her doctrines is contrary to or incompatible with any other of her doctrines. Those individual Catholics who dissent from any dogma of the Church, are in [at least] material heresy. Only in Protestant ecclesiology is it necessarily the case that a property of a particular Christian is ipso facto a property of the Church.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Bryan Cross November 24th, 2009 3:18 pm :
TurretinFan (re: #340),

You wrote:

I have the impression that Mathison is claiming (and you’re adopting) the idea that the practitioners of the “solo” position actually advocate subjectivism and/or relativism (the distinction between those two is not so great, one suspects). Of course, other places, Mathison seems to suggest that subjectivism is simply an implication of giving the creeds no authority – perhaps an unrecognized implication.

Mathison is claiming (if I may speak for him) that the solo position leads to subjectivism and relativism, not that adherents of solo consciously believe their position to be one of subjectivism or relativism. See our qualification in footnote 10 of the article.

It would seem to be the case that if the solo position implies subjectivism and the solo position is defended by solo adherents, then either (1) the defense of the solo position is internally inconsistent or (2) the defense of the solo position involves the defense of subjectivism.

I don’t think the solo position in itself logically entails subjectivism. (And I don’t think Mathison is claiming that it does.) Rather, I think Mathison’s claim (again, if may speak for him) is that the solo position in combination with the evidence of history implies (abductively) that the solo position leads to subjectivism and what we [Neal and I] called a “practical relativism.”

The article does appear to be premised on the idea that the solo position at least implies subjectivism. So, I am not sure what you are trying to point out by noting that you don’t make the following formal premise: “Solo scriptura proponents would (or would not) defend subjectivism.” The question may not itself be a premise, but it is an important question in the determination of whether there is a principled difference between the two positions.

That’s a reasonable point. In our article we did not make an argument that solo leads to subjectivism and/or to practical relativism. Nor does our argument depend on whether it does. However, in the Implications section (i.e. section VI) of our article, we point out that if solo has all the negative implications that Mathison describes, and if (as we argued in our article) there is no principled distinction between solo and sola with respect to the holder of ultimate interpretive authority, then it follows that sola likewise has these same implications, and that solo is an historical outworking (or more explicit expression) of sola. So if your position is that solo does not lead to all those nasty things that Mathison describes, then your response to our article might just be “ho-hum.” Fair enough. We didn’t set out to prove that Mathison was right about solo’s nasty results; we’re taking that as a given in our implications section, but it isn’t doing any work in the section of our article in which we argue that there is no principled distinction between solo and sola with respect to the holder of ultimate interpretive authority.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
mateo November 24th, 2009 4:06 pm :
mateo: How do you explain the doctrinal chaos within Protestantism if there is no real need for an infallible interpretive authority?

Joey Henry: I would assume that the question implicitly compares the “unity” of doctrine of within the Roman Catholic Church versus “Protestantism”. Again, I would gently submit that this comparison is not well structured. It seems that the question is portraying “Protestantism” as a single church or organization and then compare it to the Roman Catholic Church.

I have said in my other posts that Protestants are divided into thousands upon thousands of contentious sects, and that these divided sects hold not one article of faith in common. So obviously I don’t believe that Protestantism is “a single church or organization.”

Joey Henry: The first thing that I would submit in the discussion is to state the fact that “Protestantism” is not a single church or organization.

Absolutely agree.

Joey Henry: To accurately compare whether or not there is doctrinal chaos, one should look at a church or an organization not a “term” or “label” or “movement”. Then compare this with the Roman Catholic Church. Apples to apples comparison.

Since this article is about sola scriptura / solo scriptura let us define a subset within Protestantism. This subset is the set of all Protestants denominations accept Luther’s doctrine of sola scriptura as a foundational belief of their faith. Let us call this subset a Protestant organization – the Organization of all Protestants that Accept Luther’s Doctrine of Sola Sciptura – OAPAL DOSS. Now we have a Protestant organization that we can talk about that is just as real as organization called the World Council of Churches.

Joey Henry: Yet, if we look at the members of the RC church and ask them fundamental questions, we would soon discover that the views of these members are as diverse as this so called “Protestantism” organization.

It is true that there are many nominal Catholics that reject one or more of the doctrines of the Catholic Church. But what of it? That doesn’t prove anything more than the fact that many nominal Catholics reject the teachings of their Church. A nominal Catholic (i.e. a Catholic in name only) that obstinately and knowingly rejects even one infallible doctrine of the faith is a heretic, and the penalty for heresy is latae sententiae excommunication from the Catholic Church:

Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 2089… “Heresy is the obstinate post-baptismal denial of some truth which must be believed with divine and catholic faith, or it is likewise an obstinate doubt concerning the same …
Code of Canon Law, 1364 §1 An apostate from the faith, a heretic or a schismatic incurs a latae sententiae excommunication …

Catholic World News: Excommunication can take two different forms. A ferendae sententiae excommunication comes after a formal canonical trial, and is often a matter of public record. A latae sententiae excommunication is incurred automatically, under the terms of the Code of Canon Law, as the punishment for certain offenses. In the case of a latae sententiae excommunication, there is no requirement for formal trial or announcement; in fact, the individual brings the punishment upon himself.

Excommunication latae sententiae is the canonical punishment for offenses such as heresy, violation of the seal of confession, or procuring an abortion. Catholics guilty of these offenses are excommunicated automatically, even in cases when Church authorities are unaware of their offense.

The Catholic Church has a teaching office within the Church ( i.e. the living Magisterium). Because the Catholic Church has received official teaching through the teaching office of the Church, it is possible to incur a penalty of latae sententiae excommunication for obstinate disbelief in official teaching. The Catholic Church has a unity of doctrine that is totally missing within OPAL DOSS, because OPAL DOSS has no teaching office that can bind the believer to particular interpretations of scripture.

The Protestants that belong to OPAL DOSS claim that there is no need for a teaching office that can formally define infallible doctrine for the OPAL DOSS, but if that is true, how does one explain the doctrinal chaos that reigns within OAPAL DOSS?
T Ciatoris November 24th, 2009 5:19 pm :
Paige,

Thanks for your thoughtful and engaging response!

I’m not actually sure if I agree that “most Protestants are completely rootless.” Some of them certainly are, but I think it might be more accurate to say that many or most do have roots, but that they don’t fully recognize or take on board the full significance of those roots. To egregiously mix metaphors: if you look inside the roots’ collars, the tags say “Catholic Tradition” and not only “Scripture.” That’s my contention.

What’s more, I’m not convinced that you and I actually differ on the source of the dogmatic formulations we’ve been discussing. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think you would (or should) agree that, if we’re talking about the fourth century, what you mean by “the Church in history” and what I mean by the (fourth-century) “Catholic Magisterium” are the same thing. I assume that you recognize the Church in the fourth century as the one that called herself the “Catholic Church.” And Magisterium, as you know, simply means “teaching office.” So I think we could actually agree about the identity of the source: the teaching office of the Church in the fourth century. Are we on the same page thus far?

We do, however, disagree on two scores. First, I do believe that the current Magisterium stands in unbroken continuation from the fourth-century Magisterium, but that’s immaterial with respect to the points in question. Second, I think the ecumenical councils were infallible; you do not.

As a follow-up to this: do you agree that the ecumenical councils do, in fact, constitute an formal principle of orthodoxy extrinsic to the Bible? It seems that you do, though that doesn’t, of course, necessitate your admission of their infallibility (at least not obviously). As you’ve indicated, if I’ve understood you aright, it does make you personally responsible as a Christian for your acceptance (or, as the case may be, rejection) of them.

As to your proposed thought experiment, I’m not completely sure if I follow you. I think what you’re trying to get across is that the gradual nature of the actualization of a principle (such as sola Scriptura) says nothing about the legitimacy or illegitimacy of the principle itself. Is that what you’re getting at? Let me know if it is, and I’ll respond. But my response would/will be too lengthy to spend a bunch of time on it now if I’ve gotten your point wrong.

You also wrote:

Kind of like the situation of the original doctrinal formulations in the first place, the selective rejection or letting-go of older formulations probably happened almost on a case-by-case basis. Maybe it is still happening.

It seems to me that the case-by-case basis that you’ve (correctly, I think) identified for evaluating received doctrines would show that none of the reformers actually followed through with their stated governing principle of sola Scriptura. Do you think that’s the case? If I were a confessional Protestant, I wouldn’t want to admit this, because then I’d have to wonder very seriously where I could find the authentic practice of sola Scriptura, whether it’s ever actually been consistently actualized all the way down and all the way across (how long should the gradual process of winnowing doctrine take? How would we know when it’s complete?), and how I’d ever know if I’d found it. Like I said, I wouldn’t want to admit this if I were a Protestant—but, then, you’ve surprised me before, Paige! :-)

And yes, I think the process you’ve proposed is still happening, in differing, fractured, uncontrolled, and uncontrollable directions, and I think this should be a major cause for concern among Protestants who wish to maintain “classical” orthodoxy (wherever and however they determine the boundaries thereof!).

Now, in the carefree spirit of indulging in thought experiments, let’s try this one on for size:

Let’s say that (1) I’m right that the actual, fully developed orthodox dogmatic articulation of the Blessed Trinity is not a perspicuous doctrine, and that (2) orthodox Protestants believe nonetheless that the Catholic Magisterium (in the fourth and fifth centuries in any event) got it right. If the Trinity isn’t a perspicuous doctrine (which means it’s not self-obviously confirmable from a simple, dogmatically unconditioned reading of Scripture), how is the orthodox Protestant surveying the “Church in history” to know when her Magisterium started getting it wrong? That is, if you can trust the hierarchical Church to get it right about the Trinity, which is probably the most metaphysically bold doctrine I’ve ever heard (unless it’s a close second to Ephesian-Chalcedonian incarnational Christology!), how would you know when to stop trusting her?

The sharp edge of this thought experiment is this: do you agree with me that if (a) the orthodox dogma of the Trinity is necessary for sound Christian doctrine, and if (b) it is not perspicuous in Scripture, then (c) the principle of sola Scriptura cannot be a trustworthy or sufficient measure of sound Christian doctrine? Now, I’m assuming you do accept (a) but don’t accept (c). We don’t have to get into whether or not (b) is actually true at this point (though, as you know, I think it is). I just want to know if you agree with the reasoning linking (a), (b), and (c).

Thanks again for the great conversation.

in Christ,

TC
1 Cor 16:14
lojahw November 24th, 2009 5:23 pm :
Bryan wrote:

The Church needs an infallible interpreter not to make the minds of each Catholic infallible, but to preserve the unity of the Church’s faith. … Every individual Catholic can (and does) remain fallible while benefiting from having an infallible Magisterium, to clarify the deposit of faith written and unwritten.

You talk about the benefits of your Magisterium being available to clarify the deposit of faith, but in what way is it uniquely necessary for the unity of the Church on the essential doctrines of the faith – those which have been believed everywhere, always, by all? Cannot other trained Church leaders do the same?

Blessings.
Vincent Murphy November 24th, 2009 10:50 pm :
I enjoyed reading this article as it is well written and covers the salient points from both sides of the argument. That being said, I feel I must draw your attention to a minor error in argument which unfortunately leads to a conclusion that is not fully supported by the evidence.

The said error is only that the existence of a measure able to fulfil a desirable aim does not make that measure desirable; and likewise the existence of a measure able to fulfil a righteous and justified aim does not justify the measure or impute righteousness upon it.

As an illustration, consider that if all hands were amputated there would be much fewer snatch thefts. The reduction in the number of snatch thefts is justified in itself given the effects thereof; but yet the measure, even if we assume it to be of great effectiveness, does not become desirable therein unless it first stands justifiable in its own right.

Even if this error is allowed to stand unchallenged, and it is accepted that papal authority is justified because it is thought to bring about unity of the church in the body of Christ; it does not take account of the historical record of both sides. For, whilst the reformed churches have erred and strayed from the way of Christ like lost sheep, so too has the roman church. Whilst often the errors have been different, yet errors have still occured, and because of this we cannot clearly state that papal authority is able to bring about unity of the church in the body of Christ for Christ is incapable of error.

I suggest that the question remains unsettled as to whether the fragmented reformed Churches are, overall, closer to the body of Christ than the Roman church for it is clear that neither can, with a clear conscience and in full knowledge of history, that they are as one in the body of Christ. Indeed, is it even a judgement that man is capable of making? If we cannot even show a clear benefit of one model over another, then surely we cannot fault those who fall within each group, but should instead consider them all as pilgrims in common under one God and one Lord?

God caused the division of Israel into two nations; and he was God to both parts. As nations they stood individually, yet under God they remained as his one chosen people. In our common strife towards union in the body of Christ, we should remember this model and learn from each other, imitating every step which comes closer to scriptural practice and every step away from human invention and the idolatry which is the base tendency of every sinful man. I am convinced that the greatest barrier to unity is pride on both sides, an unwillingness to cast aside the traditions and doctrines created by man, doctrines which whilst possibly not contrary to holy scripture do not clearly derive themselves from it.
lojahw November 25th, 2009 12:12 am :
TC wrote:

if (a) the orthodox dogma of the Trinity is necessary for sound Christian doctrine, and if (b) it is not perspicuous in Scripture, then (c) the principle of sola Scriptura cannot be a trustworthy or sufficient measure of sound Christian doctrine?

TC: a is true; b is refutable; therefore, c is false. Scripture provides clear antecedents for every tenet of the orthodox dogma. If you think you can identify what is not found in Scripture, please do so. I’d like the opportunity to respond (BTW – I once did a men’s Bible study on the Nicene Creed doctrine of the Trinity and filled 18 pages of Scripture passages covering every element).

Blessings.
Paige Britton November 25th, 2009 12:34 am :
TC-
Well, no, you’re right, I don’t want to give away the entire farm. Thanks for the heads-up. I was speculating about what the shift must have been like for the earliest Reformers, psychologically speaking – but I really haven’t the depth of historical knowledge to inform my further speculation about how quickly they got “sola Scriptura” up and running, not to mention reevaluating Catholic doctrines one by one. So let’s let that idea quietly die. (Still, they couldn’t have reevaluated everything in a week! Just thinking pragmatically.)

Yep, the grip on orthodoxy is lax among Protestants, and there is lots of instructional work to be done. This is the kind of work I’m involved in, through writing and teaching. (You can see I certainly have a lot to learn myself!)

To your thought experiment:

Numbers first: I wonder, how complex does a non-perspicuous doctrine have to be before it is impossible to confirm that it is Scripturally supported, and one must resort to the assumption that the Magisterium got it right because the Magisterium interprets infallibly? The exquisitely precise language of the Trinitarian & hypostatic union statements are the products of brilliant men engaging with the biblical text with particular heresies in their faces, and crafting such careful confessions may be unrepeatable events. But I don’t think this precludes later Christians (well, Protestants, anyway) weighing and evaluating the statements against what is given in Scripture. If the Reformers believed (however wrongly) that they were allowed (& obligated!) to do this sort of weighing and evaluating of church teaching, then by this process they would have (gasp) judged the Church and maybe even at certain points of doctrine found her wanting, with regard to conformity to Scripture. Which is apparently what happened. If they were right about the Magisterium’s authority, then they were being very brave – and doing the only thing they could have done; if they were wrong, they were being terribly foolish, in the biblical sense of the term.

Letters next: Bear with me while I sort this out. You are saying that a) the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity is necessary, and b) it is not “self-obviously confirmable from a simple, dogmatically unconditioned reading of Scripture,” and so therefore c) sola scriptura bites the dust and the infallible interpretive Magisterium is the only option available?

Does this mean that you believe nobody could have come up with the doctrinal formulation of the Trinity unless they had an inside track, this infallible interpretive charism (which is yet not the same as inspiration)? If so, what role did the Scriptures play in the formulation of the doctrine? In what sense could we then call the doctrine “scriptural,” if it were only available to a limited body of individuals who alone could perceive it in the text? (i.e., did the meaning exist in the text already, or did it only exist when the Magisterium read it with the help of the Holy Spirit?)

I guess I would grant you your a-b-c movement if it were worded like this: a) the doctrine is necessary; b) it is not get-at-able by human means in the text of Scripture; c) sola scriptura, which relies on human intellectual activity in the absence of a Magisterium, is an insufficient judge of the doctrine, because supernatural help is needed in order to get to it. (I think your definition of “non-perspicuity” still leaves too much room for the possibility of success via human efforts, since somebody could still make a COMPLEX study of the Scripture.)

If supernatural assistance (beyond the Holy Spirit indwelling the ordinary believer) is NOT needed in order to perceive this doctrine in Scripture, then the thoughtful Protestant guesses right, that sola scriptura is a sufficient judge of the doctrine – even if it requires “complex” study, rather than a simple read, to accomplish this evaluation.

I guess it all depends on what God intended the Scriptures to communicate to ordinary believers.

Hey, you ask challenging things. I’m sure I haven’t done your questions justice. I hope you are not just amusing yourself making a rookie Protestant apologist jump through hoops.
pax!
pb
Andrew Preslar November 25th, 2009 1:33 am :
Some comments have been made to the effect that the Catholic Church is not much better off than the Protestant denominations vis unity. I can understand why people would think this. Fr. Dwight Longenecker has recently written a blog post which addresses the phenomenon of Catholic disunity in the wake of modernism (i.e., creepy humanism posing as the Christian religion), by way of comparison to the effects of modernism in the Anglican Communion. Thought you all might enjoy this.
Bryan Cross November 25th, 2009 2:27 am :
lojahw, (re: #367)

You wrote:

You talk about the benefits of your Magisterium being available to clarify the deposit of faith, but in what way is it uniquely necessary for the unity of the Church on the essential doctrines of the faith – those which have been believed everywhere, always, by all? Cannot other trained Church leaders do the same?

In order make use of the Vincentian canon, we first need to know the boundaries of the Church; otherwise we will mistakenly include the beliefs of heretics and schismatics, because we will include them among the ‘all’ in the “believed everywhere, always, by all.” And if we set the boundaries of the Church simply by a set of doctrines, we will have just reasoned in a circle, and then we can simply do away with the Vincentian canon by way of the principle of parsimony. In other words, there is no need to figure out “the true doctrine” by picking out the people who hold “the true doctrine”. That approach would be question-begging, since it would require already knowing the true doctrine. That is why the Vincentian canon requires a sacramental and hierarchical way of determining the bounds of the Church. But that is something Protestantism does not have, because of its denial of Holy Orders. And that is one reason why the Vincentian canon is not an option for Protestantism, in anything other than an ad hoc manner. Another reason why the Vincentian canon is not an option for Protestantism (as such) is that ecclesial deism is intrinsic to Protestantism (as such), as I’ve argued elsewhere.

Over the past 2000 years, many a “trained Church leader” has fallen into heresy and schism. So, no, merely being a “trained church leader” is not sufficient to ensure unity on essential doctrines. Heretics and schismatics are often trained in many respects, as the history of the Church shows. Tertullian, for example, was a very learned man, but fell into heresy. Origen was a highly trained biblical scholar, but he fell into certain errors. Orthodoxy is not merely a matter of intelligence or logic or exegetical rules. We rightly understand the Scriptures through the same Spirit by which they were inspired. And the Spirit ordinarily operates through the means Christ has established in His Church, i.e. the true shepherds who enter their vocation through the sheep-gate of the Church. If we wish to have the mind of the Spirit, we must find the Church, and then find the mind of the Church, and subordinate ourselves to the Spirit in the Church. But if we define ‘Church’ according to those who agree with our own interpretation of Scripture, we are presuming that the Spirit of the Church just is our own understanding of Scripture. A ‘Church’ defined by its agreement with our interpretation cannot transform us; it is made in the image of our own interpretation, and insofar as it departs from that it ceases to be ‘Church’. The only Church that can transform us is the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church not made by mere men in the image of mere man, but founded by the God-man and made alive by His divine Spirit.

A primary error in the philosophy underlying Protestantism and arising more fully in the Enlightenment is the notion that we can be saved by science, in this case by the science of exegesis and the historico-critical method. Christ’s method, by contrast, is to lead His sheep through the shepherds that He has appointed and authorized, not through those who set themselves up as teachers by way of their training and education or charisma and engaging speech. That’s why it is critical that we find the true shepherds, not by picking out those persons who teach the Bible according to our interpretation, but by locating those persons having the divine authorization from the Apostles, and then conforming our understanding of the Bible to their teaching and interpretation.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Michael Liccione November 25th, 2009 3:11 am :
You talk about the benefits of your Magisterium being available to clarify the deposit of faith, but in what way is it uniquely necessary for the unity of the Church on the essential doctrines of the faith – those which have been believed everywhere, always, by all?

You have invoked what’s known as “the Vincentian Canon.” But that cannot possibly suffice for the purpose you seem to have in mind. See my post here. To apply the Canon as St. Vincent intended, one needs to identify the true referent of the phrase ‘the Catholic Church’, which includes her Magisterium.

BTW, I’m impressed with the number of comments in this thread. The record for comments on a post of mine is 336, and you guys are already well past that. I salute you!
Vincent Murphy November 25th, 2009 3:34 am :
Bryan;

Does not the entire weight of your argument rest upon the question of whether those you identify as apostolic successors have, in the past, erred from good doctrine? If one is to set them up as the proper authority for interpreting scripture as being instituted and guided by Christ in doing so, then they must be free from error both now and in the past. If they have erred then it shows they can err, and if they can err, then it shows that their interpretation cannot be made a requirement of faith but only an interpretation made by a flawed man just as is an interpretation by a reformed theologian.

So I ask this question of you; can you, without qualification, state that at no time in the documented history of papal authority and the apostolic succession has such authority erred in its interpretation of scripture, whether in small or weighty degree?

Vincent
lojahw November 25th, 2009 3:48 am :
Upon rereading the article, I think the ancients have something to say to both sides.

No Middle Ground: Solo Scriptura or Apostolic Succession

The writings of the early church fathers suggest that the above is a false dilemma. The third option is to affirm that 1) the apostolic church is the one that teaches what the apostles taught (irrespective of apostolic succession), which entails the Gospel, as Mathison, says, but also 2) recognizes objective references of the Gospel both in Scripture and in the historical witness of the Church.

As to the first point, Tertullian wrote ca. AD 200:

“To this test [a pre-Nicene statement of orthodox Trinitarian faith], therefore will they be submitted for proof by those churches, who, although they derive not their founder from apostles or apostolic men (as being of much later date, for they are in fact being founded daily), yet, since they agree in the same faith, they are accounted as not less apostolic because they are akin in doctrine.” (Prescription Against Heretics, 32).

As to the second point, St. Vincent of Lerins wrote ca. AD 440:

Moreover, in the Catholic Church itself, all possible care must be taken, that we hold that faith which has been believed everywhere, always, by all. For that is truly and in the strictest sense “Catholic,” which, as the name itself and the reason of the thing declare, comprehends all universally. This rule we shall observe if we follow universality, antiquity, consent. We shall follow universality if we confess that one faith to be true, which the whole Church throughout the world confesses; antiquity, if we in no wise depart from those interpretations which it is manifest were notoriously held by our holy ancestors and fathers; consent, in like manner, if in antiquity itself we adhere to the consentient definitions and determinations of all, or at the least of almost all priests and doctors.” (Commonitory, 2.6)

And, regarding the essential doctrines of the faith: “Yet in the investigation of this ancient consent of the holy Fathers we are to bestow our pains not on every minor question of the Divine Law, but only, at all events especially, where the Rule of Faith is concerned…” (Commonitory, 28)

And, further: “But the Church of Christ, the careful and watchful guardian of the doctrines deposited in her charge, never changes anything in them, never diminishes, never adds, does not cut off what is necessary, does not add what is superfluous, does not lose her own, does not appropriate what is another’s…” (Vincent of Lerins, Commonitory, 23).

Hence, the Church can be recognized by objectively testing that its teaching agrees with what the Apostles taught, particularly in what the ancients called the regula fidei. This test requires agreement with a) the Apostles’ teaching as recorded in Scripture and 2) “that faith which has been believed everywhere, always, by all” orthodox Christians in the historic Church. Thus apostolic succession is not necessary, and solo scriptura is avoided by providing an objective standard to 2 Peter 1:20-21:

“But know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.”

Blessings.
JoeyHenry November 25th, 2009 8:38 am :
Dear Tim,

You didn’t say those words explicitly, and it’s not an argument to be made…

Ok. Thanks for clarifying. But, I am also unable to connect the dots where I implicitly made the argument (supposedly I made) from what I wrote.

Suppose that the Reformers had been right and Scripture actually was perspicuous and that, as Luther thought, once Scripture was unleashed to the people, they’d all believe the same thing. Then once they broke from Rome, they would be one unified body in opposition to the Roman church. Then we would be comparing apples to apples if we looked at the two groups.

It’s an interesting imagination. People breaking from Rome does not necessarily entail that those people are immediately considered “one organization”. I think the comparison will have the strength of logic if we compare “organization” to “organization”.

But you say we can’t compare Rome to Protestantism because it’s unfair. But it’s unfair because of Protestantism’s inherent weakness of constant fragmentation and schism.

“Unfair” is an emotionally laden word. But regardless of how I feel about the argument you made, I don’t find the comparison compelling because it’s not well structured. I’ve laid out the reasons why I said this. I’ll let the readers decide.
Bryan Cross November 25th, 2009 9:08 am :
Vincent, (re: #374)

I’ll assume you are familiar with the Church’s doctrine of infallibility. If you are not familiar with it, you could read the Catholic Encyclopedia article on it here, and then read Lumen Gentium 25. It might also be helpful to read my article titled “Eccleisal Deism.”

When you speak of “erring from good doctrine”, you presume some standard by which we know what is interpretive error and what is not interpretive error. So in order to investigate questions of error, we would first have to agree on the standard by which error is determined.

As for setting up the successors as the proper authority, I’m not “setting them up” as the proper authority. That they are the proper authority was the position of the early Church. The Apostles are the ones who set up their successors as the proper authority.

If they have erred then it shows they can err, and if they can err, then it shows that their interpretation cannot be made a requirement of faith but only an interpretation made by a flawed man just as is an interpretation by a reformed theologian.

Correct. I should point out that the gift of infallibility is not the same as impeccability, nor does it apply to individual men in an unqualified way. It is a divine gift to the Church as the Body of Christ, in her Magisterial office, through the operation of the Holy Spirit.

So I ask this question of you; can you, without qualification, state that at no time in the documented history of papal authority and the apostolic succession has such authority erred in its interpretation of scripture, whether in small or weighty degree?

Notice your “without qualification”. The doctrine itself is qualified, so my answer to your question has to be qualified. The doctrine is that the Magisterium is infallible in its definitive teaching regarding faith and morals. So throughout the history of the Church, all the doctrines that have been taught definitively by the Magisterium, in matters of faith or morals, have been divinely protected from error.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
JoeyHenry November 25th, 2009 9:35 am :
Dear Bryan,

[QUOTE] The mistake is to assume that one can have access to an infallible teaching only if one receives it in an infallible manner. [/QUOTE]

I haven’t made that assumption. I am, however, following the argument that an infinite interpretational regress would not be a necessity because one could ask the infallible interpreter a “yes” or “no” answerable question. This would entail the condition that one has to be in contact with the infallible interpreter in order to do so and thereby stop the regress.

[QUOTE] Similarly, it would be a mistake to treat the Church in a reductionistic way, just as it is a mistake to treat the human body in a reductionistic way, trying to understand the individual parts apart from their dynamic relation to all the other parts of the body. [/QUOTE]

I am not sure where I have treated the RC Church in a reductionistic fashion in my responses. In fact, I have pointed out the “reality” of the dynamics in any organization. I have pointed out that the reality of the “dynamics” in any organization such that it doesn’t always caught and correct an error made by its adherents contrary to the argument made that “word will get around” to arrest such errors.

[QUOTE] You seem to be worried about an infinite hermeneutical regress. Your worry, if I’m understanding you, is that if we need an “infallible interpreter,” this will entail an infinite hermeneutical regress. But that conclusion does not follow… The false assumption underlying your dilemma is that the individual must himself be infallible in order to benefit from having an infallible interpreter of Scripture. But in actuality, a fallible interpreter can, while remaining fallible, benefit from an infallible interpreter, just as he can, while remaining fallible, benefit from an infallible book. [/QUOTE]

I am not “worried” about infinite hermeneutical regress. I am simply making the argument that the demand for an “infallible interpreter” will have no real advantage simply because the individual remains “fallible” in his understanding of the “infallible interpretation”. I have simply asked myself, what advantage does a Roman Catholic have in addition to reading the Bible (which is already infallible) and having all the “infallible interpretations” (creeds, dogmas, bulls, canon law, his own fallible priests and bishops etc.) if, by his own admission, he remains as fallible as the guy next door in interpreting these things? What kind of certainty does a Roman Catholic have in correctly interpreting these “infallible interpretations” if he remains fallible as that guy next door?

I have heard it said many times that Protestants don’t have the certainty of knowing the truth because they don’t have the “infallible guide” from Rome who makes the “infallible interpretation”. The Protestant’s interpretation remains fallible and uncertain. But once a person gets down that road of having an infallible interpreter, has that person really escaped the problem being fallible still in interpreting the interpretation of his chosen “infallible interpreter”?

[QUOTE] If having a teacher did not benefit learning, then we would send our children to schools in which there were no teachers, but only a book on every desk. But that’s absurd. Having teachers, in addition to having books, is helpful to students, in part because the teacher can answer questions about the content and proper interpretation of the books. [/QUOTE]

First, teachers are not infallible. Second, I have not argued that we can’t benefit from teachers. What I argued is that teachers need not be infallible in order to have a correct understanding of the book.

[QUOTE] The reason your objection is an artificial abstraction is that there are already orthodox believers in every diocese, and they immediately recognize error and heresy as that which is contrary to what they have been taught and what the Church has always believed. This prompts inquiry on the part of such persons, and then [possibly] on the part of the Magisterium, as people seek to verify what the Church has definitively taught on this subject, and whether or not the bishop in question is teaching something contrary to it. In addition, when a dogma is newly promulgated by the Magisterium, it is published and thus accessible in principle to anyone in any diocese. [/QUOTE]

This is very optimistic and simplistic of the real situation. I think the real “artificial abstraction” is when you believe that, “there are already orthodox believers in every diocese, and they immediately recognize error and heresy as that which is contrary to what they have taught and what the Church has always believed.” I hope this is the real scenario, though.
Bryan Cross November 25th, 2009 9:37 am :
lojahw (re: #375),

Here are Tertullian’s words immediately preceding the quotation you provided:

But if there be any (heresies) which are bold enough to plant themselves in the midst of the apostolic age, that they may thereby seem to have been handed down by the apostles, because they existed in the time of the apostles, we can say: Let them produce the original records of their churches; let them unfold the roll of their bishops, running down in due succession from the beginning in such a manner that [that first bishop of theirs ] bishop shall be able to show for his ordainer and predecessor some one of the apostles or of apostolic men,— a man, moreover, who continued steadfast with the apostles. For this is the manner in which the apostolic churches transmit their registers: as the church of Smyrna, which records that Polycarp was placed therein by John; as also the church of Rome, which makes Clement to have been ordained in like manner by Peter. In exactly the same way the other churches likewise exhibit (their several worthies), whom, as having been appointed to their episcopal places by apostles, they regard as transmitters of the apostolic seed.

How does Tertullian propose to show that the doctrine of these heretics is contrary to that of the Apostles? He does so with two tests, and these two tests are related to each other. One necessarily comes before the other, and depends on the other. First, he uses the test of apostolic succession. “Let them produce the original records of their churches, let them unfold the roll of their bishops ….”. That’s the first test. For Tertullian, the second test depends on the first test. The second test is comparing whether the ‘faith’ proposed by the heretics agrees with the doctrine held by the Apostles. How is this second test to be conducted? To determine whether the doctrine of the heretics agrees with the doctrine of the Apostles Tertullian doesn’t say, “Look at the Scriptures.” He says that the ‘faith’ of the heretics must be compared to the faith of the churches which are in agreement with the churches founded by the Apostles. So the apostolic churches (the ones founded by the Apostles and maintaining the succession from the Apostles) are still the standard for what is the Apostolic faith. For Tertullian, how do we know which churches have the Apostolic faith? By comparing their doctrine to that of the apostolic churches, i.e. the ones having the succession from the Apostles. So the second test (i.e. comparing the faith of the heretics to that of the Apostles) depends on the first test (i.e. apostolic succession). For Tertullian the succession of men in the apostolic churches is what determines the standard for what is the apostolic doctrine, against which to compare the doctrine of these gnostic heretics. The material succession from the Apostles is that by which we locate and identify the Apostles doctrine. That’s always the way Catholics have understood apostolicity (as one of the four marks of the Church). It was never “apostolic doctrine” alone; it was Apostolic doctrine as known through the authorized succession from the Apostles.

As for the quotations from St. Vincent, those are fully in agreement with (and supportive of) the Catholic faith and the Catholic Church.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
JoeyHenry November 25th, 2009 10:43 am :
Dear Bryan,

From your other response:

[QUOTE] That’s essentially saying that we cannot compare the degree of unity of a unified thing with the degree of unity of a disunified thing, because the former is united and the latter is disunited. By claiming that the Catholic Church is a unified organization and Protestantism is not, you yourself, by that very claim, are comparing their unity. [/QUOTE]

I think this is a misunderstanding of my intent to clarify the comparison. “Protestantism” is a label of a movement. It is not a church or an organization. Thus, it is not logical to compare an “organization” such with a “non-organization”.

[QUOTE] Fine. Let’s see if “Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church” possesses all four marks of the Church. Is it catholic? That is, does it extend all over the world, consisting of people from every language, tribe, tongue and race? Or is it a provincial, local body? Obviously, it is the latter. So, it fails the test of catholicity. Therefore, we need not go on to the mark of apostolicity, and ask whether “Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church” is the Church that the incarnate Christ founded while He was on earth. Since it fails the test of catholicity, it cannot be the Church, because it lacks at least one of the four essential marks of the Church. [/QUOTE]

The context of the comparison is that of “unity”. From the original response of Dr. Beckwith, it seems that he is implying that Roman Catholic Church is “united” versus “Protestantism”. I pointed out that this is not a well structured comparison. I provided an example. You may choose to put any other “church organization” there – Mormons, JWs, Baptists, Presbyterian, Orthodox, etc. Just take note the context is “unity”. I am asking the question whether the Roman Catholic Church has an advantage of “unity” compared to any other “church organization”? I am not pursuing the question on whether or not the “Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church” extends all over the world.

[QUOTE] Christ only founded one Church. So there cannot be more than one true Church. Which of those other ‘churches’ is the one that Christ founded? [/QUOTE]

True. Christ founded one Church. So I ask the question, what is the Church? From what I’ve read in Acts 20:28, the Church of God is bought by Christ’s own blood. From that, it is not exclusively my organization or your organization which is the Church that Christ founded. Unless, of course you want to argue that it is the members of your organization alone that Christ bought by his own blood.

[QUOTE] You are glossing the distinction between the teaching of the Catholic Church, and the belief of an individual Catholic. If you gloss that distinction, you make the Church herself out to hold contrary doctrines or incompatible doctrines. But the Church has only one faith, and none of her doctrines is contrary to or incompatible with any other of her doctrines. Those individual Catholics who dissent from any dogma of the Church, are in [at least] material heresy. [/QUOTE]

I am pursuing the argument that since the Roman Catholic Church has only one faith or confession so she is united than that of “Protestantism”. This what I wrote to Mateo:

The question above assumes that the Roman Catholic Church is “united”? In what sense is the RC Church “united”? If by “united” we mean to say that the RC Church have a single confession of faith, then pick another church and try to see whether or not that church have conflicting confessions of faith.

Often times, the comparison that is utilized is that members of this so called “Protestantism” (if there is such an organization where there is none) are not agreeing with each other therefore, the RC church is more united than “Protestantism”. Yet, if we look at the members of the RC church and ask them fundamental questions, we would soon discover that the views of these members are as diverse as the members of this so called “Protestantism” organization.

Think about it. Thanks for the opportunity of having my responses posted. This will be my last response on this entry.
Tim A. Troutman November 25th, 2009 12:11 pm :
Joey,

Conversation is very difficult when one doesn’t read or process the other’s comments carefully. You said: “I am also unable to connect the dots where I implicitly made the argument ” after just quoting me saying “it’s not an argument.”

We cannot compare the Roman Church to the Protestant sects because the former is the true, united, Catholic Church and the latter is a group of heretical communities that have broken off and splintered from the true Church which Christ founded. You point out that it is unfair to compare the unity of the Catholic Church to the disunity of the various Protestant sects. I agree in some sense that the two are not comparable. But if the claims of the Catholic Church are true, this is exactly the sort of lack of comparability that we would expect to see (as Bryan mentioned above). On the contrary, if the claims of Protestantism were true, we might well expect there to be a much greater degree of unity within Protestantism (as I mentioned). Namely, we might have expected its original founders not to have such strong disagreements on things so fundamental to the faith like the Eucharist and baptism.

Now you haven’t actually interacted with what I said. My point is clear and if you want to show the contrary, that Protestantism’s disunity is a good thing and Rome’s unity is a bad thing, then you’re welcome to try. I didn’t lay my points out in a hard syllogism but if you want I can:

1. Disunity is a weakness.
2. Unity is a strength.
3. Protestantism has disunity.
4. Catholicism has unity.
5. We cannot compare the Catholic Church with the set of various Protestant communities because of their disunity.
6. It is because of Protestantism’s inherent weakness that it cannot be compared to the Catholic Church.
7. When two things cannot be compared because one possesses a quality that is objectively better than the other, the lack of comparability is itself a testimony of the vast superiority of the one thing to the other. e.g. when one thing is infinite and the other finite. The lack of comparability of the two speaks of the superiority of the one thing at least in respect of the principle by which it excels the other to the point of preventing comparison.
8. The lack of comparability between Catholicism and Protestantism, since it is due to a weakness in Protestantism, and is evidence of the superiority of the Catholic position.

Joey, btw use ‘blockquote’ instead of ‘quote’ and use greater than less than signs instead of brackets.
Tim A. Troutman November 25th, 2009 12:27 pm :
Joey,

I am asking the question whether the Roman Catholic Church has an advantage of “unity” compared to any other “church organization”?

I think if you’ll slow down and think about some of these things, the answers will become apparent. The Catholic Church, if viewed as a set of her members, has less unity than probably any particular Protestant community. That is irrelevant for a couple reasons. 1. The doctrinal unity of the Catholic Church is not the collective opinion of all her members. 2. It is due to her other strength – Catholicity and her size that she has any ‘disadvantage’ at all regarding that part.

So we answer that the unity of Catholic doctrine is the unity of the singular voice (than which no greater unity can be conceived) of the magisterium and the peoples of the Catholic Church conforming to that truth. You are using a Protestant ecclesiology and a Protestant assumption of unity by which to judge the Catholic Church. Specifically, Protestants think that unity is a sort of democratic average such that if we all believe pretty close to the same thing, then we are united. But Catholics believe in sacramental unity wherein we are united under the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, sharing at one table, and believing one faith which was handed on to us by the apostles.

On your definition of unity, the members of Called to Communion are more united than the Catholic Church. But do you see why this is irrelevant to the question? (Not just because we’re not a church). But suppose we, like many Protestants actually have, decided to call ourselves a church and we elected a preacher, a few of us became elders, and we started preaching the word faithfully. We would be more united than the Catholic Church in the way that I take you to mean. But we wouldn’t be Catholic. We wouldn’t consist of 1.x billion people from all over the world and from every tongue and race. That is, a small group of white American males from Reformed backgrounds, mostly Thomists, similar age range, comparable economic structure, who have spent a lot of time interacting with each other, would naturally have a greater degree of unity than the entirety of the Christian Church which spans the globe.
T Ciatoris November 25th, 2009 12:52 pm :
lojahw,

Responding to a portion of #366, you wrote:

a is true; b is refutable; therefore, c is false. Scripture provides clear antecedents for every tenet of the orthodox dogma. If you think you can identify what is not found in Scripture, please do so. I’d like the opportunity to respond (BTW – I once did a men’s Bible study on the Nicene Creed doctrine of the Trinity and filled 18 pages of Scripture passages covering every element).

The question I explicitly asked about (a), (b), and (c) was whether Paige agreed with the logic of what I wrote. I explicitly noted that I knew she would accept (a) and reject (c). I assumed she’d reject (b), and I already knew that you did, but I suggested that we didn’t need to actually get into (b) at this point. So I’m tempted to disregard your comment since it ignores the specific context of the conversation and the stage of its progress. I don’t mind you answering, I just wish you’d answer the question I actually asked. Nevertheless, I’ll take your bait—at least in a qualified sense.

As I’ve said over and over and over, I absolutely agree with you that Scripture is materially sufficient for the dogmas expressed in the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed. The challenge you issue above presumes that I think there are items there which are “not found in Scripture.” I don’t, and the fact that you presume that I do indicates that you’ve ignored the careful distinctions I’ve attempted to make between formal and material sufficiency. I’ve made them several times to you already, and I’m not going to repeat them all here. So I’m really not too sure how to move forward with you on this. How do you plan to “prove” perspicuity to someone (like me) who knows the prooftexts, accepts them in a Nicene fashion, has read the fourth-century literature leading up to and following the Council of Nicaea, and does not agree that Scripture is “perspicuous” on this question? Now I’m asking you for a diagnosis: am I (a) below normal intelligence and thus immune to perspicuity, (b) obstinately and inexplicably refusing to admit the obvious clarity of texts about whose meaning you and I actually agree, or, well, what?

I’m sure your 18-page document is excellent, but frankly, unless you’ve been completely original on some point, I’m pretty confident I’ve seen it all before. I’m even tempted to flatter myself that I know Scripture well enough to assemble a similar document. But my contention is that all such a document demonstrates is that Scripture is materially sufficient to produce the Nicene Creed. I don’t think it shows formal sufficiency, because I think there exists a plausible Arian reading of each of those passages (recognizing, once again, that there exist different degrees of plausibility when it comes to interpreting a text). Even if you or I don’t happen to find the Arian reading plausible, it’s clear that they Arians did, in good conscience, find it so.

Let me give you two examples of what I’m talking about, both of which I’ve already alluded to in previous comments:

1. John 1:1-3: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.” You quoted this passage in an earlier comment as if it were a knock-down, drag-out prooftext against Arianism. I’m arguing that you only think so because your reading is (thankfully!) dogmatically conditioned by the Nicene faith you’ve received from Sacred Tradition. But let’s think for a moment: does this text actually necessitate the interpretive conclusion that the Word is, not only divine, but co-equal, co-eternal, and consubstantial with the Father? Is that the only reasonable reading? With regard to co-equality and consubstantiality, I’m sure you know that the Greek literally says “the Word was with the God, and the Word was God [or even, a God].” An Arian totally agrees that the Word is divine, but he would link the distinction between “the God” and “[a] God” in John 1:1 with John 14:28 (“the Father is greater than I”), as well as other texts, and say that the John 1:1 distinction is doing ontological work. What about co-eternity? How do you know what “In the beginning” means? Nicene faith demands that we interpret this as “from eternity,” but that’s by no means obvious (do you think that’s what it means in Gen 1:1, to which John 1:1 is clearly alluding?). It only seems obvious because we’ve received the Nicene faith. The Arians did not think their interpretation of Prov 8:22 “overrode” this “clear” passage in John 1:1-3. They thought the Nicenes had misinterpreted John 1:1-3.

2. John 10:30: “I and the Father are one”; and John 14:28: “the Father is greater than I.” How do you know which of these passages is the “clear” passage in light of which the “less clear” one should be interpreted? Because the (formally extra-biblical but not unbiblical) Rule of Faith tells you. But if I were an Arian, I’d say, “Look, in John 17:20 Jesus prays that His followers might be one ‘even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee.’ So, come on you silly Nicenes, the “unity” of Father and Son referred to in John 10:30, if it’s imitable by Jesus’ followers, must be a moral unity brought about by the perfect subordination and subjection of the Son to the Father whose will He does. It can’t be a natural unity.” That’s how an Arian, I take it, would reconcile the two passages. And it’s plausible. But it’s heretical, because, without presuming to exhaust their meaning, the Council of Nicaea gives us orthodox parameters (not, in this case, an extrinsic material principle) for reading these passages. And the Arian reading falls outside these formal boundaries. You and I agree that “I and the Father are one” refers to the Divine Nature of the immanent Trinity and that “the Father is greater than I” refers to the “form of a servant” (Phil 2:7) assumed at the Incarnation, because Sacred Tradition requires us to interpret them so. But that doesn’t make the Arian’s reading implausible when he applies John 10:30 to the Father and the Son’s moral unity and John 14:28 to the very being of the Word.

Now, we could keep this up, with you sending me anti-Arian prooftexts and me trying to give an Arian reading. But I’m not inclined to pursue that route, because I’m not an Arian and I don’t want to play one on the internet. But the fact that I’m not be an Arian and that I assert that Arianism is a heresy, does not, for me anyway, mean that I have to accuse Arians of not having read the whole Bible, nor of being stupid, nor of being especially depraved. It just means that I accuse them of not submitting to the Church’s Magisterium when it set parameters for interpreting Scripture.

in Christ,

TC
1 Cor 16:14
Michael Liccione November 25th, 2009 2:13 pm :
The fundamental question that’s been reached at this point in the thread may be put thus: What are the authoritative criteria by which the inquirer-in-faith can identify the authentic community of faith, aka “the Church,” for the sake of knowing her faith as that which has been divinely revealed, and hence as an object of divine faith rather than just human opinion?

Bryan’s article shows that if “the Church” is to be identified simply as that body of people, spread through time and space, who have reached and confess the “correct” interpretation of Scripture, then the authoritative criteria for identifying “the Church” as the relevant, authentic community of faith lie ultimately with the inquirer himself. For it is ultimately up to him, and him alone, to determine for himself whether this-or-that particular church or group of scholars has reached and confesses the “correct” interpretation of Scripture. But such authority is in fact no authority at all, and renders even the authority of Scripture otiose. To be sure, such an inquirer can self-consistently say that Scripture alone is the sole “infallible” authority; but without identifying an infallible interpreter, he cannot self-consistently present his account of what Scripture means as anything more than the opinion held by himself and those who happen to agree with him, even if that group is rather large. That is not what it means to be “the Church” Christ founded, and that is not what it means to have divine faith.

The alternative answer to the question I started with is roughly the one that Bryan and his colleagues expound and defend on this blog. I say “roughly” because that answer does not address, and so far has not been meant to address, the question whether the Roman or the Orthodox communion is “the” one, universal Church of apostolic succession, and thus the true Body of Christ on earth, as opposed to merely being a collection of churches that severally enjoy apostolic succession, but which might lack full unity with said Body. The means of answering that question go beyond the concerns of this thread, and I shall not address them. The basic point is that, without appeal to what is definitively and consistently taught by “the” Church with clear apostolic succession, no interpretation of Scripture can be presented as anything more than opinion. Hence Protestantism as such, as distinct from the good will and sincerity of some individual Protestants, is incapable of transmitting and presenting the deposit of faith as an object of divine faith rather than of human opinion.
Bryan Cross November 25th, 2009 3:02 pm :
Joey (re: #378)

You wrote:

I am, however, following the argument that an infinite interpretational regress would not be a necessity because one could ask the infallible interpreter a “yes” or “no” answerable question.

Take the following conditional as true: If P then Q. Now, if P is false, does it follow that Q is false? No. That would be the fallacy of denying the antecedent. Nothing follows from the falsity of the antecedent. So likewise, just because the possibility of asking an infallible interpreter a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ question would prevent an infinite hermeneutical regress, it does not follow that without such an infallible interpreter, there would be an infinite hermeneutical regress. To see that, let P be the possibility of asking an infallible interpreter a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ question, and let Q be the avoidance of an infinite hermeneutical regress. Just because “If P then Q” is true, it does not follow that “If not P then not Q” is true.

I have pointed out that the reality of the “dynamics” in any organization such that it doesn’t always caught and correct an error made by its adherents contrary to the argument made that “word will get around” to arrest such errors.

The Church, however, is not a natural organization; it is a divine society, that is, a supernatural society vivified by the Holy Spirit. In that respect it transcends the limitations of a natural society.

The context of the comparison is that of “unity”. From the original response of Dr. Beckwith, it seems that he is implying that Roman Catholic Church is “united” versus “Protestantism”. I pointed out that this is not a well structured comparison. I provided an example. You may choose to put any other “church organization” there – Mormons, JWs, Baptists, Presbyterian, Orthodox, etc. Just take note the context is “unity”. I am asking the question whether the Roman Catholic Church has an advantage of “unity” compared to any other “church organization”? I am not pursuing the question on whether or not the “Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church” extends all over the world.

When we are applying the four marks of the Church, we are doing so to determine where is the true Church. For that reason, the two things being compared with respect to unity must both be candidates for “the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.” So, if you do not think that ‘Protestantism’ is the “one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church”, and instead you wish to propose that the “one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church” is “Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church,” and claim that the latter has more unity than the Catholic Church in communion with the Pope, then you have to be prepared to defend the claim that the “Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church” is the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church that Christ founded, and that all other Protestants are not members of Christ’s Church. Just as it would not be a “well-structured comparison” to compare the unity of a single human being to the unity of the Catholic Church, because a single human being is not a suitable candidate for being “the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church,” so likewise it is not a “well-structured comparison” to compare the unity of “Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church” to that of the Catholic Church, because “Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church” is not a suitable candidate for being “the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church” that Christ founded.

So I ask the question, what is the Church? From what I’ve read in Acts 20:28, the Church of God is bought by Christ’s own blood. From that, it is not exclusively my organization or your organization which is the Church that Christ founded. Unless, of course you want to argue that it is the members of your organization alone that Christ bought by his own blood.

Here’s what St. Paul says:

Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood. (Acts 20:28)

St. Paul is not saying there that Christ only died for members of His Church, or even that Christ died only for His Church. The purchasing of His Church includes the application of redemption, and that is limited to those in communion (either full communion or imperfect communion) with His Church. The Catholic Church believes and teaches that she is the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church that the incarnate Christ founded. She also believes and teaches that salvation comes to the world by the grace merited by Christ’s self-giving sacrifice, and that this grace comes to the world through the sacramental means Christ has established in the Church. This grace, by the operation of the Spirit, can ‘outstrip’ (i.e. outrun), as it were, the actual reception of the sacrament. In that way even those who are not in full communion with the Catholic Church, but have received grace through faith in baptism, are in some sense joined to the Catholic Church, and those who are saved are saved through and in the Catholic Church. But they cannot be saved who “knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or to remain in it.” (CCC 846)

Often times, the comparison that is utilized is that members of this so called “Protestantism” (if there is such an organization where there is none) are not agreeing with each other therefore, the RC church is more united than “Protestantism”. Yet, if we look at the members of the RC church and ask them fundamental questions, we would soon discover that the views of these members are as diverse as the members of this so called “Protestantism” organization.

The two general Protestant alternatives when comparing unity (as one of the four marks of the Church) between some [Protestant] candidate for “the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church” and the Catholic Church, are: (1) a particular Protestant institution (e.g. “Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church”) or (2) a set of Protestant institutions. The former option [i.e. (1)] fails for the reason I explained earlier in this comment. The latter option [i.e. (2)] fails because this set of Protestant institutions would be many institutions, while the Catholic Church is one institution, with one visible head, and therefore the Catholic Church has a unity of doctrine, sacraments, and government that this plurality of Protestant institutions would not have.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
T Ciatoris November 25th, 2009 3:52 pm :
Dear Paige (re: #370),

You asked:

I wonder, how complex does a non-perspicuous doctrine have to be before it is impossible to confirm that it is Scripturally supported, and one must resort to the assumption that the Magisterium got it right because the Magisterium interprets infallibly?

Hmmm…interesting way of posing the question. First, I didn’t say that the dogmas we’ve been talking about cannot be shown to be Scripturally supported, just that Scripture is formally insufficient to show that they must be believed as the only correct interpretations of Scripture. Second, I myself do not know where to draw the line you’ve inquired about with any precision, so I join you in your wonderment. I can easily see why it would be incumbent upon a Protestant practitioner of sola Scriptura to figure out where to draw it, but as a Catholic, I have the luxury of not feeling any particular urgency for drawing any such line. Lucky me, eh? I’d take exception to your characterization of the Catholic belief that the Magisterium enjoys the Spirit-given charism of making infallible determinations as an “assumption” to which we feel the need to “resort” (cf. the distinction Bryan made way back when between the desire for certainty and the desire for truth), but I don’t want to bicker. :-)

I’m not totally sure what to make of your tentative admission that it’s possible for precise formulations of dogma on matters crucial to the faith to be “unrepeatable.” If Magisterial statements of Trinitarian and Christological dogma are unrepeatable, how can we claim that Scripture is perspicuous on these questions? Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought the doctrine perspicuity claimed that derivation of at least the (precise?) dogmatic content, if not the precise expressions, should be repeatable by any believer with normal intelligence. I agree that the precise expressions of traditional dogma are historically conditioned, but I’m a little worried (for your sake, of course) that here, too, you might be giving away at least half the farm.

You’re certainly right that the unrepeatability of the dogmatic formulations doesn’t prevent anybody from “weighing and evaluating the statements against what is given in Scripture.” But part of the argument I’ve been making is that only material sufficiency is necessary for a positive outcome to such an evaluation. I don’t think that such an evaluation demonstrates formal sufficiency unless it shows that there is no other dogmatic conclusion (like, say, a modalist one) that could reasonably be considered “biblical.” And this is where I think there’s a problem when we’re confronted with groups like the Oneness Pentecostals who also claim to be practicing sola Scriptura while being docile to the guidance of the Holy Spirit. This gets back to the point I’ve been trying to make: Traditional dogma about the Trinity was a “given” for the magisterial reformers, because they’d received it through Sacred Tradition. It’s one thing for them to conclude (correctly) that this dogma is biblically supported; it’s another thing to show that sola Scriptura is a sufficient method by which to authoritatively derive the dogma. If any given pre-Reformation heresy could also be plausibly supported scripturally, what business would Protestants have condemning it as a heresy? What if a Protestant ecclesiology had been operative in the fourth century? No ecumenical council could have ever solved the Arian problem. This is why I think you should be chary (as a Protestant) of suggesting that the dogmatic formulations are “unrepeatable.”

You also asked:

Does this mean that you believe nobody could have come up with the doctrinal formulation of the Trinity unless they had an inside track, this infallible interpretive charism (which is yet not the same as inspiration)?

I’m not saying nobody could have come up with it, but I am saying that without the Magisterium’s charism of infallibility, we’d have no particularly good reason to believe one formulation over another if both could demonstrate material scriptural support.

And then:

In what sense could we then call the doctrine “scriptural,” if it were only available to a limited body of individuals who alone could perceive it in the text? (i.e., did the meaning exist in the text already, or did it only exist when the Magisterium read it with the help of the Holy Spirit?)

I hope I’ve answered already how we can call the doctrine “scriptural” without claiming that the Bible is formally sufficient for the formulation. Your worry about the meaning being “available to a limited body of individuals who alone could perceive it,” I think, only makes sense in the framework of a non-Catholic ecclesiology and ontology of Scripture. I guess I could try to expand on that, but I’m getting tired of typing (and I’m sure you’re getting tired of my disproportionately long responses!). So we’ll save that for later. As to the clarifying question in parentheses, yes, of course I believe the meaning existed in the inspired text already (do I detect in your question some influence from or worries about Derrida or Roland Barthes or somebody??). Though I guess it depends on what you mean by “in” the text… but for goodness’ sake, I don’t want to get into literary theory, at least not now! As I mentioned in a previous post, to propose the Bible as independent from the other modes of Christ’s presence to the Church is, from my particular point of view, a fast track to making it a dead letter (which is precisely what it has become for certain kinds of historical-critical exegetes, who don’t seem to agree that the Bible’s inspiration is self-confirming).

As to the “complex” study of Scripture, it seems like you’re already mitigating the doctrine of perspicuity. If every individual Christian is personally responsible to confirm the central doctrines of their faith from Scripture, then God would have to expect each individual Christian to have the time and intellectual resources to undertake the complex study you’ve proposed. If a relatively simple reading by a person of average intelligence won’t do, I don’t really see the point in claiming perspicuity at all. If you’re going to defend perspicuity, then stand firm, my dear Protestant!

I think you’re right: we disagree about the function God intended for Scripture in the life of individual believers. I’ve actually been thinking about this topic a great deal recently. Maybe we can talk about this more, too. But again, tired of typing…

(And no, I’m not toying with you or making you jump through hoops—that would just be mean! And if you really are a “rookie,” you’re a very impressive one: give yourself a big pat on the back!)

in Christ,

TC
1 Cor 16:14
Keith W. Thompson November 25th, 2009 5:45 pm :
Bryan,

Sorry I’ve been away for a few days. I see that I have a lot of catching up to do. This thread is exploding! Congratulations for stirring up enough controversy to fuel the fire’s of good discussion in here.
After reflecting on the issue of authority this past week, I’ve come to the conclusion that the whole matter is really quite simple.

My argument is that both Rome and protestants alike exercise personal and private judgment of their respective authorities. Our sole infallible authority is Scripture alone, and you accept both Scripture as well as accepting the claims of Rome that She is the sole interpreting authority and source of Scripture. Therein lies the difference between us.

Solo Scriptura necessarily follows from Sola Scriptura just as much as Solo Ecclesia necessarily follows from Sola Ecclesia. (Although I might disagree with some of the pejorative ways in which you describe it as well as the conclusions you derive from it.) I could easily state that “all appeals to Rome are essentially appeals to interpretations of Rome.” Your definition of “Solo ______” is ubiquitous of the way in which EVERY level of authority relates to the knowledge of that authority in every level of human existence. To simply point out that fact in Protestant churches and then say, “A-HA!” is … well, it is just weird. You are merely pointing out how the knowledge of all authority works. My response to that assertion is, “so what?” It is simply a slight-of-hand trick to attempt to put protestants on the defensive which takes the burden of demonstrating that Rome has true ultimate authority off of you for a brief time.
You make it sound like personal interpretation of authority is something unique to protestants, BECAUSE of the doctrine of Sola Scriptura. But the fact is, that every authority must necessarily be interpreted by all persons subscribing to that authority, whether it is Scripture, the Church, the U.S. Constitution, your parents, etc. All authority must be interpreted. This does not mean that all authority ultimately resides only in the eye of the beholder, true authority is true and real whether people agree with it or not as well as whether people interpret it correctly or not.
Simply put, the fact that personal judgment plays a role in understanding the authority of Scripture does not in any way detract from the fact that it IS authoritative, nor does it somehow make the personal interpreter somehow ultimately authoritative in a way in which Scripture is not. What really matters is the question, “What IS our ultimate authority?”
Rome claims to possess an immense amount of authority for herself over and above (rather than subservient to) Scripture, which is God-breathed. That is an assertion which I flat out deny. (In the same way in which I deny that the Mormon Prophet has true and rightful authority given to him directly from God, even though he claims it for himself. Claiming authority doesn’t guarantee authority.) I believe that is the true issue at hand.

In Him,
Keith W.T.
lojahw November 25th, 2009 6:17 pm :
Thank you for your comments, Michael, and for the link to your thoughts on the Vincentian Canon (VC). Your article is well-written. Here are some further thoughts:

First, I find it interesting that St. Vincent never once mentions apostolic succession (a key theme in this discussion). Moreover, I note that his emphasis on the content of the catholic faith is entirely consistent with Tertullian’s statement that churches, “although they derive not their founder from apostles or apostolic men … are accounted as not less apostolic because they are akin in doctrine.”

From your article:

Michael: Well then, how are we to know that one big council is to be accepted as authoritative and another not? St. Vincent is silent on that question . . .

You then suggest that the answer is found in later declarations of bishops of Rome which assert the role of the successors of Peter. I would gently remind you that given St. Vincent’s silence, your suggestion is speculative. As one reads through Vincent’s arguments regarding various scenarios, the dominant theme is: “what has been believed everywhere, always, by all.” The burden is on you to demonstrate that Vincent’s dictum does not provide a sufficient test of catholicity irrespective of apostolic succession and the decisions of councils or popes.

Michael: But such a consensus is not to be sought among just any old writers claiming to be Christian; it is to be sought only among “teachers approved and outstanding.” Approved by whom? Well, who else than the authorities of the Catholic Church? Outstanding among whom? Among those Catholics who are not Catholics in name only, but who humbly submit their judgments to the Magisterium and those writers whom the holders of the Magisterium recommend.

I would suggest that your conclusion is both an argument from silence (Vincent did not say how one determines which teachers were approved and outstanding) and anachronistic. To the latter point, there is no pattern of ECFs from Apostolic times until St. Vincent’s day “who humbly submit their judgments to the Magisterium.” Furthermore, the concept of the Magisterium as you understand it today had not been developed in St. Vincent’s day, notwithstanding statements from a few bishops of Rome after Vincent’s time that anticipated the later development of this concept. Nor was there a list in St. Vincent’s day of “those writers whom the holders of the Magisterium recommend.” These are all later developments to which St. Vincent could hardly refer.

Who, then, are the approved and outstanding teachers? The ones who consistently distinguish themselves in handing down – unadulterated – the teaching of the Apostles. It is the unadulterated version of the faith to which Vincent returns again and again, not to apostolic succession or the Magisterium.

Michael: I am thus led to believe that the VC is useful not as a empirical method of polling the Christians of the past, still less of the present, than as a normative method of ascertaining the faith of the Catholic Church by synthesizing the statements of her duly constituted authorities and those they approve. Such a normative method is highly useful for those willing to accept it. But it would not make sense without the visible, historical Catholic Church, and her teaching authority, taken as givens.

I agree with your conclusion that the VC should be considered the normative method of ascertaining the faith of the Church catholic. On the other hand, I would caution against putting blind trust in “the statements of [the Catholic Church’s] duly constituted authorities.” Rather, I would suggest that all authorities are subject to the authority of Scripture in light of the faith “which has been believed everywhere, always, by all.”

I note in the quote below, St. Vincent’s remedy for heresy is not an appeal to the Magisterium, but rather to antiquity:

Vincent: But what if some novel contagion try to infect the whole Church, and not merely a tiny part of it? Then he will take care to cleave to antiquity, which cannot now be led astray by any deceit of novelty.

You conclude:

Michael: Such a normative method is highly useful for those willing to accept it. But it would not make sense without the visible, historical Catholic Church, and her teaching authority, taken as givens.

The question that the above statement raises for me is: would St. Vincent recognize the Catholic Church today as the same Church he wrote about almost 1600 years ago? How would he respond, for example, to the veneration of images which was so vehemently opposed by the same “teachers approved and outstanding” to whom he referred in his Commonitory?

Blessings.
Paige Britton November 25th, 2009 6:43 pm :
Hey, TC —
Thanks for keeping me in line. :)
I appreciate your time & comments and will work my way through them later, though it will have to be just for myself, as we’re headed away for Tgiving for a bunch of days. But I am sure I will benefit from your tutorial. If I think of anything brilliant to ask you I’ll have to do it next week sometime!
Have a great holiday!
pax,
pb
Bryan Cross November 25th, 2009 7:12 pm :
Keith T, (re: #387)

Welcome back. I too am glad for the good discussion, and especially for the cordial and respectful manner maintained by all the participants.

My argument is that both Rome and protestants alike exercise personal and private judgment of their respective authorities. Our sole infallible authority is Scripture alone, and you accept both Scripture as well as accepting the claims of Rome that She is the sole interpreting authority and source of Scripture. Therein lies the difference between us.

I mostly agree, except that we don’t say that the Church is the “source” of Scripture. We say that God is the source of Scripture, and that He gave Scripture to the Church, and gave to the successors of the Apostles the authority to determine the canon and the authentic interpretation of Scripture. (See the document Dei Verbum.)

Solo Scriptura necessarily follows from Sola Scriptura just as much as Solo Ecclesia necessarily follows from Sola Ecclesia.

In order to evaluate that claim, I would need to know exactly what you mean by the terms “Solo Ecclesia” and “Sola Ecclesia.”

I could easily state that “all appeals to Rome are essentially appeals to interpretations of Rome.” Your definition of “Solo ______” is ubiquitous of the way in which EVERY level of authority relates to the knowledge of that authority in every level of human existence. To simply point out that fact in Protestant churches and then say, “A-HA!” is … well, it is just weird. You are merely pointing out how the knowledge of all authority works.

If all we are doing is pointing out how the knowledge of authority works, then that would be weird. But, that’s not all we are doing. We presented an argument. So which premise of our argument is false, or how does the conclusion of our argument not follow from the premises?

My response to that assertion is, “so what?” It is simply a slight-of-hand trick to attempt to put protestants on the defensive which takes the burden of demonstrating that Rome has true ultimate authority off of you for a brief time.

That doesn’t seem like a charitable interpretation of what we are attempting to do. How do you know that we don’t believe our argument to be a sound argument, and that we aren’t presenting it to help others see the truth of its conclusion?

You make it sound like personal interpretation of authority is something unique to protestants, BECAUSE of the doctrine of Sola Scriptura.

That isn’t the conclusion of our argument or a premise of our argument, and I’m sorry if we somehow implied that personal interpretation of authority is something unique to Protestants.

But the fact is, that every authority must necessarily be interpreted by all persons subscribing to that authority, whether it is Scripture, the Church, the U.S. Constitution, your parents, etc. All authority must be interpreted.

I agree.

This does not mean that all authority ultimately resides only in the eye of the beholder, true authority is true and real whether people agree with it or not as well as whether people interpret it correctly or not.

I agree.

Simply put, the fact that personal judgment plays a role in understanding the authority of Scripture does not in any way detract from the fact that it IS authoritative, nor does it somehow make the personal interpreter somehow ultimately authoritative in a way in which Scripture is not.

I couldn’t agree more.

What really matters is the question, “What IS our ultimate authority?”

We all agree that our ultimate authority is God. So I don’t think that question is the one that really matters (for reconciling Protestants and Catholics). It seems to me that the important question (viz-a-viz Protestant-Catholic reconciliation) is: What authority or authorities did Christ establish for His Church? We all agree that the Bible is authoritative, even though Catholics and Protestants don’t agree on the canon. So (except for the canon problem — which I’m not belittling) the authority question that separates us is: Did or did not Christ establish a perpetual hierarchy in His Church to shepherd and guide it until He returns, and how do those shepherds receive their authority? That’s the authority question that separates Protestants and Catholics, because Protestants reject, while Catholics accept, apostolic succession.

Rome claims to possess an immense amount of authority for herself over and above (rather than subservient to) Scripture, which is God-breathed.

The Magisterium teaches that it is the servant of Scripture. The Catholic Catechism says the following:

Yet this Magisterium is not superior to the Word of God, but is its servant. It teaches only what has been handed on to it. At the divine command and with the help of the Holy Spirit, it listens to this devotedly, guards it with dedication and expounds it faithfully. All that it proposes for belief as being divinely revealed is drawn from this single deposit of faith. (CCC, 86, drawing from Dei Verbum)

Concerning the claim that the Magisterium makes itself “over and above” Scripture, what would it look like for the Magisterium to be subservient to Scripture? In other words, if the Magisterium really were in fact subservient to Scripture, then what would be different about the Magisterium? Or, putting the same question differently: if the Magisterium were in fact presently subservient to Scripture, and you were falsely accusing it of being “over and above” Scripture, how would you know?

Claiming authority doesn’t guarantee authority.

I completely agree. Let’s compare respective grounds of ecclesial authority. What is the ground for your pastor’s authority? (My parish pastor has his authority by apostolic succession from the Apostle Peter.)

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
K. Doran November 25th, 2009 7:48 pm :
Lojahw, and Catholics who have been scandalized by him:

you said: “there is no pattern of ECFs from Apostolic times until St. Vincent’s day “who humbly submit their judgments to the Magisterium.””

You should read the history of the pelagian controversy here:
https://www.bringyou.to/apologetics/num16.htm

The behavior of all of the major parties (even Pelagius) indicated that a submission of their doctrinal judgments to the Magisterium was taken as the norm of behavior.

Furthermore, Augustine submitted his judgment to the magisterium regarding whether or not the gospels point to Manicheanism:

“Perhaps you will read the gospel to me, and will attempt to find there a testimony to Manichæus. But should you meet with a person not yet believing the gospel, how would you reply to him were he to say, I do not believe? For my part, I should not believe the gospel except as moved by the authority of the Catholic Church. So when those on whose authority I have consented to believe in the gospel tell me not to believe in Manichæus, how can I but consent? Take your choice. If you say, Believe the Catholics: their advice to me is to put no faith in you; so that, believing them, I am precluded from believing you—If you say, Do not believe the Catholics: you cannot fairly use the gospel in bringing me to faith in Manichæus; for it was at the command of the Catholics that I believed the gospel;— Again, if you say, You were right in believing the Catholics when they praised the gospel, but wrong in believing their vituperation of Manichæus: do you think me such a fool as to believe or not to believe as you like or dislike, without any reason? It is therefore fairer and safer by far for me, having in one instance put faith in the Catholics, not to go over to you, till, instead of bidding me believe, you make me understand something in the clearest and most open manner. To convince me, then, you must put aside the gospel. If you keep to the gospel, I will keep to those who commanded me to believe the gospel; and, in obedience to them, I will not believe you at all. But if haply you should succeed in finding in the gospel an incontrovertible testimony to the apostleship of Manichæus, you will weaken my regard for the authority of the Catholics who bid me not to believe you; and the effect of that will be, that I shall no longer be able to believe the gospel either, for it was through the Catholics that I got my faith in it; and so, whatever you bring from the gospel will no longer have any weight with me. Wherefore, if no clear proof of the apostleship of Manichæus is found in the gospel, I will believe the Catholics rather than you. But if you read thence some passage clearly in favor of Manichæus, I will believe neither them nor you: not them, for they lied to me about you; nor you, for you quote to me that Scripture which I had believed on the authority of those liars. But far be it that I should not believe the gospel; for believing it, I find no way of believing you too.”

In an earlier post, you said that Ignatius said: “Wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church.” The full quote is as follows: “See that you all follow the bishop, even as Jesus Christ does the Father, and the presbytery as you would the apostles; and reverence the deacons, as being the institution of God. Let no man do anything connected with the Church without the bishop. Let that be deemed a proper Eucharist, which is [administered] either by the bishop, or by one to whom he has entrusted it. Wherever the bishop shall appear, there let the multitude [of the people] also be; even as, wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church. It is not lawful without the bishop either to baptize or to celebrate a love-feast; but whatsoever he shall approve of, that is also pleasing to God, so that everything that is done may be secure and valid. Moreover, it is in accordance with reason that we should return to soberness [of conduct], and, while yet we have opportunity, exercise repentance towards God. It is well to reverence both God and the bishop. He who honours the bishop has been honoured by God; he who does anything without the knowledge of the bishop, does [in reality] serve the devil.”

If any catholic readers have become afraid that lojahw’s understanding of first millenium Church history is valid, please don’t hesitate to send me an email: KBDh02 ‘at’ yahoo ‘dot’ com. Don’t be afraid. It won’t take much to see through the smoke.

Sincerely,

K. Doran
T Ciatoris November 25th, 2009 10:00 pm :
Paige,

I hope you catch this before you unplug for the holiday. Tutorial? Don’t be silly. I’m very much enjoying our lively and, I think, constructive exchange, and I hope it will continue. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving with your loved ones.

in Christ,

TC
Eph 5:4 :-)
lojahw November 26th, 2009 11:08 am :
TC: thank you for your response on a) b) and c).

My computer access has been very limited & will remain so for a few days.

The problem with your argument against the perspicuity of Scripture is that you use the tactics of heretics by limiting your critiques to single passages of Scripture, whereas Sola Scriptura is based on the whole counsel of God’s Word as the regula fidei. Proof-texting is a favorite tactic of heretics, like the Jehovah’s Witness, whose example you gave from John 1 – which also betrays an ignorance of Greek grammar.

The bishops at Nicea, in contrast, noted their careful examination of all pertinent passages of Scripture on the subjects you mentioned, e.g.:

On one substance: “The bishops, having detected their deceitfulness in this matter [the Arian heresy], collected from Scripture those passages which say of Christ that He is the glory, the fountain, the stream, and the express image of the person … likewise, ‘ I and the Father are one.’ They then, with still greater clearness, briefly declared that the Son is of one substance with the Father; for this, indeed, is the signification of the passages which have been quoted.” (Church History 1.7)

The eternality of the Word who was God, John 1:1-3, is further clarified by Psalm 55:19, “God … with whom there is no change.” If God is without change, then “the Word was God” affirms that the Word always was, otherwise God would have changed when the Word was begotten. There are a number of other passages which could be added as well if one wanted to thoroughly examine the Scriptures on the subject. Athanasius’ Discourses against the Arians demonstrates how the application of Sola Scriptura successfully refutes heresy.

Blessings.
Steve November 26th, 2009 5:15 pm :
Bryan said:

How does Tertullian propose to show that the doctrine of these heretics is contrary to that of the Apostles? He does so with two tests, and these two tests are related to each other. One necessarily comes before the other, and depends on the other. First, he uses the test of apostolic succession. “Let them produce the original records of their churches, let them unfold the roll of their bishops ….”. That’s the first test. For Tertullian, the second test depends on the first test. The second test is comparing whether the ‘faith’ proposed by the heretics agrees with the doctrine held by the Apostles. How is this second test to be conducted? To determine whether the doctrine of the heretics agrees with the doctrine of the Apostles Tertullian doesn’t say, “Look at the Scriptures.” He says that the ‘faith’ of the heretics must be compared to the faith of the churches which are in agreement with the churches founded by the Apostles. So the apostolic churches (the ones founded by the Apostles and maintaining the succession from the Apostles) are still the standard for what is the Apostolic faith. For Tertullian, how do we know which churches have the Apostolic faith? By comparing their doctrine to that of the apostolic churches, i.e. the ones having the succession from the Apostles. So the second test (i.e. comparing the faith of the heretics to that of the Apostles) depends on the first test (i.e. apostolic succession). For Tertullian the succession of men in the apostolic churches is what determines the standard for what is the apostolic doctrine, against which to compare the doctrine of these gnostic heretics.,

First off, just because Tertullian and other church fathers took this tact, doesn’t mean that it was best way to handle the situation. It was a way to shortcut the debate. Rather than engage the gnostics head on in debate, they appealed to apostolic succession. “You don’t have bishops in apostolic succession therefore you can’t be right.” It’s not clear to me that this was the better way. Why not engage them in debate, exegete the scriptures and find out who has the better argument?

Secondly problem here is that this approach falls apart when one looks at the Christological controversies of the 4th and 5th centuries. There you had bishops in apostolic succession who supported all sort of heresies – Arianism, Modalism, Sabellianism, Nestorianism, etc., many if not all who could say they came from apostolic churches. In fact two the leading apostolic sees, Alexandria and Antioch seem to be behind much of the controversy these two centuries as they rivaled against each other for position in the church (hardly behavior one would expect from those in apostolic succession, no?) Tertullian’s solution to identifying orthodoxy falls apart at this point. Thus, apostolic succession does not historically appear to be the defense against heresy that you make it out to be. So what then?
Steve November 26th, 2009 5:41 pm :
T Ciatoris said:

I’m sure your 18-page document is excellent, but frankly, unless you’ve been completely original on some point, I’m pretty confident I’ve seen it all before. I’m even tempted to flatter myself that I know Scripture well enough to assemble a similar document. But my contention is that all such a document demonstrates is that Scripture is materially sufficient to produce the Nicene Creed. I don’t think it shows formal sufficiency, because I think there exists a plausible Arian reading of each of those passages (recognizing, once again, that there exist different degrees of plausibility when it comes to interpreting a text). Even if you or I don’t happen to find the Arian reading plausible, it’s clear that they Arians did, in good conscience, find it so.

Much is “plausible, much less is “probable”. Are you saying that you think Arian arguments from scripture are just as good as orthodox Christian arguments from scripture? I don’t think you really want to go there but perhaps you do? :) And if you’re not, and you’re then conceding that orthodox arguments are better, then the prior poster’s point about scripture is much stronger and scripture does indeed show formal sufficiency.

It just means that I accuse them of not submitting to the Church’s Magisterium when it set parameters for interpreting Scripture.

But it’s a historical fact that the “magisterium” such as it was, was very divided over the issue of Arianism, or else the debate wouldn’t have raged for so long during the 4th century as Nicea really didn’t settle much. There were bishops in apostolic succession on both sides of the issue. So how did the “magisterium” (the bishops in this case) divided as it was, decide on this and the many other Christological issues that arose during the 4th and 5th centuries? They had no one to appeal to, no one who could tell them what to believe. They certainly didn’t appeal to Rome to settle the issue. So how did they decide?
K. Doran November 26th, 2009 7:24 pm :
Steve,

The reputation of Roman faith during the fourth and fifth centuries, and its association with the “right” answer to these christological and trinitarian controversies, is well attested by the fathers of that period and the periods immediately before and after. The fact is, there was an old tradition, attested to by (among others) Cyprian (and not in his supposedly forged writings, either, but rather in his letters), that on doctrinal matters (not jurisdictional ones, so don’t bother mentioning these), no heresy would ever overcome the Roman see. Many people believed this, and expressed this belief in one form or another in their writings and their actions. It became a matter of universal acceptance among orthodox Christians that no council, no matter how great, was considered binding unless it was explicitly accepted by the Roman see. This acceptance survived the cases of Liberius, Vigilius, and Honorius. It diminished near the end of the first millennium when, due to cultural and political forces, Greek clerics looked back at the history of the last several hundred years to find excuses for claiming certain forms of independence from Rome. Even then, various admissions of dependence of the East on Roman authority for issuing binding doctrinal decisions continued for one or two hundred years, until the great schism brought a more complete break from Rome.

Some of the most beautiful expressions of allegiance, loyalty, and faith in Rome’s authority and divine protection from error come from the East (or from Greek Christians living in the West) during the fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth centuries. Dom John Chapman explains the importance of Rome in settling the various theological controversies of these centuries in the following document:
“The First Eight General Councils and Papal Infallibility”

Sincerely,

K. Doran
Tom Riello November 26th, 2009 11:24 pm :
Steve,

K. Doran puts it well concerning no heresy affecting the Roman Church. I noticed in your remarks concerning those sees who possessed Apostolic Sucession (Alexandria, Constantinople etc..,) no reference was made to the Bishop of Rome or that see teaching or affirming heretical doctrine concerning the nature of the Godhead or the Person of Christ. It is possible for those who possess valid orders to be involved in heresy or schism, for example the Donatists. In fact, as then Cardinal Ratzinger points out (Father Aidan Nichols’ excellent book The Thought of Pope Benedict XVI) Cyrprian’s appeal to Apostolic Sucession needed the addition of Augustine’s union with the cathedra petri.
Steve November 26th, 2009 11:34 pm :
The reputation of Roman faith during the fourth and fifth centuries, and its association with the “right” answer to these christological and trinitarian controversies, is well attested by the fathers of that period and the periods immediately before and after.

That’s really a separate issue. The issue being discussed was the assertion that apostolic succession guaranteed correct doctrine and that to find the ancient apostolic faith one need only look to the apostolic churches and their bishops. When large number of bishops in apostolic succession hold to heretical beliefs as in the 4th and 5th centuries, it would appear hard to maintain that assertion in the face of history.
T Ciatoris November 27th, 2009 4:37 am :
Dear lojahw (re: #393),

I’m starting to feel a bit like this exchange is becoming a slapstick routine. You’ve just accused me of using the tactics of heretics by proof-texting, when in fact I’ve just devoted a lengthy comment to showing that proof-texting is a faulty and insufficient method. The fact that you thought that I was promoting proof-texting does not instill any confidence in me that you’ve bothered to try to understand what I’ve been saying.

I’m glad to learn that you and I concur in our disapproval of proof-texting. I’d gotten onto the topic in the first place because you have sometimes seemed (to me, anyway) to display a proclivity for it. Here’s an example. (Yes, that’s right, I’m going to proof-text your proof-texting. Like I told you: slapstick!)

lojahw in #290: Come again? “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” and “All things came into being through Him.” Was this not sufficient to get the point across that there never was a time when Christ was not? [Emphasis added.]

If that’s not a proof-text, I’m genuinely not sure what is.

I’m puzzled by your suggestion that the regula fidei equals the Bible, simpliciter, for the Fathers. To my (spotty) memory, I’ve never heard regula fidei used quite this way. Can you defend this?

On another point of disagreement: your position implies that the Bible exhausts the Word of God and that the Word of God is the Bible. I do of course agree that the Bible is the Word of God, but that’s not actually saying the same thing. On all this, see the last paragraph of comment #300, to which you never responded.

Since I don’t see us making much progress on the issue, this is probably the last thing I’m going to say in this exchange with respect to the perspicuity of Scripture. Once again, I don’t mean to be trying to get the last word in. Please feel free to respond. But I’ll only respond again if I think we’re actually moving forward.

I suppose I’m glad that Nicene orthodoxy is perspicuous to you. Without the Church’s authoritative guidance, it’s not to me. That’s not a hypothetical or abstract statement. That’s my actual experience as someone who’s studied both Scripture and the patristic period in, I think, reasonable detail and depth. So I suppose that, on this particular question, anyway, you should actually be thankful for my reception of Sacred Tradition as infallibly authoritative, however wrong-headed you may think it in general. :-)

Now, if perspicuity is true, my own case is only explicable in a few ways: (1) I’m a liar who denies the decisive clarity with which I actually recognize the dogma in the text; (2) I lack faith and humility before the sacred text; (3) I lack normal intelligence; (4) I lack the Holy Spirit; or some combination of the above. (If there’s a fifth possibility that I’ve missed, by the way, please let me know.) Never mind the Arians, the Pneumatomachoi, the Nestorians, the Oneness Pentecostals, or anybody else. I’m talking about my own experience. The doctrine of perspicuity, which, I believe we agree, is necessary to uphold if you’re going to stick to sola Scriptura, makes a claim about a subjective experience of an objective reality (the subjective experience of reading the Bible and finding it objectively clear on essential doctrines) that should obtain given the conditions of honesty, faith and humility, average intelligence, and docility to the Holy Spirit. I truly don’t think any of (1), (2), (3), and (4) is true of me (but maybe I’m wrong—I suppose I can’t “prove” that I’m not self-deceived), so I think I should satisfy the conditions for perspicuity to “work” for me. I’m sorry, but it doesn’t.

I also think that to claim, as an adherent of perspicuity must do, that one or more of (1), (2), (3), and (4) is true for every person who denies perspicuity and/or comes to heterodox conclusions, is quickly going to involve you in a morass of uncharitable and unfounded judgments with respect to these persons’ honesty, intelligence, and devotion.

Please tell me what I’ve misunderstood, if anything, about the doctrine of perspicuity. I hope our conversation can move forward, lojahw. On the other hand, I won’t be too upset if you think it’s time for things to fade out.

in Christ,

TC
1 Cor 16:14
T Ciatoris November 27th, 2009 5:35 am :
Hi Steve (re: #395),

Thanks for responding to a couple of portions of my comment.

You asked:

Much is “plausible, much less is “probable”. Are you saying that you think Arian arguments from scripture are just as good as orthodox Christian arguments from scripture? […] And if you’re not, and you’re then conceding that orthodox arguments are better, then the prior poster’s point about scripture is much stronger and scripture does indeed show formal sufficiency.

The first question that comes to my mind is where and how you plan to draw the lines between “plausible” and “probable” and any other evaluative adjectives you’d like to propose. If Scripture is going to be formally sufficient for formulating doctrine that is to be binding for all Christians, then that’s not an idle question. But honestly, if we’re talking about orthodox vs. Arian interpretations of Scripture in terms like “probable” or “just as good” or “better,” I think we’ve already missed the boat. I absolutely believe that the orthodox arguments are “better” (but remember, you can’t trust me—I’m a biased reader of the Bible since I receive Sacred Tradition as giving me infallible guidelines for interpreting it). But my or your or Jack’s or Jill’s personal opinion that the orthodox have a “better” argument could be based on pretty much any hermeneutical canon (that doesn’t mean that all hermeneutics are created equal, but who judges authoritatively among them?), and I don’t believe that the deposit of faith, the Truth about the Gospel of Jesus Christ, is being passed down authoritatively by what you and I might happen to agree are “better” or “more probable” arguments. Unless you lower the bar considerably, I actually don’t think that cuts it for formal sufficiency, if by “sufficiency” we mean sufficiency to safeguard and preserve sound Christian faith.

As to the historical question you’ve asked, I’ll leave the detailed arguments to other folks (some of whom, thankfully, have already jumped in). The debates about the specific question you asked, as I’m sure you know, have been hashed out and rehashed time and again. But let me take a first stab at one general point that I think speaks to questions that lurk behind your specific question. Because we believe that the Church is the Body of Christ, we Catholics have what you might call an incarnational ecclesiology. That is, since we believe that the Lord of Eternal Glory truly entered into genuine solidarity with us in our messy and sinful world, we aren’t surprised to find His Body the Church on pilgrimage through just as messy a world as Our Lord found. So don’t be scandalized by the messiness. It strikes me that sola Scriptura, regardless of whether or not it’s true, is at least a very effective way of standing aloof from the messy contingency of history, because, as long as I’ve got a Bible in my hands, I don’t actually need that historical Body. It might help me, to be sure. I might learn some neat exegetical pointers from it, or I might hear some salutary cautionary tales from it, but it’s not actually necessary to my Christian faith and is dispensable except insofar as it played a role in getting the Bible to me. On the contrary, replies the Catholic: this messy history in which we find the Church is precisely the messy and contingent history of messy and contingent creatures that Christ came to redeem in His Incarnation, which is now extended sacramentally through time and space in His Holy Church, and there’s nothing dispensable about that.

I know I’ve by no means made my point here very rigorously or comprehensively (or even coherently?), and it probably has very little warrant for being expressed in this particular thread. Sorry. Just some food for thought.

in Christ,

TC
1 Cor 16:14
Steve November 27th, 2009 11:56 am :
K. Doran puts it well concerning no heresy affecting the Roman Church.,

Guys, I think you need to be more careful here. Some of you seem to be slipping into “catholicspeak” which it me as a Protestant is rather confusing. “Roman church”? What do you mean by that? My point is that the catholic/Catholic church (East and West) had bishops in apostolic succession who had heretical views. Do you mean something else when you say “Roman church”? Do you mean the Roman see or Roman bishop/pope? Or the Western Church as distinguished from the Eastern Church? Please clarify.

I noticed in your remarks concerning those sees who possessed Apostolic Sucession (Alexandria, Constantinople etc..,) no reference was made to the Bishop of Rome or that see teaching or affirming heretical doctrine concerning the nature of the Godhead or the Person of Christ.

No, I didn’t – the issue wasn’t papal infallibility but apostolic succession as a guarantor of correct doctrine. Historically Rome as was on the side of orthodoxy in these disputes. The issue historically seemed to be a greater problem in the East due to their perchant for engaging in speculative theology. Personally, I think they tried to explain too many things that just aren’t explainable from a human point of view, which continually got them into deeper trouble as the answer to one question then inevitably led to other questions which then caused further controversies. The West didn’t suffer from this to the same extent.

It is possible for those who possess valid orders to be involved in heresy or schism, for example the Donatists.

Then I guess there’s go Brian’s thesis per Tertullian . . .

In fact, as then Cardinal Ratzinger points out (Father Aidan Nichols’ excellent book The Thought of Pope Benedict XVI) Cyrprian’s appeal to Apostolic Sucession needed the addition of Augustine’s union with the cathedra petri.

Again, more “catholicspeak”. Cathedra petri? Ok, I looked it up, the “chair of Peter”. This is like talking to a bunch of doctors at times! Let’s try and use some plain English – I think that will make the discussion easier on all of us. So in the end more than apostolic succession is needed after all. Of course now that does lead us into papal infallibility and I’m not sure that’s in scope here nor am I sure I wish to open that can of worms :)
Bryan Cross November 27th, 2009 12:09 pm :
Steve, (re: #401),

One of the difficulties with the comments being so numerous is that new arrivals (understandably) tend not to read all the comments, and so questions addressed earlier in the comments are raised again. Your comment about apostolic succession not being sufficient to guarantee orthodoxy was raised earlier (comment #75), and we responded to it then.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Tom Riello November 27th, 2009 12:59 pm :
Steve,

I am sorry for the “catholicspeak” which you rightly spoke about. The intention by any of us was not to play some rhetorical game or sound “smart” (which to be honest I too find frustrating when reading a book and then some latin phrase gets thrown in as though we all know what it means). By Roman Church we mean the Bishop of Rome. My Bishop has valid orders and has apostolic sucession but God forbid, he could turn away from the faith and he could, God forbid, teach heresy (as happened some years ago when a European Bishop taught contrary to the Church on Humane Vitae, a Pope Paul VI Encyclical written just over 40 yrs ago). That would be handled according to canon law with the Pope handling the matter. I do think it would be very helpful to read the post that Bryan mentioned (comment #75) and his reply (I believe comment #76).
lojahw November 27th, 2009 1:14 pm :
[Re: #379]
Bryan, I agree that Tertullian defined two tests of apostolicity; however, I suggest that you reread chapter 32 of Prescription Against Heretics more carefully regarding their respective application.

First, please note the historical context specified by Tertullian:

But if there be any (heresies) which are bold enough to plant themselves in the midst of the apostolic age, that they may thereby seem to have been handed down by the apostles, because they existed in the time of the apostles, we can say: Let them produce the original records of their churches.

So, Tertullian begins by talking about heresies that began “in the midst of the apostolic age” – when the apostles were still around (e.g., the teachings of Simon Magus, cf. ch. 34; Marcion, et al.). In such cases Tertullian appealed to the teaching of those churches founded by the apostles.

But Tertullian also recognized two other kinds of churches: those derived from the apostles (by apostolic succession) and those, due to the “lateness of time” which had no direct connection with the apostles. As a result, the first test of apostolicity applies to those churches who can trace their beginnings either to an apostle or to their successors. The second test of apostolicity, according to Tertullian is sufficient for those churches “of much later date” who “although they derive not their founder from apostles or apostolic men.”

therefore will they be submitted for proof by those churches, who, although they derive not their founder from apostles or apostolic men (as being of much later date, for they are in fact being founded daily) , yet, since they agree in the same faith, they are accounted as not less apostolic because they are akin in doctrine.”

Tertullian’s second test (they are akin in doctrine) applies to all churches, whereas the first test applies to churches that appeal to pedigree alone, either as being founded by the apostles or apostolic men or their successors. Hence, churches “being of much later date” than the apostolic age are accounted apostolic solely “because they are akin in doctrine” to those churches founded by the apostles. This test, therefore, rightly applies to Protestant churches who teach what the apostles taught. This standard, furthermore, was in place long before even the council of Nicea, and it is therefore anachronistic to reference Tertullian’s tests to later-developed teachings of churches claiming apostolic succession.

My reading of early church history is that apostolic succession was necessary in the apostolic age until the Scriptures became available to the churches. As Tertullian wrote:

“those very churches which the apostles founded in person, by declaring the gospel to them directly themselves, both vivâ voce, as the phrase is, and subsequently by their epistles (Prescription Against Heresies, 21)

It is not necessary for Tertullian to appeal directly to the scriptures in chapter 32, because he assumed that the viva voce teaching in the churches founded by the apostles and their successors agrees with the gospel declared in the apostles’ epistles. This is consistent with what Irenaeus wrote one generation earlier than Tertullians, that the apostles, having previously preached the plan of salvation, “delivered to us in the Scriptures, to be for the future the foundation and pillar of our faith.”

My point from Tertullian was not that he taught Sola Scriptura, but rather that apostolicity can be determined independently of apostolic succession. Hence, your “no middle ground: Solo Scriptura or Apostolic Succession” represents a false dilemma. Any church “of much later date” than the apostolic age can be called Apostolic based solely on the second test.

Blessings.
lojahw November 27th, 2009 5:40 pm :
K. Doran, Thank you for pointing out the ambiguity in my statement: “there is no pattern of ECFs from Apostolic times until St. Vincent’s day “who humbly submit their judgments to the Magisterium.”

I meant to say that there was no pattern “beginning from Apostolic times until St. Vincent’s day” of approved teachers “who humbly submit their judgments to the Magisterium.” I agree that Augustine late in the fourth century, having been mentored in Italy, naturally called upon Rome, whose “presidency” in the region was well established. My point is that St. Vincent’s insistence on referring to “approved and outstanding” teachers from antiquity applies to many who have been so recognized throughout church history who did NOT “humbly submit their judgments to the Magisterium.” Hippolytus (the first antipope), for example, had legitimate doctrinal and moral issues with Pope Callistus. I do not think I’m out of line to include Hippolytus as one of those “approved and outstanding” teachers of his day.

As for your quotation from Ignatius, I do not follow that his insistence on the presence of a bishop refutes anything I’ve posted so far. I would suggest you read Tertullian’s Prescription Against Heretics, particularly chapter 32, regarding the tests of an apostolic church (and review my response to Bryan on the subject).

Blessings.
T Ciatoris November 27th, 2009 6:03 pm :
Incidentally, lojahw, your citation of Ps 55:19 in #393 is misleading in the extreme: if you read the context of that verse in Ps 55, without the ellipses, the antecedent of “with whom there is no change” is clearly not God, but those the psalmist’s enemies who do not fear God. I checked the Hebrew, the LXX, and the Vulgate on this to be extra sure. They all agree. Ellipses are dangerous things, lojahw. In your last comment you tried to use the prepositional phrase “with whom there is no change” from this verse to “prove” God’s eternal immutability (in which I do firmly believe). Now that the referent of “with whom there is no change” turns out, in fact, to be the enemies of the psalmist, do you wish to make a similar metaphysical claim about them? Once again, lojahw, this kind of thing doesn’t build up your credibility for me, because it makes me doubt how carefully you’re handling Scripture. I don’t want to be harsh, but I assume that you join me in taking this kind of thing very seriously because of our deep love for Scripture.

If you want a text to juxtapose with John 1:1 to show Divine immutability, by the way, you’ll be much better off with, say, Mal 3:6. Even there, the immediate referent of the verse is the immutability of God’s covenantal faithfulness to the children of Jacob, not His eternal Being, but at least the subject there is God.

in Christ,

TC
1 Cor 16:14
K. Doran November 27th, 2009 6:49 pm :
The point about Ignatius is that his phrase “where Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church” is part of a sentence which reads: “Wherever the bishop shall appear, there let the multitude [of the people] also be; EVEN AS, wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church..” The first part of the sentence suggests that Ignatius is not here making an admission that any old bloke without a bishop can call himself a member of the Catholic Church. And now, who do you suppose the bishops were in Ignatius’ time? Do you think they were anyone with a little charisma who just happened to call himself one (as in some goofy mainstream super-churches today)? Do you think that they didn’t need some kind of direct connection with the apostles or with those who had been ordained by the apostles? If you agree that they did, and you agree with Ignatius’ statements about the necessity of being under the authority of such a bishop, then why the heck aren’t you a member of a Church with valid apostolic succession?

As for Augustine, if you read the documents a little more closely you would see that the claims made by and for the popes of his day were significantly different than those made by or for any other see — so enough with the geographic attempt to diminish Augustine’s witness on the papacy. . . it ain’t gonna fly.

Finally, I have no idea what point you’re making about Hippolytus. He was reconciled with the real pope while they were in prison together, as I understand it. Are you aware of orthodox fourth century people knowingly celebrating the post-heretical (not pre-heretical) writings of people who were condemned as heretics by popes in the second and third centuries? This was an issue which the fourth and fifth century bishops paid very close attention to, I believe. The whole fifth general council was about which writings should and should not be condemned of some generally innocent and generally orthodox people. What do you think they did with the writings of the heretics? Read Quasten’s patrology. There’s a lot of heretical literature that has been destroyed, that we can never get back because orthodox fourth and fifth century scribes were so careful to try to wipe out the seeds of past heresies. The heretics who were condemned by popes from the second century onward were NOT considered equal authorities to the orthodox whose writings were celebrated by the magisterium. It was no free for all. Heresy was deadly serious (and yes, perhaps unfortunately, it lead not infrequently to exile and death, even in the early Church).

We all ought to be under the authority of validly ordained bishops, and in communion with that particular Church (Rome) of which it was said — in a prophecy of the earliest days whose meaning unfolded throughout the centuries — that heresy would never hold sway.

Sincerely,

K. Doran
lojahw November 27th, 2009 9:34 pm :
TC: Slapstick might be an apt description – I was merely trying to say that your critique of Sola Scriptura was based on 2 examples of proof-texting, which indeed has been famously used by heretics and might be acceptable in Solo Scriptura, but never for the practice of Sola Scriptura.

Re: the Bible as the regula fidei, this is indeed a Protestant viewpoint. In the ECF’s, the term was used for the abbreviated statement of Trinitarian faith epitomized in the Nicene Creed. By recognizing the whole Bible as the regula fidei we are saying that one must interpret the faith according to the “whole counsel of God” as recorded in the whole Bible. Apart from that, all abbreviated statements of faith are incomplete (hence, the need for multiple Ecumenical Councils to address nuances not addressed in the Nicene Creed).

Re: your comments in #300 about Solo Verbo. Of course I agree that Jesus, the living Word of God, is the perfect revelation of the Father. This does not, however, diminish the sufficiency of the written Word of God as a full record of God’s plan of salvation. One must not assume that there is any competition between the living and the written Word of God.

Sola Scriptura recognizes that after the apostolic age it was important that the teaching of Jesus and the Apostles be preserved in writing in order to fulfill Jesus’ promise: “heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will never pass away.” I’ve never found anything in the ECF writings that claims to be commanded by Jesus that is not in the Bible, so why would one claim that the Bible is not a sufficient record of the plan of salvation (cf. Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 3.1)?

I hope this helps.

Blessings.
rfwhite November 27th, 2009 9:34 pm :
Bryan Cross and Neal Judisch:

Many thanks for a thoughtful and thought-provoking article. As I reflect on your argumentation and conclusions, please clarify your claim that “only by recovering apostolic succession can Protestants overcome solo scriptura and all its destructive effects.” I take it that, agreeable as you are to Mathison’s assessment, you sum up these debilitating effects by referring to “the ‘cacophony of conflicting and contradictory assertions’ [that] leaves even the Christian bewildered and uncertain, groping about to find the way, the truth and the life of Christ and His gospel.”

Am I right to infer from statements like these and, for that matter, from the article as a whole, that apostolic succession has enabled Roman Catholics to overcome solo scriptura and its destructive effects, not merely among the church’s teaching officers but also among rank-and-file church members? If this inference is incorrect, please point me in the correct direction. If this inference is correct, where would you tell me to look to find the evidence that apostolic succession has had this benefit for Roman Catholics?
lojahw November 27th, 2009 10:08 pm :
TC: ‘sorry, but my computer access has been limited and will remain so for a few days, so I’m just now seeing your post #411. You are 100% right about my poor example from Psalm 55 re: God’s immutability. I appreciate the correction.

Better would be Exodus 3:14 (I AM WHO I AM) and James 1:17. Particularly in Exodus God explains that He never changes: He who was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob will be the same God who will deliver Israel out of Egypt and lead them to the promised land. There is no change in “I AM” from the infinite past to the infinite future. As you know, Jesus applied this designation to Himself a number of times to emphasize that “He who has seen Me has seen the Father” – the I AM never changes. James also says of God: “in whom there is no variation, or shifting shadow.”

Thank you for the reminder to take time to be more careful.

Again, as I have tried to say elsewhere, Sola Scriptura defines the whole Bible as the regula fidei for just this reason. You can correct me by showing the error of my interpretation and we can both return to the Scriptures for a more accurate understanding of God’s revelation for all generations.

Blessings.
lojahw November 27th, 2009 10:32 pm :
Bryan, I just noticed in your response to #374:

So throughout the history of the Church, all the doctrines that have been taught definitively by the Magisterium, in matters of faith or morals, have been divinely protected from error.

Could you be more specific: for example, is there a one-to-one correspondence between the current Catechism of the Catholic Church and the definitive teaching of the Magisterium? If this is way off, where can one find the authorized record of the definitive teaching of the Magisterium?

In Christ,
Lover of Jesus and His Word
lojahw November 27th, 2009 11:08 pm :
Bryan,

It occurred to me that we have been discussing how one knows the boundaries of the apostolic church. You have focused on the pedigree of the church leaders traced to the apostles, and to the infallible teaching interpreting the apostolic faith. But one thing you haven’t addressed is how the teaching of your Church is actually derived from the Apostles. Is there an authentic record that traces the content of the teaching of your Church today to what the Apostles themselves taught? For example, when I read your catechism, it often invokes references to things like the Council of Florence or John of Damascus, but nowhere do I find a record that traces its intermediate references back to the Apostles. Is there such an authentic record that traces these teachings step-by-step to the Apostles?

When using Sola Scriptura, one can directly trace a teaching to the Prophets and Apostles who comprise the foundation of the Church, of which Jesus Christ is the cornerstone. It would seem that for a Church to be called Apostolic, it would be just as important to trace its teachings step by step (as its representatives) to the Apostles.

Thank you.
T Ciatoris November 28th, 2009 12:25 pm :
Dear lojahw,

Thanks for your kind responses. Hope your internet access situation improves.

With regard to our little spat over proof-texting, let me apologize for all the slapstick confusion (Wait, who’s on first?) and try to explain one last time what I understood myself to be doing in #383. I was not giving examples of proof-texting, but taking examples of possible pro-Nicene proof-texts (one of which you’d used yourself in a pretty proof-text-y way in #290, the other of which, I admit, I tacked on gratis) and showing that an Arian could answer these. The possibility that an Arian could respond coherently and plausibly demonstrates the insufficiency of proof-texting. I was by no means endorsing the practice, though I can understand why you might have taken me to mean that proof-texting was a legitimate theater for theological battle—I didn’t mean that.

As an aside on John 1:1: I know Greek grammar relatively well. I don’t endorse the “a God” reading, which I know the JWs famously do. It’s not a strong reading of the grammar, but it’s not, to my knowledge, actually impossible. In any event, it’s more or less futile to argue about an indefinite article in a language that doesn’t have one. But we non-modalist Nicenes have to be careful, too, in the other direction: the referent of the second “God” isn’t the same as the first (“the God”); otherwise you wind up with patripassianism. The first “[the] God” refers to the Person of the Father (the normal biblical referent of ho theos with the definite article); the second “God” refers to the Divine Nature.

I appreciate your irenic response to my calling you out on Ps 55:19. One thing I’d like to put back on the table, though, is the hermeneutical implications of your oopsy-daisy mistake (and I recognize, of course, that we all make them!). When you thought that the antecedent of “with whom there is no change” was God, you were prepared to understand this verse to be making a metaphysical claim about God’s eternal Being. Obviously, you don’t want to make such a claim about the psalmists’ enemies. But why not, if you were prepared before to conclude that it was a metaphysical claim? (To answer based solely on the difference between “God” and “the enemies” is to beg the question.) How do we know when we are entitled to accept statements (esp. about God) metaphysically (e.g., Num 23:19) and when we aren’t (e.g., Gen 6:6; Exod 32:14)? Where is the necessary philosophical framework for making such decisions actually laid out within the Bible? And if it’s not there, who’s to say that an alternative philosophical framework (such as we find in the process theologians) isn’t just as good? I have an answer to this, but do you?

Relatedly, I think your appeal to Exodus as a whole functions similarly to Mal 3:6, emphasizing God’s faithfulness to His covenant people—to apply this to His eternal Nature is still an exegetical leap. The difference I see between us, lojahw, is that because of the teaching I’ve received from Sacred Tradition I have a principled reason to make that exegetical leap with confidence; limited to the principle of sola Scriptura, I don’t think you do.

With respect to Exod 3:14 in particular, I don’t want to get too deep into the question in this forum, but, as I’m sure you know, it’s a very vexed issue. The precise interpretation of the Hebrew is very cryptic and controverted, and one’s interpretation often depends in part on how much weight one is willing to give to the LXX’s choice of translation here (I’m for it, by the way, especially because of the mileage the Gospel of John gets out of it: cf. the Greek of John 1:18). But to draw a firm metaphysical conclusion from Exod 3:14 does suggest the presence of a Platonic philosophical interpretive framework along the lines of what Philo was doing. Re: James 1:17, I love that verse, and (as with the other texts we’ve mentioned) I don’t have any particular problem with referring it to God’s eternal Nature. But I imagine that one could counter by noting that the emphasis is on God’s loving Providence, not on His ontology. But, look, it’s kind of wearying to argue about a Divine attribute on which you and I agree. I just think we shouldn’t get over-confident about how “obvious” some of these things are from various scriptural texts, not least because this will wind up flattening our own reading of Sacred Scripture.

I think I understand your take on the regula fidei. I disagree, but I think it’ll be best to drop it for now. There’s only so much we can do at once. :-)

Regarding my points about “solo Verbo,” you chide me in #408, “One must not assume there is any competition between the living and the written Word of God.” I don’t have time to unpack my reaction to this in full detail; maybe that work can get done elsewhere some other time. But this chastisement actually seems a little ironic to me coming from a proponent of sola Scripture. From my point of view as a Catholic, the Protestant insistence that the Bible is “complete” as the Word of God is actually the position that insinuates some sort of “competition” between Christ’s presence in Scripture and His presence in other modes. I worry that the Protestant approach to the Bible, which divorces it from or at least places it “above” a thick ecclesiology and sacramental theology, constantly runs the risk of reifying and therefore ossifying “the Word of God” into something that I can carry around in my pocket. But Holy Scripture, as proclamation of and genuine encounter with the living Christ in the Holy Spirit, primarily “happens” within the context of the Church’s sacramental life. And so an ontology of “Scripture” that centers on (even if it doesn’t actually terminate in) Scripture as “the Bible” which is “a (divinely inspired, to be sure) book” strikes me as unhealthy and reductionist. I wonder if this helps you understand why your objection, “I’ve never found anything in the ECF writings that claims to be commanded by Jesus that is not in the Bible” (#408), isn’t particularly meaningful to me.

One more thing on that topic: your assumption that the fact that Jesus’ words will not pass away (what a beautiful promise!) somehow must necessitate full inscripturation (John 21:25?) strikes me as an extremely culturally conditioned assumption. Just a thought.

in Christ,

TC
1 Cor 16:14
Keith W. Thompson November 28th, 2009 12:32 pm :
Tim,

You wrote:

We cannot compare the Roman Church to the Protestant sects because the former is the true, united, Catholic Church and the latter is a group of heretical communities that have broken off and splintered from the true Church which Christ founded.

Can we please try to be a “wee-bit” more charitable than this? If this is a site dedicated to opening the lines of discussion between Catholics and Protestants, this sort of language might not be the most… charitable.

Thanks,
Keith WT
lojahw November 28th, 2009 2:19 pm :
Bryan, re: the Vincentian canon.

1) The boundaries of the apostolic Church are determined by Tertullian’s tests: 1) a particular church founded by an apostle (such as Rome) or by a successor of one of the apostles (such as Alexandria); 2) all churches, whether founded early or “later in time” without the benefit of an apostolic successor, must teach the Rule of Faith (a precursor of the Nicene Creed). Your insistence that rule 1 applies to all churches is inconsistent with Tertullian’s own words. It makes more sense to recognize the importance of teaching what the apostles taught than which personalities handed down the teaching. Your insistence on your particular brand of holy orders is special pleading. All valid churches practice ordination of their ministers who have been trained to teach and preach the Gospel. There is no justification for insistence on particular procedures of holy orders unknown to the apostles or the early church (cf. the Didache).

I disagree with your conclusion that parsimony makes the first rule unnecessary. It was historically necessary for the successors of the apostles to refute heresies until the New Testament was available. Scholars have also shown that it takes three generations for myth to grow around historic events, so the continuity of the message of the gospel was proven to heretics in the apostolic age by the apostles, and afterwards by both the successors of the apostles and the New Testament records. It was important that since some of the successors of the apostles might not accurately remember everything they were taught viva voce, that a written record be established as a perpetual reference for the “faith which was once for all delivered to the saints.” After two or three generations, the tendency of human transmission to alter the original message required reference to the permanent authoritative record of the Gospel. By the time of Tertullian (three or four generations after the New Testament was written), there were two witnesses of the gospel: a) the churches founded by the apostles and their successors and b) the New Testament (cf. Prescription, 21). The Trinitarian Rule of Faith Tertullian stated in ch. 13 of The Prescription Against Heretics agreed with the witness of both. The “who” you refer to is definitely recognized by Protestants: they were Christ’s Apostles and the “true doctrine” is that which they handed down in their Gospels and epistles.

As an aside, Tertullian was not an advocate of Sola Scriptura because he did not believe that most Christians had the comprehensive understanding of Scripture to refute heretics. He was justified in his concern. This, however, does not refute Sola Scriptura, but suggests the need for caution in applying it. It is beyond the ability of Christians to practice individually: it must be practiced within and with the participation of the larger Body of Christ.

2. Your charge of “ecclesial deism” is a new one! Deism assumes that God is no longer engaged in His creation. In no way can that charge apply to Sola Scriptura churches, which teach that the Holy Spirit speaks to us through His Word in every generation and accomplishes what He desires even through its reading (cf. Isaiah 55:10-11). God indeed engages us through His Word, which is “living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword … able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Heb. 4:12).

Your article on the subject seems to argue that if God has remained active in His church, then the Church must be infallible, and anyone who denies the Church is infallible denies that God has remained engaged with it. This is a false dilemma. God has sustained His creation with all of its brokenness since the Fall; God sustained His chosen people, Israel, through apostasy (and, as the Apostle Paul taught: one day “all Israel will be saved”). That the Church will one day will be presented as a spotless bride to Christ in no way bypasses the current process of its sanctification and perfection. What you ignore is that God has preserved His perfect Word in Scripture as the infallible record of His plan of salvation. “Today if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts” (Heb. 4:7; cf. Ps. 95:7f).

3. You wrote:

“If we wish to have the mind of the Spirit, we must find the Church, and then find the mind of the Church, and subordinate ourselves to the Spirit in the Church.”

I answered this in #1 above. Special pleading does not help your argument. The Church is wherever Christ’s disciples are gathered together in His name: the Body together with the Head (cf. Matt. 18:20).

4. You also wrote about Protestantism:

“the notion that we can be saved by science.”

This is a straw-man argument that mischaracterizes Sola Scriptura. Sola Scriptura Christians seek salvation through the living Word of God: Christ Himself. We simply trust that the Scriptures are (at this time in history) the supreme and sufficient authoritative teaching that leads to saving faith in Him.

5. You and I disagree on the extent of divine authorization passed on to the successors of the apostles. You claim it is infallible; I do not because the historical record refutes it (e.g., recall Pope Honorius’ Monothelitism for which he was anathematized by the Sixth Ecumenical Council; Pope Urban VIII who charged Galileo with heresy for teaching the diurnal rotation of the earth; etc. – the actual list is long).

6. You wrote:

As for the quotations from St. Vincent, those are fully in agreement with (and supportive of) the Catholic faith and the Catholic Church.”

I would like to know how you defend this statement (perhaps on another thread?).

Blessings.
TurretinFan November 28th, 2009 4:33 pm :
Tom Riello:

You wrote:

K. Doran puts it well concerning no heresy affecting the Roman Church. I noticed in your remarks concerning those sees who possessed Apostolic Sucession (Alexandria, Constantinople etc..,) no reference was made to the Bishop of Rome or that see teaching or affirming heretical doctrine concerning the nature of the Godhead or the Person of Christ. It is possible for those who possess valid orders to be involved in heresy or schism, for example the Donatists. In fact, as then Cardinal Ratzinger points out (Father Aidan Nichols’ excellent book The Thought of Pope Benedict XVI) Cyrprian’s appeal to Apostolic Sucession needed the addition of Augustine’s union with the cathedra petri.

This seems like an odd response. Liberius is fairly accused of signing the Sirmian (semi-Arian) creed, and Honorius I promoted monothelitism. Both were bishops of Rome. Honorius I is listed as the seventieth pope in typical lists, and Liberius as the thirty-sixth.

And these are only two of the less disputed examples. We might, for example, point out Hippolytus of Rome and his reasonable accusations against Zephyrinus, (199-217) and Callistus I (217-22).

It doesn’t appear that the Roman bishops have been free from reasonable accusation of heresy either, even after we grant (a bit unfairly) a list of bishops generated after the fact and selected among competing rivals who are not objectively distinguishable in terms of succession.

-TurretinFan
TurretinFan November 28th, 2009 4:43 pm :
K. Doran:

You wrote:

It became a matter of universal acceptance among orthodox Christians that no council, no matter how great, was considered binding unless it was explicitly accepted by the Roman see.

I wonder when you think this became a matter of universal acceptance among orthodox Christians?

As I have previously noted on my blog (link to the relevant post), the Council of Constance (1414 to 1418) declared “that everyone of whatever state or dignity, even papal, is bound to obey [an ecumenical council] in those matters which pertain to the faith,” which seems not to reflect a belief on their part that they needed papal approval. In fact, requiring papal approval for the Council of Constance would have made it difficult for the council to heal the western schism.

-TurretinFan
TurretinFan November 28th, 2009 4:53 pm :
Several commenters have mentioned Vincent’s canon. This rule, in a typical translation is:

Now in the Catholic Church itself we take the greatest care to hold that which has been believed everywhere, always and by all. That is truly and properly ‘Catholic,’ as is shown by the very force and meaning of the word, which comprehends everything almost universally. We shall hold to this rule if we follow universality, antiquity, and consent. We shall follow universality if we acknowledge that one Faith to be true which the whole Church throughout the world confesses; antiquity if we in no wise depart from those interpretations which it is clear that our ancestors and fathers proclaimed; consent, if in antiquity itself we keep following the definitions and opinions of all, or certainly nearly all, bishops and doctors alike.

There a few obvious difficulties applying Vincent’s canon today, even if it worked in Vincent’s day. First, it is difficult to create any sort of reliable poll of “all, or certainly nearly all, [ancient] bishops and doctors.” Second, selecting certain ancient “Christian” writers over others as fathers sometimes begs the doctrinal question under consideration. Finally, identifying “the whole Church through the world” can be itself a difficult task, without bringing one’s prior doctrinal commitments to bear.

In short, Vincent’s canon is not a workable alternative (at least not these days) to Sola Scriptura. Moreover, Vicent’s canon was not itself a universal, ancient majority belief in any circle. Instead, the ancient majority belief is the one that Vincent identifies as a hypothetical question to his own comments:

Here, it may be, someone will ask, Since the canon of Scripture is complete, and is in itself abundantly sufficient, what need is there to join to it the interpretation of the Church?

Those views, namely that the canon is complete and not just sufficient but abundantly sufficient, are the views that were held not only in Vincent’s day but among those who we consider the fathers of the church.

-TurretinFan
Bryan Cross November 28th, 2009 6:02 pm :
rfwhite (#409),

Strictly speaking, Catholics have never had to “overcome” solo scriptura, because it has never been the case in the Catholic Church that Scripture alone was the only authority. There have always been successors of the Apostles leading the Church. Your question, however, is something like this: How can we know if apostolic succession has prevented a situation within the Catholic Church equivalent to that described by Mathison as resulting from solo scriptura? What is the evidence that apostolic succession prevents theological chaos and confusion? If apostolic succession is supposed to prevent the theological confusion that comes from solo scriptura, why does there seem to be theological confusion among many Catholics? Doesn’t such theological confusion among Catholics undermine your claim that recovering apostolic succession takes care of this problem?

Undoubtedly you are referring to the fact that many Catholics seem theologically confused, even about the doctrines of the Catholic Church. This is, unfortunately, all too true, and it is the result of poor catechesis. But, there are principled differences between the two situations (i.e. confusion resulting from solo scriptura, and confusion resulting from poor catechesis within the Catholic Church under the three-fold authority of Scripture, Magisterium, and Tradition).

First, I should make two preliminary qualifications. As I mentioned earlier in the comments (around #76 I believe), we all agree that apostolic succession (without further qualification) does not prevent individual bishops from falling into heresy and schism. The Catholic Church believes and teaches that the gift of the keys given by Christ to St. Peter are passed down by apostolic succession from St. Peter, and that therefore the successor of St. Peter is protected from error when, exercising his office as shepherd and teacher of all Christians, in virtue of his supreme apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine concerning faith or morals to be held by the whole Church. (Vatican I) All the bishops in communion with the successor of St. Peter, either when assembled or spread out over the world, are also protected from error when they propose a teaching of faith or morals as one to be held by all the faithful. So apostolic succession, without any further qualification, does not prevent a situation of a rogue bishop collecting followers who agree with his interpretation of Scripture and Tradition, etc. Apostolic succession, in conjunction with the keys given to St. Peter, does, however, prevent the kind and degree of theological chaos and confusion that would result if there were no keys and no succession.

In addition, even the degree of clarity we have concerning the identity and nature of the Bible and which books belong to it, is dependent on the Magisterium. (I understand that you may not agree; I’m simply describing things from the Catholic point of view. Our next article will address the canon question.) The solo scriptura position is, in that respect, parasitic on the previous decisions by the Magisterium regarding the canon of Scripture. It necessarily but unconsciously borrows even the one thing all solo scriptura-ists have in common (i.e. commitment to the [Protestant] Bible) from prior decisions by the Magisterium of the Catholic Church regarding the canon.

So, how can we know if apostolic succession (as just qualified) has prevented a situation within the Catholic Church equivalent to that described by Mathison as resulting from solo scriptura? In order to answer that question, we have to understand the difference between the sort of theological confusion that necessarily follows solo scriptura (and the kind of division that entails), and the sort of theological confusion we presently find among many Catholics (and the kind of unity that permits).

Solo scriptura entails that no interpretation of Scripture is definitively established and irreversible. Given solo scriptura, we pick up the Bible as if no one has ever picked it up before, because no one’s having picked it up before requires anything of the way we now read it. That results in entirely unrestricted theological uncertainty, excepting whatever is perspicuous to all readers of at least minimal intelligence. This is why unrestricted theological uncertainty is intrinsic to solo scriptura. Take a thousand people and give each a Bible, and ask them each to come up independently with a systematic theology, the result would be many different incompatible systems, even though there would be a good deal of theological common ground. The Bible itself is insufficient to adjudicate between theological systems, in part because individuals each bring different presuppositions to the interpretive process. For these reasons the interpretive disagreements would be perpetual, because the persons would be at an irresolvable theological impasse.

How do we know this? This experiment has already been done; it is Protestantism. Perspicuity of Scripture is not sufficient in itself to maintain one Church, or to restore unity out of fragmentation. The evidence for this can be seen in various sects in Church history, but especially in the almost five hundred year history of Protestantism. Wherever apostolic succession is lost, a process of fragmentation immediately commences, and the history of Protestantism demonstrates this indisputably.

The situation is so bad that most contemporary Christians have even lost our memory of the historical unity of the Church, and hence we think nothing of seeing a building belonging to a different denomination on every street corner. We think nothing of seeing this sort thing in every Saturday newspaper. Fragmentation is now normal to us, so normal that we don’t even perceive it as evil, as not the way things are supposed to be. The unity of the Church has been transferred (in our minds) to the invisible Church. That was the only way to rationalize the evil of schism, a word no one even uses anymore, because it is not applicable when the Church is invisible. It would be unbelievably scandalous to the contemporary Christian mind to conceive of all these different denominations (and independent churches) on every street corner as schisms from the Church. We’ve become so desensitized to schism, that the very suggestion that denominations are in schism from the Church prompts charges of arrogance against Catholics and the Catholic Church. This widespread fragmentation is a result of the unrestricted theological uncertainty intrinsic to solo scriptura and its rejection of the Magisterium havings its authority in succession from the Apostles.

Contrast that sort of theological uncertainty with the theological epistemological situation within the Catholic Church. The three-fold Catholic authority structure of Scripture, Magisterium and Tradition entails that over the course of twenty-one ecumenical councils, how I can interpret Scripture is not wide open and indeterminate. There are many theological boundaries that have already been laid down by the Church once and for all, and so the range of orthodox interpretive options is limited to those that remain within those boundaries. That leaves two sorts of theological uncertainty possible within Catholicism: one resulting from ignorance of what the Church has already defined, and the other resulting from open theological/interpretive possibilities that the Church has not closed off. Both of those types of uncertainty are quite different from the sort of uncertainty resulting from having no Magisterium, but having only a Bible (in solo scriptura).

The first sort of ignorance (i.e. ignorance of what the Church has already defined) is not intrinsic to Catholicism per se, as unrestricted theological uncertainty is intrinsic to solo scriptura. Ignorance of what the Church has already defined can largely be remedied simply by reading the Catechism, and the acts of the Councils, or any collection of Catholic dogmas (e.g. Ott’s Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma). We will always have the ignorant among us, just as we will always have the poor among us. (Matt 26:11) But theological uncertainty due to mere ignorance of what the Church has already explicitly and clearly stated is easily remedied, while theological uncertainty resulting from what I have referred to elsewhere as “underdetermination of hermeneutical disambiguation,” (i.e. an indeterminacy that is objective, not merely subjective) cannot be remedied. Of course Catholics are fine with mystery. The problem with objective indeterminacy is that it cannot be the epistemological foundation, without entailing skepticism. Objective indeterminacy has to be located within an epistemic framework in which other things are known. For example, the Eucharist is a mystery, but we know that it was instituted by Christ. But solo scriptura does not provide that epistemic framework; it does not provide the framework for distinguishing essentials from non-essentials, for answering the second-order question of what is allowable mystery and what is not. And if the second-order questions are all up in the air, fragmentation and disintegration are inevitable.

The other sort of theological uncertainty possible within Catholicism (i.e. open theological possibilities that the Church has not closed off) is also very different from the sort of theological uncertainty entailed by solo scriptura. This kind of theological uncertainty is not divisive, because Catholics know (or, if they don’t, can easily find out) that differing opinions on these matters are not schism-justifying differences, precisely for the reason that the Church has not made any decision about them at this point in time. So it is a first-order theological uncertainty (whether this particular doctrine/interpretation is true or not) but not a second-order theological uncertainty (i.e. whether this particular doctrine/interpretation is essential/non-essential, orthodox/heretical). But as just mentioned, there is no principled basis within solo scriptura for distinguishing essentials from non-essentials, orthodoxy from heresy. In solo scriptura, orthodoxy is what I think Scripture says, and what I think Scripture says you must say as well, if I am to consider you a believer. Heresy is anything contrary to that. Whether it really is orthodox or heretical, I may not know for sure, but going by my interpretation of Scripture is the best I can do, given solo scriptura. This is second-order theological uncertainty, and it is intrinsic to solo scriptura, and makes solo scriptura intrinsically disposed to perpetual fragmentation and disintegration.

In other words, under solo scriptura, among the theological questions that necessarily remain unanswered are “what is essential and what is not,” “what justifies schism, and what does not.” There is no ground or basis within solo scriptura for a distinction between essential and non-essentials; each person has to determine for himself what are the essentials and what are the non-essentials. So the sort of theological uncertainty entailed by solo scriptura potentially justifies fragmentation upon fragmentation, while the two sorts of theological uncertainty possible within Catholicism do not allow or justify any schism. The two sorts of theological uncertainty possible within Catholicism call on Catholics to deepen their understanding of the Church’s faith, and extend liberty on non-essentials. The Church, not the individual, decides on essentials and non-essentials; the Church, not the individual, interprets and defines the faith. And this is where the principled ontological difference between a book and a person makes a difference. (See V.A. of our article.) The sort of theological uncertainty entailed by solo scriptura is intrinsic and objective; no amount of deeper study of Scripture will necessarily resolve it, because of the problem of underdetermination of hermeneutical disambiguation.

So what is the evidence that apostolic succession (as qualified above) has enabled the Catholic Church to avoid the effects of solo scriptura? The best evidence is that for two-thousand years, the Church has remained one, with one faith shared by 1.1 billion people, while those Protestants who have adopted some form of solo scriptura in less than five hundred years have fragmented into so many pieces that many don’t even bother to belong to a denomination, but instead form independent ‘megachurches’ or ’emergent’ churches.

Those Catholics who have rejected the one faith of the Church cannot be cited as evidence of Church disunity, without begging the question. In other words, in order to treat dissenting Catholics as evidence against the unified faith of the Church, one would have to assume that the beliefs of the dissenters belong to the faith of the Church. That we recognize them as dissenters shows that we already know that they are at odds with the teaching of the Church. They aren’t in the same condition as someone who simply doesn’t know what the Church teaches. Those Catholics who know what the Church teaches, and willfully reject it, excommunicate themselves, according to Canon Law (1364): “With due regard for can. 194, part 1, n. 2, an apostate from the faith, a heretic or a schismatic incurs automatic (latae sententiae) excommunication.”

But those Catholics who simply don’t know what the Church teaches, even if their ignorance is a result of culpable neglect, remain in full communion with the Church. Their ignorance of the faith isn’t a strike against the necessity of apostolic succession for Church unity, because that necessity does not entail that every Catholic must have perfect agreement and certainty about every single doctrine of the Church. (See Hauerwas’ comments) Some members of the Body are weaker, either in the subjective dimension of their faith (i.e. the firmness and certainty of their faith) or in the objective dimension of their faith (i.e. their comprehensive grasp of the objective faith of the Church). The same is true of those Catholics who know what the Church teaches, but wrestle with doubts about particular doctrines, though nevertheless in obedience to Christ they affirm those doctrines, even while seeking better to understand the basis for them. That kind of situation is altogether different from myriads of schisms, each holding a doctrine incompatible with the others, and after almost five-hundred years of continued fragmentation, seemingly now standing at an impasse with respect to resolution and reconciliation with each other, unless they recover that principle of unity (principium unitatis) from which they separated in the sixteenth century.

If this inference is correct, where would you tell me to look to find the evidence that apostolic succession has had this benefit for Roman Catholics?

The best evidence is the Church herself.

EPIC :120 English from Catholics Come Home on Vimeo.

The video’s message for lapsed Catholics is the same message for those who lapsed a generation ago, and those who for different reasons left almost five hundred years ago.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
TurretinFan November 28th, 2009 6:08 pm :
Michael Liccione:

You wrote:

The fundamental question that’s been reached at this point in the thread may be put thus: What are the authoritative criteria by which the inquirer-in-faith can identify the authentic community of faith, aka “the Church,” for the sake of knowing her faith as that which has been divinely revealed, and hence as an object of divine faith rather than just human opinion?

While that may be an interesting question (it seems a tad loaded from where I’m standing), it does not seem to be a question particularly raised by the article or by the majority of the comments that I’ve seen in this box.

Nevertheless, the question still pushes us back to a recurring theme in this box: the ultimate arbiter issue. Assuming, for the sake of the argument, that there are “authoritative criteria by which the inquirer-in-faith can identify the authentic [church],” the individual is asked to judge again – twice now: first in identifying the criteria, and second in applying the criteria to various churches.

The question is loaded because the third judgment (whether one should be seeking a single communal entity to trust) is already taken as assumed.

That does make the individual the ultimate arbiter in some way, but we trust that the authors of the article (Bryan and Neal, as I understand) do think that there is a principled distinction between that position and the position of sola scriptura.

-TurretinFan
TurretinFan November 28th, 2009 6:33 pm :
Tim Troutman wrote:

We cannot compare the Roman Church to the Protestant sects because the former is the true, united, Catholic Church and the latter is a group of heretical communities that have broken off and splintered from the true Church which Christ founded.

Someone else (I don’t recall who) had cricitized this as potentially uncharitable. I don’t agree with that criticism, Tim. I think you are simply honestly and frankly stating your opinion, and I’m glad you are willing to be open about it. I commend you for being frank.

We (well, some of us) on the other side of the Tiber have a very different view, as you doubtless realize. My question to you: how can we resolve those different points of view? After all, truth is objective – not subjective. How can we determine the objective truth of whether Rome has maintained the faith of the apostles or departed from it?

-TurretinFan
mateo November 28th, 2009 6:42 pm :
lojahw :… is there a one-to-one correspondence between the current Catechism of the Catholic Church and the definitive teaching of the Magisterium?

To answer your question, we would need to be precise in what you mean by “definitive” in your phrase “the definitive teaching of the Magisterium”.

A doctrine of the Church is said to be de fide definita when it has been solemnly defined through the extraordinary exercise of the magisterium. Doctrines that are de fide definita are infallible.

Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, Dr. Ludwig Ott

If Truths are defined by a solemn judgement of faith (definition) of the Pope or of a General Council, they are “de fide definita”.

—————–

Pocket Catholic Dictionary, John A. Hardon, S. J

MAGISTERIUM, EXTRAORDINARY The Church’s teaching office exercised in a solemn way, as in formal declarations of the Pope or ecumenical councils of bishops approved by the Pope. When the extraordinary magisterium takes the form of papal definitions or conciliar decisions binding on the consciences of all the faithful in matters of faith and morals, it is infallible.

Doctrines that are de fide definita are received by the Church through the extraordinary exercise of the magisterium. The ordinary way that the Church receives infallible doctrine is through the ordinary and universal magisterium.

—————–

THE CHURCH’S MAGISTERIUM, by John Young

The term ordinary universal Magisterium means an exercise of the Church’s teaching office where there is complete agreement, or fairly close to complete agreement, among the Catholic Bishops of the world that a particular doctrine is certainly true, but without a solemn definition. …

——————

Pocket Catholic Dictionary, John A. Hardon, S. J

MAGISTERIUM, ORDINARY The teaching office of the hierarchy under the Pope, exercised normally, that is, through the regular means of instructing the faithful. These means are all the usual channels of communication, whether written, spoken, or practical. When the ordinary magisterium is also universal, that is, collectively intended for all the faithful, it is also infallible.

—————————–

Code of Canon Law

Can. 750 Those things are to be believed by divine and catholic faith which are contained in the word of God as it has been written or handed down by tradition, that is, in the single deposit of faith entrusted to the Church, and which are at the same time proposed as divinely revealed either by the solemn magisterium of the Church, or by its ordinary and universal magisterium, which is manifested by the common adherence of Christ’s faithful under the guidance of the sacred magisterium. All are therefore bound to shun any contrary doctrines.

Back to your question, “… is there a one-to-one correspondence between the current Catechism of the Catholic Church and the definitive teaching of the Magisterium?” If you are asking if everything written in the CCC is de fide definita doctrine, then the answer is no. There are de fide definita doctrines quoted within the CCC. There are also infallible doctrines quoted in the CCC that has been received through the ordinary and universal magisterium, and there is material in the CCC that would not be considered to be infallible.

lojahw :… is there a one-to-one correspondence between the current Catechism of the Catholic Church and the definitive teaching of the Magisterium? If this is way off, where can one find the authorized record of the definitive teaching of the Magisterium?

There is no reason to assume the CCC is “way off” just because not every word within the CCC is a statement of infallible doctrine. The CCC is a “a sure and authentic reference text for teaching catholic doctrine.”

APOSTOLIC CONSTITUTION

ON THE PUBLICATION OF THE CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
PREPARED FOLLOWING THE SECOND VATICAN ECUMENICAL COUNCIL

JOHN PAUL, BISHOP
SERVANT OF THE SERVANTS OF GOD
FOR EVERLASTING MEMORY

The Doctrinal Value of the Text

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, which I approved 25 June last and the publication of which I today order by virtue of my Apostolic Authority, is a statement of the Church’s faith and of catholic doctrine, attested to or illumined by Sacred Scripture, the Apostolic Tradition and the Church’s Magisterium. I declare it to be a sure norm for teaching the faith and thus a valid and legitimate instrument for ecclesial communion. … I ask all the Church’s Pastors and the Christian faithful to receive this catechism in a spirit of communion and to use it assiduously in fulfilling their mission of proclaiming the faith and calling people to the Gospel life. This catechism is given to them that it may be a sure and authentic reference text for teaching catholic doctrine and particularly for preparing local catechisms.

If you are interested in a reference book for Catholic Dogma, I recommend:

Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, by Dr. Ludwig Ott.

Recognized as the greatest summary of Catholic dogma ever put between two covers. A one-volume encyclopedia of Catholic doctrines. Tells exactly what the Church teaches on any particular topic. Tells when the pronouncement was made and gives the sources from Scripture, Church Councils, Papal statements and the Fathers and Doctors of the Church. Essential for priests, seminarians, parents and teachers.

You can read the introduction to Dr. Ott’s book here.

Please take the time to read section 8 of the introduction, “The Theological Grades of Certainty”.

You can find a list of all the de fide definita doctrines listed in Dr. Ott’s book here.

Another invaluable reference book is Denzinger, The Sources of Catholic Dogma.
mateo November 28th, 2009 7:20 pm :
lojahw :… It occurred to me that we have been discussing how one knows the boundaries of the apostolic church.

The Catholic Church speaks about the visible boundaries of the Church in her documents, e.g.:

Even in the beginnings of this one and only Church of God there arose certain rifts, which the Apostle strongly condemned. But in subsequent centuries much more serious dissensions made their appearance and quite large communities came to be separated from full communion with the Catholic Church for which, often enough, men of both sides were to blame.

The children who are born into these Communities and who grow up believing in Christ cannot be accused of the sin involved in the separation, and the Catholic Church embraces upon them as brothers, with respect and affection. For men who believe in Christ and have been truly baptized are in communion with the Catholic Church even though this communion is imperfect. The differences that exist in varying degrees between them and the Catholic Church- whether in doctrine and sometimes in discipline, or concerning the structure of the Church–do indeed create many obstacles, sometimes serious ones, to full ecclesiastical communion. The ecumenical movement is striving to overcome these obstacles. But even in spite of them it remains true that all who have been justified by faith in Baptism are members of Christ’s body, and have a right to be called Christian, and so are correctly accepted as brothers by the children of the Catholic Church.

Moreover, some and even very many of the significant elements and endowments which together go to build up and give life to the Church itself, can exist outside the visible boundaries of the Catholic Church: the written word of God; the life of grace; faith, hope and charity, with the other interior gifts of the Holy Spirit, and visible elements too. All of these, which come from Christ and lead back to Christ, belong by right to the one Church of Christ.

The brethren divided from us also use many liturgical actions of the Christian religion. These most certainly can truly engender a life of grace in ways that vary according to the condition of each Church or Community. These liturgical actions must be regarded as capable of giving access to the community of salvation.

Decree On Ecumenism – Unitatis Redintegratio (3)

———————

Furthermore, the salvific action of Jesus Christ, with and through his Spirit, extends beyond the visible boundaries of the Church to all humanity.
Dominus Iesus (12)

————————–

For those who are not formallyand visibly members of the Church, “salvation in Christ is accessible by virtue of a grace which, while having a mysterious relationship to the Church, does not make them formally part of the Church, but enlightens them in a way which is accommodated to their spiritual and material situation.
Dominus Iesus (20)

An adult becomes a visible member of the Apostolic Church by receiving valid Sacraments of Initiation (Baptism, Confirmation, and Eucharist).
lojahw November 28th, 2009 9:23 pm :
TC wrote:

How do we know when we are entitled to accept statements (esp. about God) metaphysically (e.g., Num 23:19) and when we aren’t (e.g., Gen 6:6; Exod 32:14)? Where is the necessary philosophical framework for making such decisions actually laid out within the Bible? And if it’s not there, who’s to say that an alternative philosophical framework (such as we find in the process theologians) isn’t just as good? I have an answer to this, but do you?

I find it curious that you introduce pagan philosophical frameworks. Tertullian famously wrote: “What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What concord is there between the Academy and the Church?” (Prescription Against Heretics, 7). Indeed, it saddens me to read church fathers (including Augustine and Aquinas) who, in my opinion, gave too much deference to such philosophers. On the other hand, as Cyril of Jerusalem wrote: “Go to the bee, and learn how industrious she is: how, hovering round all kinds of flowers, she collects her honey for your benefit” (Catechetical Lectures 9.13). God has revealed Himself in many ways, even to pagan philosophers; yet most clearly and infallibly, in His Son, and through His prophets and Apostles.

Sola Scriptura recognizes the “analogy of faith” – that is: Scripture interprets Scripture. The things that are really important are repeated in Scripture (like the story of the kings of Israel and the fourfold telling of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus). The point is that every heretical interpretation of a particular passage of Scripture can be countered by a careful examination including other parallel passages. This is particularly true of passages such as the ones you cite above about God. Passages that teach about God’s nature cannot be contradicted by an interpretation of other passages that are presented as observations from a human perspective (e.g., “so the Lord changed his mind…”). Re: Exodus 3:14, the Hebrew is unquestionably ontological: two identical instances of the Qal imperfect form of “I AM” connected by a relative particle is clearly self-referencing. While one might infer “faithfulness” from this ontological description, it is a merely result of God’s nature. In deference to our moderators, if you would like to further discuss the LXX translation, John 1:1, etc. I would recommend doing so offline (CTC can give you my email address).

From my point of view as a Catholic, the Protestant insistence that the Bible is “complete” as the Word of God is actually the position that insinuates some sort of “competition” between Christ’s presence in Scripture and His presence in other modes.

TC: perhaps your difficulty here is that (as elsewhere) your narrow focus takes your mind away from the larger context. In this case, you seem to have forgotten the Reformers’ Solus Christus. We are saved by Christ alone (not Scripture!). I agree with you about our encounter of the living Christ both in dying and rising with Him in baptism and in the remembrance of His once-for-all sacrifice in the Eucharist until He comes, yet I am also deeply moved when I hear His voice in the Gospels calling me to follow Him.

Blessings.
lojahw November 28th, 2009 9:38 pm :
Mateo,

I understand what the CCC says about infallible definitions of faith, but I asked for a list of them. You RC’s make a big deal over knowing the exact canon of Scripture, but can you not give us a list of your infallible Magisterial teachings? (BTW: my question was a response to Bryan’s quote. If you want to know what he meant by it, you should ask him.)

Peace in Christ,
lojahw
lojahw November 28th, 2009 9:51 pm :
TurretinFan: You shouldn’t feel threatened by the Vincentian Canon, which a) limits itself to investigations regarding the doctrine of the Trinity; b) requires solid support of ancient teachers to any novel teaching not found in the Rule of Faith from the beginning (e.g., Marian devotion, paying homage to images, even the role of the bishop of Rome).

Blessings.
Tim A. Troutman November 28th, 2009 11:49 pm :
TurretinFan – thanks for understanding. I think you’ve been around the Catholic-Reformed discussion (not just here) long enough to know that I don’t mean that any of you are heretics. I can understand where Keith was coming from; sometimes, even if something is true (or one thinks it is) it might be better to hold your tongue. At any rate – to you, thanks for understanding, to Keith – please excuse my imprudence.

How can we determine the objective truth of whether Rome has maintained the faith of the apostles or departed from it?

Well, the Reformation didn’t start overnight and it ain’t gonna end overnight either. It takes just a second for a body to get wounded, but it takes a long time for it to heal.

Attempting to determine the objective truth is exactly what we hope to do here at CTC. So many of these issues are so interdependent that it is difficult to plot the best course of argument. Do we start with ecclesiology or hermeneutics? Do we start with monergism/synergism or with apostolic succession? We set out on a deliberate course of ‘lead articles’ which we’re posting and though it never plays out this way, in theory, one would not bother reading article 3 until they substantially (or at least conditionally) agreed with article 2. But I think no matter how we lay that out, we require some provisions on account of the reader to take our arguments fully into account. The best explanation of what I mean can be seen in my response to Jason Stellman in #145 above. I assumed he substantially agreed with the points made in articles prior to this one (at least provisionally) and conceded that the only way I could fully refute his objection to this one was dependent upon future articles.

That is all to say that this is a long and tedious process which requires, from all of us, patience, humility, and above all, a love for the truth. I am glad to be seeking it along side of you.
Bryan Cross November 29th, 2009 12:44 am :
Friends,

We at CTC are trying to create and maintain a context in which there can be productive ecumenical dialogue. Of course that doesn’t mean that anyone who comments here must agree with us. That would make ecumenical dialogue impossible. But, in order for us to have a productive ecumenical dialogue, there is a certain basic minimum that we have to hold in common, not primarily in doctrine, but in method. Here I’ll say something about that method.

Many Protestants who participate here are excellent examples of how it needs to be done. They ask sincere questions, usually just a few at a time. They also raise excellent objections, again, only a few at a time. They usually don’t post more than once a day, because they are focused and intellectually disciplined, and want to give careful thought to their questions and their answers. But they don’t just post and leave. They understand that this sort of dialogue requires long-term participation to be truly productive. Yet in their comments they are very measured, restrained, focused on the fundamental underlying points of disagreement, and seeking with us to get to the bottom of them. Their goal is not ultimately to refute us, even where they think we are wrong, and even though refuting us on certain points might be their proximate goal. Their fundamental goal is to find the truth with us, no matter who turns out to have been right or wrong.

And when you are talking with someone who is seeking the truth, and who treats you as someone who is also seeking the truth, then you recognize that coming to agreement by rational dialogue is a real possibility; such truth-seeking charity gives hope to the future of ecumenical dialogue. We might not end up persuading each other, at least in the short-run, but even so, in such dialogue we come away with a deeper respect for the other person, precisely because we sense a sincere love for God and for the truth in the other person, and for a recognition in the other person of our own love for God and for the truth. Neither person can deny that shared affinity, nor deny that the other knows it. It is a bond of charity that impels toward unity in the truth.

The contrasting approach is not one of dialogue. It is monologue, even if many people are speaking. It consists in throwing every objection within reach at the other person(s), and asserting the truth of one’s own position, as often and loudly as possible. Dialogue with such persons is futile, because they seem to have no interest in finding the truth, but only in debate, or in demonstrating superiority by a flood of information or tangential objections, or in hindering others from hearing what those who disagree with them have to say. One commenter of this sort posted eighteen comments in one day, most of which were not replies to our replies to his comments. That’s a sign of sophistry. There is no possibility of careful and serious dialogue when one person dumps a truckload of objections/information/contrary assertions, etc. on his interlocutors. It shows disrespect for the other persons at the [virtual] table.

Another sign of sophistry is ‘refutation by high-handed assertion’. Table-pounding assertions kill ecumenical dialogue, because nothing more can be done when one or both sides resort to table-pounding, instead of ‘backing-up’, so to speak, in charity, to find the common ground necessary in order to show the other person why his position/claim is incorrect. But table-pounding assertions and sophistry also ruin the dialogue space for others who do know how to engage in rational dialogue, and wish to do so. It is one thing to explain one’s own position, how it differs from one’s interlocutor’s, and why one thinks one’s interlocutor’s position is false. That is good and necessary for ecumenical dialogue. But simply asserting that one’s interlocutor’s position is false doesn’t show anything. It is a resort to power, rather than reasoning, to resolve disagreement.

The sophist generally does not give arguments, but he often says things like “I would suggest that …” or “I would argue that …”, as though his subjunctives are suitable replacements for real arguments. He patronizes his interlocutors by using the imperative voice, and treating them as though they have never read works they have in fact read. He treats statements like “I maintain that … ” or “I hold that … ” or any other self-descriptive statements as evidence for the truth of his own position, and sufficient to refute contrary positions. Philosophers (and truth-lovers in general) aren’t fooled by such techniques. We see right through them. But such sophistic techniques (and the persons who use them) destroy the contextual space for others who want to pursue genuine ecumenical dialogue.

People are generally not persuaded by other persons who don’t show any interest in truly understanding their position, but merely assert the truth of their own. The more one person sees that the other person truly understands his position, the more he can take seriously the other’s criticisms of and objections to his own position. The more he sees that the other person does not understand his position, and seems to have no interest in coming to understand it accurately, the more difficult it is to take his objections seriously. The good interlocutor recognizes that when the other person keeps pointing out that he is misunderstanding his position, it is time to stop criticizing (let alone asserting the truth of his own position), to slow down, start listening, and starting asking sincere questions.

We here at CTC are striving to foster genuine ecumenical dialogue and exclude the practice of sophistry. The necessary mutually shared method for engaging in genuine ecumenical dialogue avoids sophistry and pursues the truth in charity and mutual understanding, as I described above. Although we at CTC do not perfectly meet this ideal ourselves, it is what we are striving for, and what we hope our readers and participants will strive for as well. Popular internet ecumenical dialogue often is little more than sophistical sparring, and it sours people to the hope of real progress through dialogue, especially those who do not understand the difference between sophistry and the rational pursuit of truth. Helping develop the virtues required for rational dialogue (and avoiding sophistry) is part of our aim here. What we hope for ultimately is that through mutual pursuit of the truth in charity and these other virtues, we can come to unity in the truth on these matters that now divide us, so that we all, together, may bring glory to Christ in His Church in a time when the unity of Christians before the world is more important than ever before. May God give us His people grace this Advent to prepare for His Second Coming. May we bear the light of Christ to the world in darkness.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
T Ciatoris November 29th, 2009 5:39 pm :
Dear lojahw,

Here’s what I was trying to communicate about philosophical frameworks (pagan or otherwise) for exegesis, in three simple points:

1. Everybody has one. This includes you and it includes me. There is no such thing as a philosophically innocent reading. There are philosophically unaware readings, philosophically unsophisticated readings, and philosophically inconsistent readings. But there aren’t philosophically innocent ones.

2. Not everybody has the same one. Yours and mine, for example, are different from a process theologian’s.

3. Therefore, an intellectually responsible reading of the Bible should be attentive to its philosophical framework and the reasons that justify it.

That’s all I was trying to say, lojahw. Perhaps I was less than clear, but please try to give my comments a charitable reading.

I’m not positive how you wish to synthesize the quotes from Tertullian and Cyril of Jerusalem. I assume it is this:

God has revealed Himself in many ways, even to pagan philosophers; yet most clearly and infallibly, in His Son, and through His prophets and Apostles.

If that’s the case, then (in company with St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas) I heartily agree.

Your assertions about Exod 3:14 are not persuasive. Your only actual argument is to parse the Hebrew verb—to identify its stem and aspect—and then to tell me what this “clearly” means. This kind of grammatical argument does not of itself prove that Exod 3:14 constitutes an ontological statement; it’s just a bare assertion designed to dazzle those who haven’t studied Hebrew. I don’t understand what your point is when you (rightly) say the statement is “self-referencing”. Nobody here has claimed that God wasn’t referring to Himself in Exod 3:14. But “self-referencing” does not obviously equate to “ontological”? Frankly, a truly flat reading of the self-referential statement would make it merely tautological: on purely grammatical terms, anybody could say it! On your grammatical logic, Popeye’s “I yam what I yam” would have to indicate ontological immutability as well.

But let’s be clear, once again: I’m not disagreeing with your conclusion; I’m disagreeing with your methods. Throughout our conversation about various texts you’ve been responding as if I disagreed with the results of your exegesis, even though I’ve repeatedly noted my agreement. I believe that God is eternally immutable. I believe that this is one (very important!) aspect of the inspired meaning of Exod 3:14. But I disagree with the assumptions and methods behind your exegesis.

I agree that this is not the place for further discussion of the LXX or John 1. Since I agree with the results of your exegesis of these texts, I don’t feel an urgent need to pursue them with you privately. If, though, you think I’m missing something important, you may request my email from the moderators. Sorry to just put the ball back in your court. I’m not trying to be coy, but my interest is just not sufficiently acute to initiate myself.

You wrote:

TC: perhaps your difficulty here is that (as elsewhere) your narrow focus takes your mind away from the larger context.

Insult noted.

In this case, you seem to have forgotten the Reformers’ Solus Christus. We are saved by Christ alone (not Scripture!).

Unless I’m completely confused, lojahw—and that’s possible, I admit—Solus Christus is fundamentally a soteriological slogan, and sola Scriptura is one about Divine Revelation. I’m aware of the reformers’ Solus Christus, but I thought we were discussing Divine Revelation, which the reformers, unlike Catholics, wished to limit to sola Scriptura.

I am also deeply moved when I hear His voice in the Gospels calling me to follow Him.

Excellent! Beautiful! Me, too. :-)

Lojahw, please be assured that if you wish to respond again, I’ll happily read your comments thoughtfully and carefully. But I think it’s time we parted ways on this thread, so this will be my final comment to you—I guess that makes me a sitting duck! :-) Thanks for the invigorating conversation. Have a blessed Advent.

Your fellow lover of Jesus and His Word,

TC
1 Cor 16:14
lojahw November 29th, 2009 7:34 pm :
And a blessed Advent to you as well, TC. (I agree with you that further dialog between us on this subject is of doubtful value.)

I do hope someone else will be able to help you understand Sola Scriptura better than I have.

Blessings.
Andrew Preslar November 29th, 2009 9:11 pm :
lojahw,

I do hope someone else will be able to help you understand Sola Scriptura better than I have.

It is with some reluctance, but in hope of improving our quality of conversation, that I draw your attention to the rude and unbecoming nature of this comment. The rudeness might be unintentional. I hope so.

Obviously, you have not convinced your interlocutor that Sola Scriptura is true. And it is understandable that you hope that everyone will come to believe that Sola Scriptura is true.

But not affirming the principle of Sola Scriptura, and not understanding the principle of Sola Scriptura, are two very different things.

On a superficial level, your comment is self-deprecating, in that it implies that you have failed to teach your interlocutors a valuable lesson. On a more fundamental level, your comment is insulting to your interlocutors, because it implies that they stand need of some special instruction, due to a lack of understanding on their part.

It would be better to say that “I hope someone else will be able to convince you of the truth of Sola Scriptura,” since this statement would be based on an objective fact, namely, that Catholics deny the principle of Sola Scriptura, and a subjective fact to which you have direct access, namely, your wish that Catholics (and everyone else) would accept this principle.

As it is, the language you use presumes something that you have no direct knowledge of, nor have demonstrated, namely, the ignorance of your interlocutor.

That is the kind of thing that tends to shut down dialogue. But we want to keep the lines of communication open.

Andrew Preslar
Paige Britton November 29th, 2009 10:55 pm :
Dear TC,
Here I am again!
This is in response to your #386 (which in turn responded to my #370) sometime last week.

Part of the difficulty involved in a conversation like this is that, since we are not sitting across from each other at the kitchen table, we can’t very quickly correct misapprehensions & missteps. I do apologize if any of my phrasing comes across as slighting – that is surely not my intent. (I spoke of ‘resorting’ to the ‘assumption’ of a magisterium as if from the p.o.v. of a Protestant coming to the point of throwing in the towel, not meaning to caricature your own submission to Church teaching. :)

A second difficulty arises because I am sometimes standing on tiptoes trying to grasp what you are asking, even before I begin to draft any kind of response. I’ve not had any formal training in this area, so I am a funny mix of knowledge and ignorance. Acting on the theory that it’s ultimately better (if initially more painful) to take a stab at answering and receive correction than it is to risk nothing and learn nothing, I plunge ahead. Thanks for your patience, and your willingness to converse.

Some thoughts and Q’s:
1. Re. Material & Formal Sufficiency: I have heard these terms, but I am not familiar with their meanings. Do they describe the difference between *content* and *authority*? And does the difference between Protestant & Catholic understanding here lie in our different confessions of what the Bible inherently IS? It would seem that we (P’s) would want to stress that the Bible contains its own authority and interprets itself, so does this mean that we find “formal sufficiency” in the text while you find it in the Church?

2. Re. Perspicuity: I questioned your phrase “self-obviously confirmable from a simple, dogmatically unconditioned reading of Scripture,” noting that one could yet make a *complex* study of the biblical text in order to arrive at (or evaluate) a doctrinal formulation, and still not expect to need infallible Magisterial help. You felt that I was implying that all believers need to be formally educated in order to get at the doctrine of the Trinity. Now I am wondering whose perspicuity we are talking about. If you were speaking in terms of Protestant perspicuity (rather than a more general definition), here is my understanding of it (which I’ve double checked with my local Reformed scholars):

a.) Perspicuity is an attribute inherent to the Bible itself, rather than to individual doctrines in varying degrees, and it describes God’s intention to communicate his revelation directly to believers through his written Word with no help from supernaturally guided interpreters (of the Catholic Magisterial sort). Individual doctrines may be more or less *obvious* in the text (e.g., Creation v. Trinity), but the degree of effort needed to discern/formulate a doctrine does not change the nature of the perspicuous Scriptures.

b.) Perspicuity is an objective attribute of Scripture and does not vary according to the skill of the interpreter. The Bible’s perspicuity does not change just because some doctrines require concentrated effort or instruction for ordinary believers to perceive them in the text, or because, say, an illiterate reader cannot make sense of Gen. 1:1.

This is why I adjusted your a-b-c phrasing in my last note, since such perspicuity does not depend on simple or complex reads, but on God’s intention for the interpretation of Scripture (i.e., thru a Magisterial arrangement, or not). No, I don’t believe that everybody has to be a scholar – that’s why God gives us teachers and pastors. (By “ordinary believers” I do not refer to “believers with average intelligence and education,” but to “ordinary believers as opposed to the supernaturally guided Pope and Magisterium.” Within the set of “ordinary believers,” then, different individuals will be more or less gifted and equipped for the task of interpreting Scripture and evaluating competing interpretations.)

3. Re. Texts & Meanings: My puzzled questions stemmed from a lack of detail in my mind about the “material sufficiency” of Scripture in the Catholic system, which you’ve now filled in for me, thanks!

4. Re. what I tentatively called the “unrepeatablility” of the two particular doctrinal formulations, I did indeed mean that the historical conditions at Nicaea/Constantinople and Chalcedon led to the crafting of something unique, not in *meaning* but in specific phrasing – as a Hopkins sonnet or even a da Vinci painting would be unique and unrepeatable events. Given this clarification, I don’t see that this suggestion betrays the doctrine of the perspicuity of Scripture; and certainly the Reformed, at any rate, would recognize and celebrate God’s providence and sovereignty over history in these formulations. (Of course God might have arranged for these crucial doctrines to have been articulated differently somehow, at a different time and by different individuals – but it is very difficult to imagine a more excellent convergence of personal and historical details!)

Speaking of God’s providence, here is a related Q for you: at one point in the article above, Bryan and Neal write,

“The denial of sacramental magisterial authority closes a person off to the Church as supernatural, leaving only the possibility of democratic (bottom-up) man-made authority under providential guidance.” (Under “Implications”)

Now, to a Reformed believer with a robust view of God’s personal, intimate guidance of even the minutiae of human history, the latter arrangement doesn’t sound half bad. But of course the authors meant to contrast the solid certainty of the Catholic system with the rather chaotic, uncertain, and dicey arrangement of “sola scriptura.” Am I correct to read here a real difference between Catholic and Reformed teaching on providence? In Bryan and Neal’s usage, it would seem that resorting to an assumption of providence, so to speak, would be akin to relying on impersonal fatalism or chance. For some, “providence” is a throwaway word meaning “not much better than luck, might as well flip a coin,” but for others it’s a wonder and a delight. What do you think is going on in B&N’s use of the term?

I look forward to your thoughts!
pax,
pb
Paige Britton November 29th, 2009 11:12 pm :
Bryan (#419) wrote, “The video’s message for lapsed Catholics is the same message for those who lapsed a generation ago, and those who for different reasons left almost five hundred years ago.”

The thoughtful Protestant mind boggles: Which is easier, do you think, straightening out contemporary evangelicalism on basic Christian doctrine, or convincing the same constituent that they are lapsed Catholics (well, as of 500 years ago)? Either way seems to resemble bailing the ocean with a teacup. We’ve all got our work cut out for us. :)
cheers!
pb
TurretinFan November 30th, 2009 10:49 am :
lojahw:

You wrote: “You shouldn’t feel threatened by the Vincentian Canon, which a) limits itself to investigations regarding the doctrine of the Trinity; b) requires solid support of ancient teachers to any novel teaching not found in the Rule of Faith from the beginning (e.g., Marian devotion, paying homage to images, even the role of the bishop of Rome).”

I think you may have misunderstood my comments. Vincent’s canon is simply unworkable today, whether or not it was workable in Vincent’s day. In principle, it sounds nice – and would rebut all sorts of subsequent innovations. In practice, however, it is plagued by the difficulties I already noted.

-TurretinFan
TurretinFan November 30th, 2009 10:57 am :
Tim Troutman:

I had written: “How can we determine the objective truth of whether Rome has maintained the faith of the apostles or departed from it?”

You wrote (after some other discussion): “That is all to say that this is a long and tedious process which requires, from all of us, patience, humility, and above all, a love for the truth. I am glad to be seeking it along side of you.”

I agree that patience, humility, and love for the truth are the state in which we should be while seeking to determine the objective truth. So far, so good.

My question, however, was intended to be aimed more at the authority or authorities to which we should appeal (if any) to determine the objective truth of whether Rome has maintained the faith of the apostles or departed from it?

-TurretinFan
TurretinFan November 30th, 2009 12:36 pm :
Bryan Cross:

Thanks for your comments at #364. I won’t repeat all of them. Your comments help illuminate your opening summary to me now. That summary was:

In this article we argue that there is no principled difference between sola scriptura and solo scriptura with respect to the holder of ultimate interpretive authority, and that a return to apostolic succession is the only way to avoid the untoward consequences to which both solo scriptura and sola scriptura lead.

My response is a little complex, and so I hope I’ll make myself more clear by using some formatted structure in this response.

1) If I understand you correctly, you do not mean by this to suggest that solo/sola lead to these consequences as a matter of logical necessity, but rather as a matter of historical reality (I was going to write “historical accident” but that is rather weaker than the claim I think you’re making). Can you please confirm that I have correctly understood that you are saying that these consequences are simply a practical outworking, not a logical necessity?

2) I believe that by the expression “untoward consequences” you mean to include a bundle of things. I found interesting that later in the article you seemed to equate these untoward consequences with “unbiblical consequences”: (“Moreover, we shall show that the only way to avoid the solo/sola position (and the unbiblical consequences to which it leads) is by way of apostolic succession.”) But tracking down your definition of these consequences is tricky. You state, for example:

In that respect, rejecting the authority of the Church, according to Mathison, has devastating consequences for Christianity, because it eliminates the creeds, and thereby eliminates the historic Christian faith as an objective reality.

But you never explicitly state which consequences you had in mind, at least not by identifying them as the consequences. I’m left thinking that your implications section provides the answer (I’ve added the bracketed letters for convenience later in this comment):

In this paper we have argued that apart from apostolic succession, there is no principled difference between solo scriptura and sola scriptura. If our argument is sound, it follows that the criticisms Mathison raises against solo scriptura apply no less to sola scriptura. If [A] “hermeneutical chaos and anarchy” result from solo scriptura, then they likewise result from sola scriptura. If solo scriptura leads to the [B] “multiplication of schisms,” so does sola scriptura. If solo scriptura entails that [C] the creeds have no “real authority,” then sola scriptura likewise entails that the creeds have no real authority. If the necessary result of solo scriptura is [D] a practical relativism concerning the content of Scripture, then this too is the necessary result of sola scriptura. If solo scriptura [E] “destroys” the authority of Scripture “by making the meaning of Scripture dependent upon the judgment of each individual,” then so does sola scriptura.

I think that those are the five identifiable consequences that you have tried to assert (when I say “assert” – I don’t mean to suggest that you have avoided using arguments). Can you please confirm that [A]-[E] are in fact a more or less complete list of the consequences you have mind?

3) Assuming for the moment an affirmative answer to (1) and (2), with respect, I offer the following undermining arguments:

as to [A], “hermeneutical chaos and anarchy” is not a characteristic of the sola position. For example, confessional sola scriptura prevents this chaos and anarchy by the administration of the elders. Of course, what level of internal disagreement over things is considered chaos/anarchy tends to be a bit subjective, so it may be difficult to judge the historical data here in an unbiased way.

as to [B], “multiplication of schisms” – this allegation is counter-intuitive. Churches where the elders lack any real authority or in which elders don’t exercise their authority are churches from which people would seem less likely to want/need to split. It seems that folks would want to split from churches where the elders are viewed as having authority, and they find themselves unable (due to conscience) to submit to that authority. Furthermore, if a church has [A], we wouldn’t expect [B], unless to avoid [A]. That is to say, these consequences seem opposed to one another.

as to [C], “the creeds have no “real authority,”” – this allegation is logically impossible. By definition, the creeds/confessions/whatever-you-want-to-call-it have real authority in churches that practice sola scriptura. One might argue that such churches are prone to lapsing into a solo position, but this seems to suggest a problem with the people holding the position (too loosely) rather than a problem with the position itself.

as to [D], “a practical relativism concerning the content of Scripture” – this one is requires some clarification. If the claim is that there is a “practical relativism” regarding non-essential doctrines in Scripture, why is this a problem? Should we not have charity in things that are not essential doctrines? If the claim is that there is a “practical relativism” in essential doctrines, this seems to fall prey to the same objection as at [C]. Would you please identify what you mean by [D]?

as to [E], ““destroys” the authority of Scripture “by making the meaning of Scripture dependent upon the judgment of each individual,”” this one too requires some clarification. It seems to be, to some extent, a rephrasing of [D]. Furthermore, it appears simply to be reflective of the fact that the meaning of statement (whether in documentary or oral form) to a person is necessarily dependent on some judgment by the person. As such, it doesn’t really seem to much of a consequence. In other words, if it is simply pointed out that an individual must make judgments to understand things, that’s not really a destruction of the authority of Scripture, any more than it is a destruction of all external authority absolutely.

Which gets us to the final point:

4) You state that “a return to apostolic succession is the only way to avoid” these consequences. Nevertheless,

a) allegedly the “Protestant Reformation” came out of a church that had apostolic succession. If it is good for the goose that the radical relativists be blamed on sola scriptura, then it seems proper for the gander that sola scriptura be blamed on apostolic succession.

b) only following apostolic succession consistently would seem to avoid those parts of the problems that are avoidable. Yet, if one consistently follows sola scriptura one also would not have those same avoidable problems. To pitch inconsistently practiced [X] against consistently practiced [Y] seems to be an unfair comparison. Wouldn’t you agree?

c) there are other ways to avoid the problems than apostolic succession and sola scriptura. For example, Mormonism and the Jehovah’s Witnesses [so-called] avoid this problem without apostolic succession (although one might argue that they substitute something similar) or sola scriptura.

d) it may be that the cost of apostolic succession as the means to solving these problems is not worth the price. That is to say, a rigid hierarchy may avoid dissent, but it may do so at the cost of truth. Whether that is, in fact, the consequence is another story. I trust that you see that in the case of the Mormons and JWs, it is the case that their tightly controlled beliefs are not more true simply because the countenance less dissent.

-TurretinFan
Colman November 30th, 2009 3:54 pm :
Pardon me if I err but I don’t think the Roman Catholic Church has a single canon of scripture. Like the Creed the Roman Catholic Church recognizes the Scriptures of the Eastern Orthodox as being canonical. I believe that the Eastern Catholic Churches use the Eastern Orthodox Scriptural Canon.

In some respects, the final parameters of the Canon of Scripture remain undetermined.

Colman
lojahw November 30th, 2009 4:46 pm :
TC (if you are still there): Please know that I intended no insult: I regret that we were unable to communicate better.

Since my comments about understanding Sola Scriptura appear to have caused offense, please consider:

Sola Scriptura begins with the affirmation that “the whole counsel of God” as recorded in Scripture is the regula fidei, and all interpretations must be consistent with all of Scripture. Secondly, Sola Scriptura affirms 2 Peter 1:20-21, “no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation.” Because your arguments focused on a) possible alternate interpretations (not the common understanding of Christians from the time of the Apostles until now) of b) isolated verses, neither of which is compatible with the basic principles of Sola Scriptura, the dialog could not be fruitful. As I have argued previously, Sola Scriptura is perfectly compatible with consulting (as the Reformers themselves did) the historic understanding of Scripture from apostolic times forward. According to Sola Scriptura, the secondary authority of the Church – from the time of the Apostles until the present – is nontheless a valid authority. One who challenges the faith as “believed everywhere, always, by all” has a mighty tough burden to prove that Scripture should be interpreted differently.

Peace in Christ.
T Ciatoris November 30th, 2009 7:40 pm :
Dear Paige,

Nice to have you back, and I hope your holiday was great! I’m sorry to say this will probably be my last comment to you on this thread, for two reasons. First, the thread is getting absurdly long. Second, I’m getting especially short on time these days. But if you want to continue privately, please don’t hesitate to ask the moderators for my email, and I’d be more than happy to continue our discussion without the pressure to respond as quickly as we tend to in the combox. I hope that sounds good to you. On to responding to your comment, which I’ll try to do point-by-point.

As to the first difficulty, rest assured that I wasn’t offended and didn’t think you intended your phrasing to come off as slighting. Thanks for the clarification…but there’s a “but”. You noted that you were speaking “as if from the p.o.v. of a Protestant coming to the point of throwing in the towel.” I still want to register some concern about that, especially since I myself am an ex-Protestant who used to hold sola Scriptura, and I don’t think my abandonment of it was a case of “throwing in the towel,” as tempting as that sometimes was! It’s possible for a Protestant to wish to become a Catholic for this reason, but this would be a conversion out of a desire for certainty rather than out of a desire for truth (cf. Bryan’s post on Principium Unitatis here). I don’t think anybody should throw in the towel, throw up their hands, and become a Catholic out of epistemic despair. That might be a sufficient reason not to be a Protestant, but it’s not sufficient to become a Catholic. I think one should become a Catholic because one believes that Catholicism is true, not because it offers a subjective experience of certainty. But again, all this for the sake of accuracy and clarity, not because I think you were intending to be condescending or dismissive, either to the objective Catholic doctrine or to my subjective submission to it. And you’re right: all of that would have taken about forty seconds at a kitchen table. Still, a combox plus some patience makes for progress nonetheless!

Second difficulty: thanks for your candor, humility, and persistence in dialogue.

Thoughts/Questions
1. Material & Formal Sufficiency
You asked, “Do they describe the difference between *content* and *authority*?” I think that’s actually a decent way of putting it, understanding “authority” to mean “interpretive authority.” Material sufficiency (for a particular doctrine) means that the content of that doctrine is found in Scripture, but it does not say anything about how clearly or unclearly it’s expressed in the Bible. I’ve seen this equation before, which I think is probably about right and might be helpful: “material sufficiency” + “perspicuity” = “formal sufficiency”. I’ve been trying to argue that Scripture is materially sufficient for the dogmas defined in the fourth and fifth centuries, but that Scripture is not formally sufficient for these dogmas to bind the conscience of all Christians without a living ecclesial interpretive authority guided by the Holy Spirit.

(Sidebar: As I’ve tried to clarify above, this means that, as a Catholic studying Church history, I can confidently identify heresies as heresies rightly anathematized (thus avoiding doctrinal wishy-washiness) without being constrained to impugn the intelligence and/or scriptural knowledge and/or moral character of every single heretic. Certainly there have been heresies that Scripture is formally sufficient to refute (including many that are popular today!), but I don’t believe that’s the case for all of them. Certainly there have been plenty of stupid and/or biblically illiterate and/or evil heretics, but I don’t believe all of them are such.)

I think you’re quite right that there are different ontologies of Scripture operative in Catholicism and Protestantism. This is way too big an issue to get into in depth right now, but I’ll not resist the temptation to throw out a few preliminary thoughts. I think it’s a wonderful gift that Catholics and Protestants can agree that the Bible is the written Word of God (bracketing the extent of the canon for now), but that can sometimes mask deeper differences. For example, as a Catholic I cannot intelligibly speak of the Bible as Sacred Scripture if it’s separated from its home, its native context: the Church, above all in her liturgy. The Bible as the Word of God does not subsist as an independent, fixed entity in an ecclesial vacuum, but precisely in the Church, the Body of Christ and Temple of the Holy Spirit. Outside the Body animated by the Spirit, the Bible is in constant danger of becoming a “dead letter.” And yes, I think you’re right that, unlike Protestants, we Catholics would not be comfortable, if we’re using language precisely, talking about the Bible “containing its own authority.” All authority is, of course, God’s, and He doesn’t deposit it somewhere (the Bible, the Church, my own mind, or whatever) and then leave it to fend for itself or function by itself (much less interpret itself :-) ). So I think we need to talk more precisely about how Scripture mediates God’s authoritative revelation without setting it up as an independent (even if divinely appointed) source of authoritative revelation. (I do realize, Paige, that you may or may not have been using precise language when you referred to the Bible “containing its own authority,” so you may not have intended to imply everything I just inferred. I’m not trying to pull a “Gotcha!” on you, just to push for more precise language.) I’m about to get carried away far beyond the scope of this comment, so I’ll stop, but I hope that at least sets the table for potential future discussion.

2. Perspicuity
I really appreciate your careful articulation of the doctrine of perspicuity. I’ve occasionally been sloppy in my use of the term, so this is very helpful. Here are a few things that come to mind:

First, I think we need to be circumspect about how much work can be done by the insistence that perspicuity is an “objective attribute” of the Bible, because it nonetheless makes a claim about the Bible’s (inherent and objective) capability of producing a subjective experience for the Bible-reader under the proper conditions. That is, if I understand it aright, the doctrine of perspicuity asserts that, as a result of God’s salvific intentions for Scripture, there inheres in the Bible an objective clarity. Fair enough, but this is only an abstract postulate until and unless it issues in concrete subjective experiences of believing readers finding doctrinal clarity in the Bible. This is where I think we run into trouble.

You’ve agreed, I think, that some complex central doctrines (say, the Trinity in a developed articulation) may not be clear to any given member of the faithful, but that this is not a problem for the doctrine of perspicuity because some have been appointed as pastors and teachers. But let’s say I don’t have a vocation to be a pastor or teacher. How do I know which pastors and teachers to listen to? The well-educated Catholic priest down the street says the Bible teaches one thing about a central doctrine; the well-educated Presbyterian minister says it teaches something else; and the Pentecostal preacher who claims to have the anointing of the Holy Ghost says something totally different, but boy does he thump his Bible a lot! So here, anyway, we’re back to sola = solo. How else, according to sola Scriptura, am I supposed to select my subordinate and fallible ecclesial authority responsibly? The onus is right back on me to figure out who is actually giving the right interpretation of the allegedly perspicuous scriptural Word of God on central doctrines. So if there are some complex central doctrines (like the Trinity—and the elephant in the room, justification :-) ) that aren’t actually in practice clear to any given Christian with average intelligence who hasn’t received formal training and isn’t called to be a pastor or a teacher, then what kind of work is the doctrine of perspicuity actually doing? This is why I think the emphasis on perspicuity being “inherent and objective” will only get you so far before it just turns in on itself, so that the Bible is inherently clear to, well, itself, but not necessarily clear to anyone else.

At this particular point, one release valve for proponents of perspicuity is the appeal to the necessity of illumination by the Holy Spirit. But the presence or absence of the Holy Spirit in another person is, of course, very difficult to adjudicate, to say the least (cf. Bryan’s post here). So what winds up happening in practice is that 1 Cor 2:14, for example, gets used as a weapon. This verse has already been used once to bludgeon a (heretical, I admit) friend of mine on this thread (#298), and once to bludgeon me in a comment over at TurretinFan’s blog: here. Whatever the intention, the logic in practice seems to run like this: (1) the illumination of the Holy Spirit is required to understand the perspicuous Bible; (2) your interpretation of the perspicuous Bible does not agree with mine; (3) my interpretation of Scripture is correct (it’s perspicuous, after all); (4) therefore, you do not have the illumination of the Holy Spirit. This is extremely troubling to me, and I assume it would be to you, too, Paige.

3. Texts & Meanings
Glad to have helped. :-) One disclaimer: I’ve been careful to confine my assertions about “material sufficiency” to the early ecumenical councils, where it’s basically uncontroversial. To be fair, you should know that you’re not getting my full view of material sufficiency, which is, I like to think anyway, very complex and nuanced. But for the purposes of the present discussion, I think we’re in good shape.

4. The “unrepeatability” of the formulations of Nicaea-Constantinople and Chalcedon
This is totally unfair to you, but I’m going to have to simply gesture at a couple of things here. I think you’ve done a beautiful job clarifying what you meant by unrepeatability. But the fact that I’m uncomfortable as a Catholic abstracting the dogmatic content from its historical formulation (though I don’t say it’s impossible) indicates to me that we’re getting at something very significant here that’s probably also too big for a combox, viz., that Catholics are tethered to history in ways Protestants aren’t. I think maybe revisiting my comments about ecclesiology in ##263, 279, and 400 might give you some idea of where I’m going with this (sorry to be so allusive and vague, but this was supposed to be a brief comment!). I think these ecclesiological comments probably relate to the quote from Bryan and Neal that you asked about. Beyond that, though, you’ll be way better off asking them your excellent questions about Divine Providence and the Church. I sit near the back with the total ignoramuses on the Philosophy Bus, but those two sit up front and chat with Aquinas.

Thanks one last time for the excellent conversation, Paige!

in Christ,

TC
1 Cor 16:14
mateo November 30th, 2009 7:47 pm :
Hi Paige, glad to see you back! I would like to pick up our conversation again.

Paige Britton: … You asked: “Paige, you have yet to answer this question: If sola scriptura doctrine and the concomitant private interpretation of the Bible is not the source of the doctrinal chaos within Protestantism, then what is the source of that doctrinal chaos?”

Mateo, I don’t know that there is one source. If the concept of the infallible interpretive Magisterium is true, then we’re all missing the boat, and no wonder we’re floundering around in different denominations. If there is no earthly infallible interpretive authority such as the Catholic Magisterium, then the source is human sin – from the little sin of hasty reading, to the largest sins of lies and deception.

Are the Amish given over to hasty readings of the Bible? If not, then why don’t they agree with every doctrine espoused by the Calvinists? Could a source of the doctrinal chaos within Protestantism be simply due to ignorance, and the fact that not every doctrine of the Christian faith is perspicuous in the Bible?

You have been asserting the scriptures are perspicuous. But I don’t see any evidence at all that with only a Protestant Bible in my hands, that after a careful and prayerful reading of the Protestant Bible, that I will necessarily understand that certain fundamental doctrines of orthodox Christianity are perspicuous. I agree with T Ciatoris that with only a Protestant Bible to guide me, that a modalist, or an Arian reading of scriptures is also at least plausible. That is why I asked you in my post # 341: “Have you ever tried to use the Protestant Bible alone to convince a Oneness Pentecostal to change their mind about the Trinity?” I know that I have tried to do that many times. My experience tells me that it is not possible to prove, using a Protestant Bible as my only source, that a modalist interpretation of scriptures is impossible to maintain. I have had the same experience with Jehovah Witnesses – if all I have is a Protestant Bible as my only source, I cannot really prove through the alleged perspicuity of scriptures that an Arian interpretation of scriptures is a totally implausible interpretation of scriptures.

Paige Britton: I wonder, how complex does a non-perspicuous doctrine have to be before it is impossible to confirm that it is Scripturally supported …

I don’t want to sidetrack this thread with a discussion about the perspicuity of the Doctrine of the Trinity. But since this is a thread about “Solo Scriptura, Sola Scriptura, and the Question of Interpretive Authority”, I do want to ask you whether sola scriptura doctrine is itself a perspicuous doctrine.

The Catholic Bible contains every book of a Protestant Bible, and Catholics maintain that there are NO scriptures within their Bible that explicitly teaches that the Protestant Bible is the ONLY source of authority for a Christian.

If I asked you to show me the scriptural verses in the Protestant Bible that are so perspicuous that I would have to agree that the Protestant Bible is the ONLY source of infallible authority for a Christian, could you do that?
Bryan Cross November 30th, 2009 7:57 pm :
TurretinFan, (re: #436)

You wrote:

If I understand you correctly, you do not mean by this to suggest that solo/sola lead to these consequences as a matter of logical necessity, but rather as a matter of historical reality (I was going to write “historical accident” but that is rather weaker than the claim I think you’re making). Can you please confirm that I have correctly understood that you are saying that these consequences are simply a practical outworking, not a logical necessity?

The term ‘logical necessity’ is used in difference senses, and the more common sense of the term is one that is synchronic and formal, the way a conclusion of a syllogism follows by logical necessity from its premises. But we don’t have to choose between logical necessity and historical accident, because there are other kinds of necessity. One of those other kinds of necessity is called ‘natural necessity’ (necessitas naturalis). For example, that an acorn becomes an oak tree is not a logical necessity, but it is a natural necessity, even though many contingencies could prevent this particular acorn from becoming an oak tree. Given the ordinary conditions, the acorn would naturally become an oak tree. That is the natural end of an acorn, given its nature, and it will necessarily move toward that end, unless other factors interfere. (In that respect, the result does not follow in just the same way a conclusion follows by necessity from premises in a deductive argument.) So likewise, the results of sola/solo (described by Mathison) follow from it over time by natural necessity, because of what it is by nature (i.e. each individual retaining ultimate interpretive authority).

Can you please confirm that [A]-[E] are in fact a more or less complete list of the consequences you have mind?

Yes, they are.

as to [A], “hermeneutical chaos and anarchy” is not a characteristic of the sola position. For example, confessional sola scriptura prevents this chaos and anarchy by the administration of the elders. Of course, what level of internal disagreement over things is considered chaos/anarchy tends to be a bit subjective, so it may be difficult to judge the historical data here in an unbiased way.

Order within a confessional community of like-minded individuals practicing sola scriptura is fully compatible with hermeneutical chaos and anarchy when we expand our field of vision to include the fact that all these confessional communities (each practicing sola scriptura) cannot agree, and hence are divided. The seeming absence of “hermeneutical chaos and anarchy” is only the result of an artificial abstraction, i.e. abstracting away all those other sola scriptura practioners who do not agree with “me,” and only counting those who agree with “me.”

as to [B], “multiplication of schisms” – this allegation is counter-intuitive.

Whether or not it is “counter-intuitive” is irrelevant; the question is whether it is true. The existence of all these (thousands) of different Protestant sects is indisputably true.

Churches where the elders lack any real authority or in which elders don’t exercise their authority are churches from which people would seem less likely to want/need to split.

I’m wondering (tongue-in-cheek) whether you have had any pastoral experience. My uncle pastored a church that came a hair’s breadth from splitting, (wait) . . . over the color of the replacement carpet in the ‘sanctuary’. Lack of authority only compounds the schism-tendency of sola scriptura.

It seems that folks would want to split from churches where the elders are viewed as having authority, and they find themselves unable (due to conscience) to submit to that authority.

True, but that doesn’t prevent schisms within sola scriptura communities/denominations.

as to [C], “the creeds have no “real authority,”” – this allegation is logically impossible. By definition, the creeds/confessions/whatever-you-want-to-call-it have real authority in churches that practice sola scriptura. One might argue that such churches are prone to lapsing into a solo position, but this seems to suggest a problem with the people holding the position (too loosely) rather than a problem with the position itself.

As we pointed out in the article, a so-called authority that has as its basis of authority that it agrees with me, is not an authentic authority. And that is manifested as soon as that ‘authority’ disagrees with me, and ipso facto loses ‘authority.’ “When I submit (so long as I agree), the one to whom I submit is me.” That’s premise 1. The second premise is that given sola scriptura, the basis of the creed’s authority is that it agrees with one’s own interpretation of Scripture. (We explained this in the article.) From those two premises it follows that given sola scriptura, the creed does not have authentic authority.

as to [D], “a practical relativism concerning the content of Scripture” – this one is requires some clarification. If the claim is that there is a “practical relativism” regarding non-essential doctrines in Scripture, why is this a problem? Should we not have charity in things that are not essential doctrines? If the claim is that there is a “practical relativism” in essential doctrines, this seems to fall prey to the same objection as at [C]. Would you please identify what you mean by [D]?

We mean practical relativism simpliciter, not limited to non-essentials or limited to essentials. (Sola scriptura has no principled basis for distinguishing essentials from non-essentials anyway; see my comment #419.) If you think this unqualified practical relativism falls prey to the same object as [C], then see my reply (immediately above) to your objection to [C].

as to [E], ““destroys” the authority of Scripture “by making the meaning of Scripture dependent upon the judgment of each individual,”” this one too requires some clarification. It seems to be, to some extent, a rephrasing of [D]. Furthermore, it appears simply to be reflective of the fact that the meaning of statement (whether in documentary or oral form) to a person is necessarily dependent on some judgment by the person. As such, it doesn’t really seem to much of a consequence. In other words, if it is simply pointed out that an individual must make judgments to understand things, that’s not really a destruction of the authority of Scripture, any more than it is a destruction of all external authority absolutely.

That’s like saying that all the laws on the books don’t lose their authority if you take away all the judges, that taking away all the judges wouldn’t be “too much of a consequence”. If that’s what you really believe, then I’ll just rest my case, because I think it is self-evidently false that taking away all the judges wouldn’t be “too much of a consequence”. And Mathison (and other Protestants) recognize the same thing. That’s the whole problem with solo scriptura; it makes the individual the ultimate arbiter, and in doing so, it undermines the authority of Scripture, not only because individuals don’t all have the necessary training to interpret Scripture rightly, but because people bring different presuppositions to the interpretive process, and end up (in many ways, whether intentionally or unintentionally) interpreting it in ways that make it conform to themselves — hence, eviscerating its authority. Scripture can function authoritatively in the Church only if the individual does not have the final interpretive say, just as the law of the land can function authoritatively only if the individual does not have final interpretive authority over the law, i.e. is not his own judge. And as we have argued in our article, sola scriptura entails the rule of private judgment, and thus entails that each person is his own ecclesial supreme judge and supreme teacher. In other words, each person is his own pope.

a) allegedly the “Protestant Reformation” came out of a church that had apostolic succession. If it is good for the goose that the radical relativists be blamed on sola scriptura, then it seems proper for the gander that sola scriptura be blamed on apostolic succession.

That would be like saying that since God made Lucifer, therefore God is to blame for Lucifer’s sin. But while Lucifer’s being comes from God, Lucifer’s sin does not come from God, even though Lucifer’s sin depends upon Lucifer’s being. All evil comes from good in this way, as Aquinas explains in Summa Theologica I Q.49 a.1. Protestantism came out of the Catholic Church not by an essential continuity with its intrinsic principles, but as a discontinuity, a rupture with the principles of sacramental authority and apostolic succession that had been operative in the Church from the first century. Solo scriptura, on the other hand, is the natural outgrowth of sola scriptura, because the same principle is operative in both (i.e. the individual retains the ultimate interpretive authority).

b) only following apostolic succession consistently would seem to avoid those parts of the problems that are avoidable. Yet, if one consistently follows sola scriptura one also would not have those same avoidable problems. To pitch inconsistently practiced [X] against consistently practiced [Y] seems to be an unfair comparison. Wouldn’t you agree?

No. Every sola scriptura practitioner in good conscience is consistently practicing sola scriptura, because to practice sola scriptura is to operate as one’s own ultimate interpretive authority. The only possible inconsistent practice of sola scriptura (apart from intentionally twisting the Scripture) would be to affirm sola scriptura and simultaneously treat someone else as being able to bind one’s conscience regarding faith and morals. (This is why Turretin, who is consistent, allows Christians to reject ecclesial authority when it goes against their conscience, as Mathison explains, and we discussed in the article.)

c) there are other ways to avoid the problems than apostolic succession and sola scriptura. For example, Mormonism and the Jehovah’s Witnesses [so-called] avoid this problem without apostolic succession (although one might argue that they substitute something similar) or sola scriptura.

Mormonism and JWs are also subject to this same dilemma. What is different in their case is that they add pseudo-succession and/or pseudo-revelation. The origin of both groups, is the 19th century. Both of them are outgrowths of Protestantism, not immediately from its sola scriptura form, but in the God-speaks-directly-to-me form. That is just a return to Montanism. But, again, if the Holy Spirit directly and immediately [not through the Magisterium of the Church] guides my interpretation of Scripture (WCF I.10), then not only am I my own ultimate interpreter of Scripture, but I am my own ultimate interpreter of what the Holy Spirit is saying. And that’s how the theology of Jakob Boehme (1557-1624) and George Fox (1624-1691), and these other new revelation sects (Mormons and JWs) naturally grew out of Protestantism.

d) it may be that the cost of apostolic succession as the means to solving these problems is not worth the price. That is to say, a rigid hierarchy may avoid dissent, but it may do so at the cost of truth. Whether that is, in fact, the consequence is another story. I trust that you see that in the case of the Mormons and JWs, it is the case that their tightly controlled beliefs are not more true simply because the countenance less dissent.

First, speculation is cheap and easy. Lucifer did it in the garden: “Did God say …”, speculating about whether the cost of abiding by what God had established was not worth the price. No schism can be justified on the basis of mere speculation: “it may be that …”

Second, authority is not control or force. Of course Satan can (and does) mimic authority. Mormons and JWs believe they are submitting to divine authority, but they are submitting to persons with merely man-made authority. (In section V.A. of the article we explained the limited way in which man-made organizations can bind the conscience, compared to the way in which the Church can bind the conscience.) Those man-made sects may exercise force and control, but they do so with merely human authority. But the Church Christ founded has divine authority, because He (the God-man) gave it His own authority, to bind things in heaven, and loose things in heaven.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
T Ciatoris November 30th, 2009 10:16 pm :
Dear lojahw (re: #438),

I appreciate the fact that it’s difficult to make one’s intended tone clear in a combox, so thank you for the clarifications. It’s clear that at a number of points in our exchange we talked right past each other. I know I could have been more lucid at some points. Thanks also for the clear and admirable summary of sola Scriptura, in this comment as elsewhere. What you describe is, indeed, the principle I held for a long time.

Despite our miscommunications, on the whole I enjoyed our discussion.

in Christ,

TC
1 Cor 16:14
Tim A. Troutman December 1st, 2009 1:35 am :
TurretinFan:

My question, however, was intended to be aimed more at the authority or authorities to which we should appeal (if any) to determine the objective truth of whether Rome has maintained the faith of the apostles or departed from it?

I’m not sure what kind of answer you’re looking for if my previous one didn’t suffice. Can you ask it in a different way?
TurretinFan December 1st, 2009 9:03 am :
Tim Troutman:

I had written:

My question, however, was intended to be aimed more at the authority or authorities to which we should appeal (if any) to determine the objective truth of whether Rome has maintained the faith of the apostles or departed from it?

You responded:

I’m not sure what kind of answer you’re looking for if my previous one didn’t suffice. Can you ask it in a different way?

Well, I looked through your previous answer and I don’t see you identifying any authority or authorities to which we should appeal (if any) to determine the objective truth of of whether Rome has maintained the faith of the apostles or departed from it. Perhaps I missed something. It seemed that your previous answer had to do with our personal subjective state.

Perhaps an analogy would help. If I say, “How can we know who signed the U.S. Constitution?” you might answer, “We inquire diligently, humbly, and calmly.” That would be similar to your answer to my question, in that it addresses our subjective state but not the source(s) of authority to be used. The answer I’m looking for, by analogy, would be something like “Go to such-and-such U.S. Government website and review the facsimile images there, or if you really want to be sure, go to the National Archives in Washington, D.C., and examine the original document for yourself.”

With that clarification (I hope it helps to clarify) using what authority or authorities (if any) can we determine the objective truth of whether Rome has maintained the faith of the apostles or departed from it?

-TurretinFan
Devin Rose December 1st, 2009 12:20 pm :
TurretinFan wrote: “My question, however, was intended to be aimed more at the authority or authorities to which we should appeal (if any) to determine the objective truth of whether Rome has maintained the faith of the apostles or departed from it?”

I was interested in this question and thought it was a very good one, but didn’t respond to it initially because I feared my answer would be off-topic from the post. But since it has been asked again to Tim, I would like to offer an answer of sorts from a conversation I had with two of my Protestant friends yesterday (one is Plymouth Brethren/cessationist, the other Bible church/Baptist).

We were discussing the Eucharist: they both believe in the symbolic-only Eucharist (ala Zwingli and the Baptists) whereas I as a Catholic believe in transubstantiation. I asked them how can we know what the Apostles believed on this subject, given that we disagree with each other on how to interpret the Bible on this doctrine.

They said it comes down to their belief in the Bible and how clearly it teaches the symbolic-only Eucharist. I told them that, since we disagree on the interpretation, what if we looked at other sources, say, two of the early Christian leaders whose writings we know are authentic: St. Ignatius of Antioch and St. Justin Martyr. I am sure you are familiar with what they wrote about the Eucharist. In short, they unequivocally speak of the bread and the wine becoming the body and blood of Christ. Even if one were to try to interpret their words in the most Baptist-leaning way possible, they fall much closer to the Catholic (and Lutheran and even Calvinist) belief on the Eucharist than the Zwinglian/Baptist symbolic belief.

What did my friends say? “We have only a few witnesses in the 2nd century, so we cannot trust that their beliefs represented what was really taught by the Apostles. These few men could have come to a wrong understanding of the Eucharist that the Apostles did not believe, and then the Church eventually absorbed their false beliefs until Zwingli in the 16th century finally corrected this error.”

So how do we know what the Apostles taught (and thus whether the Catholic Church’s teachings jive with it)? For my Protestant friends, there is no way to know other than the “clear, correct” reading of the “plain Scriptures,” which they assert teaches the symbolic-only Eucharist. They will not admit historical witnesses, the Fathers, the early or medieval Church, and claim that this is following the true understanding of sola Scriptura. I told them that it is really the Anabaptist/Radical Reformers’ understanding of sola Scriptura and not Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin’s, but they responded that Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin were just fallible men and thus have no more authority or accuracy of interpretation of the Scriptures than they do. The Anabaptists were the only Protestants taking the doctrine sola Scriptura to its logical end.
rfwhite December 3rd, 2009 4:39 pm :
Bryan Cross: as you understand it, does the Holy Spirit work immediately, mediately through the church, or both immediately and mediately to effect the right understanding of Holy Scripture?
Paige Britton December 4th, 2009 8:20 am :
Hi, Mateo,
I’m glad you want to keep conversing, and I’ll happily do my best. But if you are sincerely curious about these things, you’d do better consulting the writings of someone more learned, like J. I. Packer.

You asked about perspicuity, and where we find it in Scripture. Remember that we (P’s) are operating within a different worldview than the Catholic view; we are not convinced of (and many of us at this point in history may never even have considered) the claims to papal infallibility. But we ARE convinced of God’s goodness, the necessity of his communication to us, and the location of that communication in Scripture. Perspicuity as a doctrine is the theological confession that God’s Word is clear because GOD is clear, and that he means to communicate to believers through that Word, without appointing anybody to a special infallibly interpretive office.

I think there is some confusion here about the doctrine – I have read several times in these comments the assumption that if God’s Word is so “perspicuous,” then all doctrines should be immediately obvious to every reader, and there should be none of the disagreement that we find among Protestants. But this is a caricature or misunderstanding of perspicuity.

Perspicuity (as Protestant doctrine) instead relates to God’s *intention* to communicate to his people via his inspired Word, without mediation from an infallible earthly interpreter, and is (we believe) a quality inherent to the Bible as a whole. Various doctrines may be more or less *obvious* in the text – compare Creation with the Trinity, for example – but the degree of effort it takes to recognize or formulate a doctrine does not affect the “perspicuity” of Scripture. Nor does perspicuity depend on the abilities of any particular reader. We do not have to BE Bible scholars to understand God’s intentional communication to us, but we may need to LEAN on Bible scholars to understand well, especially if our own reading skills are poor or we do not yet have a deep knowledge of the Word. (This opens out to TC’s good question re. “whom do we trust,” but I will leave that for another time.) And all of us (P’s) OUGHT to lean on each other for checks and balances to our understanding (we don’t always!).

One more thought re. perspicuity: To understand what we mean by the doctrine, consider God’s other perspicuous “book,” Science (or Nature). We can study Nature, we can do Science, we can gain knowledge, because God the Creator is a God of reason. He has left us a good deal to figure out: some of it is accessible to the littlest children; most of it takes some instruction and experience to know; some of it requires concentrated effort and training to comprehend. Our knowing in every case is fallible and can be corrected, but it is also sufficient for living on planet earth. Following on this thought, and because our worldview does not include the Catholic Magisterium, we (P’s) assume the same kind of perspicuity will be true of God’s *written* book, and believers should therefore approach it carefully, humbly, and expectantly. [I should not be mistaken here for calling Scripture the OBJECT of Science, something MERELY objective to be mastered: rather, the parallel is that both Science & Scripture come to us from the God who means for us to KNOW.]

As to where the doctrine is found in the text: well, briefly, it is assumed by the many statements about the writers’ intention for the written text, especially in the NT. (I can list these if you want.) But as far as convincing you about perspicuity, I think the only thing that would get you there would be the conviction that God did not arrange for the infallible Magisterial interpretive body after all. And that’s another ballgame.

Re. the Amish: as it happens, I live among the Amish. I don’t know firsthand what their church services are like, nor their daily experience with the Bible. But I do know that they are farmers and carpenters, not theologians, and that their education stops at 8th grade. This tells me that in their closed and close-knit community, they are probably limited in their ability (AND their desire!) to go beyond the basic teaching they’ve inherited, and take a good look at the texts.

Re. the failure of the Protestant Bible in your previous apologetic encounters – well, I have to wonder whether it was not the Bible, nor you as apologist, but rather the stance of those you were talking to that made the difference. (Did you really expect to convince them of ANYTHING?) People can be trained to sidestep orthodox readings by giving words different spins. (But even the Protestant Bible has [Jewish!] people worshiping Jesus as divine. That’s harder to get around than the definition of “Son.”)

Thanks for your good questions.
pax!
pb
Tim A. Troutman December 4th, 2009 10:56 am :
TurretinFan,

A better analogy would be: what authority would I appeal to determine whether the woman claiming to be my mother was actually my mother.

Here’s what I’d appeal to:

1. Testimony of my father ( Word of God: Scripture/Tradition )
2. Birth certificates, hospital records, early family photos ( Early Church history )
3. Her self testimony (Standing miracles, four marks of the Church, holiness of saints, etc.)

My brother could deny her motherhood on a couple different accounts. Perhaps he only accepted the written testimony of our father and used something he wrote out of context to prove she wasn’t our mother. Perhaps he has bad philosophy and questions whether or not her body could be the same body that bore us since none of the original molecules remain or that just because one molecule replaced an old one (as a new living cell replaces dead ones in the body) it doesn’t mean that the molecule actually holds valid succession. Maybe it means nothing that the molecules are literally and directly succeeded from her original set of molecules. Perhaps if she stops acting like a mother, then she loses motherhood. By his estimation, maybe our true mother is the sum of all women everywhere who treat us as a mother would.

So I repeat what I answered the first time, if my brother didn’t already believe this woman to be our mother, it would take a long time to convince him, and it would require patience, humility, and above all, a love for the truth.
TurretinFan December 4th, 2009 1:10 pm :
Tim Troutman:

Without commenting on whose analogy is better, let me seek some clarification. I think you are saying that to determine the objective truth of whether Rome has maintained the faith of the apostles or departed from it, you would appeal to the following authorities/evidence:

1. “Word of God: Scripture/Tradition”
2. “Early Church history”
3. “Standing miracles, four marks of the Church, holiness of prophets, etc.”

Have I understood you correctly?

-TurretinFan
Teri December 4th, 2009 2:42 pm :
Tim,

After reading R.C. Sproul, Jr .’s description of Sola Scriptura here and at his Church’s website
(https://saintpeterpresbyterian.org/), I am more convinced than ever that what he says is the complete opposite.

Correct me if I am wrong, but wouldn’t the Anabaptist sect have been clearest to the meaning of Sola Scriptura? Unlike Luther or Calvin, they read solely from The Bible, and based their belief in adult baptism, for instance, on the fact that they could not read clearly from scripture alone that infants were baptized.

Martin Luther proclaimed “Sola Scriptura” and then proceeded to reform abuses he saw in the Catholic Church. Clearly, he was vehement against the idea of the Eucharist as a mere memorial. That is something most Protestants say is not clear or true in Scripture.

Calvin, under the auspices of reform, redesigned what Church looks like, sounds like, and how you could tell you were in the True Church. He used Sola Scriptura – but as I’ve said before, because he wrote tons of letters and commentaries explaining the scripture, he meant Sola Scriptura according to Sola John Calvin.

The Anabaptist at least didn’t bring anything from the Catholic Church that I’m aware of. Just the Bible and their faith in their interpretation of it. Wouldn’t that mean they were more in line with reading and trusting in the Bible alone without relying on earlier Sacred Tradition such as baptizing infants?

On a side note, we should be in prayer for the congregation of R.C. Sproul, Jr.’s Church.
The Church is in my area and two women in their congregation were killed the other day when the high winds blew a large tree into their vehicle. We should pray for them and their families at this tragedy.

PAX,
Teri
Tim A. Troutman December 4th, 2009 3:28 pm :
TurretinFan – Yes that is correct.
Tim A. Troutman December 4th, 2009 4:51 pm :
Teri,

Sorry to hear about those two women.

There is a sense in which the Anabaptist tradition is more consistent with their own beliefs in that solo scriptura is not disguised under a pretension of Church authority. As the article demonstrates, those who subject the Church to the authority of the Scriptures subject the Church to the authority of their private interpretation of Scripture. No one has been able to refute this yet and there haven’t been many legitimate attempts. Mathison’s reply is forthcoming I understand.

But I think it might be a little misleading to say that Anabaptists were more faithful to sola scriptura than the Reformed Protestants. Anabaptists and their modern grandchildren may have a different application of S.S. but that doesn’t mean they’re more or less faithful to S.S. itself. They cannot be more faithful to the Reformed conception of S.S. than the Reformed are because the Reformed conception of S.S. is whatever they say and believe it to be. They (the Reformed) invented it, so by definition it means what they say it does. It is possible that the Reformed could be inconsistent with their own belief, but by being inconsistent with the original belief, the belief would change with whatever their practice is. That is why, Reformed generally qualify the things they are defending by saying “the historical Reformed view of…” as if the fact that it is original or historical gave it any authority.

The problem is that the logical out-workings (e.g. solo scriptura) of all the ‘historic’ Reformed positions (insofar as the originals diverged from the faith once delivered to the apostles) are completely indefensible as shown by this article and the combox. The ‘historic’ beliefs are also indefensible but it is much easier to see their weakness when the logical results are demonstrably false or when they can be shown to lack a principle of distinction between obvious errors (like solo scriptura).
mateo December 5th, 2009 12:36 am :
Paige Britton:

Hi, Mateo,
I’m glad you want to keep conversing, and I’ll happily do my best. But if you are sincerely curious about these things, you’d do better consulting the writings of someone more learned, like J. I. Packer.

I would like to keep conversation going. I hope I am not coming across as harsh and without sympathy for all things Protestant. If so, I apologize, and I will try to do better. I have been reading with delight the comments that you have added to this thread, and I really do look forward to your responses.

Paige Britton: You asked about perspicuity, and where we find it in Scripture.

I see that I didn’t do a very good job communicating my question to you. I wanted to ask a question about the doctrine of sola scriptura: i.e. … Where are the scriptures that explicitly teach that the Protestant Bible is the ONLY source of authority for the Christian?

But let us talk about the perspicuity of scriptures, since the Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura assumes that scriptures are perspicuous.

Paige Britton: Remember that we (P’s) are operating within a different worldview than the Catholic view; we are not convinced of (and many of us at this point in history may never even have considered) the claims to papal infallibility.

I think that we can put the issue of papal infallibility to the side for the moment. The Orthodox believe that when bishops formally define dogma in a valid Ecumenical Council, that the bishops of the Council have spoken infallibly, and that the whole church must accept these doctrines as binding. Do you agree with that?

Paige Britton: But we ARE convinced of God’s goodness, the necessity of his communication to us, and the location of that communication in Scripture.

Catholics believe that God is good, that God desires to communicate with us, and that God speaks to us through the Scriptures. So on those points, we agree. But when one reads the Bible, it is obvious that God doesn’t speak to us ONLY through the Scriptures, because the Scriptures teach us about other ways that God speaks to his people, such as God speaking to us through the supernatural gift of prophecy: e.g. Numbers 11:25-29, Joel 2:28, 1 Cor. 14:1.

Paige Britton: Perspicuity as a doctrine is the theological confession that God’s Word is clear because GOD is clear, and that he means to communicate to believers through that Word, without appointing anybody to a special infallibly interpretive office.

I understand that some (most) Protestants believe that there is no one within the Church that Christ founded that can infallibly interpret scriptures, but where are the scriptures that teach this belief? This belief of Protestantism comes from an interpretation of scriptures, not from scriptures themselves! Catholics and Orthodox believe that there is nothing within the scriptures that supports this Protestant doctrine.

Paige Britton: I think there is some confusion here about the doctrine – I have read several times in these comments the assumption that if God’s Word is so “perspicuous,” then all doctrines should be immediately obvious to every reader, and there should be none of the disagreement that we find among Protestants. But this is a caricature or misunderstanding of perspicuity.

Perspicuity (as Protestant doctrine) instead relates to God’s *intention* to communicate to his people via his inspired Word, without mediation from an infallible earthly interpreter, and is (we believe) a quality inherent to the Bible as a whole.

Various doctrines may be more or less *obvious* in the text – compare Creation with the Trinity, for example – but the degree of effort it takes to recognize or formulate a doctrine does not affect the “perspicuity” of Scripture.

I quite agree that some doctrines of Christianity are “more or less obvious in the text”, and you chose two good examples to illustrate that point. But it seems to me that you are trying very hard to redefine the word “perspicuous” so that you can claim that the Bible is perspicuous!

Perspicuous – adjective
clearly expressed or presented; lucid; easy to understand: perspicuous prose

Synonyms: intelligible, plain, distinct, explicit.

Catholics agree that God intends to communicate to his people through Scriptures. What doesn’t follow from that belief is that Scriptures are perspicuous, that is, that the scriptures are “easy to understand, explicit, plain”!

And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he [Jesus] interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself. Luke 24:27

So Philip ran to him [an Ethiopian, a minister of the Candace, queen of the Ethiopians], and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet, and asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?” And he said, “How can I, unless some one guides me?” Acts 8: 30-31

Protestants write books about the Bible to explain the things that are in the Bible that are not perspicuous (plain, easy to understand). There are also a lot of contradictory explanations within these different Protestant books. All of which does not prove that the Bible is unintelligible and full of contradictions – it just proves that the Bible is not perspicuous in the ordinary meaning of the word.

Paige Britton: Nor does perspicuity depend on the abilities of any particular reader.

If scriptures have the quality inherent in them of being perspicuous, then that quality must be perspicuous to someone, or the scriptures aren’t perspicuous! Now we are touching upon a key point discussed in the article by Byran and Neal:

Mathison: All appeals to Scripture are appeals to interpretations of Scripture. The only real question is: whose interpretation? People with differing interpretations of Scripture cannot set a Bible on a table and ask it to resolve their differences. In order for the Scripture to function as an authority, it must be read and interpreted by someone. According to “solo” Scriptura, that someone is each individual, so ultimately, there are as many final authorities as there are human interpreters.

Bryan and Neal’s response to the above: Because Scripture must be interpreted, and because Scripture cannot interpret itself by itself, it follows that some person or persons must interpret Scripture if Scripture is to function as an authority. … Mathison’s point is that when individuals take Scripture out of its ecclesial context, and treat themselves as the ultimate or highest interpretive authorities, the practical authority of Scripture is effectively destroyed. Scripture can function as an objective authority only when interpreted in and by the Church.

“Scripture can function as an objective authority only when interpreted in and by the Church.” Do you agree with that?

Paige Britton: We do not have to BE Bible scholars to understand God’s intentional communication to us, but we may need to LEAN on Bible scholars to understand well, especially if our own reading skills are poor or we do not yet have a deep knowledge of the Word.

If a person with average reading skills needs to “lean” on expert advise to understand the scriptures, then the scriptures are not perspicuous by definition!

Paige Britton: (This opens out to TC’s good question re. “whom do we trust,” but I will leave that for another time.) And all of us (P’s) OUGHT to lean on each other for checks and balances to our understanding (we don’t always!).

I agree – “whom do we trust” is the question that must be asked! Where do I find the Church that Christ founded that authoritatively interprets scriptures? Why should I trust Calvin, Luther, or any other Protestant teacher if they begin teaching novel doctrines? What makes Calvin and Luther any more trustworthy in their interpretations of scripture than the interpretations of scriptures given to us by John Wesley, John Smyth, Joseph Smith, Chuck Smith, Theophilus Lindley, Charles Taze Russell, Garner Ted Armstrong, Ellen Gould White, Aimee Semple Mcpherson, Victor Paul Wierwille … etc., etc., etc.? It is impossible to argue that Protestants are united in their doctrine when the doctrinal division within Protestantism is so perspicuous! Obviously just belonging to a Protestant church doesn’t guarantee the orthodoxy of what is taught in that particular Protestant church.

Paige Britton: One more thought re. perspicuity: To understand what we mean by the doctrine, consider God’s other perspicuous “book,” Science (or Nature). We can study Nature, we can do Science, we can gain knowledge, because God the Creator is a God of reason. He has left us a good deal to figure out: some of it is accessible to the littlest children; most of it takes some instruction and experience to know; some of it requires concentrated effort and training to comprehend. Our knowing in every case is fallible and can be corrected, but it is also sufficient for living on planet earth.

You said that some Christian doctrines are “more or less obvious from the text”, and I agree with that. Some things that we know about nature are also more or less obvious too, such as the fact that the sun rises in the east, or that fire burns hands that touch it. But again, I think that you are redefining the word perspicuous. Would the usual definition of the word “perspicuous” apply to an understanding of nature that is possible through, say, Quantum Electrodynamics and Quantum Chromodynamics? I don’t think so. I would argue that most scientists do NOT think that, say, quantum physics is perspicuous (for one example, see this article about the Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen paradox: “…most physicists today regard the EPR paradox as an illustration of how quantum mechanics violates classical intuitions”).

Paige Britton: Following on this thought, and because our worldview does not include the Catholic Magisterium, we (P’s) assume the same kind of perspicuity will be true of God’s *written* book, and believers should therefore approach it carefully, humbly, and expectantly.

I understand that most Protestants have a “worldview” that rejects that there is an authoritative teaching office within the Church that Christ founded (JW and LDS are Protestant exceptions to this worldview – they do accept a belief in an authoritative teaching office within their respective churches). The typical Protestant “world view” about teaching authority is why most Protestants don’t have a problem with church shopping.

To me, it naturally follows that if a Protestant believes that God speaks to all people through the scriptures, that he or she “should therefore approach it carefully, humbly, and expectantly” because that is how any sane person would approach God speaking to them. I would think that we would agree that part of the respect that is due to scriptures is to accept what scriptures actually teach without regard to whether I am comfortable with what scriptures teach. Which is why I find it hard to understand why the Protestant practice of church shopping is not seen as a scandal within Protestantism. Where do scriptures teach church shopping or synagogue shopping? Where do scriptures teach that I can found my own church if I disagree with the existing church?

This question of interpretive authority gets us back to the question that I really wanted to discuss. Where are the verses in scripture that explicitly state that the Protestant Bible is the ONLY infallible source of authority for a Christian? If I have to accept someone’s infallible interpretation of the Bible to find out about the existence of the doctrine of sola scriptura, then I have a very big problem indeed. If need two sources of infallible authority to know that sola scriptura is infallible doctrine (i.e. I need both the Bible and Martin Luther’s infallible interpretation of the Bible) then the Bible cannot be the ONLY source of infallible authority for me! Any pleading to the authority of the writings of the Fathers of the Church doesn’t make the case for sola scriptura any stronger, even if the Fathers of the Church did teach that the Protestant Bible is the ONLY source of authority for a Christian (which is something that they definitely didn’t teach!)

Paige Britton: As to where the doctrine is found in the text: well, briefly, it is assumed by the many statements about the writers’ intention for the written text, especially in the NT. (I can list these if you want.)

I have no doubt that you can quote the Bible to show that scriptures are authoritative, and that God speaks to us through scriptures. That is a point of agreement that I have with you, not a point of contention.

What I was trying to ask you in my previous post was whether you could provide me with a list scriptures that explicitly teach that the Protestant Bible is the ONLY source of infallible authority for a Christian. It is the “ONLY” that is the source of contention – Catholics and the Orthodox don’t reject the idea that the scriptures speak with authority, they reject the idea that Scriptures are the ONLY infallible authority for a Christian.

Paige Britton: But as far as convincing you about perspicuity, I think the only thing that would get you there would be the conviction that God did not arrange for the infallible Magisterial interpretive body after all.

Since I believe that scriptures are infallible, you could make your case simply by quoting to me the scriptures that explicitly teach that the Protestant Bible is the only source of infallible authority for a Christian. The question about perspicuity is nothing more than a question about reading skills.

Let us suppose a teacher of reading skills at the local community college gives an assignment to a class of Japanese exchange students that are not Christians and that have never read the Protestant Bible. The teacher’s assignment is to list all the verses in the Protestant Bible that make the explicit claim that the Protestant Bible is the ONLY source of authority for Christians. The Japanese students with average to above average reading skills would learn from this assignment that there are no verses in the Protestant Bible that make the explicit claim that the Protestant Bible is the ONLY source of infallible authority for a Christian.

If you think that there are verses in the Protestant Bible that make the explicit claim that the Protestant Bible is the ONLY source of authority for a Christian, then I would certainly like to know what they are! Catholics have been reading the Bible for two thousand years and they have yet to find those verses. Even Luther never quoted any scriptures that supported his novel doctrine of sola scriptura, because there aren’t any verses in scriptures that he could quote to support his novel doctrine.

Paige Britton: Re. the Amish: as it happens, I live among the Amish. I don’t know firsthand what their church services are like, nor their daily experience with the Bible. But I do know that they are farmers and carpenters, not theologians, and that their education stops at 8th grade. This tells me that in their closed and close-knit community, they are probably limited in their ability (AND their desire!) to go beyond the basic teaching they’ve inherited, and take a good look at the texts.

I also lived near the Amish when I lived in Pennsylvania. As far as I know, the Amish don’t build churches. Their “church” services were always held in someone’s house where they were spoken in German. In the summertime, I could hear the preaching coming from the Amish houses, but I couldn’t understand it because I don’t speak German. The Old Order Amish that I knew had a relationship with scriptures that was pretty intense. My point in bringing up the Amish was that I don’t believe that the Amish are given over to “hasty” readings of the Bible, and they don’t agree with every interpretation of the Bible that are held by Calvinists. If the Bible is perspicuous, why does anyone need to read John Calvin to understand the Bible? How were the Christians that lived before John Calvin supposed to understand scriptures without John Calvin to teach them?
Matthew Anderson December 5th, 2009 8:31 am :
Tim,

You’ve stated repeatedly that there have been no substantial refutations of the original essay. My feeling is that there are several claims made in the paper, and so it depends on which claim you’re referring to. My understanding is that there are two main arguments in the paper:

1) Sola scriptura, in principle, reduces to solo scriptura
2) solo scriptura is unworkable.

Many Protestant may accept # 1, and may have done so eagerly without having to read a lengthy argument about it. But even so, that doesn’t mean they accept # 2. Are you suggesting that argument #2 has been proved by this essay?
Tim A. Troutman December 7th, 2009 9:55 am :
Matthew,

Good point. I wouldn’t say that #2 has been as carefully demonstrated as #1. The article mostly assumes that #2 is true as would most of the confessional Reformed. The reason why #2 wasn’t more carefully proven was because we assumed a wide consensus with it. Interestingly, no one who agrees with #2 believes that #1 is true. It seems that since you don’t have a problem with #2, you’re willing to admit that #1 is true.

We have a difficult job defending ourselves because the accusations come from all over and cover every imaginable topic. You said (or implied) that what I said was true: we had not been refuted on #1, but another commenter states the opposite (that we have been refuted). Above, one guest affirms that if Catholics had material apostolic succession, then it would prove their claims but he doesn’t believe that we have it. Another Protestant says we do have material apostolic succession but it doesn’t matter. These aren’t just anecdotal examples I’m giving you; this is the norm for us. I hope you can appreciate the difficulty of defending so many things at once!

That is why I keep repeating that the article has not been refuted. Many have only seen “sola scriptura” somewhere in the title and took that as an invitation to attack devotion to the saints and Petrine primacy. We have over 450 comments but at least 100 have not gone through. I’m just keeping it real – let’s all be on the same page regarding what’s going on. We made a claim that there is no principled difference between sola and solo. If you don’t think that matters, then you have no beef with this article.
Bryan Cross December 7th, 2009 12:08 pm :
rfwhite, (re: #446)

You wrote:

does the Holy Spirit work immediately, mediately through the church, or both immediately and mediately to effect the right understanding of Holy Scripture?

Both. The Holy Spirit illumines Scripture to us as we study it privately, and the Holy Spirit works through the Church to help us better understand Scripture. But the Holy Spirit does not contradict Himself. The ordinary way in which the Spirit guides the Church in her interpretation of Scripture is through the organ Christ established to do just that. So we submit our private interpretation of Scripture to the authority of the Holy Spirit speaking through the Magisterium.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Matthew Anderson December 7th, 2009 1:03 pm :
Tim,

Thanks for your response. My understanding has been that confessional Protestantism has always been confident that their particular creed or doctrine (depending on the tradition or denomination) could be defended adequately on the basis of Scripture alone. Take for example the Anglican tradition. The 39 Articles state repeatedly that only doctrines which can be proven from Scripture may be held as necessary for salvation. So, even the creeds are affirmed because as Article 8 states, “they can be proven by most certain warrants of Holy Scripture.” So, the Anglican tradition doesn’t necessitate that every single aspect of church life be proven by Scripture, but that those beliefs which are held to be necessary to salvation be proven by Scripture.

For me, the kind of point that Mathison and others are making is more about interpretive method and ecclesiological culture, in that he (and others) are attempting to distinguishing between historic Protestant method in biblical interpretation and the culture of respect for tradition that comes with it, from the method and culture of modern evangelicalism. But, I feel that both sola scripturists and solo scripturists would at the end of the day believe their doctrines could be defended adequately from the Bible alone. I think they both would agree that at the core the operative principle is the same, but that there are substantial differences in the practical outworking of the two approaches.

To put all this another way, are you suggesting that Mathison is arguing that Reformed churches can hold to various significant doctrines without any substantial appeal to Scripture?

I hope that makes sense.
Paige Britton December 7th, 2009 9:22 pm :
Hi again Mateo:
Wow, we need a thread all to ourselves! I’ll try to be both brief and thorough here, though I will have to address your comments in parts. :) (You are not coming across as harsh! I’m not offended by your questions, only feeling limited in my ability to answer.)

PART ONE: PERSPICUITY & SOLA SCRIPTURA
We are playing tug-of-war with the word “perspicuity.” You are using a dictionary definition to understand it; I am trying to clarify what the Protestant doctrine means. I am not personally redefining the word, but I am simply trying to express that it is a THEOLOGICAL (and polemical) confession made by Protestant theologians, who have co-opted the dictionary word and made it a label for “God’s intention to communicate through his written word to believers without need of an infallible interpreter.” “Perspicuity” is a technical term, in this use. (Whether or not Protestants in general understand that this is what is going on with “perspicuity” and “clarity,” such is the case.)

And yes, yes, yes – I do indeed dare to compare the Protestant doctrine of perspicuity with even such difficult scientific discoveries and theories as Quantum Chromodynamics. I can do this because I am not using the dictionary definition of “perspicuity” (i.e., “anybody of ordinary education could understand”) but the technical Protestant term, which is a theological confession: God’s Word is MEANT for humans to understand it, just as God’s WORLD is meant to be understood, both coming from the Great Communicator. Both are complex because GOD is complex: but both are open to investigation, and (we P’s believe) both need no infallible interpreter.

I am afraid that we cannot set aside the doctrine of magisterial infallibility of interpretation here: in fact, I believe it is the crux of the matter! If it is true, there is no need for this doctrine of “perspicuity,” or indeed of “sola scriptura.” If it is NOT true, then the Protestant explanation is the only available option, if we are going to receive God’s communication at all. It is this decision (or assumption) about whether or not we have access to an infallible interpreter on earth that determines our approach to the Bible. I think the most important question is: Does any one of us (within the Church) have special access to God’s truth, or is there “epistemic parity” among us? There is a world of difference between these views!

If there is an infallible interpreter on earth, then that interpreter has the ability and the right to tell us what the Bible IS – e.g., one authority among several, in the Catholic or EO view (or an unreliable authority that needs to be upgraded, as per the Mormon view). If there is no infallible interpreter on earth, then the Bible itself must teach us what the Bible IS – i.e., the sole authoritative revelation of God to his people. We simply do not have any other “visitors’ booth” to the universe, to tell us the way things stand and what God has been up to.

You note that “Catholics & Orthodox believe that there is nothing w/in the scriptures that supports this Protestant doctrine” of no earthly infallible interpreter. Perhaps this means that there is something w/in the scriptures that supports the opposite? But I note in Tim’s response to TF above that there are about four means needed to assess the truth of the Catholic doctrine, only one of which is the Bible. And to what authority can Catholics appeal for their particular interpretation of the texts they see as relevant to this doctrine? Isn’t it the infallible Magisterium? As a couple of Protestant guests have expressed on this thread, we are utterly baffled as to how we’d ever arrive at an objective confirmation of papal infallibility, standing as we are on this side of the Tiber, heirs of the Reformation. The only “visitors’ booth to the universe,” the only “authorized version” of the way things really are, seems to us to be the Word of God. It does not appear obvious to us that the Word comes with an infallible earthly interpreter, as a package deal. (As I half-jokingly asked ‘way back at the beginning, perhaps there is a new move of the Spirit needed to overcome the “noetic effects” of our Protestantism!)

You asked for Scripture proof that the Bible speaks of itself as the ONLY authority for believers, as confirmation of the claim to “sola scriptura.” But sola scriptura, like perspicuity, is not something built out of a verse here or there; it is a doctrine reflecting biblical themes, and a confession of God’s intention for his Church, for how we are to know him and his works. So, just scratching the surface: It is the sum of the messages about the writers’ intentions for the text, that they would be read (or heard) and understood by ordinary believers, for a purpose (e.g., John 20:31; 21:24; Luke 1:1-4; Acts 1:1; Eph. 3:1-6; 1 John 2:1, etc.)…Plus the call to test our own and others’ teaching against a particular standard called “sound doctrine” (Mt. 7:15-20; Acts 17:11; Rom. 16:17; Gal. 1:6-9, 11-12; 1 Tim. 4:6, 16; 6:3-5; 2 Tim. 2:2, 15)…Plus the identification of the biblical texts as the repository of that doctrine, the very words of God, useful for ordinary believers (2 Tim. 3:16-17; Eph. 6:17; 2 Thess. 2:13).

You gave several (biblical) examples of ways that God has communicated besides his written Word: OT prophets, NT church gift of prophecy, etc. But here are three ways to understand this kind of communication that do not assume a continuation of revelation via this medium: 1) OT prophecy had specific significance in redemptive history, and has now ceased; 2) OT prophecy was inspired revelation from God; 3) the “prophecy” referred to in the NT churches was not new revelation, and always had to be tested by what was established teaching (Gal. 1:8-9; 1 Thess. 5:21; 1 John 4:1). If you are using these examples as an argument for the existence of present-day extrabiblical revelation, I’d have to note that the Montanist controversy happened pretty early (150AD), and was easily recognized as heresy; and also that in the case of the Magisterium’s claims to infallible *interpretive* authority, there is NO concurrent claim to *inspiration* (which I learned from Bryan or from Andrew Preslar in some venue this fall, I forget where). (Though I am not sure how to categorize the extrabiblical doctrines such as Purgatory and the Immaculate Conception – they are not technically interpretation, but are they considered inspired? Don’t know.) Anyway, the Protestant reading is, of course, that the canon is closed, and no new verbal revelation can be added – which seems to have been the attitude of the very earliest Church Fathers, though I am no expert in that literature.

There, that is enough for you to chew on for now. I’ll address the rest of your ideas later today or tomorrow. I do appreciate this chance to interact with you on these topics!
Tim A. Troutman December 7th, 2009 10:52 pm :
Matthew,

The article is not about whether doctrines need to be explicitly stated in Scripture or not. Neither is it about epistemology (though many guests have tried to move it in that direction ). The issue is about authority. The Reformed claim to believe in Church authority but they subject that authority to their own private interpretation of Scripture and thus their self-view of Church authority is no different in principle than the Protestant who would explicitly state that his only authority is his private interpretation of Scripture. That’s what the article demonstrates. If someone disagrees they need to say so and start out with something like this: “There is a principle of distinction between sola and solo scriptura and it is this:” (and then go on to explain what that principle is).

But if they do not do that or something very similar, then they do not refute the article and don’t really engage it. In 349 I gave two very explicit examples of what a refutation would look like. So far, nothing has looked like that at all.
Paige Britton December 8th, 2009 8:18 am :
Mateo —
Here is some more food for thought:

PART TWO:
You asked: “The Orthodox believe that when bishops formally define dogma in a valid Ecumenical Council, that the bishops of the Council have spoken infallibly, and that the whole church must accept these doctrines as binding. Do you agree with that?”

No, I do not agree that the Ecumenical Councils produced infallible doctrines – because I am not convinced that there is any such thing as an infallible interpreter on earth. I believe that even those brilliant theologians who wrote those doctrinal formulations were on the same epistemic footing as myself (i.e., fallible, and with access to the biblical texts). But to say that interpreters are “fallible” does not mean that they are necessarily always wrong, and to say that doctrines are “fallible” does not mean that they are necessarily always untrue. “Fallible” simply refers to our (believers’) state of dependence on God’s Word and one another (as co-readers of God’s Word) for checks and balances to our understanding, and to the fact that our interpretations are sometimes wrong and therefore correctible, something that cannot be said by Catholics about the Pope’s ex cathedra pronouncements.

As to whether the doctrinal formulations are binding on the church, I believe the Protestant understanding is that they are NOT binding EXCEPT to the extent that they accurately represent the biblical witness to the particular doctrines. Yes, this means that other believers must judge the accuracy of the doctrines against the biblical text. Protestantly speaking, we believe this is a sufficient and reliable course to take. Here’s why:

If the Bible is perspicuous – i.e., God’s sole intentional verbal communication to the church, regardless of difficulty level (some things are more obvious than others) – then any interpretation can be judged more or less orthodox by appeal to the text. Yes, yes, yes – different people would like to convince me of different interpretations! Big surprise: the Bible is thick and complex, and if we are operating with an assumption of epistemic parity, differences of interpretation will arise. I am not saying that I as a believer, or even a J. I. Packer, will always be able even to *judge* competing interpretations correctly, let alone come up with the right ones every time ourselves. What we WILL do is a lot of listening to arguments, a lot of comparing of texts, a lot of weighing and judging of explanations, and a lot of leaning on those more experienced than ourselves (this last is hard to do if you are a J. I. Packer!). And sometimes we’ll have to say, “I don’t know which interpretation is best,” and sometimes we will choose to say, “This one seems most convincing, though that other one is possible,” and sometimes we will firmly say, “No, that one is not at all supported by the text of Scripture, and is an unorthodox reading,” and often we can say confidently, “Yes, that is a valid reading, and I will stand on it.”

And while Bryan and Neal characterize this Protestant interpretive process as being solely (and shamefully) an individualized one, thoughtfully & rightly done it is something that happens in community, each of us being humbly aware of our own fallibility. Yes, each individual Protestant must finally make decisions for herself, whether about whom to trust or what to believe; but wise individuals seek checks and balances before making life-changing (or church-changing!) decisions. (And none of us are really surprised to find that individual Protestants are not always wise!!)

[Side note: I am kind of an anomaly among Protestant laypeople, given my interest in theological topics. The evaluative process that I sketch above is most commonly the course of pastors and professors, with laypeople encouraged to know the Bible and theology to the extent of their abilities. This means that knowing WHOM TO TRUST is hugely important in Protestantism, though it is, I think, a much-neglected topic in our teaching. More on this later.]

Obviously, it would be easier for everybody if we had an infallible interpreter on earth. We wouldn’t make mistakes and missteps in our interpretations, because we would read everything according to our Magisterium’s teaching. But just because something seems preferable does not mean it is TRUE. If we are NOT convinced that the Catholic claims are true, then (to be consistent with our confession) we are to dive into studying God’s Word with all the intellectual skills and spiritual gifts that God has given us, trusting that he will provide wisdom, teachers, and sufficient understanding if we ask him to, and acknowledging that we (and others whom we trust) may sometimes make mistakes.

That’s all for now — I’ll write a few more notes later today.
pax!
pb
Matthew Anderson December 8th, 2009 9:22 am :
I graduated from a Reformed seminary (WTS), and my experience was that people there generally didn’t see doctrinal, confessional, or ecclesiastical authority functioning apart from Holy Scripture. That there was a distinction between a confessional formulation and scripture was of course acknowledged, but the idea would be that if you took enough time to study and understand, you could eventually see why the confessional formulation was a legitimate deduction from Scripture. WCF chapter 1 would indicate that all essential doctrine is based upon scripture, and this would further suggest that anyone who wants can test a particular doctrine accordingly. I guess I’m just saying that I don’t know how revolutionary it is to prove that at the core level, solo scriptura and sola scriptura are operating according to the same principle. The real issue for me would be whether there is something inherently flawed or broken in this approach.
TurretinFan December 8th, 2009 10:51 am :
Tim Troutman:

You are mistaken about how the article can be refuted. You are correct that one way to refute the article would be to use the format you mentioned: “There is a principle of distinction between sola and solo scriptura and it is this:” (and then go on to explain what that principle is). However, there are other ways to refute the article, such as by demonstrating that the article is unfounded or that the article is self-defeating. Those sort of refutations of the article have been offered (both by myself – here, for example – and by others.

Yet, lest you continue to assert that no refutation has been offered according to your preferred form:

There is a principle of distinction between sola scriptura and solo scriptura and it is this: respect for subordinate authority.

Scriptures teach that the elders are overseers (Act 20:28 Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood.) and that they are to be accorded special dignity (1 Timothy 5:1 Rebuke not an elder, but intreat him as a father; and the younger men as brethren; & 1 Timothy 5:19 Against an elder receive not an accusation, but before two or three witnesses. ). This respect, of course, is not without limits. An elder can be accused by a plurality of witnesses (1 Timothy 5:19), an elder can be entreated when in error (1 Timothy 5:1), and there will be false teachers that will come in (2 Peter 2:1 But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction. ).

Submission to the elders of the church is part of a Christians overall duty to submit to authority to authority (Romans 13:1 Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. & Titus 3:1 Put them in mind to be subject to principalities and powers, to obey magistrates, to be ready to every good work,). Indeed, even the civil authorities in an ungodly empire are called ministers of God:

Romans 13:1-7
Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation. For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same: for he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil. Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake. For for this cause pay ye tribute also: for they are God’s ministers, attending continually upon this very thing. Render therefore to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honour to whom honour.

Indeed, Jesus himself commended human authority to his disciples (Matthew 23:1-3 Then spake Jesus to the multitude, and to his disciples, saying, “The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat: all therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after their works: for they say, and do not.”) However, this submission to human authority was rightly understood by the apostles to be tempered by a higher duty toward God (Act 5:27-29 And when they had brought them, they set them before the council: and the high priest asked them, saying, “Did not we straitly command you that ye should not teach in this name? and, behold, ye have filled Jerusalem with your doctrine, and intend to bring this man’s blood upon us.” Then Peter and the other apostles answered and said, “We ought to obey God rather than men.”)

The elders, like the civil magistrate, are ministers of God (1 Thessalonians 3:2 And sent Timotheus, our brother, and minister of God, and our fellowlabourer in the gospel of Christ, to establish you, and to comfort you concerning your faith:). They accordingly ought to be obeyed and respected, so long as obedience to them does not conflict with obedience to God.

There is one further parallel that must be made. Obedience to parents is repeatedly emphasized in Scripture:

Exodus 20:12 Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.

Deuteronomy 5:16 Honour thy father and thy mother, as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee; that thy days may be prolonged, and that it may go well with thee, in the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.

Micah 7:6 For the son dishonoureth the father, the daughter riseth up against her mother, the daughter in law against her mother in law; a man’s enemies are the men of his own house.

Malachi 1:6 A son honoureth his father, and a servant his master: if then I be a father, where is mine honour? and if I be a master, where is my fear? saith the LORD of hosts unto you, O priests, that despise my name. And ye say, Wherein have we despised thy name?

Matthew 15:4-6
For God commanded, saying, Honour thy father and mother: and, He that curseth father or mother, let him die the death. But ye say, Whosoever shall say to his father or his mother, It is a gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me; and honour not his father or his mother, he shall be free. Thus have ye made the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition.

Matthew 19:19 Honour thy father and thy mother: and, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

Mark 7:10-13
For Moses said, Honour thy father and thy mother; and, Whoso curseth father or mother, let him die the death: but ye say, If a man shall say to his father or mother, It is Corban, that is to say, a gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me; he shall be free. And ye suffer him no more to do ought for his father or his mother; making the word of God of none effect through your tradition, which ye have delivered: and many such like things do ye.

Mark 10:19 Thou knowest the commandments, Do not commit adultery, Do not kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Defraud not, Honour thy father and mother.

Luke 18:20 Thou knowest the commandments, Do not commit adultery, Do not kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Honour thy father and thy mother.

Ephesians 6:2 Honour thy father and mother; (which is the first commandment with promise;)

Colossians 3:20 Children, obey your parents in all things: for this is well pleasing unto the Lord.

Yet even the divinely commanded obedience to father and mother is tempered by a necessary trumping obedience to God (Ephesians 6:1 Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right. & Matthew 8:21-22 And another of his disciples said unto him, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father. But Jesus said unto him, Follow me; and let the dead bury their dead. & Luke 9:59-60 And he said unto another, Follow me. But he said, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father. Jesus said unto him, Let the dead bury their dead: but go thou and preach the kingdom of God.)

Now the Roman Catholic church does not deny that the authority of parents and kings are subordinate to the authority of God. Furthermore, the Roman Catholic church (at least in theory) affirms that God is a higher authority than the church. Thus, this principle of distinction between sola scriptura and solo scriptura ought to be understandable, at least, to the Roman Catholic reader.

Finally, and this is where the refutation extends beyond simply stating the principle of distinction and explaining it, the sola scriptura position is the position that best fits our present circumstance. Our elders are men. They are not incarnations of the Logos – they are not divinely inspired prophets. They are teachers and pastors. They are owed submission and respect, but not absolutely. Even the apostles (who were sometimes divinely inspired prophets) were not given absolute respect (Acts 17:11 These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so. & Galatians 2:11 But when Peter was come to Antioch, I withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed.).

Even Jesus himself, though he could have insisted on his divine prerogative, opened his ministry to Scriptural examination (John 5:39 Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me. & Matthew 11:2-5 Now when John had heard in the prison the works of Christ, he sent two of his disciples, and said unto him, “Art thou he that should come, or do we look for another?” Jesus answered and said unto them, “Go and shew John again those things which ye do hear and see: the blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them.” & compare Isaiah 35:4-6 Say to them that are of a fearful heart, Be strong, fear not: behold, your God will come with vengeance, even God with a recompence; he will come and save you. Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing: for in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert. & Luke 24:25-27 Then he said unto them, “O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken: ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory?” And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.).

The Scriptures, after all, are the very word of God, not the private interpretations of men (2 Peter 1:20-21 Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.) Furthermore, the Scriptures are both formally and materially sufficient (2 Timothy 3:15-17 And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: that the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works. )

Accordingly, not only is there a principled distinction between sola scriptura and solo scriptura, but sola scriptura is distinguishable from (and superior to) an unbounded submission to the successors (real or alleged) of the apostles. I’m aware of Bryan Cross’ objections to this distinction and I’ve answered them (here – where I demonstrate that his objection amounts to a denial that there can be subordinate authority).
Devin Rose December 8th, 2009 12:02 pm :
Turretinfan,

I will let the CtC guys respond to your post directly in regard to their article, but several months ago I wrote a blog post that demonstrates the problem with your particular concept of “obeying the elders of the church” here: https://www.devinrose.heroicvirtuecreations.com/blog/2009/04/30/what-if-the-elders-are-wrong/

I do not want to pull the thread off-topic, but I would certainly be interested in how you respond to my objection to this concept (you can comment on my site).
Paige Britton December 8th, 2009 12:56 pm :
Mateo — last installment!

PART THREE: (are you tired of hearing from me yet?? :)

You quoted Mathison & then Bryan & Neal, then asked (quoting B&N) if I agreed with the statement, “Scripture can function as an objective authority only when interpreted in and by the Church.” I do not agree, for how can the Scripture function as an objective authority when its interpretation is subject to the authority of the Church? I would say instead that it only functions as an OBJECTIVE authority when the Church’s teaching is subject to IT.

But we can’t agree on definitions, here, I think, because of the difference in worldviews – from the Catholic perspective, it is only when Scripture is used by those with the infallible interpretive charism that it has its proper authority; and hence anyone who seeks to judge the church’s teaching by the content of the biblical text is both disobedient and merely being subjective, since the true interpretation is the sole commodity of the Magisterium. From the Protestant perspective, God has set things up so that a) language communicates, b) as co-readers we provide checks and balances to one another’s interpretations in the church, and c) the content of church teaching can be judged against the biblical message by fallible human readers sufficiently and reliably. (Do we always do this well, carefully, impartially, and irenically? Nope.)
……..
Knowing whom to trust in general is a *wisdom* question. Some of this discernment can be taught directly, but much of it comes through imitation and experience (sometimes hard experience). The sincerity or friendliness of a teacher should not be our final measure of good teaching, although these can be examples of good fruit.

Very, very briefly: we should test those who teach us by their character, their intellectual virtues (both in learning and teaching), and their faithfulness to the biblical message. (This last piece requires time and hard work for the student to gain it, so there will probably be a delay before it is in place. This means we need to pay special heed to the first two – and we need also to be aware when a lack of information means we should not lean too heavily on a particular teacher or message till we have checked with others whom we trust.)

Teachers who encourage us to be like the Bereans (Acts 17) and DIG in the Scriptures to validate what they teach indicate their willingness to be tested and subject to the higher authority of God’s Word. Teachers who discourage questions and challenges should be regarded with a healthy skepticism.
…..
I am totally in agreement with you that there is a “scandal of church shopping” among Protestants – though I guess I lament most those changes that are due to spiritual immaturity, such as subjective tastes in worship styles, lack of perseverance, unresolved conflicts, boredom, and the like, which I think account for a lot of church hopping. I am much more respectful of those choices that are made out of thought and conviction, with much prayer, counsel, and peaceable partings. It does not surprise me that some Protestants would move from one denomination to another because they have grown in their knowledge of theological systems and the biblical text, and are newly convinced that a certain system of thought best expresses the biblical message. (Frequent theological changes, though, are a sign of immaturity!) And of course many changes are due to necessity, and not attributable to either immaturity or theological conviction.
…..
Re. the Amish again: Hey, did you live in Lancaster County? You are right, “hasty” is not a word I would ascribe to the Amish in any area of life, let alone in Bible reading! But I do still think that they probably lack the ability and the desire to STUDY the texts that they read. Maybe they are the opposite of hasty; maybe they are just stuck.
….
So, the $64K question: where is the True Church? Did Calvin and/or Luther find it, or leave it? If they left it, then we heirs of the Reformation are in a pickle, stranded here on the wrong side of the Tiber. But if they caught a glimpse of God’s intention for his church that had been obscured for centuries, then we 21st century Protestants have some catching up to do, to live up to the implications of what they saw — not least in growing literate enough to make use of the clear but complex Scriptures to evaluate the myriad of options you mentioned.

pax,
pb
Tim A. Troutman December 8th, 2009 1:00 pm :
TurretinFan,

I went to those posts earlier but I confess I did not read them. I’ll let Bryan respond directly if he wants to; I’m more interested in the direct refutation of the article.

We need to more carefully define what we mean by “principle of distinction” since the obvious meaning seems to be in question now (for the sake of winning a debate I guess). We mean a principle of distinction in regard to the principle of the thing in question. For example, is there any principle of distinction whatsoever in any way between solo scriptura and sola scriptura? Sure, 1. the former is spelled “solo” and the latter is spelled “sola.” We can always distinguish them by inspecting the last letter of the word. That is a principle of distinction as regards spelling. Another principle distinction: The former is improper Latin and the latter is proper Latin. That is a principle of distinction as regards grammar. If we examine the concepts themselves, there might be principles of distinction in one regard, but not in regard to the principle of the things in question. The principle here is authority. So while there is a principled distinction in regard to spelling, there is no principled distinction in regard to authority.

Suppose a government started an education lottery. “We will raise $1 million and all of it will go to education” they said. Having raised the money, the tax payers realized that the $5 million education spending stayed the same. They question it, and the authorities reply that they indeed used the $1 mil from the lottery to pay for education, but that freed up $1 mil of the education money to be used elsewhere. We can say without qualification that what the government did is no different in principle than if they had directly misappropriated the fund. They rebut: “No there is a principle of distinction in what we did, we respected the law and we did everything according to the book. The $1 mil was designated to education exactly as promised.” So there is a principle of distinction in the action of the government, but not in regard to the principle of the things in question, namely whether or not the government misappropriated the funds. One way does it directly; the other does it indirectly. But they both do the same thing in principle.

There are some accidental differences and those differences could be considered principles of distinction but only in regard to a certain aspect of the question. For example, in regard to the question, per se, of whether or not the money was designated according to the law, is there a distinction between the government designating 1 mil and then moving other funds and them not designating 1 mil? Yes there is. But there still is no principle of distinction in regard to the very thing in question: whether the funds were misappropriated.

We can probably think of many examples. But to tie it into your argument, the question is whether or not one’s private interpretation of Scripture is authoritative for a believer. In regard to this, there is no principle of distinction between sola and solo scriptura. Your argument shows that there is a principle of distinction in regard to an accidental aspect, namely whether one acknowledges church authority in any way whatsoever, but not in regard to the very thing in question: whether one’s private interpretation of Scripture holds more authority than the Church.
Tim A. Troutman December 8th, 2009 1:06 pm :
Matthew,

I get where you’re coming from; it depends on the recipient. I think that in my Presbyterian days, I would have been in your camp. But I think you can see that TurretinFan and a few others consider it much more important and are going to some lengths to try and disprove it.

I think it is related mostly to one’s self perception. Many Reformed see themselves as subordinate to the Church in a more tangible way than say a ‘community church’ member or even a Baptist. When someone else comes out and says, “in principle there’s no real difference,” it can rub the fur the wrong way.
Bryan Cross December 8th, 2009 1:11 pm :
TurretinFan,

In our article we explain carefully how there can be subordinate authority, both of the civil government, and even within heretical sects. See also comment #149.

The conclusion of our argument is not that there is no [conceptual] distinction between solo and sola, but that there is no principled distinction between them with respect to the holder of ultimate interpretive authority. And that is why in essence they are the same, even though they are defined differently. Sola is merely the indirect form of solo. I can either directly act as my own ultimate interpretive authority (that’s solo), or I can pick people who agree with my interpretation, and then ‘submit’ to them (that’s sola). The underlying principle or essence is the same in both cases (i.e. the individual is his own ultimate interpretive authority), but in the latter case this essence is hidden by a layer of customized secondary ‘authority.’

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Keith Mathison December 8th, 2009 2:09 pm :
All,

I’ve seen several comments here and on other blogs wondering about my response and when I will have it ready. Two quick things:

1). This is a long paper and it deals with a number of important issues. I’m sure Bryan and Neal didn’t compose the whole thing in a week, or even a month. It obviously took some time to write. It will also take some time to write a response that will do it justice.

2). I was planning on beginning the response back at the beginning of November. However, a couple of unforeseen incidents have taken up the majority of my time since then. Two weeks before Thanksgiving, my wife took a bad fall and seriously injured her face. We were in and out of doctor and dentist offices for several days. One week before Thanksgiving, while she was still recuperating, a water pipe burst in the wall behind my kitchen sink. Those who have dealt with this know it is a mess. We spent the next week or so ripping out damaged drywall, insulation, floors, and even cabinets when we discovered that the burst pipe had been slowly leaking for some time and had caused mold and mildew to grow into the cabinet wood. Now we’re slowly getting everything put back together.

Needless to say, I haven’t had much time to think about sola scriptura or apostolic succession since the beginning of November.

In short, it may take some time to write a thoughtful response. I’ll let Bryan know when it is done and where it is posted, so he can let the folks here know. But don’t expect it anytime in the next few weeks. I have too many people coming in and out of my house right now to get much done when I’m home.

Thanks,

Keith
Andrew Preslar December 8th, 2009 5:14 pm :
Keith,

I am so sorry to read about your wife’s injury. I hope that she is well on the mend. What a time to have the house turn against you! May the Lord grant healing to your wife and good repair to your house.

Thanks for posting this update.

In Christ,

Andrew Preslar
Teri December 8th, 2009 5:17 pm :
Dr. Mathison

I will certainly be in prayer for your wife. I also will pray for your situation with water pipes! These things do try our patience and there is never an opportune time for them. An aside, since my husband and I have an insurance agency, be sure that you have done everything they tell you exactly.

I will wait until you can comment fully about this article. The gentlemen here at CTC are to be commended for moderating so many, many comments!

Along the lines of interpretive authority…
I was re-reading some of Flavius Josephus’ work the other night. My thought was how amazing it was that when Our Lord spoke to his apostles and told them when to leave Jerusalem, they remembered and heeded this warning.
From Josephus you can understand how someone who didn’t listen to the apostles may have been fooled by the priests or false messiahs, etc.
What a horror that ensued upon those people that were inside the city gates!
I wonder what it would be like in today’s world with so many competing voices of authority according to sacred scripture?
Who would you follow?
Thankfully, the apostles were entrusted with Our Lord’s words and those who followed them fled to safety. I wonder sometimes if that is just an example of the end of time in our own world order.
I personally will still follow those who Our Lord entrusted with His Kingdom on earth from the beginning. HE hasn’t failed them yet.

Blessings and peace on this Holy Day, Tim and the rest of the CTC!
Teri
Bryan Cross December 9th, 2009 2:05 am :
Matthew, (re: #461)

You wrote:

but the idea would be that if you took enough time to study and understand, you could eventually see why the confessional formulation was a legitimate deduction from Scripture. WCF chapter 1 would indicate that all essential doctrine is based upon scripture, and this would further suggest that anyone who wants can test a particular doctrine accordingly.

This was my own point of view as well, when I was in seminary (see here). The meta-level assumptions implicit in this methodology, cannot be tested by the method, because they are presupposed by the method. This methodology presupposes, for example, that Scripture is such that the Church’s entire confession can, by sufficient historico-critical study, be deduced from Scripture. If that assumption is false (and I believe it is) then the whole methodology is based on a false presupposition. That assumption paints the magisterial target around one’s interpretive arrow, which implicitly withholds from that magisterium interpretive (not to mention canon-determining) authority. For that reason, the methodology cannot be used to evaluate whether apostolic succession is true, because the methodology itself implicitly presupposes the falsity of apostolic succession, by presupposing that the ‘magisterium’ consists of persons agreeing with wherever my interpretive arrow lands. The methodology in that respect begs the question against the Catholic Church, assuming precisely what is in question between Protestants and the Catholic Church.

I guess I’m just saying that I don’t know how revolutionary it is to prove that at the core level, solo scriptura and sola scriptura are operating according to the same principle. The real issue for me would be whether there is something inherently flawed or broken in this approach.

It gets rid of the Church. Christ founded a Church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. It is the pillar and bulwark of truth (1 Tim 3:15), and the Body of Christ (1 Cor 12). It is the ark of salvation (St. Cyprian), and the Israel of the New Covenant. All men are called to enter Christ’s Church by baptism, having one faith and one baptism (Eph 4), and being one Body because of [Eucharistic] partaking of the one Loaf which is Christ (1 Cor 10:17). Through our unity in Christ’s one Church, we testify to the world that the Father sent the Son and loves us as He loves the Son whose name we (Christians) bear. (John 17:23) Solo scriptura solves the problem of schism not be reconciling Christians in the one Church that Christ founded, but simply by redefining ‘Church’ so that schism is impossible (see here and here and here). You can’t pray for the schismatics if you don’t even believe there is such a thing as being in schism from the Church, let alone that it is a grave sin. If sola scriptura is in principle the same as solo scriptura, then all the sola scriptura folks who think they are “doing church” (as it is now fashionably called), are merely playing church.

If those consequences aren’t revolutionary to you, that might be precisely because there is no principled difference between sola and solo. But in that case, the contrast between your ecclesiology and that of the Church Fathers is revolutionary. And unless you’ve drunk deeply of ecclesial deism, the discontinuity between solo and the Fathers should be deeply troubling.

St. Augustine and St. Thomas were not advocates of solo scriptura. To the Donatists, St. Augustine wrote:

“You know what the Catholic Church is, and what that is cut off from the Vine; if there are any among you cautious, let them come; let them find life in the Root. Come, brethren, if you wish to be engrafted in the Vine: a grief it is when we see you lying thus cut off. Number the Bishops even from the very seat of Peter: and see every succession in that line of Fathers: that is the Rock against which the proud Gates of Hell prevail not.”

And Aquinas showed the same thing. As Aquinas lay dying, the Sacred Viaticum (i.e. Holy Eucharist) was brought into the room, and he said:

“If in this world there be any knowledge of this sacrament stronger than that of faith, I wish now to use it in affirming that I firmly believe and know as certain that Jesus Christ, True God and True Man, Son of God and Son of the Virgin Mary, is in this Sacrament.”

Then as he was to receive the Eucharist, Aquinas added these words:

“I receive Thee, the price of my redemption, for Whose love I have watched, studied, and laboured. Thee have I preached; Thee have I taught. Never have I said anything against Thee: if anything was not well said, that is to be attributed to my ignorance. Neither do I wish to be obstinate in my opinions, but if I have written anything erroneous concerning this sacrament or other matters, I submit all to the judgment and correction of the Holy Roman Church, in whose obedience I now pass from this life.”

The solo scriptura-ist cannot submit his doctrine to the judgment and correction of the Church; he is his own ‘Church’, which means, for him, there is no Church.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
mateo December 9th, 2009 3:56 pm :
Paige Britton: Mateo … are you tired of hearing from me yet??

No, I am not tired of hearing from you! I enjoy the dialog and I appreciate the thoughtful responses. And now I will need to respond to your three-part response in more than one post. :-0

Paige Britton: PART ONE: PERSPICUITY & SOLA SCRIPTURA

We are playing tug-of-war with the word “perspicuity.” You are using a dictionary definition to understand it; I am trying to clarify what the Protestant doctrine means. I am not personally redefining the word, but I am simply trying to express that it is a THEOLOGICAL (and polemical) confession made by Protestant theologians, who have co-opted the dictionary word and made it a label for “God’s intention to communicate through his written word to believers without need of an infallible interpreter.” “Perspicuity” is a technical term, in this use. (Whether or not Protestants in general understand that this is what is going on with “perspicuity” and “clarity,” such is the case.)

I am indeed using the dictionary understanding of the word “perspicuous”, and I think that you can see the problem I have with using the Protestant “theological” definition of the word “perspicuous” to mean “God’s intention to communicate through his written word to believers without need of an infallible interpreter”. One, this isn’t even close to the ordinary meaning of the word “perspicuous”. Two, there is nothing in scriptures that explicitly makes the claim that God has the intention to “communicate through his written word to believers without need of an infallible interpreter”. My objection here is that communication breaks down when words that have an ordinary meaning are redefined to mean the exact opposite of what they normally mean.

Paige Britton: And yes, yes, yes – I do indeed dare to compare the Protestant doctrine of perspicuity with even such difficult scientific discoveries and theories as Quantum Chromodynamics. I can do this because I am not using the dictionary definition of “perspicuity” (i.e., “anybody of ordinary education could understand”) but the technical Protestant term, which is a theological confession …

Right. If we redefine the word “perspicuous” to mean “non-perspicuous”, then Quantum Chromodynamics can be said to be “perspicuous”. Likewise, if we redefine the word “perspicuous” to mean “a Calvinist interpretation of the Bible”, then Calvinists can claim that the Bible is “perspicuous”. But Calvinist’s aren’t alone in abusing the word “perspicuous” in this manner, because there are thousands of other Protestant denominations that use the word “perspicuous” to mean nothing more than “my Protestant denomination’s interpretation of scripture”. So what we really need is something to replace the word “perspicuous” since “perspicuous” doesn’t ordinarily mean thousands of different interpretations of the same thing – it means the exact opposite of that.

How about this? If the interpretation of scriptures agrees with John Calvin’s interpretation of scriptures, we will call this particular interpretation of scriptures Calvinist Perspicuity ®™. In a like manner, if a particular interpretation of scriptures agrees with Martin Luther, we will call that Lutheran Perspicuity ®™. Proceeding in this manner we can define United Methodist Perspicuity ®™, SDA Perspicuity ®™, UPC Perspicuity ®™, UU Perspicuity ®™, Southern Baptist Perspicuity ®™, etc, etc.

;-)

Paige Britton: God’s Word is MEANT for humans to understand it, just as God’s WORLD is meant to be understood, both coming from the Great Communicator. Both are complex because GOD is complex: but both are open to investigation …

Agreed.

… and (we P’s believe) both need no infallible interpreter

And my response to a person asserting Protestant sola scriptura doctrine will always be this: show me the scriptures that explicitly state there is no need for a teaching office in Christ’s Church that can infallibly interpret scriptures!

Paige Britton: I am afraid that we cannot set aside the doctrine of magisterial infallibility of interpretation here: in fact, I believe it is the crux of the matter! If it is true, there is no need for this doctrine of “perspicuity,” or indeed of “sola scriptura.”

If there is another source of infallible authority for Christians besides scripture, then obviously Protestant sola scriptura doctrine is false, since the Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura is the claim that scripture is the ONLY source of infallible authority for a Christian.

Claiming that scriptures are Perspicuous ®™ doesn’t get us away from the fact that scriptures are, in fact, not perspicuous, and that scriptures need to be interpreted correctly to be understood correctly.

Paige Britton: If there is an infallible interpreter on earth, then that interpreter has the ability and the right to tell us what the Bible IS – e.g., one authority among several, in the Catholic or EO view …

Absolutely. An infallible authority other than the Bible can tell us what does and does not belong in the canon of scripture. Without that infallible temporal authority, how does the Protestant infallibly know what constitutes the canon of scripture? He can’t know, because there are no scriptures in a Protestant Bible define the canon of the Bible. How does the Protestant know that sola scriptura is itself infallible doctrine? He can’t know that either, because there are no scriptures in a Protestant Bible that claim that the Protestant Bible is the ONLY source of authority for the Christian.

A seeker of the truth is in the position of having Jews, Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants telling him that the Bible is an infallible source of authority. But only the Protestant are telling the seeker of the truth to ignore the fact that there are no scriptures in anyone’s Bible that explicitly teach the doctrine of sola scriptura. The Protestant is telling the seeker of the truth the he should assume that sola scriptura is true, and then make this unsupported assumption a foundational belief of his faith. Then, armed with a Protestant Bible as his only source of infallible authority, to arrive at the truth, he needs to sort through the thousands of Protestant denominations that interpret the Bible in contradictory ways . :-(

Paige Britton: You note that “Catholics & Orthodox believe that there is nothing w/in the scriptures that supports this Protestant doctrine” of no earthly infallible interpreter. Perhaps this means that there is something w/in the scriptures that supports the opposite?

Of course. Both Catholics and the Orthodox claim that if the scriptures are properly interpreted, that the scriptures support the idea that the deposit of faith entrusted by Christ to his Church is contained in both Scriptures and Holy Tradition (e.g. 2 Thes 2:15 – “ … brethren, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by letter.”) Neither the Catholics nor the Orthodox have ever claimed that the scriptures are formally sufficient to support every doctrine of Christianity. But that is not a problem for the Catholics and the Orthodox, since they have never believed in the Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura.

Paige Britton: You asked for Scripture proof that the Bible speaks of itself as the ONLY authority for believers, as confirmation of the claim to “sola scriptura.” But sola scriptura, like perspicuity, is not something built out of a verse here or there; it is a doctrine reflecting biblical themes, and a confession of God’s intention for his Church, for how we are to know him and his works.

IOW, there are no scriptures that explicitly make the claim that the Protestant Bible is the ONLY source of authority for the Christian. One needs to assume that this Protestant doctrine is correct without regard to what scriptures actually say.

Paige Britton: So, just scratching the surface: It is the sum of the messages about the writers’ intentions for the text, that they would be read (or heard) and understood by ordinary believers, for a purpose (e.g., John 20:31; 21:24; Luke 1:1-4; Acts 1:1; Eph. 3:1-6; 1 John 2:1, etc.)…Plus the call to test our own and others’ teaching against a particular standard called “sound doctrine” (Mt. 7:15-20; Acts 17:11; Rom. 16:17; Gal. 1:6-9, 11-12; 1 Tim. 4:6, 16; 6:3-5; 2 Tim. 2:2, 15)…Plus the identification of the biblical texts as the repository of that doctrine, the very words of God, useful for ordinary believers (2 Tim. 3:16-17; Eph. 6:17; 2 Thess. 2:13).

These scriptures support what Catholics, Orthodox and some Protestant denominations hold in common – that God intends to speak to us, that God speaks to us through the scriptures, that scriptures are a source of authority for the Christian, etc . But there is NOTHING in the scriptures that you quoted that asserts that the Protestant Bible is the ONLY source of authority for a Christian. Since the Protestant doctrine of “ONLY” is not found in the scriptures, it must have its source in something other than scriptures. Sola scriptura is truly an extra-biblical doctrine! One day a Protestant yanked this doctrine out of the clear blue sky and it has been plagueing Protestantism ever since.

Paige Britton: You gave several (biblical) examples of ways that God has communicated besides his written Word: OT prophets, NT church gift of prophecy, etc. But here are three ways to understand this kind of communication that do not assume a continuation of revelation via this medium …

Agreed. Revelation is the key word here. What do we mean by Revelation?

Paige Britton: If you are using these examples as an argument for the existence of present-day extrabiblical revelation, I’d have to note that the Montanist controversy happened pretty early (150AD), and was easily recognized as heresy …

The biblical interpretations of Montanus were easily recognized as heresy by whom? ;-)

To directly address your point, I am not claiming that the supernatural gift of prophesy is a source of what Catholics call “public revelation” (i.e. the Revelation given to us in both Scripture and Holy Tradition)

CCC 66 … no new public revelation is to be expected before the glorious manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Yet even if Revelation is already complete, it has not been made completely explicit; it remains for Christian faith gradually to grasp its full significance over the course of the centuries.

CCC 82 … the Church, to whom the transmission and interpretation of Revelation is entrusted, “does not derive her certainty about all revealed truths from the holy Scriptures alone. Both Scripture and Tradition must be accepted and honored with equal sentiments of devotion and reverence.”

Paige Britton: … there is NO concurrent claim to *inspiration* (which I learned from Bryan or from Andrew Preslar in some venue this fall, I forget where).

Catholics believe that the Holy Scriptures are inspired writings. Infallible means without error in matters of faith and morals. So all Scriptures are both inspired, and infallible. We will receive no more Revelation that is inspired. A dogma defined at a valid Ecumenical Council is infallible, not inspired. The dogma may be worded in ways that are clumsy and wooden and in need of further development, but it will be without error in matters of faith and morals.

Paige Britton: … Though I am not sure how to categorize the extrabiblical doctrines such as Purgatory and the Immaculate Conception – they are not technically interpretation, but are they considered inspired? Don’t know.

Catholics would reject the notion that the dogmas of Purgatory and the Immaculate Conception are “extrabiblical”. The scriptures are at least materially sufficient to support both these dogmas. In any case Purgatory, I would argue that scriptures are formally sufficient to support this dogma – the problem here is that the Catholic canon of scripture contains 2 Maccabees, and the Protestant canon does not. Arguing whether scriptures are formally sufficient to support the dogma of Purgatory would involve an argument of the canon of scriptures. To pursue whether or not Purgatory and the Immaculate Conception are “extrabiblical” will take this conversation way off topic. Let us discuss this another day. :-)

Paige Britton: Anyway, the Protestant reading is, of course, that the canon is closed, and no new verbal revelation can be added – which seems to have been the attitude of the very earliest Church Fathers, though I am no expert in that literature.

None of the earliest Church Father’s proclaimed that the Protestant canon of scriptures is something that the Church accepts. Other than that, we are in agreement here – the canon is closed, and the supernatural gift of prophesy, while still active within the Body of Christ, will not add new Revelation to what has been received in the Deposit of Faith.

The supernatural gift of prophecy is a charism that is given to some within the Church to build up the Body of Christ. Likewise, the gift of teaching infallibly is also a supernatural charism that is given to some to build up the Body of Christ.

Christ has created a Church where charisms are not equally distributed among the members of the Church (see 1 Cor. Chapter 12 – “… there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; … Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles?”)
K. Doran December 9th, 2009 4:44 pm :
Paige,

The world responds to scientific experiments. God’s inspired scriptures do not. The former is not merely a dataset, but a tangible world that can be experimented on. The latter is, in the absence of any direct inspiration of the holy spirit to the person doing the interpretation, merely a dataset.

And a dataset can always be tortured until it confesses . .. to whatever confession the torturer wishes.

This sort of thing happens all the time in empirical (non-experimental) work. People torture the data, and since no one can experiment on the data, alternative viewpoints inevitably develop. That is the nature of a dataset that can’t be experimented on. In fact, when the models we care about have more variables than the dataset itself has observations, there is a mathematical indeterminacy that necessarily results.

I don’t see how you can make the analogy between God’s WORLD and his WORD (meaning, in protestant circles, his scriptures, as opposed to the deeper Catholic sense of the WORD).

Coming to know God’s World involves experimentation, or else it involves not coming to know it at all, but rather spinning out into multiple and contradictory interpretations. Since we can’t experiment on God’s Word, multiple interpretations are the inevitable result.

Sincerely,

K. Doran
lojahw December 9th, 2009 7:31 pm :
Hello Bryan,

Can you give examples of substantive differences in essential doctrines between churches that actually practice sola scriptura to substantiate your thesis? If churches that practice sola scriptura are in agreement on the essentials of the faith, then you’re arguing against a strawman caricature – not sola scriptura.

One cannot assume 1) that churches that practice sola scriptura differ on essential doctrines (rather than on style or emphasis only); 2) that Protestants choose churches because of essential differences in doctrines; nor 3) that all Protestant churches practice sola scriptura (see my posts #259 & 275).

Pointing to Protestants who change churches in order to find others who agree with their own interpretation of scripture merely shows that they are not practicing sola scriptura (cf. 2 Pet. 1:20-21; Tit. 1:9; Heb. 13:17). Solo scriptura is a corruption – not a mode – of sola scriptura.

Blessings.
herbert December 9th, 2009 10:17 pm :
Bryan (re#471)-

The solo scriptura-ist cannot submit his doctrine to the judgment and correction of the Church; he is his own ‘Church’, which means, for him, there is no Church.

This article seems to demonstrate that the solo scriptura-ist can rightly be seen as not having a Church. However, he still has the Christ upon whom the Church is built, correct?

As the non-Catholic sees it, and as CS Lewis said, the church is a means to an end rather than an end in itself. Non-Catholic Christians, then, can be seen as already having the end which God had in mind, namely Christ.

How does a Catholic, then, convince a non-Catholic Christian that he also needs the means to Christ, when the non-Catholic already undeniably has Him? It seems that the non-Catholic would ask “Why argue about the right route to take home, when you’re already there?”

As a Catholic, I would look to Christ’s prayer for our unity and its reference to the unbelieving world (John 17). We aren’t only to be united for our personal sake. We’re to be united so that the unbelieving world may see and believe!
thanks. herbert
lojahw December 9th, 2009 10:29 pm :
I would appreciate your comments:

One principled distinction between Solo Scriptura and Sola Scriptura is that the former is associated with indiscriminate church selection, the latter is not. Solo Scriptura people are “tossed here and there by waves, and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming” because they are either untaught or unstable (cf. Eph. 4:14; 2 Pet. 3:16). They “accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires” (2 Tim. 4:3). Rather than adhering to sound teaching based on the “whole counsel of God” from the whole Bible, they fall for distortions of Scripture based on proof-texts and unsound exegesis.

Sola Scriptura Christians, in contrast, are not carried about by every wind of doctrine nor do they accumulate teachers in accordance with their desires, but they recognize sound teaching based on the “whole counsel of God” from the whole Bible. Sola Scriptura Christians are committed to the essential truths of God’s plan of salvation clearly taught by Scripture. They would never join a church that denies Christ’s incarnation through the virgin Mary, or His substitutionary death on the cross for our sins, or His bodily resurrection and ascension into heaven.

The above persuades me that there is at least one principled distinction between Solo Scriptura and Sola Scriptura.

Blessings.
Bryan Cross December 9th, 2009 10:30 pm :
lojahw (re: #474),

Just to clarify, neither the conclusion of our argument nor any of its premises is the claim that there are substantive differences in essential doctrines between persons or communities who affirm sola scriptura. Protestantism has no principled, non-arbitrary basis for distinguishing essential from non-essential doctrines, and there are substantive differences in [what are believed by at least one party to be] essential doctrines between persons and communities that affirm sola scriptura. But neither of those two claims is a premise of our argument, or its conclusion. So your claim that “If churches that practice sola scriptura are in agreement on the essentials of the faith, then you’re arguing against a strawman caricature” is itself arguing against a strawman caricature of our argument.

Pointing to Protestants who change churches in order to find others who agree with their own interpretation of scripture merely shows that they are not practicing sola scriptura (cf. 2 Pet. 1:20-21; Tit. 1:9; Heb. 13:17).

Two questions:

(1) Are you in the same denomination you were in when you became a Christian? If not, then your commitment to sola scriptura, and your claim that sola scriptura disallows ‘changing churches’ to find others who agree with your own interpretation of Scripture would seemingly require you to return to the denomination in which you became Christian. Have you done so? If not, why not?

(2) How did all these different Protestant denominations come into existence from the Catholic Church, if being faithful to ‘sola scriptura‘ entails not ‘changing churches’ in order to find others who agree with one’s own interpretation of Scripture or to start an ecclesial community of one’s own? Here’s the dilemma. Either (a) the founders of each of these denominations and sects were not faithful to sola scriptura in order to come into existence as separate entities from the Catholic Church or (b) sola scriptura does not disallow ‘changing churches’ in order to find others who share one’s own interpretation of Scripture. Which is it?

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
lojahw December 9th, 2009 10:43 pm :
For TurretinFan,

You previously argued against the Vincentian Canon, but it occurs to me that the VC can be seen as evidence for the perspecuity of Scripture with respect to the essential doctrines of the faith. The associated caveats of St. Vincent apply: what is believed everywhere, always, by all (or nearly all, approved Christian authorities). This common intersection of beliefs should be no different for Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, and/or Protestants.

Blessings.
Neal Judisch December 9th, 2009 10:54 pm :
Dear Keith,

Very sorry to hear about your wife’s injury. Be assured of our prayers, concerning this and (what must seem to you the lesser matter of) the annoyances of home ownership. I sympathize wholeheartedly with both.

Every blessing,

Neal
Bryan Cross December 9th, 2009 11:43 pm :
Herbert, (re: #475)

You wrote:

This article seems to demonstrate that the solo scriptura-ist can rightly be seen as not having a Church. However, he still has the Christ upon whom the Church is built, correct? As the non-Catholic sees it, and as CS Lewis said, the church is a means to an end rather than an end in itself. Non-Catholic Christians, then, can be seen as already having the end which God had in mind, namely Christ. How does a Catholic, then, convince a non-Catholic Christian that he also needs the means to Christ, when the non-Catholic already undeniably has Him? It seems that the non-Catholic would ask “Why argue about the right route to take home, when you’re already there?”

From the Catholic point of view, Protestant ecclesial communities do not have all the grace and gifts Christ has established in His Church by which her members may attain to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. This is why the Catholic Church has always taught that being reconciled to the Church is not soteriologically optional (e.g. Extra Ecclesium Nulla Salus), even though salvation is possible for persons not in full or perfect communion with the Church. Protestant communities have some gifts, but not the most important gift by which we are to grow in Christ, i.e. the Eucharist, not the fullness of the Spirit we receive in the Sacrament of Confirmation, not the Sacrament of post-baptismal forgiveness, i.e. Penance, and not the Sacrament of Holy Orders by which believers benefit from the charism of truth that belongs to the Magisterium.

It is much more difficult to grow in the Christian life without all the sacraments Christ has instituted in His Church, because these are the means He established by which we are to receive His divine life, i.e. sanctifying grace, and grow in it. Without the Sacrament of Penance, for example, the Protestant who has committed mortal sin must have perfect contrition in order to attain forgiveness of post-baptismal sins, whereas for a Catholic receiving the Sacrament of Penance only imperfect contrition is necessary for forgiveness of post-baptismal sins (though perfect contrition is better). And therefore, from the point of view of the Catholic Church, it is much more difficult to grow into the fullness of the life of God and to persevere in grace unto death in Protestant communities than in the Catholic Church. This is why remaining in schism is not soteriologically neutral.

Furthermore, all this assumes invincible ignorance about the identity and necessity of entering the Church Christ founded. And invincible ignorance is a very high standard, as James Akin has explained in his article “Ignorance – Invincible and Vincible.” As the Catetchism states, “Hence they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or to remain in it.” (CCC, 846)

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
mateo December 9th, 2009 11:47 pm :
Paige Britton: Mateo —
Here is some more food for thought:

PART TWO:

You asked: “The Orthodox believe that when bishops formally define dogma in a valid Ecumenical Council, that the bishops of the Council have spoken infallibly, and that the whole church must accept these doctrines as binding. Do you agree with that?”

No, I do not agree that the Ecumenical Councils produced infallible doctrines – because I am not convinced that there is any such thing as an infallible interpreter on earth. I believe that even those brilliant theologians who wrote those doctrinal formulations were on the same epistemic footing as myself (i.e., fallible, and with access to the biblical texts).

I would argue that you are not on the same “epistemic footing” as bishops defining dogma at an Ecumenical Council, and here is why. You and I can never be on the same “epistemic footing” as the authors or Sacred Scriptures, because the authors of Sacred Scripture were cooperating with a supernatural charism of the Holy Spirit that inspired these writers in a way that you and I will never experience. In an analogous manner, the bishops formally defining dogma at an Ecumenical Council are cooperating with a supernatural charism of the Holy Spirit that you and I will never experience. God in his divine Providence has determined that not every member of the Body of Christ receives the supernatural charism of inspiration or the supernatural charism that protects teaching from error.

The assertion that you are on the same “epistemic footing” as bishops solemnly defining dogma at an Ecumenical Council is a novelty of Protestantism, and the article by Bryan and Neal addresses that point:

The Protestant epistemological stance, by contrast, is exemplified in the words of Martin Luther at the Diet of Worms: “Unless I am convicted by Scripture and plain reason — I do not accept the authority of popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other — my conscience is captive to the Word of God.”

Luther’s statement captures the very essence of Protestant religious epistemology. All Protestants who followed Luther’s example took this very same stance, subjecting the Church’s teaching, councils, and interpretive tradition to the standard of their own interpretation of Scripture, picking and choosing from them as though they were mere advice. Since according to Mathison “all appeals to Scripture are appeals to interpretations of Scripture,” Luther’s claim that his conscience was “captive to the Word of God” means in actuality that his conscience was ultimately bound by his own interpretation of Scripture. That very claim, namely, that our conscience is bound ultimately by our own interpretation of Scripture, is contrary to the perpetual teaching of the Church …

Paige Britton: As to whether the doctrinal formulations [of a valid Ecumenical Council] are binding on the church, I believe the Protestant understanding is that they are NOT binding EXCEPT to the extent that they accurately represent the biblical witness to the particular doctrines. Yes, this means that other believers must judge the accuracy of the doctrines against the biblical text.

The Dogma of the Trinity is NOT a settled matter among Christians? Who has the authority to determine whether or not the dogma of the Trinity accurately reflects the “biblical witness”?

Paige Britton: If the Bible is perspicuous – i.e., God’s sole intentional verbal communication to the church, regardless of difficulty level (some things are more obvious than others) – then any interpretation can be judged more or less orthodox by appeal to the text.

The reality of the state of Protestantism testifies that this isn’t true – there are thousands of Protestant denominations that interpret the Bible in contradictory ways! Protestants leaning on one another in determining the “accuracy of the doctrines” has only resulted in ever increasing doctrinal chaos within Protestantism.

Paige Britton: Yes, yes, yes – different people would like to convince me of different interpretations!

Why would it be difficult to convince you of this? There are thousands of Protestant denominations that disagree with your own denomination’s interpretation of scriptures.

Paige Britton: Big surprise: the Bible is thick and complex, and if we are operating with an assumption of epistemic parity, differences of interpretation will arise.

Of course differences of opinions will arise, if we assume “epistemic parity”. “Epistemic parity” makes every man, woman and child his or her own pope. See Bryan’s comment in his post # 441: “And as we have argued in our article, sola scriptura entails the rule of private judgment, and thus entails that each person is his own ecclesial supreme judge and supreme teacher. In other words, each person is his own pope.”

Paige Britton: I am not saying that I as a believer, or even a J. I. Packer, will always be able even to *judge* competing interpretations correctly, let alone come up with the right ones every time ourselves. What we WILL do is a lot of listening to arguments, a lot of comparing of texts, a lot of weighing and judging of explanations, and a lot of leaning on those more experienced than ourselves (this last is hard to do if you are a J. I. Packer!). And sometimes we’ll have to say, “I don’t know which interpretation is best,” and sometimes we will choose to say, “This one seems most convincing, though that other one is possible,” and sometimes we will firmly say, “No, that one is not at all supported by the text of Scripture, and is an unorthodox reading,” and often we can say confidently, “Yes, that is a valid reading, and I will stand on it.”

This is what most Protestant denominations do – and there are thousands of Protestant denominations that interpret scriptures in irreconcilable ways. It seems to me that your solution is no solution for reigning in the doctrinal chaos of Protestantism. Most Protestants will confidently say “Yes, that is a valid reading, and I will stand on it” while they are contradicting another Protestant and his confident reading of scripture.

The Pontifiator’s Second Law: When the Bible alone is our authority, the Bible ceases to be our authority.

Paige Britton: And while Bryan and Neal characterize this Protestant interpretive process as being solely (and shamefully) an individualized one, thoughtfully & rightly done it is something that happens in community, each of us being humbly aware of our own fallibility. Yes, each individual Protestant must finally make decisions for herself.

You agree that “each individual Protestant must finally make decisions for herself”, which is the usual Protestant position.

From the article by Bryan and Neal:

According to Turretin, the individual Christian should submit to the Church’s teaching and interpretation, except when his conscience, ultimately informed by his own interpretation of Scripture, cannot accept what the Church says. … To submit to others only when one agrees with them, is to submit to oneself. But submission to oneself is an oxymoron, because it is indistinguishable from not submitting at all, from doing whatever one wants.

… “when I submit (so long as I agree), the one to whom I submit is me.” For this reason, in sola scriptura it is the individual who ultimately has and always retains final interpretive authority. Sola scriptura is a more sophisticated version of solo scriptura, but this added sophistication makes the position more deceptive, by allowing the individual to believe that he is not one of those me-and-my-Bible individualists.

So how do you maintain that there is a principled distinction between sola scriptura and solo scriptura if the final interpretive authority is the individual Christian?

Paige Britton: Side note: I am kind of an anomaly among Protestant laypeople, given my interest in theological topics. The evaluative process that I sketch above is most commonly the course of pastors and professors, with laypeople encouraged to know the Bible and theology to the extent of their abilities. This means that knowing WHOM TO TRUST is hugely important in Protestantism, though it is, I think, a much-neglected topic in our teaching. More on this later.

Whom to trust is indeed the key to escaping the doctrinal chaos that reigns within Protestantism. I can’t argue with that!

Paige Britton: Obviously, it would be easier for everybody if we had an infallible interpreter on earth. We wouldn’t make mistakes and missteps in our interpretations, because we would read everything according to our Magisterium’s teaching. But just because something seems preferable does not mean it is TRUE.

Being preferable doesn’t make it not true either! I am glad that we can agree on certain things, as this gives us a basis for further dialog. I believe that we agree that:

God is good.
God desires to communicate with us.
God communicates with us through the scriptures.
Scriptures are a sublime gift from God written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
Scriptures are a source of infallible authority for all men and women.
It would be preferable to have an infallible interpreter of scriptures than to have doctrinal chaos reigning within the Church founded by Christ.

You may be deeper in the Tiber than you realize! :- )

Paige Britton: If we are NOT convinced that the Catholic claims are true, then (to be consistent with our confession) we are to dive into studying God’s Word with all the intellectual skills and spiritual gifts that God has given us, trusting that he will provide wisdom, teachers, and sufficient understanding if we ask him to, and acknowledging that we (and others whom we trust) may sometimes make mistakes.

There was a time that I wasn’t convinced of the “Catholic claims” either, so I can understand where you are coming from. If you continue to dialog at CTC, perhaps some of the reasons that you are not convinced of Catholic claims will disappear over time. It seems to me that you are a seeker of the truth, and you are at least willing to hear the Catholic claims from Catholics, which is all that I could ever ask of you.

May God bless you abundantly with the supernatural charism of discernment!
lojahw December 10th, 2009 12:26 am :
Bryan wrote:

(1) Are you in the same denomination you were in when you became a Christian? If not, then your commitment to sola scriptura, and your claim that sola scriptura disallows ‘changing churches’ to find others who agree with your own interpretation of Scripture would seemingly require you to return to the denomination in which you became Christian.

Bryan, We seem to be going in circles: I can’t figure out why my previous explanations for the many reasons Protestants change churches aren’t communicating. Your question assumes what I have explicitly denied: that Protestants ONLY change churches in order to find others who agree with their own interpretation of scripture. Please reread my posts # 259 and 275. There are many reasons – other than interpretation of Scripture – for which Protestants change churches. Given that many agree on the essentials of the faith, there is freedom for a number of other reasons to change churches. For example, when people from different denominations get married, they may choose a third denomination, wherein all three denominations are in communion with each other, but there are differences in style or social dynamics (not doctrinal substance). Also, people move, and their particular church may not exist in their new location or if it does, it may not honor the doctrinal statement of the denomination. In the case of the Episcopal Church in the USA, the denomination drifted away from its own doctrinal statement. Meanwhile, non-denominational churches which are all in agreement on doctrine, are started, many of them as daughter churches from a single church, with different names, making them appear (by your counting method) to be many separate denominations, when in fact, they are not.

But to answer your question: I, a former Episcopalian, married a former Baptist, and we looked for an orthodox church that was a good fit for both of us. After many years, my wife has acquired an appreciation for liturgical worship and we are now in the Anglican Church of North America (the orthodox wing of my first church) – so, yes, I am back where I started. The journey in between, however, has given me a great appreciation for the diversity of Protestant churches (like different branches on the true vine, different members of the one Body of Christ, different instruments in a common orchestra) which share a common faith and common communion in our Lord Jesus Christ.

(2) How did all these different Protestant denominations come into existence from the Catholic Church, if being faithful to ‘sola scriptura‘ entails not ‘changing churches’ in order to find others who agree with one’s own interpretation of Scripture or to start an ecclesial community of one’s own? Here’s the dilemma. Either (a) the founders of each of these denominations and sects were not faithful to sola scriptura in order to come into existence as separate entities from the Catholic Church or (b) sola scriptura does not disallow ‘changing churches’ in order to find others who share one’s own interpretation of Scripture. Which is it?

The answer is too complex to cover in this combox, but fundamental differences over soteriology and ecclesiastical practices (based on the teaching of Scripture) launched the initial Reformation Churches based on personal convictions that the RCC was teaching/practicing “another gospel.” “Another gospel” is a deal breaker; e.g., Scripture does not teach that it is necessary for the salvation of every human being to be subject to the Roman Pontiff. After that initial break, most of the differences between the early Protestant denominations were due to 1) acceptance/rejection of certain traditions (e.g., infant baptism); and/or 2) teaching of particular practices based on proof-texting (e.g., pacificism, forbidding oaths and taking public office). Among the various branches of Protestantism, however, the fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith were commonly held. So your point a) explains some differences among Protestant churches, but does not explain the initial break from the RCC. Geography, wars, and many other social factors have proliferated the number of churches – having nothing to do with doctrine.

Re: b) see my most recent post on the principled distinction between Solo/Sola Scriptura. A Sola Scriptura Christian is bound to orthodoxy, but since there is a common orthodoxy among many Protestant churches, one may for non-doctrinal reasons (e.g., social and geographical) change churches.

Please let me know if I need to further clarify anything above.

Blessings.
Bryan Cross December 10th, 2009 12:45 am :
lojahw (re: #476),

A principled difference between two things requires more than a difference in what they are associated with, and more than a difference in degree, rate, or emphasis. Those are accidental differences, and accidental differences are not principled differences, because they do not show a distinction in essence. We are using the definitions of solo scriptura and sola scriptura given by Keith Mathison in his book; you can find them in the article. We are arguing that there is no principled difference between them with respect to the holder of ultimate interpretive authority. But the truth of our conclusion is fully compatible with there being many accidental differences between them, and between persons holding them.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Bryan Cross December 10th, 2009 2:02 am :
lojahw, (re: #482)

It is my understanding that ECUSA and ACNA are not in full communion. Is that correct? If that is correct, then ACNA is not a “wing” of ECUSA, but an entirely separate denomination. If I’m understanding you correctly, at some point while you were in ECUSA, you came to disagree with ECUSA’s interpretation of Scripture at that time, and so you found another denomination (i.e. ACNA) that more closely matched your interpretation of Scripture, and you joined ACNA.

Now let’s go back to what you said in #474:

Pointing to Protestants who change churches in order to find others who agree with their own interpretation of scripture merely shows that they are not practicing sola scriptura

So this raises the question of whether you were acting in accord with sola scriptura when you decided that ACNA fit your interpretation of Scripture better than did ECUSA. (You don’t need to answer.) The point is that you didn’t decide that the ACNA is the Church Christ founded, and then submit to its doctrine regarding what is the gospel, which books belongs to Scripture, etc. Rather, you found an institution whose doctrines matched your interpretation of Scripture, and you joined it, under the condition that it remains faithful to your interpretation of Scripture. And there’s no principled difference between that and solo scriptura.

I think we get a further clarification when you say the following:

The answer is too complex to cover in this combox, but fundamental differences over soteriology and ecclesiastical practices (based on the teaching of Scripture) launched the initial Reformation Churches based on personal convictions that the RCC was teaching/practicing “another gospel.” “Another gospel” is a deal breaker;

So, your claim in #474 that “Protestants who change churches in order to find others who agree with their own interpretation of scripture … are not practicing sola scriptura” needs to be qualified with a large caveat: unless the individual thinks that his present worship community isn’t teaching or practicing the gospel according to his own interpretation of Scripture. In other words, it is perfectly compatible with sola scriptura, in your opinion, to change churches whenever one judges that one’s present church is not teaching or practicing the gospel according to one’s own interpretation of Scripture. But given that qualifying exception, there’s no principled difference between solo and sola, as we showed in Section IV.A. “No Middle Ground” of our article. The individual retains ultimate interpretive authority, and hence submits on matters he deems important (i.e. central or essential to the gospel) only when he agrees. But when I submit (only when I agree), the one to whom I submit is me. And that’s exactly the situation of the person advocating solo scriptura. He acts as his own ultimate interpretive authority directly; the sola scriptura proponent does so indirectly, by selecting a group of persons who already agree with his interpretation of Scripture, and then ‘submitting’ to them (so long as he agrees with them, on matters he deems important).

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
TurretinFan December 10th, 2009 9:49 am :
lojahw:

As to Vincent’s canon, I had noted that the canon is simply unworkable. Among the reasons I had given were some similar to Bryan’s first comments at #372:

In order make use of the Vincentian canon, we first need to know the boundaries of the Church; otherwise we will mistakenly include the beliefs of heretics and schismatics, because we will include them among the ‘all’ in the “believed everywhere, always, by all.”

In fact, the way that folks avoid including the beliefs of heretics and schismatics is by using some touchstone of orthodoxy. What we then discover is that the only (or almost only) commonality among the group we’ve discovered is the very touchstone that we selected. As such, to establish orthodoxy, it looks very much like a circular appeal.
TurretinFan December 10th, 2009 12:25 pm :
Tim and Bryan,

Thanks for your responses above (). I’ve typed up a fairly detailed response to your comments (link to response). I’ll summarize it here:

1) For Mathison (as distinct from the Reformed view of sola scriptura), the principle with respect to the ultimate holder of interpretive authority that distinguishes Mathison’s view from solo scriptura is that individual must not interpret Scripture contrary to the ecumenical creeds – i.e. he must read Scripture through that interpretive grid.

2) Mathison’s methodology is functionally the same as the methodology of the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox positions, as to how the individual interprets the Scripture. Yes, the RC and EO positions use different grids, but the methodology of applying a binding grid is the same.

3) In consequence of (2), if Mathison’s position shares a commonality with solo scriptura as to the ultimate holder of interpretive authority, then so do the RC and EO positions, in which case, who cares. Similarly, since submission to any grid is necessarily voluntary any objection that because the submission to the interpretive grid is voluntary, it is not true submission, is an invalid objection.

4) Because the absence of a binding extrinsic hermeneutic grid is not the chief or main problem of solo scriptura, we are fine if that turns out to be a common feature of both the Reformed sola and erroneous solo positions.

5) The absence of a binding extrinsic hermeneutic grid does not preclude the presence of a binding intrinsic hermeneutic grid and consequently does not mean the death of hermeneutics.

-TurretinFan
Tom Riello December 10th, 2009 1:23 pm :
lojahw,

When you write: “and we looked for an orthodox church that was a good fit for both of us, ” I think you make the point that, at the end of the day, the Protestant submits, as Bryan rightly states, to himself and himself alone!
Bryan Cross December 10th, 2009 2:14 pm :
TurretinFan, (re: 486)

You wrote:

For Mathison (as distinct from the Reformed view of sola scriptura), the principle with respect to the ultimate holder of interpretive authority that distinguishes Mathison’s view from solo scriptura is that individual must not interpret Scripture contrary to the ecumenical creeds – i.e. he must read Scripture through that interpretive grid. … Mathison’s methodology is functionally the same as the methodology of the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox positions, as to how the individual interprets the Scripture. Yes, the RC and EO positions use different grids, but the methodology of applying a binding grid is the same.

We addressed this in sections VI and V of our article, and again in the comments. As we explained in our article, the Reformed ‘methodology’ is to find ‘the Church’ by finding those who agree with one’s interpretation of Scripture (especially those who agree with one’s own determination from Scripture of what are the marks of the Church). We explained the Catholic approach in section V.A., in which we wrote:

The person becoming Catholic, by contrast, is seeking out the Church that Christ founded. He does this not by finding that group of persons who share his interpretation of Scripture. Rather, he locates in history those whom the Apostles appointed and authorized, observes what they say and do viz-a-viz the transmission of teaching and interpretive authority, traces that line of successive authorizations down through history to the present day to a living Magisterium, and then submits to what this present-day Magisterium is teaching. By finding the Magisterium, he finds something that has the divine authority to bind the conscience.

So, it is not true that “Mathison’s methodology is functionally the same as the methodology of the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox positions, as to how the individual interprets the Scripture”, because in sola scriptura the ground for the ‘grid’ (as you call it) is still the individual’s own interpretation, whereas in the Catholic Church the ground for the ‘grid’ is the succession of Christ’s authority passed down through apostolic succession.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
TurretinFan December 10th, 2009 3:07 pm :
Bryan,

You and Mathison may pick your grids different ways. He’s actually not really very clear about how he decides to go with the ecumenical creeds, perhaps he thinks he “seek[s] out the Church that Christ founded”).

That difference, however, is not a difference with respect to the use of the grid once obtained. You both apply an hermeneutic grid or, if you prefer, lens to your interpretation of Scripture once the grid/lens is in place.

Furthermore, for Mathison (as best I follow him), sola scriptura is only possible with the lens in place. So, for you to bring in his pre-lens activities is to compare apples with oranges.

Finally, Mathison alleges that the lens itself predates the New Testament scriptures, although he’s not very specific about how this is possible, given the fact that it must have existed in some other form than the ecumenical creeds. With that in mind, at least according to Mathison’s assertions, it would seem impossible that his identification of the grid/lens is supposed to be based on first interpreting the Scriptures, then picking creeds etc. that match that interpretation.

-TurretinFan
lojahw December 10th, 2009 3:15 pm :
Bryan,

The differences between solo scriptura and sola scriptura are not merely accidental. In the former, there are no extrinsic limitations to interpretation; in the latter, the extrinsic limitations defined by Scripture itself cannot be denied. This constitutes a principled difference between the two. The individual is not the ultimate interpretive authority because Scripture itself is the ultimate interpretive authority.

By declaring “the Scripture cannot be broken,” Jesus defined Scripture itself to be the ultimate interpretive authority: all interpretations to be consistent with Scripture, the ultimate regula fidei. Further, as Peter wrote, one is forbidden to distort Scripture. Jesus likewise chided the Pharisees for being mistaken because they did “not understand the Scriptures.” To understand the Scriptures, one must rightly interpret them (without distortion) in light of the whole Bible. Solo scriptura is not constrained to be consistent with all of Scripture, and hence a principled difference does exist between solo and sola scriptura. The extrinsic interpretive authority of Scripture itself is a valid principled difference.

The outcomes of the principled difference between solo/sola scriptura are also measurable by the doctrines both affirmed and denied. Those things which Scripture declares to be of first importance, including what Jesus commanded to be observed by His disciples, are affirmed by those who practice sola scriptura (see my post # 268 for examples). Solo scripturists deny what Scripture teaches (e.g., the Trinity) and affirm what it denies (e.g., ordination of gay bishops).

Blessings.
lojahw December 10th, 2009 6:53 pm :
Tom wrote:

When you write: “and we looked for an orthodox church that was a good fit for both of us, ” I think you make the point that, at the end of the day, the Protestant submits, as Bryan rightly states, to himself and himself alone!

Tom, you seem to assume that a Protestant cannot discern truth and orthodoxy? Why not? Like a bank teller trained to recognize true currency, one who has listened to God’s voice in Scripture for many years is able to distinguish between the real thing and the counterfeit. I remain constrained and committed to the truth that God teaches in Scripture. If you believe I have erred, please show me where I am inconsistent with God’s Word.

Blessings.
lojahw December 10th, 2009 7:20 pm :
Bryan,

ECUSA and ACNA are both members of the Anglican Communion. Family feuds don’t mean the children are no longer members of the same family. Re: my leaving ECUSA, you misunderstood – after I grew up in ECUSA, it was ECUSA that walked away from its own doctrinal statement (the 39 Articles of Religion). Watching the apostasy in ECUSA over a period of years without any sign of its return to orthodoxy, I honored my confirmation vow to “follow Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior” and sought a Church whose leaders were committed to Him and to His Word.

in your opinion, to change churches whenever one judges that one’s present church is not teaching or practicing the gospel according to one’s own interpretation of Scripture.

You misrepresent me. If a church changes what it teaches and demonstrates that it is no longer committed to the authority of Scripture, one should leave: “Anyone who goes too far and does not abide in the teaching of Christ, does not have God” (2 John 9).

The individual retains ultimate interpretive authority

Not true. The Scripture is the ultimate interpretive authority, and one who practices Sola Scriptura is willing to submit his interpretation to whomever would challenge his consistency with Scripture. Your hypothetical dialogues avoid the issue of actually confronting the interpretations of Scripture which you claim are private interpretations. If you can show me where my interpretations of Scripture are not consistent with God’s Word, be my guest; otherwise, please stop accusing me of private interpretation.

Blessings.
mateo December 10th, 2009 9:12 pm :
Paige Britton: Mateo — last installment!

PART THREE:

You quoted Mathison & then Bryan & Neal, then asked (quoting B&N) if I agreed with the statement, “Scripture can function as an objective authority only when interpreted in and by the Church.” I do not agree, for how can the Scripture function as an objective authority when its interpretation is subject to the authority of the Church? I would say instead that it only functions as an OBJECTIVE authority when the Church’s teaching is subject to IT.

We both agree that scripture has authority. Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that you could affirm this:

CCC 105 God is the author of Sacred Scripture.“The divinely revealed realities, which are contained and presented in the text of Sacred Scripture, have been written down under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.”

Since God is the author of Sacred Scripture, no man has the authority to change or contradict what is written in scriptures. Therefore, a valid interpretive authority would not be above scriptures, but the servant of it. Which is what I think you believe – i.e. the authorities that you trust would strive to interpret scriptures in a manner that does not change or contradict what scriptures teach. That is also what the Catholic Church teaches about the Magisterium:

Catechism of the Catholic Church

The Magisterium of the Church

85 “The task of giving an authentic interpretation of the Word of God, whether in its written form or in the form of Tradition, has been entrusted to the living teaching office of the Church alone. Its authority in this matter is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ.” This means that the task of interpretation has been entrusted to the bishops in communion with the successor of Peter, the Bishop of Rome.

86 “Yet this Magisterium is not superior to the Word of God, but is its servant. It teaches only what has been handed on to it. At the divine command and with the help of the Holy Spirit, it listens to this devotedly, guards it with dedication and expounds it faithfully. All that it proposes for belief as being divinely revealed is drawn from this single deposit of faith.”

890 The mission of the Magisterium is linked to the definitive nature of the covenant established by God with his people in Christ. It is this Magisterium’s task to preserve God’s people from deviations and defections and to guarantee them the objective possibility of professing the true faith without error. Thus, the pastoral duty of the Magisterium is aimed at seeing to it that the People of God abides in the truth that liberates. To fulfill this service, Christ endowed the Church’s shepherds with the charism of infallibility in matters of faith and morals. …

Paige Britton: But we can’t agree on definitions, here, I think, because of the difference in worldviews – from the Catholic perspective, it is only when Scripture is used by those with the infallible interpretive charism that it has its proper authority; and hence anyone who seeks to judge the church’s teaching by the content of the biblical text is both disobedient and merely being subjective, since the true interpretation is the sole commodity of the Magisterium.

I read scriptures because I believe that the scriptures are God speaking to me. I would think that you read scriptures for this reason also. The role of the Magisterium is to make sure I don’t go off the reservation with my own mistaken interpretations of scriptures. If a JW comes to my house and tells me that Jesus is not divine, no matter how many scriptures he quotes to me, I know with certainty that that the JW has gone off the reservation because the Magisterium has infallibly addressed this matter. If a Southern Baptist tells me that baptism doesn’t bestow grace on infants, I know he has gone off the reservation, because the Magisterium has infallibly addressed this matter.

How is that you know with certainty that the JW, or the Southern Baptist is mistaken in his interpretation of the Bible? More importantly, how do you know that your Protestant sect doesn’t teach mistaken interpretations of scripture?

Paige Britton: From the Protestant perspective, God has set things up so that a) language communicates, b) as co-readers we provide checks and balances to one another’s interpretations in the church, and c) the content of church teaching can be judged against the biblical message by fallible human readers sufficiently and reliably.

How do you KNOW that your Protestant denomination’s interpretation is “reliable” if you have no way of knowing with certainty that the interpretations you accept are without error? Scriptures can’t interpret themselves!

(quoting from the article): Because Scripture must be interpreted, and because Scripture cannot interpret itself by itself, it follows that some person or persons must interpret Scripture if Scripture is to function as an authority. Otherwise, irreconcilable hermeneutical disputes can only end in division, as each faction has no recourse but to separate.

Paige Britton: …we should test those who teach us by their character, their intellectual virtues (both in learning and teaching), and their faithfulness to the biblical message. (This last piece requires time and hard work for the student to gain it, so there will probably be a delay before it is in place. This means we need to pay special heed to the first two – and we need also to be aware when a lack of information means we should not lean too heavily on a particular teacher or message till we have checked with others whom we trust.)

You say that we must test the character of the teacher against their “faithfulness to the biblical message.” This presupposes that I would already know the correct interpretation of the Bible, and that the trustworthy teacher agrees with what I know!

Paige Britton: Teachers who encourage us to be like the Bereans (Acts 17) and DIG in the Scriptures to validate what they teach indicate their willingness to be tested and subject to the higher authority of God’s Word.

I agree that a teacher should encourage us to dig into the Scriptures, and that what he teaches should not contradict what is in the Scripture. But a sincere teacher may think that his interpretation of scriptures is correct when it isn’t. Calvin was sincere, and he thought he could interpret scriptures correctly – but was he really he correct in everything he taught? Is it possible that Calvin got some things wrong? There are thousands of Protestant denominations that think that he did. How do we know that these Protestant denominations are not wrong in their interpretations of scriptures?

Paige Britton: Teachers who discourage questions and challenges should be regarded with a healthy skepticism.

Agreed.

Paige Britton: Re. the Amish again: Hey, did you live in Lancaster County? You are right, “hasty” is not a word I would ascribe to the Amish in any area of life, let alone in Bible reading! But I do still think that they probably lack the ability and the desire to STUDY the texts that they read. Maybe they are the opposite of hasty; maybe they are just stuck.

I lived in western Pennsylvania and knew the Amish living there. I know that the Amish study their Bibles, but I don’t know what else they might study.

Paige Britton: So, the $64K question: where is the True Church? Did Calvin and/or Luther find it, or leave it?

Obviously there were Christian churches (Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox) that that existed for over a thousand years before Calvin and Luther founded their own churches. Since Calvin and Luther were divided over doctrinal matters from day one, it is not possible that they both found the True Church.

Paige Britton: If they left it, then we heirs of the Reformation are in a pickle, stranded here on the wrong side of the Tiber.

Or the Bosphorus. ;-)

Paige Britton: But if they caught a glimpse of God’s intention for his church that had been obscured for centuries, then we 21st century Protestants have some catching up to do, to live up to the implications of what they saw — not least in growing literate enough to make use of the clear but complex Scriptures to evaluate the myriad of options you mentioned.

Do you see any reason why Protestantism will not continue down the path of fragmentation into ever more sects that are divided over fundamental doctrinal matters? It seems to me that solo scriptura is on the ascendancy within Protestantism, and the latest trend among Protestants is not to belong to any church at all.
:-(
Bryan Cross December 11th, 2009 3:28 am :
TurretinFan, (#489),

The objection you are raising is the tu quoque, which we addressed in section V of our article. You are saying that Catholics and sola scriptura Protestants are doing the same thing, because they both have an interpretive ‘grid’, as you put it. My response was to point out that the essential difference is that since sola scriptura Protestants pick their ‘Church’ by finding those who agree with their interpretation of Scripture, they retain ultimate interpretive authority. Catholics, by contrast, find the Church that Christ founded by tracing His authority through apostolic succession, and then submitting to those whom they discover to have this authority from Christ. For this reason, they do not retain ultimate interpretive authority. Hence there is principled difference between sola scriptura and the Catholic relation to Scripture. In reply you wrote:

Furthermore, for Mathison (as best I follow him), sola scriptura is only possible with the lens in place. So, for you to bring in his pre-lens activities is to compare apples with oranges.

The nature of the “pre-lens activities” is precisely why there is no principled difference between sola and solo, and why there *is* a principled difference between sola and the Catholic approach to Scripture.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Bryan Cross December 11th, 2009 3:45 am :
lojahw, (re: #490)

You wrote:

The differences between solo scriptura and sola scriptura are not merely accidental. In the former, there are no extrinsic limitations to interpretation; in the latter, the extrinsic limitations defined by Scripture itself cannot be denied.

Why, exactly, are there no “extrinsic limitations to interpretation” under solo scriptura?

The individual is not the ultimate interpretive authority because Scripture itself is the ultimate interpretive authority.

Whose interpretation of Scripture’s interpretation of Scripture is authoritative? (And if you answer “Scripture”, then the follow-up question will be “Whose interpretation of Scripture’s interpretation of Scripture’s interpretation of Scripture is authoritative?”, and you’ll have an infinite regress on your hands.)

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Paige Britton December 11th, 2009 8:57 am :
Mateo —
Hi! I am not ignoring you — tis the season to be busier than usual. I will read over your comments and respond as I can, so keep you eye out for me.
pax!
pb
Paige Britton December 11th, 2009 10:23 am :
Mateo —
Okay, I was able to fit some thinking in this morning. The troops are still asleep.

I’m responding to your good questions (to my 3rd installment) in reverse order:

1. “Do you see any reason why Protestantism will not continue down the path of fragmentation into ever more sects that are divided over fundamental doctrinal matters?”

There’s no denying that Protestantism is scandalously divided, and that we have rather got into the habit of doing so. Bryan & Neal have asserted that the sola/solo scriptura approaches are at the root of the divisions. To my mind, the most satisfying explanation for the North American slew of fragmentation is Mark Noll’s “Scandal of the Evangelical Mind,” which places the situation in the context of religious history since the Wesleys. A religious climate of anti-intellectualism, revivalism, and Arminianism has combined with American individualistic autonomy and consumerism to produce a mindset of competition amongst religious leaders.

Even without the influence of those factors, even if we boiled it down to just the most sincere and careful interpretations, there would still be differences of opinion amongst Protestants interpreting the Bible without help of Magisterium. And some of these would be great enough to cause splits. I’m not saying that this is a good thing, but only that it is an inevitability, given an assumption of epistemic parity among believers, and the limited nature of human knowing. But if that assumption is correct, or if we are convinced that it is, then we must work within the limits we’ve been given, and accept responsibility before God for how we conduct ourselves while forming our beliefs and differing with one another.

2. Did Calvin sometimes get things wrong? How do we know which competing interpretations, or parts of interpretations, are correct?

This gets back to the question of certainty. We (P’s) believe we can operate in the world as God’s people without the100% certainty that we would gain from leaning on an infallible interpretive teaching body like the Magisterium. We believe this not because we happen to like autonomy (though many of us do, overmuch!), but because we believe this is the way God has set things up.

In a world like this, we evaluate interpretations by comparing them to the Scriptures. Sometimes we will agree that a teacher has accurately represented the biblical message; sometimes we will disagree; and sometimes we won’t be sure, and we’ll have to hold out till we have more information. And in the course of our growing up in knowing the Word, as well as any growing we do in our knowledge of theological systems and church history, we may change in our convictions about whose explanation best represents the biblical message. The point is not that this approach leads us immediately to 100% certainty; the point is that we may test our teachers at all – something a Catholic may not do re. the teaching of the Magisterium.

3. “How do you KNOW that your Protestant denomination’s interpretation is “reliable” if you have no way of knowing with certainty that the interpretations you accept are without error? Scriptures can’t interpret themselves!”

When you (or Bryan and Neal) say that “Scriptures can’t interpret themselves,” you mean that there is an activity of the human reader, who is gathering meaning from the biblical texts, that the Scriptures (being inanimate) cannot duplicate. I agree.

But on the other hand, the Scriptures interpret themselves all over the place. NT writers give definitions of their terms and illustrations of their statements. They give deeper interpretations of OT prophecies and passages, and identify OT types and shadows. Jesus explains his parables sometimes. The principle of using clearer passages to interpret the more obscure ones is based on this idea that the whole Book was authored by God, and will be consistent in its message. If we pay attention to it, we will pick it up, sufficiently and reliably for life on planet earth.

And who among us P’s is claiming that we’re expecting to achieve complete certainty across the board, or interpretations without error? (Maybe some of us are, in which case we’re misguided!) WE don’t get to make that claim. The claim that we are aiming for what is “sufficient” or “reliable” is a theological confession: we believe that God intends to communicate, and that he has set things up so it will be possible, without an infallible earthly interpreter. We’re responsible to do what depends on us to make this happen; but we’re conscious that we – and our leaders – are always open to correction.

4. “The role of the Magisterium is to make sure I don’t go off the reservation with my own mistaken interpretation of Scriptures.”

Well, right. That is indeed what the Magisterium claims it is here on earth to do. It would be handy to have one around for that reason. But if we don’t happen to be convinced that the claim is true, we will have to seek out other ways to make sure our interpretations are sound, so we don’t go skittering off into eisegesis. (And note that we are aiming for “sound” interpretation, that is, reasonably supported by Scripture, not infallibly so.)

5. “A valid interpretive authority would not be above scriptures, but the servant of it.”

Well, right. We agree that both the Magisterium and the Protestant pastor are to be the servants of the Scriptures. The difference is, I as a member of my elder-led church may question or challenge or even bring charges against my pastor for teaching that is out of accord with the Scriptures, and you as a Catholic may never question the Magisterium’s teaching, even if you felt that they had changed or added to or contradicted what was presented in the text. You must always assume your doubts about the Magisterium’s teaching to be wrong, because you believe they have received the charism of infallible interpretation. We are operating with different assumptions about the way God has chosen to lead his church; simply pointing out similarities does not cancel out the basic difference at the level of epistemology (i.e., “How do we know what we know?”).

pax!
pb
rfwhite December 11th, 2009 10:42 am :
Bryan Cross: As I continue to study your thesis and argumentation, I notice that when it comes to identifying the locus of “ultimate interpretive authority,” you have consistently, and understandably, focused our attention on the individual. I am seeking clarification of the Church’s relation to the individual. Would you agree that it is the Church, whether conceived in Protestant or Roman Catholic terms, that retains ultimate authority to grant or deny admission of the individual into its midst? If so, how does this fact affect your identification of the locus of “ultimate interpretive authority”?
Bryan Cross December 11th, 2009 11:51 am :
rfwhite, (re: #498),

You wrote:

Would you agree that it is the Church, whether conceived in Protestant or Roman Catholic terms, that retains ultimate authority to grant or deny admission of the individual into its midst?

The Catholic Church retains the authority to grant or deny admission of an individual into its membership. So does any Protestant denomination or independent “Bible church.”

If so, how does this fact affect your identification of the locus of “ultimate interpretive authority”?

It doesn’t. The authority held by every Protestant denomination or independent congregation to grant or deny admission of a person into their community is fully compatible with our argument, and fully compatible with it being true that each individual Protestant retains ultimate interpretive authority.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
rfwhite December 11th, 2009 3:06 pm :
Bryan Cross: to follow up on your #499 comment — how, then, do you understand the relationship between the authority to grant or deny admission and ultimate interpretive authority?
Bryan Cross December 11th, 2009 5:53 pm :
rfwhite (re: #500)

The authority of a denomination or independent congregation to grant or deny admission is an authority limited to determining membership in that denomination or congregation. It is not ultimate interpretive authority. The denomination or congregation can require that anyone who wishes to be a member must believe x doctrine or interpretation of Scripture. And it can expel those of its members who cease to believe x, or come to believe ~x. So it can bind the conscience of the individual in a qualified or conditional sense, i.e. “If you want to become or remain one of us, then you must believe x.”

But if an individual in such a denomination or congregation comes to believe that Scripture teaches ~x, he is not bound to believe that Scripture teaches x, even though he may very well be bound morally to inform his pastor, and/or resign his membership. The denomination or congregation does not have the authority to bind his conscience in an unqualified way regarding doctrine and the interpretation of Scripture, but only in a conditional way, as we explained in the article (i.e. “if you want to be or remain one of us”). That’s because the denomination or congregation does not have ultimate interpretive authority; it has only if-you-want-to-be-one-of-us-then-you-must-believe-x authority. So when the individual comes to disagree with his denomination or congregation, he is not bound to submit; he is only bound to submit if he wishes to stay. If he does not wish to stay, he may leave and join some other denomination or congregation (or start one of his own) that shares his new interpretation of Scripture. That’s because he retains ultimate interpretive authority. The denomination or congregation does not have the keys of the Kingdom; it only has keys to membership in itself. And because that denomination or congregation is merely human, it has no more interpretive authority than any individual in it, and hence it cannot bind the conscience of its members (or anyone else) in an unqualified way.

Every Protestant denomination and congregation is necessarily limited in authority in this way, because claiming otherwise would undermine its separation from the Catholic Church in the sixteenth century. In other words, if a Protestant denomination claimed that the Church has the authority to bind the conscience in an unqualified way regarding the interpretation of Scripture, then it would logically follow that Protestantism is in schism from the Church, because the first Protestants appealed to their own interpretations and conscience to believe and act contrary to the teaching of the Church with respect to [what they determined to be] essential doctrines, marks of the Church, etc. And so claiming that the Church has the authority to bind the conscience in an unqualified or unconditional way regarding faith and morals would undermine the Protestant separation from the Catholic Church, and thus undermine Protestantism’s existence as such.

In contrast to the conditional interpretive authority of Protestant denominations and congregations, the Catholic Church claims to be a divine society, the very society that Christ founded and hierarchically ordered, having authorized shepherds with divine authority in succession from Christ through the Apostles and their successors. Because of apostolic succession the Church can bind the conscience in an unqualified way regarding doctrine and morals. The layman does not have divine authority, and therefore does not have the interpretive authority had by the Magisterium. This divine authority is not conditional (i.e. “if you want to be one of us”), but unconditional: “By divine authorization we declare and define … x”. To be excommunicated from the Catholic Church is to be excommunicated from the Kingdom of Heaven and from every right to expect eternal life, so long as one intentionally remains estranged from the Church. This is why the Church has always taught “They could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or to remain in it.” (CCC, 846) The excommunication scene from Becket comes to mind:

Lord Gilbert could not just go to another denomination or congregation, or start his own ‘church’. And the reason for that has nothing to do with historical contingency, and everything to do with the divine authority present through apostolic succession in full communion with the successor of St. Peter. The authority of the bishops by apostolic succession includes not only the authority to exclude from the Kingdom, but also the authority to give the authentic and definitive determination and interpretation of matters of faith and morals for all the faithful.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
mateo December 11th, 2009 7:13 pm :
mateo: “Do you see any reason why Protestantism will not continue down the path of fragmentation into ever more sects that are divided over fundamental doctrinal matters?”

Paige Britton: There’s no denying that Protestantism is scandalously divided …

… if we boiled it down to just the most sincere and careful interpretations, there would still be differences of opinion amongst Protestants interpreting the Bible without help of Magisterium. And some of these would be great enough to cause splits. I’m not saying that this is a good thing, but only that it is an inevitability, given an assumption of epistemic parity among believers, and the limited nature of human knowing. …

I agree with you – given the limited nature of human knowing, if every man and woman is ultimately the final arbiter of what interpretation of Scripture he or she is willing to accept, then the division within Protestantism is inevitable. But it seems to me that you are arguing that for some mysterious reason known only to God, that He has given us the scriptures, and then left us with no way of ever settling disputes about what they mean. This is really an argument that God intends for us to NOT have certainty about the meaning of the Bible, and there is nothing we can do about that.

Paige Britton: But if that assumption is correct, or if we are convinced that it is, then we must work within the limits we’ve been given …

If God has set limits that preclude us from ever having certainty about the meaning of His scriptures, then the height of wisdom would be to know that this is true. The wise man would simply follow his conscience as the ultimate arbiter of truth, and forget trying to understand scriptures, because God does not intend for us to understand scriptures.

mateo: Did Calvin sometimes get things wrong? How do we know which competing interpretations, or parts of interpretations, are correct?

Paige Britton: This gets back to the question of certainty. We (P’s) believe we can operate in the world as God’s people without the100% certainty that we would gain from leaning on an infallible interpretive teaching body like the Magisterium. We believe this not because we happen to like autonomy (though many of us do, overmuch!), but because we believe this is the way God has set things up.

Quite right, this get us back to the question of certainty, and what, if anything, that God has established for those of us in the world to have that certainty. You are arguing that God set up the world so that no one can know with certainty the meaning of the Scriptures. Therefore, Calvin’s interpretations of scriptures are doubtful, as are anyone’s interpretations of scriptures.

Paige Britton: In a world like this, we evaluate interpretations by comparing them to the Scriptures.

Why would you do that? Where is that going to lead you? If God does not intend for anyone to have certainty about the meaning of the scriptures, why would you compare any interpretation of scriptures to scriptures themselves? How can the interpretation be less doubtful than the scriptures themselves?

Paige Britton: The point is not that this approach leads us immediately to 100% certainty; the point is that we may test our teachers …

What is the point of testing your Protestant teachers? From what I understand you to be saying, your teachers can no more know with certainty the meaning of scriptures than you (or anyone else) can know with certainty the meaning of scriptures. Testing your teachers for orthodoxy is pointless if there is no interpretation that can be known to be orthodox. This would be like trying to calibrate a weight scale without having a known calibration standard.

Paige Britton: And who among us P’s is claiming that we’re expecting to achieve complete certainty across the board, or interpretations without error? (Maybe some of us are, in which case we’re misguided!) WE don’t get to make that claim. The claim that we are aiming for what is “sufficient” or “reliable” is a theological confession: we believe that God intends to communicate, and that he has set things up so it will be possible, without an infallible earthly interpreter.

What do you mean when you say “that God intends to communicate”? If God has set things up so that no one can know with certainty the meaning of scriptures, then what God intends to communicate to us is exactly that – that scriptures are not meant to be understood by us! Sure, we can guess about what they mean, but we can never know with certainty what they mean.

If no one can know with certainty that any particular interpretation of scriptures is correct, then how can anyone possibly know that they have an interpretation that is “sufficient” or “reliable”? If I gather together with three hundred people who agree with my interpretation of scriptures, what of it? It may only mean that I am gathered together with people that make the same mistakes in interpretation that I make. And such it is within Protestantism. People gather together with others that have the same mistaken interpretations of the Bible. And I know that that is true, because there are thousands of Protestant denominations that interpret the Bible in irreconcilable ways. Someone has to be wrong, and that is a truth that I can know without scriptures!

The problem with Protestantism is that no one can know with certainty who is wrong. Perhaps all Protestants believe in some things that are mistaken – no one can know that that isn’t true since no one can know with certainty that any particular interpretation of the Bible is true or false.

mateo: “A valid interpretive authority would not be above scriptures, but the servant of it.”

Paige Britton: Well, right. We agree that both the Magisterium and the Protestant pastor are to be the servants of the Scriptures. The difference is, I as a member of my elder-led church may question or challenge or even bring charges against my pastor for teaching that is out of accord with the Scriptures …

You would only be charging that your pastor disagrees with your personal interpretation of scriptures. He could make the same charge against you. In the Protestant world, there is no way to settle these disputes, since every man, woman, and child is the ultimate arbiter of what constitutes a true or false interpretation of scriptures.

Paige Britton: … and you as a Catholic may never question the Magisterium’s teaching, even if you felt that they had changed or added to or contradicted what was presented in the text.

If the Magisterial teaching is infallible, I cannot challenge it. You are correct, what I feel is true wouldn’t matter in the case of an infallible teaching. But that doesn’t bother me, since I know from experience that my feelings are no infallible guide to the truth! But in all honesty, I don’t know of a single infallible teaching of the Magisterium that contradicts what I read in scripture. As for adding to scripture … Catholics believe that the Revelation that Christ and the Apostles gave to True Church is found in both Holy Scripture and Holy Tradition. I don’t have any expectations that scriptures should be formally sufficient to prove every dogma of the faith – that is an alien way of thinking to me, something that only troubles the minds of Protestants that believe in Luther’s doctrine of sola scriptura.

Bottom line, the dogmas of the faith can’t contradict Sacred Scriptures, since Holy Tradition and Holy Scriptures can’t contradict each other, and I don’t think that there are any dogmas of the Catholic Church that contradict Sacred Scripture.

I also believe that Luther’s sola scriptura doctrine does contradict Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture. To have any reason to believe in sola scriptura I have to look outside of scriptures, since there are no scriptures that teach the Protestant Bible is the only source of authority for a Christian. What source of authority should I trust to believe in Luther’s sola scriptura doctrine?
rfwhite December 11th, 2009 7:15 pm :
Bryan Cross: I appreciate your patience in answering my questions about your thesis and argumentation. From where I sit, your comment in #501 provides additional clarity to your definition of “ultimate interpretive authority.” If I understand you correctly, ultimate interpretive authority entails ultimate disciplinary authority.

Returning to #456, and still seeking understanding and clarification, would you say that the Holy Spirit ever immediately and directly gives the individual the right interpretation of Scripture?
TurretinFan December 11th, 2009 7:37 pm :
Bryan:

You wrote:

The objection you are raising is the tu quoque, which we addressed in section V of our article. You are saying that Catholics and sola scriptura Protestants are doing the same thing, because they both have an interpretive ‘grid’, as you put it.

a) As I pointed out at 324, the label tu quoque for this category of response is not appropriate. The argument is a uniqueness argument. If what you are criticizing in Mathison is also present in what you are offering as an alternative to Mathison, you haven’t given us a reason to change boats.

b) I actually presented 5 objections, numbered. I assume you are referring in this comment to number 3. However, while this objection may fall in the same category of being a uniqueness take-out, it is not addressed in the article. The article seemingly ignores the fact that the path is voluntary in both cases. Instead, the article states: “But the Catholic finds something principally different, and properly finds it by way of qualitatively different criteria.” Even assuming that is true (for the sake of the argument), the distinction lies at a different level then who is the holder of ultimate interpretive authority. In both cases (yours and Mathison’s) the holder is “me looking through my grid” and in both cases the grid is “the grid that I chose.”

c) You assert that you and Mathison go about picking your grids in different ways, and you argue (in the article) that it is this difference that permits there to be a principled distinction between Roman Catholicism and Mathison’s position (actually, in the article you typically distinguish between Roman Catholicism and solo scriptura, which leads to a problem that I’ll address below). However, in fact, Mathison’s selection of the ecumenical creeds as his grid looks pretty similar to the approach that you have proposed. Your article, which had so many quotations from Mathison before, goes dry on quotations from Mathison here. I’d respectfully submit to you that the reason it goes dry is that Mathison doesn’t propose the approach that you characterize as the “Protestant” approach.

d) Since Mathison’s approach is different from the “Protestant” approach (as you describe it), and since his difference is based on the same underlying principle (the felt need for an extrinsic grid), the distinction in your article between your position and the “Protestant” position ought to serve to demonstrate that Mathison’s position is also distinguishable in principle from solo scriptura.

e) Yes, you arrive at a different grid from the one that Mathison arrives at. However, if a different grid is a sufficient distinction, then Mathison again is distinguishable over solo scriptura since he uses a grid whereas the solo scriptura practitioner does not. If the difference between grids is great, the difference between a grid and no grid is even greater.

f) Your assertion regarding how people pick the Roman Catholic church may be more autobiographical than general. In other words, people pick the Roman Catholic church for lots of different reasons – and there is not any dogmatic requirement that people go about picking the RCC in a particular way (at least, you haven’t set forth any evidence that the RCC requires folks to pick the RCC based on specific criteria).

g) Similarly, assuming that people have chosen to accept Mathison’s position, there does not seem to be a requirement that they use specific criteria. In fact, Mathison’s argument asserts that one could come to his position without having any access to Scripture (see, for example, pages 20-21 of Mathison’s book).

h) Your article compares picking a congregation or denomination (a “Protestant community”) to picking the Roman Catholic church. That’s not a relevant comparison for the purposes of Mathison, because Mathison has not argued (that I can see) that the grid is one’s particular congregation, denomination, or communion (in fact, Mathison criticizes this kind of approach at p. 323). Picking the grid for Mathison is not picking a denomination, congregation, or the like: it is (to try to use his words) believing the apostolic faith. In fact, I wish Mathison would be less apophatic in his approach, but he clearly distinguishes his approach from the idea of selecting a particular communion.

i) It is important to be clear that while you stated, “You are saying that Catholics and sola scriptura Protestants are doing the same thing, because they both have an interpretive ‘grid’, as you put it,” I actually do not agree that Mathison’s approach is the sola scriptura approach. I don’t agree that sola scriptura involves the application of an extrinsic interpretive grid.

You (Bryan) continued:

My response was to point out that the essential difference is that since sola scriptura Protestants pick their ‘Church’ by finding those who agree with their interpretation of Scripture, they retain ultimate interpretive authority.

a) I dealt with this at point (h) above. Mathison’s alternative is not picking a different communion, and Mathison does not indicate that one finds “the Church” by first interpreting Scripture.

b) As noted above, for the reasons I’ve already given, Mathison’s approach is not sola scriptura in the Reformed sense.

c) “Protestants” pick congregations and denominations for lots of reasons (similar to the fact that people become Roman Catholic for lost of reasons). Sometimes “Protestants” do so because of a desire to be faithful to God’s word, other times for less noble reasons. Hardly anyone (Roman Catholic or “Protestant”) picked their church because it disagreed with what Scriptures says (in their judgment, of course, both of Scripture and their prospective church).

You (Bryan) continued:

Catholics, by contrast, find the Church that Christ founded by tracing His authority through apostolic succession, and then submitting to those whom they discover to have this authority from Christ.

a) This is as good a point as any to point out that folks who are considering joining the RCC are not Roman Catholics. Likewise, a prospective Mathisonian is not yet a Mathisonian.

b) As noted above, that may be an autobiographical comment, but it is not a “required” way for people to become Roman Catholic, nor is it the only way that people do.

c) In point of fact, I’m dubious that many folks bother with very much historical investigation at all as to the matter of apostolic succession. I’m not questioning your own claim (I assume you wouldn’t say what you said if that’s not what you did) to have made an historical investigation, but I would question whether most folks who join Roman Catholicism (even if we limited our consideration to proselytes and ignored cradle folks) make an investigation that goes beyond surface level.

d) Typically, Roman Catholic apologists make appeals to Scripture in attempting to proselytize. There may be some somewhere that do not. Those who do are, at least implicitly, encouraging folks to base their decision to become a Roman Catholic on their own interpretation of Scripture and on that interpretation being in agreement with what they think that Rome teaches. They may also appeal to history or other things, of course, but the point I’m drawing out here is the overlap.

e) Similarly, some (though not all, of course) “Protestant” evangelists suggest examining history. So there is also overlap in that regard.

You (Bryan) continued:

For this reason, they do not retain ultimate interpretive authority. Hence there is principled difference between sola scriptura and the Catholic relation to Scripture.

a) This is an interesting implicit admission. The use of the term “retain” suggests that you think that the individual has the authority, but gives up that authority by submitting.

b) As per (a), that means that the search itself (again) is irrelevant. It is the submission after the search, not the search itself, that removes (per your argument) the locus of the holder.

c) But Mathison’s approach doesn’t differ from yours here. Mathison essentially argues that one must submit to the grid and must read Scriptures through that lens.

You (Bryan) concluded:

The nature of the “pre-lens activities” is precisely why there is no principled difference between sola and solo, and why there *is* a principled difference between sola and the Catholic approach to Scripture.

a) There is no pre-lens activity in solo, because there is no lens in solo.

b) The task of finding an extrinsic binding grid is the same task in both Mathison’s view and your view. The task is performed the same way as to the holder of ultimate interpretive authority during the search.

c) As noted above, the pre-lens activities vary significantly both among “Protestants” and Roman Catholics. One assumes that they would likewise vary among Mathisonians.

-TurretinFan
Bryan Cross December 11th, 2009 8:09 pm :
rfwhite (re: #503),

You wrote:

Returning to #456, and still seeking understanding and clarification, would you say that the Holy Spirit ever immediately and directly gives the individual the right interpretation of Scripture?

Undoubtedly, yes. But, if many people are claiming to be guided by the Holy Spirit in their interpretation of Scripture, and they are all disagreeing with each other, then obviously not all of them are being led by the Holy Spirit, because He is the Spirit of truth and order, and not the Spirit of confusion. The sacramental way of thinking is that God ordinarily works through appointed means. That doesn’t bind or limit God from working outside those means (this we call extraordinary, i.e. outside the ordinary means), but it is for our sake, so that we are not left groping about like Montanists for the word of the Lord, peering within for the direction of the burning in our bosom. We are humans, not angels; we learn through matter. If we want to know what the Holy Spirit has said in illuminating Scripture, we ask, “What has the Church, and all her doctors and saints and councils, taught about Scripture?” We pull out the Catena Aurea, or the Fathers, and the councils, and there we find the Spirit speaking through the Church to the Church, illuminating Scripture, and thus deepening our understanding of Christ and His redemption, because as He tells us, the Scriptures testify of Him.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Bryan Cross December 11th, 2009 8:21 pm :
TurretinFan,

I’ve just read through your comment (#504), and I don’t see anything there that challenges either the validity or the soundness of our argument. Could you, in one paragraph, state which premise you think is false, or why the conclusion of our argument does not follow from the premises?

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Paige Britton December 12th, 2009 9:03 am :
Dear Mateo,

I’m afraid this will have to be my last entry in our conversation, due to the press of demands on my time right now! I’m sorry I didn’t get to respond to all of your comments, but here’s a final go:
The accusation that (within Protestantism) “each person is his own pope” is an inaccurate caricature of Protestant epistemology. It is true that each Protestant believer retains autonomy of conscience regarding what he or she will believe, which includes retaining the right to critique the teaching of our leaders. But none of us is a “pope,” because none of us claims the infallible charism of interpretation that the Catholic Pope is understood to have. We are all on equal footing, being correctible.

I would finally say that there is no principled difference between solo and sola scriptura in this: that in both cases, we retain autonomy of conscience regarding what we will believe, as well as retaining the right to critique and test those who teach us. But because our confession is that the Bible needs no earthly infallible interpreter, we are responsible before God to remember that we, too, are fallible, and our efforts to understand his communication to us must be pursued with humility, openness to correction, and diligent study. In this area of responsibility of approach, I think, we see a principled difference between Mathison’s categories, even if epistemologically there is no difference.

Thank you again for being willing to go back and forth with me on these topics. It has been very helpful and interesting to interact with you and others on this blog. I wish you all the best.

pax,
pb
TurretinFan December 12th, 2009 9:52 am :
Bryan:

Regarding #504, there were so many responses offered, that I’m not sure a single paragraph could do them justice. In general, I’d suggest to you that if you want to see how #504 addresses your argument, one easy way is to do this: as you read each of the counter-points {(a), (b), etc.}, consider to yourself whether you can accept the counter-point I’m making as true and still maintain the point to which that counter-point responds. I have identified the point to which the counter-points respond by block-quoting the argument you presented.

Alternatively, you may be asking how what I wrote interacts directly with “the argument” set forth in section IV(A) of your original post. I’m not sure it does, exactly. That argument takes a different position than the position my post #504 was addressing. The primary germane aspect of #504 is the reminder that Mathison’s view =/= the Reformed doctrine of sola scriptura. I’ll address “the argument” in section IV(A) in a new post of my own.

-TurretinFan
Teri December 12th, 2009 9:56 am :
Bryan,

We are at over 500 comments and not one of the Sola Scriptura advocates has yet to tell me which Reformer – Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, King Henry VIII, or the Anabaptists had/has the real interpretive authority given by God to interpret sacred scripture.

I am sure you will moderate this comment appropriately, but this seems like the same problem the Reformers started out with and could not agree on even then.

I’m looking at this too simply, I know. But it reminds me of the movie, The Wizard of OZ. The great and powerful Oz made everyone tremble with the power of his words, but in the end it was just the little man behind the curtain pulling the strings.

No matter what group is pulling the strings or interpreting the sacred scripture, it still is just a man’s interpretation. Those who understood from the beginning what Our Lord and His Apostle’s meant when they spoke of the One Eucharist,One Baptism, One Faith, One Body,One Spirit, One Lord who is over all surely are the ones entrusted with the authority to interpret the sacred writing.

No matter who is behind the curtain of The Great and Powerful Oz pulling the strings – he is still just a man unless his authority came from God. As the apostle John says, He became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld Him. Not the Reformers, but the Apostles and those they ordained.

In the peace of Christ
Bryan Cross December 12th, 2009 10:23 am :
TurretinFan,

If your primary point in #504 is that Mathison’s description of sola scriptura is not the Reformed doctrine of sola scriptura, then would you say that the Reformed doctrine of sola scriptura is what Mathison calls “solo scriptura,” or is it a third position altogether?

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
TurretinFan December 12th, 2009 10:35 am :
Bryan,

That wasn’t my primary point. If I had to pick a primary point it would be that given your claim that it is the pre-lens activity that provides the distinction, it is an undermining fact that the people doing the pre-lens activity are neither Mathisonians nor Roman Catholics. Nevertheless, to answer your question, sola scriptura is a third position (between, in some sense, Mathison and the solo position), namely the position set forth in the Westminster Standards, Three Forms of Unity, and Thirty-Nine Articles (as I’ve pointed out several times now).

-TurretinFan
Bryan Cross December 12th, 2009 10:48 am :
TurretinFan, (re: #511),

You wrote:

If I had to pick a primary point it would be that given your claim that it is the pre-lens activity that provides the distinction, it is an undermining fact that the people doing the pre-lens activity are neither Mathisonians nor Roman Catholics.

Which premise of our argument does this “undermining fact” undermine?

sola scriptura is a third position (between, in some sense, Mathison and the solo position), namely the position set forth in the Westminster Standards, Three Forms of Unity, and Thirty-Nine Articles

What is the “in some sense“? In other words, in one paragraph or less, what is the significant difference between Mathison’s position regarding sola scriptura, and the account of sola scriptura found in “the Westminster Standards, Three Forms of Unity, and Thirty-Nine Articles”?

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
TurretinFan December 12th, 2009 11:40 am :
Bryan,

You asked: “Which premise of our argument does this “undermining fact” undermine?”

You previously conceded:

The nature of the “pre-lens activities” is precisely why there is no principled difference between sola and solo, and why there *is* a principled difference between sola and the Catholic approach to Scripture.

Obviously, that concession is not in the form of a formal argument with premises and a conclusion. However, the undermining fact I identified undermines the premises in which the “pre-lens activities” are predicated as to the various positions. For example, reducing your concession to a more formal argument, you are stating:

1) The pre-lens activities of Solo are [X];
2) The pre-lens activities of Mathison are [Y];
3) The pre-lens activities of RC are [Z];
4) There is no principled distinction between [X] and [Y]; and
5) There is a principled distinction between [Y] (or [X]) and [Z].

My undermining fact undermines 2-3. As a result, 4-5 are moot whether or not they could be shown to be the case. Incidentally, other of my points in #504 undermine other items. For example, that there is no lens in Solo undermines 1, that [Y] and [Z] are not uniform quantities undermins 2-5, and that [Z] as you describe it is [Y] as Mathison appears to describe it undermines 5.

***

You again make a “in a single paragraph” request. Given that we’re discussing a 20,000+ word article in an even more wordy comment box, single paragraph requests are a bit odd and don’t seem to be particularly conducive to a thorough dialog. That said, as I’ve mentioned repeatedly, one of the key differences between Mathison’s position and the position of the WCF, 3FU, and 39A is that he identifies the regula fidei in a proper/formal sense with something other than Scripture. I emphasize proper/formal because if he had done so informally (as some of the fathers he cites did) there would be only a distinction of expression, not concept.

I hope that helps.

-TurretinFan
Bryan Cross December 12th, 2009 12:04 pm :
TurretinFan,

When I make a statement, that is not a “concession”; it is a statement. If you don’t want me to start referring to your statements as ‘concessions,’ (or ‘desperate attempts to save your position’ or something worse) then please practice the Golden Rule, and avoid such sophistry.

You wrote:

However, the undermining fact I identified undermines the premises in which the “pre-lens activities” are predicated as to the various positions.

I don’t understand what that sentence means.

You wrote:

For example, reducing your concession to a more formal argument, you are stating:

1) The pre-lens activities of Solo are [X];
2) The pre-lens activities of Mathison are [Y];
3) The pre-lens activities of RC are [Z];
4) There is no principled distinction between [X] and [Y]; and
5) There is a principled distinction between [Y] (or [X]) and [Z].

Not only is that not my argument; it is not even an argument. It is only a set of statements.

I’ve asked for a brief [in a paragraph or less] explanation of the difference between the Reformed view of sola scriptura, and Mathison’s account of sola scriptura. You responded:

You again make a “in a single paragraph” request. Given that we’re discussing a 20,000+ word article in an even more wordy comment box, single paragraph requests are a bit odd and don’t seem to be particularly conducive to a thorough dialog.

Since my request is not about our article, but about the difference between Mathison’s view of sola scriptura and the Reformed view of sola scriptura, the length of our article is not relevant to my request.

You continue:

That said, as I’ve mentioned repeatedly, one of the key differences between Mathison’s position and the position of the WCF, 3FU, and 39A is that he identifies the regula fidei in a proper/formal sense with something other than Scripture. I emphasize proper/formal because if he had done so informally (as some of the fathers he cites did) there would be only a distinction of expression, not concept.

Good and well, but our article did not deal with the relation between Scripture and Tradition, but only with the relation between Scripture and the Church. Hence, if the Reformed view of sola scriptura differs from Mathison’s only in the relation of Tradition to Scripture, and not in the relation of Church to Scripture, then this difference [between Mathison’s position and, as you call it, the Reformed view of sola scriptura] is not relevant to our article or to the argument within our article. In other words, if Mathison’s account of sola scriptura is identical to the Reformed view of sola scriptura with respect to the relation between Church and Scripture, then since our article only focuses on Mathison’s account of sola scriptura in its position on the relation of Church to Scripture, therefore insofar as our argument shows that there is no principled difference [with respect to the holder of ultimate interpretive authority] between Mathison’s account of sola scriptura and solo scriptura, our argument likewise shows that there is no principled difference [with respect to the holder of ultimate interpretive authority] between the Reformed account of sola scriptura and solo scriptura.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
rfwhite December 12th, 2009 12:15 pm :
Bryan Cross: To clarify my question in #503, let’s stipulate that neither of us is interested in what many (or few) people are claiming with regard to the Holy Spirit’s guidance in their interpretation of Scripture. Instead we share an interest in, to apply your language, what is ordinary and what is extraordinary in the Holy Spirit’s work of giving illumination to the individual.
TurretinFan December 12th, 2009 1:27 pm :
Bryan:

Before my paragraph response you stated: “Since my request is not about our article …” yet after my paragraph response “Good and well, but our article … .” Perhaps you will understand my confusion.

I appreciate your distinction amongst Church, Tradition, and Scripture. In Roman Catholic theology (particularly if one accepts Mathison’s characterization of it at, for example, p. 183) there is a distinction among those three categories. Furthermore, of course, Mathison uses the term “tradition” in a wide variety of senses, some of which he labels with numbers.

However, if Mathison views the regula fidei as the voice of the Church (and pages 246 and 325 suggest that such is his view), then the difference between his view and the Reformed view (as expressed by the WS/3FU/39A – and we could add other Reformed confessions, like the Irish Articles of Religion) matters.

Do you deny that Mathison views the regula fidei as the voice of the Church? If you do deny that, how do you explain his comments at pages 246 and 325?

-TurretinFan
rfwhite December 12th, 2009 1:30 pm :
Bryan Cross: Still seeking understanding … in relating the sacramental way of thinking to the Spirit’s work of illumination, would you say that, in that work, the individual ordinarily is or is not in direct contact with and immediate dependence on the Holy Spirit?
Bryan Cross December 12th, 2009 1:48 pm :
TurretinFan,

As for Mathison’s position on the regula fidei, I’d like to wait to let him clarify his own position.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
TurretinFan December 12th, 2009 1:59 pm :
Bryan:

I had written:

However, the undermining fact I identified undermines the premises in which the “pre-lens activities” are predicated as to the various positions.

You responded:

I don’t understand what that sentence means.

Maybe a brief illustration will help:

Man X and Man Y are two atheists searching for the truth. One ends up buying into Mathison’s view, the other ends up becoming a Roman Catholic. During the time of their searching, neither was yet either Mathisonian or Roman Catholic. So to say that one set of “pre-lens” activities is either Mathisonian or Roman Catholic is incorrect: those searchers are neither. Does that help clarify what I meant by “However, the undermining fact I identified undermines the premises in which the “pre-lens activities” are predicated as to the various positions.”?

-TurretinFan
Bryan Cross December 12th, 2009 2:51 pm :
rfwhite, (re: #515,517),

Does “the Holy Spirit ever immediately and directly gives the individual the right interpretation of Scripture?”

Undoubtedly, yes.

“[I]n [the Spirit’s work of illumination], the individual ordinarily is or is not in direct contact with and immediate dependence on the Holy Spirit?”

The Holy Spirit dwells within every believer who is in a state of grace. (John 14:27, Rom 8:9; 1 Cor 3:16, 2 Tim 1:14) A spirit, because it is not material, is not something that can be touched, so ‘contact’ is at best only a metaphor. But, I hope that by saying that the Holy Spirit indwells every believer who is in a state of grace, I’m getting at what you are asking. It is not as though the individual believer in a state of grace is devoid of the Holy Spirit, and only has ‘contact’ with the Spirit at the moment he or she is receiving a sacrament.

As for whether the individual is ordinarily immediately dependent on the Holy Spirit for the correct interpretation of Scripture, if that means, “When the Holy Spirit directly and immediately [i.e. without the meditation of the Church or Tradition] illumines Scripture to the individual who is studying or meditating on Scripture and allows that individual to perceive the right interpretation of Scripture, is the individual in that case immediately dependent on the Holy Spirit?” then the answer must be yes. But, if your question is whether the direct and immediate [i.e. unmediated] operation of the Holy Spirit for the correct interpretation of Scripture is the ordinary [i.e. divinely established] way in which the individual believer is to come to know the correct interpretation of Scripture, then I would say no. Scripture is ordinarily exposited in the Church, in her liturgy. The exposition of Scripture to the faithful in the liturgy is guided by the Magisterium and the Tradition, and that is the ordinary means through which the Holy Spirit works to teach the faithful the correct interpretation of Scripture. The Holy Spirit is the “soul of the Body of Christ”, and thus is the Spirit of the Body of Christ. The operation of the Spirit is not the sum of His work in individual believers; it is a singular activity that is participated in to various degrees by the members of that Body. The individualistic conception of the Spirit’s work is just that — individualistic; it fails to see that the Spirit’s operation is the operation primarily of the Body, and in the individual believer derivatively and by participation.

In other words, we don’t want to say that what is extraordinary is ordinary, because that would nullify the distinction between extraordinary and ordinary. So we don’t want to say that the believer’s dependence on the extraordinary work of the Spirit is ordinary. When the Spirit immediately grants a believer insight into the correct interpretation of Scripture, that’s extraordinary. But that will never contradict what the Spirit has done ordinarily, in the Church. The Spirit will never contradict Himself, and so He will never give some ‘insight’ to an individual member, something that is contrary to what He has given to the whole Body. That wouldn’t be the “correct” interpretation of Scripture. The standard for what is the correct interpretation of Scripture is found in the Church and the Tradition, not in the individual’s direct unmediated experience.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Bryan Cross December 12th, 2009 3:19 pm :
TurretinFan,

You wrote:

Man X and Man Y are two atheists searching for the truth. One ends up buying into Mathison’s view, the other ends up becoming a Roman Catholic. During the time of their searching, neither was yet either Mathisonian or Roman Catholic. So to say that one set of “pre-lens” activities is either Mathisonian or Roman Catholic is incorrect: those searchers are neither.

We didn’t claim that one person’s “pre-lens” activities are Mathisonian and another’s are Catholic. We didn’t even talk about lenses or “pre-lens” activities. Those are your terms that you are importing into the discussion, to frame it from your point of view. That’s fine, but you need to avoid setting up a strawman by criticizing your own [inaccurate] construal of our position.

We explained, in section V of our article, that there is a principled distinction between the means by which the Catholic Church is identified as the true Church, and the means by which someone picks out a Protestant denomination as the true Church (or a branch of it). The former relies on an historical succession of magisterial authority to find the Church and then through the Church determine what is the Bible and its canon and its authentic interpretation. The latter relies on one’s own determination of what one assumes to be Scripture to pick out that group of present day persons whose beliefs and practices most closely match one’s own determination (on the basis of one’s own interpretation of what one takes to be Scripture) of what the early Church must have been like. The former locates form by tracing matter. The latter locates matter by matching form.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
TurretinFan December 12th, 2009 3:33 pm :
Bryan:

You have now written:

We didn’t claim that one person’s “pre-lens” activities are Mathisonian and another’s are Catholic.

(#521)

You previously wrote:

The nature of the “pre-lens activities” is precisely why there is no principled difference between sola and solo, and why there *is* a principled difference between sola and the Catholic approach to Scripture.

(#494)

Are you now taking back what you said in #494?

-TurretinFan
TurretinFan December 12th, 2009 4:01 pm :
As to “the Argument” in Section IV(A), a detailed response is at this link but in a nutshell:

a) 10 does not follow from 4 and 9;
b) even if 10 is modified to be what actually follows from 4 and 9, modified 10 could be expanded to include apostolic succession, because 4 could be expanded to include apostolic succession, using the same rationale upon which 4 is based; and
c) if we permit apostolic succession the escape from 4 argued-for in Section V(A) of the article, then premises 2, 7, and 9 are false because Mathison’s position and solo scriptura (as well, incidentally, as the Reformed position on sola scriptura) can all use the same escape.

There’s plenty more in the article (link to the article) but those are some of the high points.

-TurretinFan
Bryan Cross December 12th, 2009 4:07 pm :
TurretinFan, (re: #522)

No, I’m not taking anything back. I used the term “pre-lens activities” in #494, for your sake, because you had used it (and the term ‘grid’) in 489. The problem with that term, however, is that it is too ambiguous. As I used it in 494, I was referring to anything prior to full membership in the Catholic Church or in a Protestant denomination or congregation. And as I just explained in 521, there is a great deal of difference between the respective bases for identifying ‘the Church’ prior to full membership in the Catholic Church or in a Protestant denomination or congregation.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
TurretinFan December 12th, 2009 4:17 pm :
Do you agree with my contention that “prior to full membership in the [Roman] Catholic Church” a person is not a Roman Catholic?
Bryan Cross December 12th, 2009 4:19 pm :
TurretinFan, (re: #523),

You wrote:

a) 10 does not follow from 4 and 9;

Correct. Line (10) should include the qualifier “with respect to the holder of final interpretive authority” [regarding what is essential and thus, by extension, all other doctrines as well].

b) even if 10 is modified to be what actually follows from 4 and 9, modified 10 could be expanded to include apostolic succession, because 4 could be expanded to include apostolic succession, using the same rationale upon which 4 is based;

The fact that a premise could be modified does not refute an argument.

and c) if we permit apostolic succession the escape from 4 argued-for in Section V(A) of the article, then premises 2, 7, and 9 are false because Mathison’s position and solo scriptura (as well, incidentally, as the Reformed position on sola scriptura) can all use the same escape.

I don’t understand the antecedent of this conditional. Nor do I see how the consequent of the conditional follows from the antecedent.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Bryan Cross December 12th, 2009 4:28 pm :
TurretinFan (re: #525)

You asked:

Do you agree with my contention that “prior to full membership in the [Roman] Catholic Church” a person is not a Roman Catholic?

I agree. Prior to being received into the Catholic Church, a person is not a Catholic.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
TurretinFan December 12th, 2009 4:29 pm :
“The fact that a premise could be modified does not refute an argument.”

That may be true, but it is irrelevant. The modification of premise 4 results in apostolic succession being included with “sola” and “solo” in 10. That makes the argument useless, though not necessarily invalid.

“I don’t understand the antecedent of this conditional. Nor do I see how the consequent of the conditional follows from the antecedent.”

The article to which I linked provides a more complete explanation. Perhaps if you read the article, it will become more clear. Section IV is the section that deals with that particular issue. Here is the URL: https://turretinfan.blogspot.com/2009/12/distinction-gets-narrower-again-further.html

-TurretinFan
TurretinFan December 12th, 2009 4:38 pm :
Bryan,

Given your agreement in #527, I renew my objection that your principled distinction is not between the positions of someone who affirms a Mathisonian view and someone who affirms a Roman Catholic view, but between the positions of two people, neither of whom necessarily holds to either view, in view of your statement (I didn’t mean to offend you by calling it a concession):

The nature of the “pre-lens activities” is precisely why there is no principled difference between sola and solo, and why there *is* a principled difference between sola and the Catholic approach to Scripture.

(#494)

According to your own characterization, you’ve tackled seekers, not those actually holding to either view.

-TurretinFan
Bryan Cross December 12th, 2009 4:45 pm :
TurretinFan, (re: #528)

I had written: “The fact that a premise could be modified does not refute an argument.”

You replied:

That may be true, but it is irrelevant. The modification of premise 4 results in apostolic succession being included with “sola” and “solo” in 10. That makes the argument useless, though not necessarily invalid.

If I’m understanding you correctly, you are saying this: If premise (4) of our argument were to be modified, then our argument is made useless.

Two things. First, arguments are not evaluated by whether they are “useless”, but by whether they are sound. Second if you criticize a modified form of our argument (a modification that you make), that is not a criticism of our argument. That’s a textbook case of the strawman fallacy. And that’s why “our argument being useless” does not follow from any true statement about a modified form of our argument.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
TurretinFan December 12th, 2009 4:59 pm :
Bryan:

As to 1) You’re wrong. In the context of “should I be RC or SS” an argument that SS has a trait that RC also has is a useless argument. Whether you make it explicit or not, the proposition for which this article is an argument is the proposition that we should all be RC. You recognize this fact in that you include Section V in your article.

As to 2) You’re wrong again. I’m not criticizing a modified form of your argument. I believe that you would understand this, if you had read the article to which I’ve now linked a few times (here it is again). I encourage you to do so. When you misrepresent the other person’s argument, you run the risk of committing the straw man fallacy.

When I demonstrate that the reasoning behind premise 4 of your argument can be extended (without changing the reasoning) to cover apostolic succession, I’m not criticizing a modified form of your argument. Instead, I’m demonstrating that conclusion 10 is a non-unique conclusion.

-TurretinFan
Bryan Cross December 12th, 2009 5:01 pm :
TurretinFan, (re: #529)

You wrote:

I renew my objection that your principled distinction is not between the positions of someone who affirms a Mathisonian view and someone who affirms a Roman Catholic view, but between the positions of two people, neither of whom necessarily holds to either view

You are objecting to something that we have neither claimed nor denied, so I don’t see why you frame it as an objection. We never claimed that one has to be a Catholic in order to find form by tracing matter. We never claimed that one has to be a “Mathisonian” (your term) to locate matter by matching form.

According to your own characterization, you’ve tackled seekers, not those actually holding to either view.

Our article and argument do not tackle any person. Our argument is an argument about the relation of solo to sola. The tu quoque objection to the conclusion of our argument is that even if all Protestants retain ultimate interpretive authority, so do all Catholics, and therefore there is no Catholic advantage here over Protestantism. In reply, we show in section V of our article that Catholics do not retain ultimate interpretive authority.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
TurretinFan December 12th, 2009 5:04 pm :
Bryan:
You wrote: “Our argument is an argument about the relation of solo to sola.”

However, as I’ve pointed out above, the place where you (per #494) find absence of principled distinction is not among the holders of those views, but among folks who don’t hold those views.

-TurretinFan
TurretinFan December 12th, 2009 5:15 pm :
Bryan:

Thanks for the very active dialog today on this topic. I’m going to take a break for the weekend. I’m glad we could have this civil conversation despite our differences.

-TurretinFan
Bryan Cross December 12th, 2009 5:19 pm :
TurretinFan (re: #531)

You wrote:

As to 1) You’re wrong.

In order for us to have a productive conversation, you need to put yourself in my shoes a little. I had no idea what you were referring to by “As to (1)” until I figured it out from what you said below. To avoid this confusion, please include my statement that you are criticizing, and make sure you include the comment number, so I know where you are getting it from.

You wrote:

In the context of “should I be RC or SS” an argument that SS has a trait that RC also has is a useless argument. Whether you make it explicit or not, the proposition for which this article is an argument is the proposition that we should all be RC. You recognize this fact in that you include Section V in your article.

The evaluation of an argument itself, and its application, are two distinct things. If you agree that our argument is sound, but claim that the truth of its conclusion doesn’t give the Catholic a leg up because of the tu quoque, then I’ll know where you stand, and where you disagree. I’ll know that you’re not challenging the argument itself, but the application of it to the Protestant-Catholic discussion, so as seemingly to give the Catholic an advantage.

As to 2) You’re wrong again. I’m not criticizing a modified form of your argument.

Yes you are. In #528 you wrote: “The modification of premise 4 results in apostolic succession being included with “sola” and “solo” in 10.” Well, who modified premise 4? Not Neal or me. Therefore, it must have been you. And therefore you are criticizing a strawman, and that’s a fallacy.

You wrote:

When I demonstrate that the reasoning behind premise 4 of your argument can be extended (without changing the reasoning) to cover apostolic succession, I’m not criticizing a modified form of your argument. Instead, I’m demonstrating that conclusion 10 is a non-unique conclusion.

The soundness of our argument does not depend on conclusion (1o) being unique. So, showing our conclusion to be non-unique does not refute the argument.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Bryan Cross December 12th, 2009 5:23 pm :
TurretinFan (re: #533),

You wrote:

However, as I’ve pointed out above, the place where you (per #494) find absence of principled distinction is not among the holders of those views, but among folks who don’t hold those views.

Could you point me to the place in our article where we claimed to find a person holding a view that he or she didn’t actually hold? Thanks.

As for your appreciation for the civility of the conversation, I feel the same. Enjoy your weekend.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
lojahw December 12th, 2009 5:38 pm :
Teri wrote:

We are at over 500 comments and not one of the Sola Scriptura advocates has yet to tell me which Reformer – Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, King Henry VIII, or the Anabaptists had/has the real interpretive authority given by God to interpret sacred scripture.

I think you miss the point of sola scriptura. The authority is not in the person, but in the Scriptures. Any interpretation that is inconsistent with the teaching of the Scriptures is false – regardless of who it comes from. The only reason this is an issue is that you reject the perspicuity of Scripture. When the Scriptures say, “Christ is risen” and then tell how He invites Thomas to put his fingers in His wounds and that He eats food, it is clear that Scripture teaches Jesus’ bodily resurrection. It takes no special “interpretive authority” to arrive at that conclusion. Since we both recognize that

1) not all doctrines are essential to salvation; and
2) not all Scriptures are perspicuous,

it would seem to be more helpful to talk about where Scripture does not clearly teach what is essential to salvation. In such cases, sola scriptura recognizes the subordinate interpretive authority of the Church and its leaders. What CTC contributors have failed to provide is examples where Churches committed to sola scriptura disagree with one another on matters essential to salvation (e.g., not on colors of carpet, ancillary social agendas, etc.).

Blessings
mateo December 12th, 2009 5:40 pm :
Paige Britton: Dear Mateo,
I’m afraid this will have to be my last entry in our conversation, due to the press of demands on my time right now!

I quite understand – may you have a blessed Christmas!

Paige Britton: I’m sorry I didn’t get to respond to all of your comments, but here’s a final go:

The accusation that (within Protestantism) “each person is his own pope” is an inaccurate caricature of Protestant epistemology. It is true that each Protestant believer retains autonomy of conscience regarding what he or she will believe, which includes retaining the right to critique the teaching of our leaders. But none of us is a “pope,” because none of us claims the infallible charism of interpretation that the Catholic Pope is understood to have. We are all on equal footing, being correctible.

I hope you will excuse me for me for painting what you perceived as a caricature of Protestant epistemology. You are quite right, you have said all along that no Protestant can infallibly interpret scriptures; so to imply that all Protestants believe that they are infallible interpreters of scriptures would be a grossly unfair accusation.

The point that I was trying to make about the Pope was about where the final temporal authority rests for deciding between disputed interpretations of scriptures. For Catholics, the ultimate temporal authority rests with the Pope. For Protestants, the ultimate temporal authority rests with each man, woman and child, since each person is on “equal epistimic footing” and “we retain autonomy of conscience regarding what we will believe, as well as retaining the right to critique and test those who teach us.”

The dispute here is about primacy – Catholic believe in the Primacy of Peter; most Protestants believe in the Primacy of the Believer (JWs and LDS are obvious exceptions to that rule).

Paige Britton: I would finally say that there is no principled difference between solo and sola scriptura in this: that in both cases, we retain autonomy of conscience regarding what we will believe, as well as retaining the right to critique and test those who teach us.

Thank you for being bold enough to take an unequivocal position on Bryan and Neal’s article!

Paige Britton: … because our confession is that the Bible needs no earthly infallible interpreter, we are responsible before God to remember that we, too, are fallible, and our efforts to understand his communication to us must be pursued with humility, openness to correction, and diligent study.

Which is certainly a sensible approach to take if there is no one you can trust to be infallible in his or her interpretations of scripture …

Paige Britton: In this area of responsibility of approach, I think, we see a principled difference between Mathison’s categories, even if epistemologically there is no difference.

Right … if sola scriptura is true, then each individual Protestant is responsible for making sure that every single article of faith that he or she believes is true. If I believe in sola scriptura I don’t have freedom in my “Bible Freedom” – instead, I have had a heavy burden of responsibility placed upon me. I must diligently seek to know if there is any valid reason for me to accept the traditional interpretations embraced by my particular church community. If my community embraces, say, the doctrines established by the first seven Ecumenical Councils, that would not be sufficient reason for me to embrace those doctrines. It would be incumbent upon me to begin educating myself so that I could judge the conclusions of the bishops reached by these seven Ecumenical Councils. All two thousand years of doctrinal development would need to be weighed by me before I could accept anything that I don’t find explicitly stated in scriptures.

I must say this – I have never personally met a Protestant that is willing to take on this crushing burden of personal responsibility. I have never met a Protestant that does accept most of what believes because he accepts it on authority.

C. S. Lewis make this point about authority:

Do not be scared by the word authority. Believing things on authority only means believing them because you have been told them by someone you think trustworthy. Ninety-nine per cent of the things you believe are believed on authority. I believe there is such a place as New York. I have not seen it myself. I could not prove by abstract reasoning that there must be such a place. I believe it because reliable people have told me so. The ordinary man believes in the Solar System, atoms, evolution, and the circulation of the blood on authority – because scientists say so. Every historical statement in the world is believed on authority. None of us has seen the Norman Conquest or the defeat of the Armada. None of us could prove them by pure logic as you prove a thing in mathematics. We believe them simply because people who did see them have left writings that tell us about them: in fact, on authority. A man who jibbed at authority in other things as some people do in religion would have to be content to know nothing all his life.

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

I accept the teachings of the Magisterium on authority. I am not really doing anything different than what most Protestants do when they accept their religious beliefs on authority. The real question is this; do I have any reason for accepting the authority of the Magisterium? Is it really possible that God does give the charism of infallibility to certain men in certain circumstances?

“He who hears you hears me, and he who rejects you rejects me, and he who rejects me rejects him who sent me.”
Luke 10:16
mateo December 12th, 2009 5:50 pm :
Oops .. this sentence makes no sense: “ I have never met a Protestant that does accept most of what believes because he accepts it on authority.”

The Protestants that I know do accept their beliefs on authority!
lojahw December 12th, 2009 6:20 pm :
Bryan wrote:

Why, exactly, are there no “extrinsic limitations to interpretation” under solo scriptura?

Because a solo scriptura person is free to make personal claims based on isolated texts, disregard the broader teaching of Scripture on any given point, and/or make any argument that he wants as long as he can find someone else who will agree with him.

Whose interpretation of Scripture’s interpretation of Scripture is authoritative?

Another way of answering your question is to answer this one: “How can one know which interpretations of Scripture are NOT authoritative?” The answer is: if the interpretation is inconsistent with Scripture. For example, the Scripture teaches:

“The Gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, ‘But the righteous man shall live by faith.’” (Rom. 1:16-17).

Pope Boniface VIII taught: “We declare, say, define and pronounce, that it is absolutely necessary for the salvation of every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff.” (Bull Unam Sanctam)

It should be evident to all that “everyone who believes” in Romans is not the same set of people who are “subject to the Roman Pontiff.” Unam Sanctam therefore is inconsistent with Scripture regarding the extent of the power of the Gospel. The sola scriptura conclusion is that Pope Boniface’s interpretation is NOT authoritative.

Blessings.
Bryan Cross December 12th, 2009 6:36 pm :
lojahw (re: #537),

You wrote:

it would seem to be more helpful to talk about where Scripture does not clearly teach what is essential to salvation. In such cases, sola scriptura recognizes the subordinate interpretive authority of the Church and its leaders.

Who, presently, are the “leaders” of “the Church”? What are their names?

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Bryan Cross December 12th, 2009 7:08 pm :
lojahw (re: #540)

I had asked you: “Why, exactly, are there no “extrinsic limitations to interpretation” under solo scriptura?”

You replied:

Because a solo scriptura person is free to make personal claims based on isolated texts, disregard the broader teaching of Scripture on any given point, and/or make any argument that he wants as long as he can find someone else who will agree with him.

Given that solo scriptura means that Scripture is the only authority, why is the person holding solo scriptura “free to make person claims based on isolated texts, disregard the broader teaching of Scripture on any given point, and/or make any argument that he wants as long as he can find someone else who will agree with him”, if the sola scriptura person is not free to do those things?

I had asked you: “Whose interpretation of Scripture’s interpretation of Scripture is authoritative?”

You replied:

Another way of answering your question is to answer this one: “How can one know which interpretations of Scripture are NOT authoritative?” The answer is: if the interpretation is inconsistent with Scripture.

First, you seem to be assuming that there is only one interpretation of Scripture that is logically consistent (i.e. doesn’t contain contradictions). How do you justify that assumption?

Second, your reply doesn’t answer my question. My question is this: “Whose interpretation of Scripture’s interpretation of Scripture is authoritative?” Telling me that interpretations which are inconsistent with Scripture are not authoritative gives me a ‘what’ answer when I asked a ‘who’ question. It also give me a negative answer (i.e. x interpretations are not authoritative) when I had asked a positive question (“Whose interpretation of Scripture’s interpretation of Scripture is authoritative?”). So in both ways your reply does not answer my question.

Third, your reply only pushes back the question. You claim that an interpretation is not authoritative if it is inconsistent with Scripture. But that pushes the question back: “Inconsistent with whose interpretation of Scripture?”

You wrote:

It should be evident to all that “everyone who believes” in Romans is not the same set of people who are “subject to the Roman Pontiff.”

You are assuming that St. Paul is giving the sufficient condition and not merely a necessary condition. So your conclusion that Unam Sanctam is inconsistent with Romans is based on your speculative interpretation of Scripture. Otherwise, if you take St. Paul to be giving the unqualified sufficient condition, you make him contradict Jesus, because Jesus says “He who has believed and has been baptized shall be saved” (Mk 16:16), and “it should be evident to all” that “everyone who believes” in Romans is not the same set of people who “believe and are baptized”. Therefore, given your assumption that St. Paul is giving the unqualified sufficient condition, Jesus’ addition of baptism is “NOT authoritative”.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Teri December 12th, 2009 8:12 pm :
#538
Dear Mr. lojahw,

I understand what you are saying, but it still doesn’t work. First, no one before Luther (correct me if I’m wrong) said the doctrine of Sola Scriptura was an essential of the faith or part of the “gospel that was to be preached throughout the world”.

Since the Reformers – Luther,Calvin, Zwingli, Anabaptist, and Henry VIII were the group that said this was essential to the faith AND they disagreed on what the Eucharist is (memorial, body and blood in spirit, actual body and blood BUT not like the papist…etc.) AND on baptism of infants versus adults – those are essentials I would think.

The persecuted Church went from around 120 people in a small sect of Jewish believers to a majority in the 300 or so years after Our Lord ascended in Heaven. They did this without killing or forcing anyone to be Christian. They were willing to give up their lives for their faith under the worst tortures imaginable. Yet, the Christians grew and multiplied.

They did not believe in Sola Scriptura and they did not believe the gospel was Calvinist, Arminian, etc. They did, however, believe in the actual real presence of Our Lord in the Eucharist.

If I have to pick which authority is true regarding sacred scripture , it will be the Catholic (universal) Church because after over 2000 years, they are either the Church of The Apostles that Christ gave authority or they are crazy or just liars. They’ve outlasted every single other faith and heresy since the beginning. They kept all of the Old Testament that the Apostles used (Septuagint). At least if you are going to have a doctrine like Sola Scriptura you shouldn’t start by pulling out what you don’t like or deem not “sound doctrine”.

The RCC is to the interpretative authority. Not because it fits with my own idea. On the contrary. But because it was what those who died for the faith believed. The prayer Our Lord taught us to pray is, “Our Father”….not “my Father”……

In the peace of Christ during this glorious season of Advent,
Teri
lojahw December 12th, 2009 9:36 pm :
Bryan wrote:

The authority of the bishops by apostolic succession includes not only the authority to exclude from the Kingdom …

On what basis do you claim that apostolic succession includes the authority to exclude from the Kingdom? Soteriology belongs to God in Christ alone. I agree that the apostles’ successors have ecclesial authority, but they have no power to take away the salvation that Christ alone can give:

“the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out … and this is the will of Him who sent Me, that of all that He has given Me I lose nothing, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of My Father that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him may have eternal life; and I Myself will raise him up on the last day.” John 6:37-40 (cf. John 20:29, “Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed.”)

In Christ,
lojahw
lojahw December 12th, 2009 10:15 pm :
Bryan wrote:

why is the person holding solo scriptura “free to make person claims based on isolated texts, disregard the broader teaching of Scripture on any given point, and/or make any argument that he wants as long as he can find someone else who will agree with him”, if the sola scriptura person is not free to do those things?

I explained the difference, Bryan: the sola scriptura person is contrained by the whole of Scripture, and therefore not at liberty to “disregard the broader teaching of Scripture on any given point.” To do such is to disregard the principles of sola scriptura, just as one who chooses to disobey traffic laws. The one who practices solo scriptura is, in effect, practicing lawlessness.

To your question, “Whose interpretion of Scripture’s interpretation is authoritative,” the answer is Christ and the Apostles. When you ask “who,” that is the only definitive answer I can give. On the other hand, it is possible to disqualify those whose interpretations are inconsistent with Scripture. Since the goal is to interpret Scripture, shouldn’t we focus on which interpretations can be eliminated? (BTW – I did not say there is only one correct interpretation, but rather only that one can rule out those which are inconsistent with Scripture.)

You are assuming that St. Paul is giving the sufficient condition and not merely a necessary condition.

Given the many unqualified statements of Scripture to the same effect, that salvation comes from believing in Christ, the Son of God, I believe my assumption is sound.

“He who has believed and has been baptized shall be saved” (Mk 16:16),

The above statement does not require that baptism is a prerequisite for salvation, but it does reflect obedience to Jesus’ great commission that all disciples be baptized. Indeed, this concords with Acts 10:47, “Surely no one can refuse the water for these to be baptized who have received the Holy Spirit as we did, can he?” Peter recognized the manifestation of the Holy Spirit as a sign of salvation and hence a prompt for baptism of Christ’s new disciples.

The real question is where do the Apostles add the condition to salvation that Boniface claims? (I have found it neither in the Scriptures nor in the ECFs.)

Blessings.
Bryan Cross December 13th, 2009 12:43 am :
lojahw, (re: #544)

You wrote:

On what basis do you claim that apostolic succession includes the authority to exclude from the Kingdom?

The keys that Jesus gave to Peter were the keys to the Kingdom (κλεῖδας τῆς βασιλείας). (Matthew 16:19) Whatever he binds on earth is therefore bound in heaven. And whatever he looses on earth is therefore loosed in heaven. (Mt 16:19) Those who listen to him listen to Christ; those who reject him have rejected Christ. (Luke 10:16) Those whose sins he forgives, their sins are forgiven by Christ. Those whose sins he retains, their sins are retained by Christ. (John 20:23) These keys didn’t go out of existence when Peter died; they were handed down to his successors, because the Church did not cease to need visible government when Peter died or when the last Apostle died.

If a person knows of the Church and does not submit to the Church, he is not submitting to Christ. And this is why if a person refuses to enter the Church, knowing that Christ established His Church as necessary for salvation, that person cannot be saved. To reject the Church is to reject Christ, because it is His Body. And to reject Christ is to reject the Father, because He is the Son of the Father. And to reject the Father is to forfeit eternal life.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Bryan Cross December 13th, 2009 1:28 am :
lojahw, (re: #545)

I had asked (in #542):

Why is the person holding solo scriptura “free to make person claims based on isolated texts, disregard the broader teaching of Scripture on any given point, and/or make any argument that he wants as long as he can find someone else who will agree with him”, if the sola scriptura person is not free to do those things?

You replied:

I explained the difference, Bryan: the sola scriptura person is contrained by the whole of Scripture, and therefore not at liberty to “disregard the broader teaching of Scripture on any given point.”

There is a difference between an assertion and an explanation. You have merely asserted that the person holding sola scriptura is constrained by the whole of Scripture, and that the person holding solo scriptura is not so constrained. But you have not explained why the one is so constrained and the other is not.

To do such is to disregard the principles of sola scriptura, just as one who chooses to disobey traffic laws. The one who practices solo scriptura is, in effect, practicing lawlessness.

What are the “principles of sola scriptura”? Please list them. If they are found in Scripture, then since solo scriptura means that the Bible is the only authority, why isn’t the holder of solo scriptura subject to them. But if these principles are not found in Scripture, then where do they come from, and why is the holder of sola scriptura subject to them?

To your question, “Whose interpretion of Scripture’s interpretation is authoritative,” the answer is Christ and the Apostles.

This simply pushes back the question: Whose determination of what is Christ and the Apostles’ interpretation of Scripture’s interpretation of Scripture, is authoritative?

You wrote:

Given the many unqualified statements of Scripture to the same effect, that salvation comes from believing in Christ, the Son of God, I believe my assumption is sound.

Where does the Bible say that if an unqualified statement is made many times, it is safe to assume that there is no qualification? You are bringing that extra-biblical philosophical assumption into your hermeneutics. The fact is, the Bible never says that faith alone is sufficient for salvation. The only place the Bible mentions faith alone, it says that faith alone cannot save. St. James tell us:

“You see that a man is justified by works, and not by faith alone.” (James 2:24)

Therefore, you are not only using an extra-biblical assumption to reach your conclusion that faith alone is sufficient for salvation, you are going against an explicit statement of Scripture, and then using your speculative assumption to justify interpreting Jesus statement in Mark 16:16 to mean that one of the two conditions Jesus lists there (i.e. belief) is necessary and sufficient, and the other condition (i.e. baptism) is neither sufficient nor necessary. Instead of using Mark 16:16 to explain what the other verses mean when they speak about salvation through faith in Christ, you use your assumption that those verses really mean (even though they don’t say) that faith alone is sufficient for salvation to trump what Jesus says in Mark 16:16 about baptism. So you assume that the other verses are explanatorily prior and thus explain Mark 16:16, rather than that Mark 16:16 is explanatorily prior, and explains what constitutes the faith referred to in the other verses. How you justify that assumption you do not say. Perhaps you do not even know that you are making that assumption. The point is, however, that there are a great many assumptions going into your hermeneutic, and you seem not to be aware of them, thinking that you are merely reading the meaning straight off the page.

The real question is where do the Apostles add the condition to salvation that Boniface claims? (I have found it neither in the Scriptures nor in the ECFs.)

I think I’ve already explained the answer to that question in my previous comment. If being in submission to the Church didn’t matter for salvation, then excommunication would have no soteriological consequences. But in reality it is a handing over to Satan, as St. Paul says. (1 Tim 1:20) Heaven is a community, and those who wish to enter it, must enter the society Christ established, and love those who are His own members. If we do not love His members, then we do not love Him. But if we love Him, we will not refuse to be members of His Body, the Church. To be cut off from that society, is to be cut off from Christ. And since the successor of St. Peter bears the keys of the Kingdom, he is the visible head of that society. And thus to be in the Church is to be under the authority of the successor of St. Peter.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Richard December 13th, 2009 6:27 am :
lojahw, may I ask how you know your canon is correct? As far as I can make out we have four choices:
1. It is an infallible collection of infallible books.
2. It is an infallible collection of fallible books.
3. It is a fallible collection of infallible books.
4. It is an fallible collection of fallible books.

Which of these is it? Note that if it is a fallible collection then in effect there is no canon as a canon is a defined collection of “what’s in” but if we cannot be sure what is in then there is no defined collection. If the collection is infallible then who or what made that choice, i.e. who was / is the infallible judge?
lojahw December 13th, 2009 7:43 pm :
Bryan,

But you have not explained why the one is so constrained and the other is not.

You are ignoring the obvious, Bryan. Your question is like asking why a church organist playing Bach is constrained to play the notes on the page instead of using the score as an occasional reference. Sola Scriptura is a discipline: those who disregard the rules of the discipline simply do not practice Sola Scriptura.

What are the “principles of sola scriptura”?

From the Anglican 39 Articles of Religion (there are other equivalent statements):

Holy Scripture contains all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation.

The Scriptural basis for the above includes:
1) Jesus’ statements: “Thy Word is Truth” (John 17:17) and “Scripture cannot be broken” (John 10:35). Hence anything that contradicts the teaching of God’s Word is false.

2) John 20:31 affirms the sufficiency of the written Word for salvation. Jude 3 attests to the complete revelation of God’s plan of salvation: “the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints.” If anyone claims that this “faith” is not fully contained in the written Word let them produce evidence that such other teachings were handed down by the Apostles to their successors as required articles of faith.

3) 2 Tim. 2:15 states that the word of truth must be handled correctly, which excludes distortion by those who are untaught and unstable (2 Pet. 3:15). Further, since God’s word is Truth, one must consult all of it for consistency of interpretation, particularly since multiple passages often touch on the same subjects (cf. Psa. 119:160). This excludes solo scriptura, e.g., resorting to interpretations of isolated proof-texts which are contrary to the sense of the broader teaching of Scripture. A further corollary of 2 Pet. 3:15, is that hard to understand passages of Scripture may not yield interpretations that can be proved. According to the rule above, such interpretations are not to be required as articles of faith.

4) 2 Tim 3:16 states that the “profit” resulting from Scripture as the source of teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness is that “the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.” Further, if Scripture is sufficient to make “the man of God adequate,” then whatever is neither found in nor proved by Scripture, cannot be required of Christians.

5) 1 Cor. 4:1-2; Heb. 13;17; and Titus 1:9 recognize the leaders of the Church as secondary teaching authorities subject to the Truth taught by the Scriptures.

since solo scriptura means that the Bible is the only authority, why isn’t the holder of solo scriptura subject to them [the rules acc. to sola].

The difference is in how one uses “the only authority” – as explained previously, the rules of sola scriptura are not recognized by a person using solo scriptura because they are either untaught or unwilling to submit their interpretations to what is consistent with all of Scripture.

Whose determination of what is Christ and the Apostles’ interpretation of Scripture’s interpretation of Scripture, is authoritative?

Your question assumes that either there is an infallible authority by which all interpretations of Scripture can be known to be true or false, or that one cannot know which interpretations of Scripture are true or false. I deny the first, but believe that there are some teachings of Scripture about which all true Christians agree with reasonable certainty are true or false based on standard hermeneutical practice [and there are also interpretations which can be shown with some certainty to be false]. That there are such common teachings held / rejected by all major streams of Christianity demonstrates my point. Neither the EO nor Protestants recognize the RCC Magisterium as an infallible authority, yet we all agree on the interpretation of the core tenets of Christian doctrine.

You want to make it all or nothing; I’m suggesting that we start with what we agree about and work from there to understand the reasons for our differences. You seem to want to accept only a fiat [the Magisterium IS the only infallible authority], which squelches dialogue about why our interpretations on certain things differ.

You quoted James 2:24 and wrote:

you are not only using an extra-biblical assumption to reach your conclusion that faith alone is sufficient for salvation, you are going against an explicit statement of Scripture

Bryan, we both recognize that James is talking about counterfeit faith that exposes itself by lacking the fruit of saving faith (as Jesus said, you will know them by their fruits). It is also commonly recognized that justification refers to different things in different contexts. In James it refers to one’s claim of faith before men; in Romans 4 it refers to one’s justification before God (about which Paul writes: “For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God.”). Can you show me where Scripture says that salvation / eternal life is NOT assured for those who truly believe in Christ (i.e., they not only say they believe but they show it by the way they live)? I don’t find such teaching in John 1:12; 3:15-16; 5:24; 6:29, 40, 47; 20:31; Acts 16:31; 1 Cor 1:21; 1 Tim. 1:16; etc.

If being in submission to the Church didn’t matter for salvation, then excommunication would have no soteriological consequences. But in reality it is a handing over to Satan, as St. Paul says. (1 Tim 1:20)

Bryan, why do you assume 1) that Boniface’s Unam sanctam is about excommunication and 2) that excommunication has the power to condemn people to hell? Firstly, Unam sanctam never mentions excommunication. Secondly, do you really believe the Roman Pontiff condemned the Eastern half of the Church to hell by a bull of excommunication in 1054? That somehow the EO stopped being part of the Body of Christ by that act? Thirdly, how do you know that those who came to faith in Christ without being in communion with the Roman Pontiff are not saved? Your example from 1 Tim 1:20 does not help your argument, for all Paul claims there is “so that they may be taught not to blaspheme.” Paul is not claiming to condemn these blasphemers to hell, as Boniface appears to do. Can you give one example where an Apostle claimed to have authority to condemn a person to hell?

It is interesting that you chastise me for making assumptions, but your definition of the Body of Christ makes a huge assumption with which half of the global Body of Christ disagrees. It is sad that you only recognize certain baptized Christians as members of His Body (cf. 1 Cor 12:13). Where did the Apostles teach this?

In Christ.
lojahw December 13th, 2009 7:59 pm :
Richard,

I will simply say that I believe there are some good tests of canonicity for affirming what should and should not be in the canon. If you seek dialogue (and not simply staking out a position), I would suggest that the common books recognized by the EO, RCC, and Protestants provide much material for fruitful dialogue:

“Sacred Scriptures provide for the work of dialogue an instrument of the highest value in the mighty hand of God for the attainment of that unity which the Saviour holds out to all” (Unitatis Redintegratio 21)

Alternatively, if moderation wishes, perhaps another thread will focus on dialogue about the canon.

Blessings.
Ronnie December 14th, 2009 11:08 am :
lojahw, may I ask how you know your canon is correct? As far as I can make out we have four choices:
1. It is an infallible collection of infallible books.
2. It is an infallible collection of fallible books.
3. It is a fallible collection of infallible books.
4. It is an fallible collection of fallible books.

Which of these is it? Note that if it is a fallible collection then in effect there is no canon as a canon is a defined collection of “what’s in” but if we cannot be sure what is in then there is no defined collection. If the collection is infallible then who or what made that choice, i.e. who was / is the infallible judge?

Richard,

This doesn’t follow. Fallibility does not always mean error, therefore a fallible collection can be inerrant which I believe is the case. To make the point another way. Jesus held the people during His time accountable for knowing the Scriptures. However, if there was not infallible council telling the people what the canon was how could He? If there was an infallible council then this goes against the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church. Pick your poison.
TurretinFan December 14th, 2009 12:13 pm :
Bryan:

There are two parts to this, so as to keep my responses to one today.

Part 1:

I had written:

However, as I’ve pointed out above, the place where you (per #494) find absence of principled distinction is not among the holders of those views, but among folks who don’t hold those views.

You responded (at #536):

Could you point me to the place in our article where we claimed to find a person holding a view that he or she didn’t actually hold? Thanks.

I’m not sure what this request has to do with my comment. My comment is about the fact that (per #494) the alleged presence of distinction between sola/solo and apostolic succession is a distinction between people who don’t yet hold either view. That doesn’t mean you claimed to find a person holding a view he doesn’t hold. I hadn’t expressed an opinion about that (as far as I recall). Do you agree or disagree that the implication of #494 is what I’ve stated? If you agree, I have a further question, but if you don’t agree, I’d like to know why.

Part 2:

At #535 you wrote:

The soundness of our argument does not depend on conclusion (1o) being unique. So, showing our conclusion to be non-unique does not refute the argument.

You (and Tim Troutman) have made this statement or one like it a number of times. I’m not sure why you think this is significant. Assume for the sake of discussion that your argument is sound and valid, but that your argument is completely irrelevant to the Roman Catholic/ Reformed dialog (and, indeed, irrelevant to any call for folks to change communions). Can you see why that would matter to almost everyone who plans to spend the time necessary to read the article? If you don’t agree that this would matter, could you please explain why you think it would not matter?

-TurretinFan
Richard December 14th, 2009 3:58 pm :
lojahw,

I am all for fruitful dialogue, what are the “good tests of canonicity” and who gets to decide them. Hebrews seems to have been included in the canon because the early church believed St. Paul to have written it, if he didnt (which is plausable) should we include it? Further, how can we possibly prove that it should be canonical?

Ronnie,

My question concerns the quality of the collection (canon) rather than the quality of the books (scriptures). Jesus indeed held the people during His time accountable for knowing the Scripture but even in his day there was no Jewish canon, the Psalter wasn’t closed until 50 C.E.
lojahw December 14th, 2009 6:40 pm :
Richard,

Since you insist: it appears that the RCC canon fits somewhere between your categories #3 & #4 (a fallible collection of infallible and fallible books) because it includes at least one fallible book, while Jesus teaches that the books of the Penteteuch, the Psalms, Daniel, Isaiah, etc. are infallible.

Example: Judith 1:5-2:6 claims that Nebuchadnezzar ruled the Assyrians from Nineveh. Judith therefore explicitly contradicts both secular history and 2 Kings 24:1; 1 Chron 6:15; 2 Chron 36:7; Ezra 2:1; 5:14 “the Chaldean”; Neh. 7:6; Esther 2:6; Jer. 21:2, 7; Jer. 22:25; Jer. 24:1; Ezek 26:7; Dan. 1:1-2; 5:11, etc. Since Jesus declared the other books to be infallible, Judith must be fallible.

No orthodox Christian questions the infallibility of the books in the Protestant canon, so it would appear to fit either #1 or #3. Which do you think is correct?

In Christ.
Tim A. Troutman December 15th, 2009 12:05 pm :
TurretinFan – There are two primary claims being made: 1. Sola and solo are not distinct in principle 2. Catholicism avoids this error. The tu quoque objection, which has been refuted, would only relate to 2 and not to 1 were it true.
TurretinFan December 15th, 2009 12:42 pm :
Tim:

As Bryan has acknowledged (I hope that’s a sufficiently neutral word) at #526 above, the first primary claim is more significantly more limited than that those two positions are not distinct in principle. Your comment regarding the second primary claim is essentially a reiteration of what I addressed in “Part 2” of #552 above. If you have responses to the questions I was asking Bryan there, I’d be interested in hearing them.

-TurretinFan
Tim A. Troutman December 15th, 2009 1:11 pm :
TF – “acknowledge” might be neutral but “significantly more limited” doesn’t sound very neutral to me. It makes it sound, and you have made this assertion I think, that we’ve re-adjusted our argument. That is not the case.

If I say there is no principle of distinction between jogging and running very slow and you say “yes there is, one has three words and the other only has one” I might add a qualifier that “I meant with respect to the action being performed not to the number of words used to describe it.” You might come back and say “well now your new assertion is significantly more limited than before.” But my original statement is still true. Sometimes we have to add more qualifiers to expose bad arguments; it doesn’t mean we’re re-adjusting our original statement.

I agree with you that the question of whether the Catholic Church is subject to this same problem of individual interpretation is an important question for Christian dialogue. But if you don’t agree that Protestantism has the problem, then how can we say that the Catholic Church has the problem also. Do you agree that Protestantism has this problem?
lojahw December 15th, 2009 1:24 pm :
Richard,

Jesus indeed held the people during His time accountable for knowing the Scripture but even in his day there was no Jewish canon, the Psalter wasn’t closed until 50 C.E.

Two questions:
1. If Jesus granted authority to the Scriptures without there being a formal Jewish canon, why should a particular fourth century Christian canon (which was not held by the vast majority of ECFs prior to Augustine) be authoritative? How did God protect His Church for so many centuries beforehand?

2. On what basis do you claim the Psalter was not closed until 50 C.E.?

Regarding the tests of canonicity: I have given one, but I really think that further discussion about canonicity should be held for another thread on that subject (the canon is not the emphasis of this thread).

Blessings.
lojahw December 15th, 2009 1:37 pm :
For those who accept the thesis of the article:

Is there a principled difference between:

1) A lush and a person who only drinks responsibly?
2) A kid who screeches his car out of his driveway and lays rubber at every traffic light, and a person who drives responsibly and respectfully obeys the traffic laws?

If there is not a principled difference, why not?

Blessings.
Tim A. Troutman December 15th, 2009 2:50 pm :
Lojah,

The principle of distinction in the two things is contained in their definition. So:

1. One drinks excessively the other does not.
2. One drives responsibly and the other does not.

I understand the objection you’re getting at and I’ve already answered it here. I see that you’ve already commented on that blog post, but you either didn’t read the article or didn’t understand it because you’re bringing up the same objection I already showed to be false. Or else you may have an objection to it that you didn’t write. If so, what is it?
TurretinFan December 15th, 2009 2:50 pm :
Tim:

Conclusion 10, as presented in the article does not follow from premises 4 and 9, as I’ve demonstrated. You can either limit 10 further (in an important way) or you can have an invalid argument.

I’m not convinced that the alleged lack of principled distinction with respect to the ultimate holder of interpretive authority concerning what he considers to be essential is a “problem” at all. I’m not sure it is even worth investigating whether it is a problem, if it is a common trait of “Protestantism” and “Roman Catholicism.” That’s why Section V(A) of Bryan’s article and my own recent article (link) are so important. Do you see my perspective?

-TurretinFan
Andrew Preslar December 15th, 2009 3:40 pm :
TF,

Here is the comment that I posted on your site, in response to the post you linked to in your comments #523 and #528 (and, I just observed, #561):

The conclusion of your post claimed that

Bryan’s argument is plainly invalid on its face since conclusion 10 is an invalid generalization. Furthermore, even when corrected, Bryan’s conclusion can be just as legitimately expanded to include the RC position. And if the RC position is permitted to escape by distinguishing between finality of communication and finality of authority, the sola scriptura position (whether in the classical reformed sense or in the Mathisonian form – and even solo scriptura) also escapes.

Thanks for this analysis and for your interaction with the article at Called to Communion.

You are correct that [10.] needs to be narrowed down. (I think that Bryan said the same, in one of the comments above.) This narrowing, however, is perfectly acceptable, in fact, helpful, for the purpose of the article, which is focused upon final interpretive authority.

(Just to make sure that everyone knows what we are referring to, here is the original conclusion of the argument for the non-distinction, in principle, of solo and sola: “10. There is no principled difference between sola scriptura and solo scriptura.” TF rightly point out that the premises upon which this conclusion is based validly yield a narrower conclusion, i.e., *10.* The is no principled difference between sola scriptura and solo scriptura with respect to final interpretive authority. The entire formal argument is found at the end of Section IV.A. of this article.)

It seems to me that in the last bit of your conclusion you are alluding to (what I take to be) your argument to the effect that there is a parity between solo, sola and Catholicism with respect to final interpretive authority both in sense of the terminus of communication (the individual interpreter) and in the acknowledgment of a hierarchy of interpretation (culminating in the highest interpretive authority). At least, this is what I take to be the point of the following:

The key weakness (and perhaps I ought to have placed it first, so bored readers would find it) to Bryan’s response is that he is comparing the whole governing authority of the solo person to a part of the governing authority of the RC person. In other words, where he ought to compare (Scripture, Oral Tradition, and the Magisterium) to (Scripture) he compares (Scripture […]) to (Scripture), hiding the Oral Tradition and Magisterium from consideration. In the process, Bryan himself conflates the finality of communication with the finality of authority, as noted above. The true comparison would be that for the solo person the Scriptures are the final authority, whereas for the RC person (per Bryan) the final authority is the Magisterium.

Several things come to mind at this point.

(1) It is agreed on all sides that the individual is the final interpreter in the sense of being a terminus of communication.

(2) Again, it seems that you are also claiming that solo (and sola?) is non-distinct from Catholicism in that it too posits a hierarchy of interpreters, one which does not culminate in the individual.

(3) I am not sure why you assert that there is a conflation between the two senses of interpretive finality in Neal and Byran’s article. Perhaps you could point out where this occurs, and what is the significance thereof for the argument.

(4) Another point of this section of your post seems to be that the disparity between solo/sola and Catholicism is accounted for by the fact that, for s/s, Scripture is the highest interpreter of Scripture, while for Catholicism, the Magisterium is the highest interpreter of Scripture.

If this is your point, then it trades upon an equivocation with respect to interpretation. It is not the same thing for a book to “interpret” itself, and for a person, or body of persons, to interpret a book. (This issue was addressed in the article.)

If, however, your claim is not about interpretive authority, but about (religious) authority per se, then the last sentence in the quote above does not represent the Catholic position. The Catholic position on authority is that God, revealed in Christ Jesus, is the “final authority” (Mt 28:18). I am sure that you would agree, and that our dispute, at this point, concerns not so much interpretation as identification of that objective divine revelation, including how it has been preserved (more or less) and transmitted through the centuries following the Ascension of Our Lord.

In sum, after reading this, I am not sure that we are all on the same page in maintaining a careful distinction between divine revelation and the interpretation of divine revelation. Hence, there seems to be some (understandable) ambiguity (in this discussion) on the distinction between the authority of revelation and interpretive authority in the exposition of that revelation.

Thanks again for engaging the argument.
Tim A. Troutman December 15th, 2009 4:39 pm :
TurretinFan,

I did not understand your perspective before but I think I do now; thanks for clearing that up. If the non-distinction between solo and sola scriptura is not problematic because there is not, or could not be, an option that avoids the “problem,” then I don’t understand why you are attempting to refute the article. Above (can’t find the number and ctrl+f seems to crash my browser on this long thread) you argued that there is a principle of distinction between the two. This seems to be contrary to what you are saying here but perhaps the above was just an example in which you wouldn’t invest much effort since it’s not important from your perspective.

The article was written with those in mind who share our position that solo scriptura, as described by Mathison, would be a problem if one held that position. If one thing is a problem, and another thing is not different in principle with respect to the problematic aspect of the former, then it would also be a problem.

1. A is a problem (with respect to X)
2. B is not different in principle from A (with respect to X)
3. Therefore B is a problem.

It seems that you do not agree that A is a problem or that if it is, there is no way to avoid the problem and therefore no position is superior (with respect to X). Then it seems your argument is something like:

1. Putatively: A is a problem (with respect to X)
2. But if this problem exists, it cannot be avoided by any position.
3. If a problem is universal, then a position cannot be refuted as inferior to another position on the grounds that it is subject to that problem.
4. Therefore even if there is no distinction between A & B in position Z, Z is not refuted.

Is that a fair assessment?
TurretinFan December 15th, 2009 7:58 pm :
Tim:

Thanks for your comments (#563). I think you’re comments have helped me to think more precisely about the issues. There are two different things going on. One has to do with what we might call a direct rebuttal, the other with what we might call a dismissal.

I. Direct Rebuttal

From where I’m sitting, it looks like a lot of folks are reading Bryan’s (and Neal’s) article as though the argument were the following:

1) Solo Scriptura is a bad thing.
2) Sola Scriptura is the same as Solo Scriptura with respect to (X).
3) Therefore, Sola Scriptura is also a bad thing.

I think you would agree with me that if that were the extent of the argument, the argument would be fallacious. After all, it would be absurd to draw that conclusion if (X) were that both have a label that uses the word “scriptura.” Thus, the flow can’t work for any arbitrary (X). But I think you would also agree with me that the three points above are not the argument that is being made.

Instead, the argument is more like what you have described (I’ve slightly tweaked it):

1. Solo Scriptura has a problem with respect to (X).
2. Sola Scriptura is not different in principle from Solo Scriptura with respect to (X).
3. Therefore Sola Scriptura has a problem with respect to (X).

The direct refutation is that (1) is wrong because (X) has been selected incorrectly. That is to say, Solo Scriptura may have one problem or a whole host of problems, but not with respect to (X). Several responses in this thread have made an argument to the effect that “the problem with solo scriptura is (Y)” where (Y) is not “the holder of ultimate interpretive authority with respect to the things he considers essential” but something else, like a failure to apply ‘tota’ scriptura or a lack of reverence for subordinate authority, etc.

II. Dismissal

The dismissal takes a slightly different form. The dismissal says that the “real argument” is:

A. Sola/Solo Scriptura share a common problem.
– 1. Solo Scriptura has a problem with respect to (X).
– 2. Sola Scriptura is not different in principle from Solo Scriptura with respect to (X).
– 3. Therefore Sola Scriptura has a problem with respect to (X).
B. Roman Catholicism does not share this problem.
C. Therefore you should be a Roman Catholic.

But the dismissal responds that B is wrong. Roman Catholicism does have a problem with respect to (X). Therefore, C does not follow.

But the dismissal can also be phrased differently:

1. It is alleged that Sola/Solo suffer from problem (X);
2. If something is a characteristic of every alternative, it shouldn’t be called a problem;
3. (X) is characteristic of every alternative; therefore
4. (X) shouldn’t be called a problem.

I should point out that one response to the dismissal is to say that Roman Catholicism doesn’t have (X). However, as I’ve pointed out previously, the grounds on which it is said that RC doesn’t have (X) could also serve as grounds for why Mathison’s position, the real sola position, and (depending on the argument – in some cases) even the solo position doesn’t have (X).

-TurretinFan
lojahw December 16th, 2009 12:03 am :
Tim,

Following your response to my analogies:

Self is subordinate to the totality of Scripture in sola scriptura, self rules over personally selected proof-texts from Scripture in solo scriptura.

The person who practices sola scriptura is constrained to be consistent with all Scripture, the solo scriptura person exempts himself from this principle of sola scriptura.

The former interprets Scripture responsibly, the latter does not.

Please clarify your objection to my descriptions of the differences.

Blessings.
Tim A. Troutman December 16th, 2009 9:59 am :
Lojah, there are at least two problems with your descriptions of the difference.

1. The one who practices solo scriptura would also consider himself to be constrained to obey all of scripture.
2. This is, at best, a principle of difference in respect to something other than what we’ve clarified above as the principle of the argument. That is, it would not solve the problem of lack of principled distinction between sola and solo with respect to authority.
TurretinFan December 16th, 2009 10:12 am :
Andrew:

Thanks for your comments. I’ve responded in more detail on my own blog (in the same comment box where you left your comment). Very briefly, (1) the question is not really who is the “final” religious authority (everyone agrees in principle that this is God) but what is the “final” source of revelation from God and (2) while a book interprets itself intrinsically and everything else (including people) interpret the book extrinsically, it nevertheless remains the case that both are sources of interpretation.

-TurretinFan
Purify Your Bride » Blog Archive » Sex and Authority December 16th, 2009 11:10 am :
[…] see the Sola/Solo thing being somewhat similar. Sure there are some who take to many liberties with scripture. But that is […]
Andrew Preslar December 16th, 2009 3:24 pm :
TurretinFan,

For (1), I am happy to just get rid of “religious authority” (my phrase) and stick with “final source of revelation from God” (your phrase). I think that in either case we end up at the same place: the Word made flesh. For (2), I agree that Scripture is, in some general sense, including a few explicit instances, a source of interpretation for Scripture.

The difficulty, for your comparison of S/S and Catholicism, seems to begin with the fact that the intrinsic interpretations that are explicitly stated as such (e.g., “text x means y“) are very few, not enough to settle many fundamental theological issues. Apart from these explicit intra-biblical interpretations, we are ultimately left to our own discretion (on the S/S model) in discerning which biblical texts “interpret” which other texts. This is undoubtedly an exciting and often illuminating exercise. However, on S/S, there is no ultimately binding interpretive authority to adjudicate between orthodox and unorthodox theological conclusions derived from this hermeneutical activity. And this is where the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic interpretations of divine revelation comes into play, viz the principled difference between S/S and Catholicism.

Andrew
mateo December 16th, 2009 3:36 pm :
lojahw responds to Teri: I think you miss the point of sola scriptura. The authority is not in the person, but in the Scriptures. Any interpretation that is inconsistent with the teaching of the Scriptures is false – regardless of who it comes from.

No one in here is disputing that Scriptures are a source of infallible authority for the Christian, and we all agree that a false interpretation of scriptures is wrong no matter where it comes from. The dispute is about Martin Luther’s assertion that the Protestant Bible is the ONLY infallible source of authority for a Christian. It is the “ONLY” that is in dispute, not the authority of scriptures.

You make the claim that “authority is not in the person, but in the Scriptures.” By what authority do you believe Luther’s doctrine of sola scriptura? You can’t appeal to the authority of the Protestant Bible, since there are there are no verses in a Protestant Bible that explicitly teach that the Protestant Bible is the ONLY source of infallible authority for the Christian on matters of faith and morals.
TurretinFan December 16th, 2009 5:03 pm :
Andrew:

It seems you and I stand on opposite sides of the river on these particular issues. Thanks for explaining your position.

-TurretinFan
Andrew Preslar December 17th, 2009 6:07 am :
TF,

It seems you and I stand on opposite sides of the river on these particular issues.

I think that we knew that going in. The question is not on what side of the river one stands on particular issues, but whether, as you seem to imply, Solo/Sola adherents are not their own final interpretive authority.

Thanks for explaining your position.

I was not so much explaining my position as critiquing yours. But you are welcome.

Andrew
lojahw December 17th, 2009 9:57 pm :
Tim,

The article assumes that if a person finds anyone else who agrees with his own interpretation on a particular point, whatever that might be, that such a person is practicing sola scriptura. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The reference point for sola scriptura is never an individual’s – or some group’s – interpretation, but what the whole of Scripture consistently teaches (for which the teaching of many centuries of Christians beginning with the Apostles provides great sources of reference). This is why we speak of the perspicuity of the Scriptures regarding the essentials of salvation – there are many non-essentials for which Scripture is not clear.

A person who finds other persons – no matter how many or whether they call themselves a church – who agree with his own interpretation – is starting from “self” as the primary reference, rather than Scripture. “I interpret X from this passage of Scripture or from these few passages of Scripture” (solo scriptura) is principally different from “the Scriptures consistently teach X” (sola scriptura). The article misrepresents sola scriptura by not acknowledging this difference.

In Christ.
lojahw December 17th, 2009 10:09 pm :
Mateo,

I demonstrated in #554 that your Magisterium is not an infallible authority because it mistakenly declared a fallible book to be infallible. Do you know of another infallible authority today besides God’s written Word?

Blessings.
Bryan Cross December 18th, 2009 2:45 am :
lojahw,

In #574 you wrote:

I demonstrated in #554 that your Magisterium is not an infallible authority because it mistakenly declared a fallible book to be infallible.

In #554 you wrote:

Judith 1:5-2:6 claims that Nebuchadnezzar ruled the Assyrians from Nineveh. Judith therefore explicitly contradicts both secular history and 2 Kings 24:1; 1 Chron 6:15; 2 Chron 36:7; Ezra 2:1; 5:14 “the Chaldean”; Neh. 7:6; Esther 2:6; Jer. 21:2, 7; Jer. 22:25; Jer. 24:1; Ezek 26:7; Dan. 1:1-2; 5:11, etc. Since Jesus declared the other books to be infallible, Judith must be fallible.

How do you know that two people could not have had the same name? This is the same way that liberals treat the rest of the Bible: every seeming contradiction is treated as an actual contradiction, when there are other ways of explaining the data.

So, you have not actually demonstrated that the Magisterium is not an infallible authority.

Let’s keep the thread on-topic. Our next article will be on the canon, so please save canon discussions for that thread.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Tim A. Troutman December 18th, 2009 10:41 am :
Lojah,

Please check my comment 566. Right now what you’re doing is table pounding; I’ve already refuted the argument you’re making.
lojahw December 18th, 2009 6:58 pm :
Tim,

If it seems that I’m belaboring a point, it’s because you don’t seem to recognize it. The article claims that there is no principled difference between sola scriptura and solo scriptura; I have shown that there is when one properly describes sola scriptura.

Properly understood, sola scriptura is indeed a third option apart from solo scriptura and Apostolic succession. All have interpretive ability, but infallibility belongs only to God and to His revelation through the Prophets and Apostles who make up the foundation of the Church.

Blessings.
Tim A. Troutman December 18th, 2009 9:03 pm :
Lojah,

Please respond to my comments in 566 then we can continue the dialogue.
T Ciatoris December 18th, 2009 9:07 pm :
Dear lojahw,

I’m going to be straightforward. Here’s what I think is going on:

From the article’s introduction:

In this article we argue that there is no principled difference between sola scriptura and solo scriptura with respect to the holder of ultimate interpretive authority. (Emphasis added.)

On my reading, the primary reasons you think you’ve refuted this argument are twofold. First, you redefine solo scriptura to mean “irresponsible or incomplete use of Scripture (according to your judgment).” In practice, this is a catch-all argument for you. If anyone draws conclusions from Scripture about essential matters with which you disagree, you can always have recourse to the accusation that they are not, and must not be, listening to “the whole counsel of God,” because, as you see it, since Scripture is perspicuous, they would naturally agree with you if they were “truly” practicing sola scriptura. So you brand them as solo scripturists. But since you’re dealing with a definition of “solo scriptura” foreign to the article’s definition, you’ve refuted nothing from the article.

The second part is related to the first. You think you’ve refuted the article’s argument because you deny the fact that every interpretation of Scripture, no matter how thorough, well-defended, cogent, or venerable, is precisely and inevitably an interpretation of Scripture. You believe that your interpretation of the Bible (on “essentials”) is not an interpretation: it’s simply what the Bible says. Therefore you deny that you retain ultimate interpretive authority. You say you are submitting to Scripture, period. We say you are submitting to lojahw’s interpretation of Scripture. This has nothing to do with whether your interpretation is good, bad, or middling. It could be the greatest anybody has ever achieved. It might be intelligently informed by the Church Fathers and by discerning readings of other theologians. It might be based on the most unimpeachable “common sense” and “valid reasoning” known to the Western Hemisphere. But it’s still your interpretation. You do not seem prepared to agree with this. And that makes sense, because it would logically entail agreement with the article’s claim that, by practicing sola scriptura, you are retaining ultimate interpretive authority, and thus failing to demonstrate a principled difference from solo scriptura, not with respect to thoroughness of reading or hermeneutical intelligence, but with respect to the holder of ultimate interpretive authority, which is the “with respect to” explicitly named in the article’s introduction.

That’s why you think you’ve refuted the article. And that’s why Tim (and I) don’t think you have, and seem, to me anyway (I won’t speak for Tim), to be tilting at windmills.

in Christ,

TC
1 Cor 16:14
Spencer December 18th, 2009 10:04 pm :
lojahw,

I don’t want to seem like I’m jumping into the debate between you and Tim, but I do have a question for you regarding one thing you said:

“I interpret X from this passage of Scripture or from these few passages of Scripture” (solo scriptura) is principally different from “the Scriptures consistently teach X” (sola scriptura). The article misrepresents sola scriptura by not acknowledging this difference.

Are you saying that the definition of solo scriptura is “deriving one’s doctrinal beliefs from few passages of Scripture” and that the definition of sola scriptura is “deriving one’s beliefs from all of Scripture consistently?” And if so, how would you view (for example) an Arian, who claims to be deriving his views from all of Scripture read consistently, in spite of the fact that it contradicts everything the Church (I use the term in a generic, not specifically Roman Catholic sense) has taught and still teaches about the deity of Christ? Is he an adherent to sola scriptura, or solo scriptura?

Pax Christi,

Spencer
lojahw December 19th, 2009 10:08 pm :
Dear TC,

There is a disconnect over “ultimate interpretive authority.” Sola Scriptura does not recognize an “ultimate interpretive authority” outside of the Prophets and Apostles through whom God has revealed His Word. Instead, Sola Scriptura recognizes relative interpretive authority that is judged by consistency with “the whole counsel of God.” Generally, this favors those who have spent their lives studying God’s Word, including those ordained as leaders in the Church. Such interpretive authority is magnified by the degree of universal agreement among church leaders and all other church leaders, going back to the Apostles. But “ultimate interpretive authority” among members of Christ’s Body today is just not a concept that Sola Scriptura recognizes. I do not deny that every interpretation of Scripture is an interpretation. So what? Every interpretation of your catechism is also an interpretation. Every interpretation of Unam sanctam is an interpretation (and there are many among RCs!).

Sola Scriptura does, however, teach the analogy of faith: that clearer passages of Scripture often guide the interpretation of less clear passages. Sola Scriptura also recognizes that the core teachings of the faith are clearly presented in Scripture, and the evidence for this is the universally recognized core doctrines taught by approved leaders of the Church all the way back to the Apostles (e.g., the basic doctrines of the Trinity, the observance of baptism and the Lord’s Table in obedience to Christ’s commands, etc.).

You say I seem to be tilting at windmills, but that sounds like the pot calling the kettle “black.” You want to engage me in a controversy over some supposed Sola Scriptura interpretation on unspecified essentials that would cause me to switch Churches. Can you give me an example?

Blessings.
lojahw December 19th, 2009 10:21 pm :
Spencer,

You would have to go back to earlier posts for what I’ve already written about the Arian heresy, but Arius indeed focused on a brief passage in Proverbs 8 on “sophia” which he assumed defined and limited Christ, from which he decided that the more immediate NT texts about Christ must be interpreted consistently with HIS interpretation of Proverbs. If you want a better account of the many NT texts with which Arius did not reckon, I suggest you read Athanasius’ Four Discourses Against the Arians. Note also Theodoret’s description of how the Council of Nicea used many texts of Scripture on Christ to refute Arius.

Blessings.
Spencer December 20th, 2009 12:11 pm :
lojahw,

Thanks for the reply. I think you may have misunderstood my question, though, I’m sorry if I wasn’t clear enough. I certainly disagree with Arius as well and agree with you that Scripture consistently opposes Arianism. But my point was this: if someone argued a heretical position and claimed to be doing so from all of Scripture read consistently (and not just a few passages), then would you consider him to be an adherent to sola scriptura or solo scriptura?

Pax Christi,

Spencer
lojahw December 20th, 2009 7:16 pm :
Spencer wrote:

if someone argued a heretical position and claimed to be doing so from all of Scripture read consistently (and not just a few passages), then would you consider him to be an adherent to sola scriptura or solo scriptura?

‘Sorry I misunderstood your question. It is not the “claim” to argue from all of Scriptura that makes one an adherent of Sola Scriptura, but that one can reasonably demonstrate that they are doing so. To reasonably demonstrate that one’s interpretation is consistent with all of Scripture, one must reasonably show how their interpretation is consistent with Scripture as well as refute arguments against that interpretation by experts in the subject matter (i.e., if one argues that a particular Greek word must mean X, one would have to defend that assertion with reference to credentialed Greek scholars). This is how one proves that Jehovah’s Witnesses are not practicing Sola Scriptura: they “claim” that their version of the Arian heresy is consistent with Scripture, but close examination shows that they are not.

For another example: I was asked to read a Catholic defense of Marian doctrines, in which it was claimed that the Greek word translated “overshadowed” uniquely identified Mary with the Ark of the Covenant because the Septuagint and the NT Greek used the same word with reference to both. The problem with this argument is that the same word is also used for Peter’s shadow in Acts 5:15, for the cloud overshadowing the Israelites in Exodus, for Jesus’ transfiguration, etc. When one carefully examines interpretations with knowledge of the languages, the historical and literary context, parallel passages in Scripture, etc. one gains an appreciation for how difficult it is to argue for a novel interpretation of Scripture.

Blessings.
retro satana December 20th, 2009 9:01 pm :
Quoted by Bryan Cross, post #483:
“Those are accidental differences, and accidental differences are not principled differences, because they do not show a distinction in essence. We are using the definitions of solo scriptura and sola scriptura given by Keith Mathison in his book; you can find them in the article. We are arguing that there is no principled difference between them with respect to the holder of ultimate interpretive authority. But the truth of our conclusion is fully compatible with there being many accidental differences between them, and between persons holding them.”

Sorry I haven’t able to keep up with this discussion. My original posts on presuppositionalism came to no avail since the authors reject presuppositionalism as “fideism built upon skepticsm.” I was told to discuss that elsewhere, so I stayed quiet. However, the email notifications keep piling up in my inbox and I just happened to catch this quote by Bryan. If my following points have already been stated by someone else, please just discard them and accept my apology for beating a dead horse. It is not my intention. Directing me to the replies would be sufficient. I know this is quite lengthy, but it is my full thoughts on the subject. Aside from further exchange I don’t believe I have anything left to add.

I think we all know that there is no such thing as SOLO scriptura. It was a catchy play on words that the Presbo’s came up with to try to show a difference between Scripture as the only infallible source of knowledge (as they proclaim) and the “what-my-bible-says-might-not-be-what-your-bible-says/’what-does-it-mean-to-you’-relativism” of modern evangelicals (that RC’s accuse Protestants of). It could be argued that the continued usage of this term and the fact that Mathison wrote a whole book defining it is in poor taste and is actually doing more harm than good to the Reformed-cause. But even if there were such a thing as solo scriptura, then the authors of this article are absolutely right that there is no principled difference between it and SOLA scriptura. Indeed, the individual Protestant must ultimately use his private judgment and private interpretation to decide what he thinks is true or false doctrine. I heartily affirm this, and so should every Protestant.

But what does this mean? It means that the authors have written a splendid article on how all humans think and make choices. God has given us the tools of reason and logic by which we filter all received data. Sometimes our logic is valid and we make correct choices or believe certain things to be true. Sometimes our logic isn’t so great and we make bad decisions or believe things to be false. Welcome to fallen nature. The key then is to think as critically as possible and rely on the Holy Spirit to guide our thoughts, but we are all still using our “private judgment” in this process. The two are not in opposition to each other. When any given Christian believes the Holy Spirit has revealed truth to him, was it not his reason and judgment that brought him to that conclusion? This is not unique of Protestants. Everyone does this, even RC’s and Orthodox Christians.

In the article’s tu-quoque-objection answer, we are basically told that the “principled” difference between the RC and the Protestant is that Protestants start with an interpretation of Scripture, and then seek a church body that aligns with that particular interpretation. Whereas the RC convert simply seeks the church Christ founded, and then submits to all of her infallible interpretations. But I will dare to say this only begs the question. First of all, it implies that there is some area of neutral facts that all people can receive and properly interpret – as if all the history books unanimously agree to the validity of Rome’s succession, primacy and infallibility. We know that isn’t true. There is no such thing as a brute fact. All ‘facts’ are interpreted facts. By what standard of evidence can I conclude which version of history is correct? Whichever Rome says is correct? What about the Eastern Orthodox’s version? Can a RC direct me to a history book or Christian theologian that proves Rome’s assertions? What makes that source so reliable? Secondly, the RC convert had to presuppose his own interpretation of Scripture prior to “seeking the church Christ founded.” He has to assume that Christ existed. That Christ established a church. That his understanding of Matthew 16:18 is the right one. That apostolic succession is true. The RC convert starts with his own interpretation of scripture and then finds the church body that agrees with his conclusion: Rome. He’s already made up his mind, and he’s looking for all the ‘facts’ that align to his position. If Bryan or another reader disagrees with this assessment, I would ask them to please explain how a Protestant believing Scripture is the highest interpretive authority and submitting himself to what he understands it teaches is any different than a RC believing the Magisterium is the highest interpretive authority and submitting himself to what he understands her to teach.

The binding-conscience explanation is problematic as well, because the RC is still his own “final interpretive authority.” The RC will say that he doesn’t rely on his private interpretation, but rather the ex cathedra pronouncements of the Pope. But let’s take it back even further: how did he decide that he should rely on the ex cathedra pronouncements of the Pope? He had to use his private “interpretation” of scripture, tradition, and history to conclude that Rome was the true church and what the Magisterium proclaims is infallible. Furthermore, the individual RC has to use his private judgment to interpret what the ex cathedra documents actually mean, and he’ll rely on the Pope to correct any misinterpretation of that document. But then the RC has to interpret that correct interpretation, ad infinitum. The inevitability of the RC having to use his private interpretation is inescapable. If he perceives a contradiction in dogma or in the historical validity of Rome his conscience will not allow him to remain. This happens whenever a RC leaves for another church-body. Rome binds the conscience as long as she aligns with the individual’s conscience. Is it not a sin to go against one’s own conscience? Or should he simply pretend to not see inconsistencies? If you say he should ignore his conscience, then you are saying he should not ignore his conscience in joining Rome, but after that, his conscience should be abandoned. “Use your conscience and judgment to realize you shouldn’t use your conscience and judgment.” I don’t think any of you are really trying to say this, but I don’t see how it leads to any other conclusion.

The Protestant in essence does the same thing as the RC, except we disagree on the ultimate authority. For the RC it’s the Magisterium, for the Protestant it’s the Scriptures. The Protestant relies on the pronouncements of the Scriptures, and seeks to understand them properly while guided by the Holy Spirit. The Protestant believes that Scripture can interpret itself, and that it can also correct someone’s interpretive error. RC’s believe in a living church, Protestants believe in a living church AND living Scriptures. (Not to say RC’s wouldn’t admit the Scriptures are living, I’m simply making a point that the way they view the Magisterium w/interpretation is the same way we view the Scriptures themselves.) To use Bryan’s philosophical language above, in the end there is no principled difference between sola scriptura, solo scriptura, or the “three legged stool” of Roman Catholicism. Perhaps the only differences are “accidental.”

This isn’t to say there isn’t a true debate between RC’s and Protestants. There certainly is, but the “private interpretation” argument isn’t it. The real debate should be on the consistency of the two worldviews, the logical or illogical circularity within the two. But I regress, since that is not the topic at hand. Needless to say, whenever I’ve pressed RC’s on this point, they always resort to telling me they had to take a “Kierkegaardian leap of faith” into the Magisterium. I’m personal friends with a reader of Called To Communion and he said the same thing. What other option is there? I guess presuppositionalism isn’t the only fideism built upon skepticism.
lojahw December 21st, 2009 11:40 am :
One thing that “does not compute” with adherents of Sola Scriptura is the attempt to identify WHO has ultimate interpretive authority. The notion that any person or group should be trusted because of who they are or what office they hold is inconsistent with Paul’s statement in Galatians 1:8.

”But even though we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to that which we have preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to that which you received, let him be accursed.”

Who is the “we” in the above quote? the apostles themselves. By this statement Paul places ultimate authority in the gospel, the Word of God, which the apostles preached – not in any interpretive authority of those who preach it. If an apostle or angel can be accursed for preaching a gospel different than that which Paul preached, the successors of the apostles are not exempt. This is an argument from the greater (the apostles) to the lesser (their successors).

Jesus taught that “the Scripture cannot be broken,” and “He who rejects Me and does not receive My sayings, has one who judges him; the word I spoke is what will judge him at the last day” (John 10:35; 12:48). Jesus says that the ultimate authority is in “the word I spoke,” not in any interpreter of His word. All Christians have responsibility to listen to and respond to Jesus and His words, but no one in the Church has ultimate authority to interpret them for all Christians.

Sometimes it is the little town boy who sees and tells the town leaders that the emperor’s new clothes are not what everyone else claims they are. Truth is truth regardless of who recognizes it.

Blessings.
Spencer December 21st, 2009 9:18 pm :
lojahw,

You said:

Sorry I misunderstood your question. It is not the “claim” to argue from all of Scriptura that makes one an adherent of Sola Scriptura, but that one can reasonably demonstrate that they are doing so. To reasonably demonstrate that one’s interpretation is consistent with all of Scripture, one must reasonably show how their interpretation is consistent with Scripture as well as refute arguments against that interpretation by experts in the subject matter (i.e., if one argues that a particular Greek word must mean X, one would have to defend that assertion with reference to credentialed Greek scholars).

I do see your point, but can’t a person argue a false position and make good exegetical defenses for it from the whole of Scripture? If so, then sola scriptura, as you define it, could lead to false beliefs, and there would only be competing interpretations, with no authority to show which one is correct–which would seem to lead to the problem that this article describes: everyone functioning as their own ultimate authority. But if someone can’t argue a false position and make good exegetical defenses for it from the whole of Scripture (not a proposition that most would agree with), then it would necessarily follow (from the great number of competing interpretations of Scripture on many points of doctrine) that either a) Scripture is not at all clear or b) Scripture is clear, but we–because of biases, cultural background, presuppositions, etc.–can barely interpret it rightly. Either way, we would have a hard time knowing if we are interpreting Scripture rightly. It could be said–rightly–that a careful study of Scripture will mostly yield right doctrines, and this is true, but there are indeed some issues in which the opposing sides are both carefully reading Scripture and still coming to different conclusions.

A case in point would be the Reformed dispute over baptism. Both Reformed Baptists and Presbyterians argue from the whole of Scripture. They give exegeses and counter-exegeses of the relevant passages. Both can make good cases for their position Scripturally. But at the end of the day, one is right and one is wrong. The question is, since both are arguing from Scripture consistently, how is the issue to be resolved? Both sides could–and probably do–think that the other side is not -really- interpreting Scripture consistently, but then this just goes down into a sort of stale-mate, and at the end of the day, the issue is not resolved and the Reformed are still divided over baptism. I’m not asking your opinion on baptism, but in a situation like this, where both sides are actually arguing consistently from Scripture but differ, would you say that both are practicing sola scriptura?

I should probably also note that I’m undecided on this matter, so I’m chiefly questioning you to learn.

Thanks, pax Christi.

Spencer
Bryan Cross December 22nd, 2009 3:03 pm :
retro (re: #585)

You wrote:

In the article’s tu-quoque-objection answer, we are basically told that the “principled” difference between the RC and the Protestant is that Protestants start with an interpretation of Scripture, and then seek a church body that aligns with that particular interpretation. Whereas the RC convert simply seeks the church Christ founded, and then submits to all of her infallible interpretations. But I will dare to say this only begs the question. First of all, it implies that there is some area of neutral facts that all people can receive and properly interpret – as if all the history books unanimously agree to the validity of Rome’s succession, primacy and infallibility. We know that isn’t true. There is no such thing as a brute fact.

If there are no “brute” or “neutral” facts, then the claim “there is no such thing as a brute fact” is just your biased, subjective, worldview-mediated, personal lens-colored, private paradigm-distorted opinion, and there is therefore no reason to believe it to be true.

All ‘facts’ are interpreted facts.

Again, that’s just your self-interpreted, privately-mediated, non-neutral biased opinion, so there’s no reason to take it seriously as referring to objective reality, or being objectively true.

By what standard of evidence can I conclude which version of history is correct?

Until you get your epistemology squared away, you will be unable to answer this question without reasoning in a circle. Paradoxically, you haven’t reserved that same skepticism for your epistemology, because you have embraced as objectively true the non-existence of “brute facts”.

So there’s no point in responding to the second half of your comment, until you give up the post-Kantian skepticism you now confidently (and contradictorily) hold to be objectively true.

Grace builds on nature. So errors at the level of philosophy (including epistemology) lead to errors in sacred theology. So there is no point in trying to reason about sacred theology, until we first agree about the truth at the level of nature, i.e. in this case, epistemology.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Bryan Cross December 22nd, 2009 4:29 pm :
lojahw,

There are a few questions I have asked you, that you have not answered. First, in #537 you wrote:

sola scriptura recognizes the subordinate interpretive authority of the Church and its leaders.

In #541 I replied by asking:

Who, presently, are the “leaders” of “the Church”? What are their names?

You have not yet provided those names.

Second, in #495 I wrote:

Whose interpretation of Scripture’s interpretation of Scripture is authoritative? (And if you answer “Scripture”, then the follow-up question will be “Whose interpretation of Scripture’s interpretation of Scripture’s interpretation of Scripture is authoritative?”, and you’ll have an infinite regress on your hands.)

In #540 you replied:

Another way of answering your question is to answer this one: “How can one know which interpretations of Scripture are NOT authoritative?” The answer is: if the interpretation is inconsistent with Scripture.

In #542 I replied by showing that your reply did not actually answer my question, but only pushed back the question. Hence I wrote:

Second, your reply doesn’t answer my question. My question is this: “Whose interpretation of Scripture’s interpretation of Scripture is authoritative?” Telling me that interpretations which are inconsistent with Scripture are not authoritative gives me a ‘what’ answer when I asked a ‘who’ question. It also give me a negative answer (i.e. x interpretations are not authoritative) when I had asked a positive question (“Whose interpretation of Scripture’s interpretation of Scripture is authoritative?”). So in both ways your reply does not answer my question.

Third, your reply only pushes back the question. You claim that an interpretation is not authoritative if it is inconsistent with Scripture. But that pushes the question back: “Inconsistent with whose interpretation of Scripture?”

In #545 you responded:

To your question, “Whose interpretion of Scripture’s interpretation is authoritative,” the answer is Christ and the Apostles.

In #547, I responded:

This simply pushes back the question: Whose determination of what is Christ and the Apostles’ interpretation of Scripture’s interpretation of Scripture, is authoritative?

In #549 you answered:

Your question assumes that either there is an infallible authority by which all interpretations of Scripture can be known to be true or false, or that one cannot know which interpretations of Scripture are true or false.

In fact, my question assumes no such thing. My question asks “Whose determination of what is Christ and the Apostles’ interpretation of Scripture’s interpretation of Scripture is authoritative?” It does not ask “Whose determination of what is Christ and the Apostles’ interpretation of Scripture’s interpretation of Scripture is infallible.” If you think that all interpretive authority is ipso facto fallible, then you’ll have to retract your original claim in #537 that “sola scriptura recognizes the subordinate interpretive authority of the Church and its leaders”, or else you’ll need to claim that your Church’s leaders (whom you have not yet named) are infallible. I assume you wish to do neither. Therefore, now that we are agreed that interpretive authority does not need to be infallible in order to be an interpretive authority, we can agree that my question (asked in #547) does not assume that anyone is infallible.

But, that still leaves my question in #547 unanswered: “Whose determination of what is Christ and the Apostles’ interpretation of Scripture’s interpretation of Scripture, is authoritative?”

So those are the two questions I am asking you. What are the names of the present leaders of the Church? And, whose determination of what is Christ and the Apostles’ interpretation of Scripture’s interpretation of Scripture, is authoritative?

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Bryan Cross December 22nd, 2009 5:01 pm :
TurretinFan (re: #552)

In #533 you wrote:

However, as I’ve pointed out above, the place where you (per #494) find absence of principled distinction is not among the holders of those views, but among folks who don’t hold those views.

In #536 I replied:

Could you point me to the place in our article where we claimed to find a person holding a view that he or she didn’t actually hold? Thanks.

Then in #552 you replied:

I’m not sure what this request has to do with my comment. My comment is about the fact that (per #494) the alleged presence of distinction between sola/solo and apostolic succession is a distinction between people who don’t yet hold either view. That doesn’t mean you claimed to find a person holding a view he doesn’t hold. I hadn’t expressed an opinion about that (as far as I recall). Do you agree or disagree that the implication of #494 is what I’ve stated? If you agree, I have a further question, but if you don’t agree, I’d like to know why.

Notice that in #533 you claimed that we found absence of a principled distinction in a “place”, i.e. “among folks who don’t hold those views”. In fact, we never claimed to find an absence of principled distinction in a place, or between persons, but between two theological positions, i.e. the position referred to as ‘sola scriptura’, and the position referred to as ‘solo scriptura’, as defined by Mathison. Because you claimed that we had found absence of principled distinction in a place (i.e. “among folks who don’t hold these views”), I asked you (in #536) to point to the place in our article where we made such a claim. You reply (in #552) seemingly confused, not sure what my request has to do with your comment. Here’s what it has to do with your comment: If you claim that we claim something in our article, then you need to be prepared to show where in the article we make that claim. It is as simple as that. You claimed that we found an absence in a place (i.e. “among folks who don’t hold these views”). We never made such a claim. So, your claim (in #533) is not true.

When you write (in #552): “alleged presence of distinction between sola/solo and apostolic succession is a distinction between people who don’t yet hold either view” you show the same misunderstanding of our thesis. We’re arguing, in our article, that there is no principled distinction between two positions, not between two sets of persons, and not in a place.

In #535 I wrote:

The soundness of our argument does not depend on conclusion (1o) being unique. So, showing our conclusion to be non-unique does not refute the argument.

In #552 you replied:

You (and Tim Troutman) have made this statement or one like it a number of times. I’m not sure why you think this is significant.

I make statements because I think they are true, regardless of their “significance.” A statement cannot be significant if it isn’t true. And it is true that the soundness of an argument does not depend on its conclusion being unique. That’s why an argument is not refuted by showing that another argument has the same conclusion. So, if you have shown that another argument has the same conclusion as our argument, you have not thereby shown the conclusion of our argument to be false.

You wrote:

Assume for the sake of discussion that your argument is sound and valid, but that your argument is completely irrelevant to the Roman Catholic/ Reformed dialog (and, indeed, irrelevant to any call for folks to change communions). Can you see why that would matter to almost everyone who plans to spend the time necessary to read the article?

Yes, of course. But that would not be a criticism of our argument itself, but a criticism of its relevance or applicability. That would require (from you) the construction of another argument, having as its conclusion something like “The truth of the conclusion of Neal and Bryan’s argument is irrelevant to Catholic / Reformed dialogue.”

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Bryan Cross December 22nd, 2009 7:56 pm :
lojahw,

In #540 you claimed:

Because a solo scriptura person is free to make personal claims based on isolated texts, disregard the broader teaching of Scripture on any given point, and/or make any argument that he wants as long as he can find someone else who will agree with him.

In #542 I replied:

Given that solo scriptura means that Scripture is the only authority, why is the person holding solo scriptura “free to make person claims based on isolated texts, disregard the broader teaching of Scripture on any given point, and/or make any argument that he wants as long as he can find someone else who will agree with him”, if the sola scriptura person is not free to do those things?

In #545 you replied:

I explained the difference, Bryan: the sola scriptura person is contrained by the whole of Scripture, and therefore not at liberty to “disregard the broader teaching of Scripture on any given point.” To do such is to disregard the principles of sola scriptura, just as one who chooses to disobey traffic laws. The one who practices solo scriptura is, in effect, practicing lawlessness.

In #547 I replied:

There is a difference between an assertion and an explanation. You have merely asserted that the person holding sola scriptura is constrained by the whole of Scripture, and that the person holding solo scriptura is not so constrained. But you have not explained why the one is so constrained and the other is not.

In #549 you replied:

You are ignoring the obvious, Bryan. Your question is like asking why a church organist playing Bach is constrained to play the notes on the page instead of using the score as an occasional reference. Sola Scriptura is a discipline: those who disregard the rules of the discipline simply do not practice Sola Scriptura.

No, my question is not like that at all. A person “playing Bach” is, by the very meaning of the words ‘playing Bach’ following Bach’s score. Whereas a person who is just messing around on the organ would, by the very meaning of the words ‘messing around’ not be constrained to follow Bach’s score. But nothing about the definitions of sola scriptura and solo scriptura constrains the former to follow the whole of Scripture but does not constrain the latter to the whole of Scripture. Therefore, your assertion that the former is so constrained and the latter is not, is an ad hoc assertion.

In order avoid this problem, you need to show why, given the definitions of ‘sola scriptura‘ and ‘solo scriptura’ provided toward the beginning of the article, the person holding sola scriptura is constrained by the whole of Scripture, while the person holding solo scriptura is not thus constrained.

In #565 you make the same mistake. There you wrote:

Self is subordinate to the totality of Scripture in sola scriptura, self rules over personally selected proof-texts from Scripture in solo scriptura. The person who practices sola scriptura is constrained to be consistent with all Scripture, the solo scriptura person exempts himself from this principle of sola scriptura. The former interprets Scripture responsibly, the latter does not.

Here again you are making an ad hoc assertion that under sola scriptura the self is subordinate to the totality of Scripture, while under solo scriptura the self is not subordinate to the totality of Scripture. Nothing about these positions, according to the definitions given by Mathison and stated toward the beginning of our article, entails the distinction in your assertion. And this is why your assertion is ad hoc.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Bryan Cross December 22nd, 2009 8:17 pm :
lojahw (re: #573),

You wrote:

The article assumes that if a person finds anyone else who agrees with his own interpretation on a particular point, whatever that might be, that such a person is practicing sola scriptura.

Actually, neither our article nor our argument makes this assumption.

Then you wrote:

This is why we speak of the perspicuity of the Scriptures regarding the essentials of salvation

What are those essentials? Please list them out, without omitting a single one. (Since they are each essential for salvation, then surely you must know and believe them all.)

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
retro satana December 23rd, 2009 12:18 am :
Bryan, perhaps we should define “brute facts.” I’d define a brute fact as “that which corresponds to reality, known for what it is, as it is, without the need of interpretation.” Do you agree or disagree with this definition? In the context of my comment I assumed it was clear that I was talking about the way in which we receive information and interpret data. This is why we’re dealing with epistemology (“how do we know what we know?”) I do believe in objective truth but only because I believe in God and that he knows the proper interpretation of all data and events. It’s his interpretation (objective truth) that we are to seek. However, when it comes to individuals seeking that truth, to simply say, “You just find the church Jesus founded by looking to history, bro” doesn’t cut it. Facts to our fallible minds only make sense in the context of other facts, which are subject to each person’s understanding and private interpretation of any given data. No one is an unbiased observer. This is why I said there were no brute facts, meaning there is no neutral perspective that any person can take when trying to understand the world around them. You’re either for the Truth or against the Truth, there’s no middle ground. It’s precisely because observations require interpretations that facts and faith go hand in hand. No matter the worldview, no matter the belief, inductive and deductive reasoning alike will always require a measure of faith when it comes down to it. But, of course, I’m making factual claims and so are you. Our claims are in opposition to one another. Can you please give an example of a brute fact that we can know as true without the need of interpretation? You don’t believe the Scriptures teach brute facts, because you admit they need to be interpreted. Which facts in the world are “brute”?

To disregard my epistemology as “subjective-non-brute-fact-skepticism” does not follow. To realize that all worldviews must rely on a measure of faith is not skepticism. This is how God made us. To realize that all worldviews must argue in a circle inevitably is not skepticism or “blind/irrational” faith. There’s no way around it. If I ask a rationalist why he uses reason to discover truth, he’ll appeal to reason. If I ask an empiricist why he uses sense experience, he’ll appeal to sense experience! In light of your accusation I find it ironic that my RC friends are the ones who have admitted to taking “Kierkegaardian leaps of faith”. It sounds like you are placing a false dichotomy between faith and reason. They are not opposed to one another. Faith provides the basis for rationality. Do you deny that you had to have a measure of faith in concluding Rome was the true church? Or was that a brute fact that had nothing to do with faith?

There’s no contradiction in believing “there are no brute facts” as objectively true because I believe it’s a revelational fact revealed by the HS through the Scriptures, not a brute/neutral fact. You’d rightly point out a contradiction if I said, “it’s a brute fact that there are no brute facts.” But that’s not what I’ve said.
Bryan Cross December 23rd, 2009 12:41 am :
retro, (#593)

Your question is an epistemic one, and it belongs on the fideism thread. I’ll reply there.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
retro satana December 23rd, 2009 1:10 am :
Bryan,
My posts were actually in response to your tu-quoque rebuttals, just so everyone knows I’m not changing topic. I was pointing out the holes in part V, article A above. You disagree with my method, so you say we cannot discuss it on this thread. If debating methods of interpretation or epistemology is necessary to this debate, I don’t see why it should be restricted on this thread. But, it’s your website and I respect your rules. Just so long as we can return to my response after we’ve dealt with the epistemic issue. See you over there. Blessings!
Bryan Cross December 23rd, 2009 2:50 am :
TurretinFan,

In our article, we included the following paragraph:

This objection conflates two senses of the term ‘final.’ ‘Final’ can mean the terminus of a movement or of a series of movements, as an airplane has a final destination, the terminus of a series of flights for the day. ‘Final’ can also mean the terminus in an order or hierarchy, as the Commander in Chief is for the military. In a communication, the individual receiving that communication is, by definition, the terminus of the movement whereby knowledge is transmitted. He is, in that sense, the final interpreter. But he is not thereby the final interpretive authority in the sense of a terminus in an order or hierarchy. He may be the terminus of the motion of the communication, while remaining subordinate in the order of interpretive authority. The exercise of interpretive authority by the Magisterium, say, at an ecumenical council, does not prevent believers from interpreting Scripture or any other communication. Nor does it withhold from them the skill by which to interpret Sacred Scripture. On the contrary, the exercise of this teaching and interpretive authority provides a supernatural light by which the believer ought to interpret Scripture. We ignore or disregard that interpretive authority at our peril, because it is God-given authority, for our good.

In response you wrote “four rebuttals” on your own blog. I’ll respond to them here. You wrote:

1) In sola scriptura and Mathison’s position, the individual is only the “final” interpreter in the sense of communication. Scripture itself is the final authority for the sola scriptura position and scripture plus the ecumenical creeds (in essence) is for Mathison. Even in solo scriptura, it is not necessarily the case that the individual grants himself any authority over the text (though it appears that Mathison thinks this does happen in solo scriptura). So to the extent that Bryan’s escape from lack of principled distinction works for the RC position, it proves too much, in that it undermines premises 2, 7, and 9.

I don’t know for sure what your last sentence means, because I’m not escaping from a lack of anything. You seem to be saying in this paragraph that sola scriptura (according to your definition) is a position in which only Scripture has interpretive authority. If you are claiming that the only interpretive authority is Scripture itself, then you seem to be implying that the Church (however you define ‘Church’) has no interpretive authority. Do you hold that the Church (as you define ‘Church’) has no interpretive authority? That would seem to reduce sola scriptura to solo scriptura. How then is your position different from solo scriptura?

In addition, since Scripture needs to be interpreted (otherwise you would never say “Scripture interprets Scripture), then the Scripture that interprets Scripture needs to be interpreted. This pushes back the question: Who holds interpretive authority in the determination of Scripture’s interpretation of Scripture? Someone must determine which verses are clearer than others, and which verses serve as the touchstone by which to interpret the others. If your answer is ‘Scripture”, then this just pushes the question back again: Who holds interpretive authority in the determination of Scripture’s interpretation of Scripture’s interpretation of Scripture? This leads to a regress problem. If there were something in Scripture itself that prevented the regress, then all truth-loving and adequately intelligent persons who come to Scripture would all arrive at all the same conclusions regarding its interpretation. But obviously they do not. Hence, Scripture does not provide its own self-evident hermeneutical foundation that by necessary inferences closes off all false interpretive alternatives, leaving only the one correct interpretation of Scripture. So, without such a hermeneutical foundation, the position (that Scripture alone has interpretive authority) is left with the regress problem. There are only two ways to avoid this regress. Either deny that Scripture needs to be interpreted, and thus abandon the claim that Scripture interprets Scripture, or locate a regress-stopping point in human persons holding interpretive authority.

Denying that Scripture needs to be interpreted at all, is sufficiently naive and self-evidently false so as to be self-refuting. What about the human alternative? You might think that if human beings have interpretive authority that would not avoid the regress problem. But it does. That’s because there is a relevant ontological difference between a person and a book. As we explained in our article:

The problem with this dilemma is that it ignores the qualitative ontological distinction between persons and books, and so it falsely assumes that if a book needs an authoritative interpreter in order to function as an ecclesial authority, so must a living person. A book contains a monologue with respect to the reader. An author can often anticipate the thoughts and questions that might arise in the mind of the reader. But a book cannot hear the reader’s questions here and now, and answer them. A living person, however, can do so. A living person can engage in genuine dialogue with the reader, whereas a book cannot. Fr. Kimel talks about that here when he quotes Chesterton as saying that though we can put a living person in the dock, we cannot put a book in the dock. In this respect, a person can do what a book cannot; a person can correct global misunderstandings and answer comprehensive interpretive questions. A book by its very nature has a limited intrinsic potency for interpretive self-clarification; a person, on the other hand, by his very nature has, in principle, an unlimited intrinsic potency with respect to interpretive self-clarification. This unlimited potency with respect to interpretive self-clarification ensures that the hermeneutical spiral may reach its end. A book cannot speak more about itself than it does at the moment at which it is completed. A person, by contrast, remains perpetually capable of clarifying further any of his previous speech-acts.

If the possession of interpretive authority by persons did not avoid the regress problem, then this problem would continue in heaven, since we would need an interpretive authority to interpret the interpretive authority, etc. etc. But that’s obviously false. So the possession by persons of interpretive authority does avoid the regress problem. In short, some humans having interpretive authority is the only real option.

Next you wrote:

2) Mathison explicitly selects the ecumenical creeds as his extrinsic grid to which he submits. That’s the same as Bryan’s example. If submitting to the outcome of an ecumenical council liberates you from matching the solo position, Mathison is liberated in the exact same way.

The statement “That’s the same as Bryan’s example” is false. Picking some Creed or confession (e.g. the Westminster Confession of Faith) as one’s “extrinsic grid” isn’t the same thing as locating in the first century the Church that Christ founded, and tracing it forward to the present, and then submitting to it. The person who draws from the Scripture to identify the first-century stage of the Church, and then traces the Church forward through history from the time of Christ is doing something altogether different from the person who uses Scripture (and perhaps an ad hoc assortment of selections from tradition) to derive a general theology, against which he compares the existing theologies of all the competing sects, and judges the sect(s) whose doctrine most closely matches his general theology to be ‘the Church’.

The latter use treats the faith as something entirely formal, and hence not as requiring organic continuity with Christ and the Apostles. And that’s why it is gnostic, because it de-materializes the faith, making it quite entirely reducible to propositions, something you can carry around in a book, or on a flash drive. And propositions (like mathematical truths) have no organic history; they are timeless and spaceless, without matter, without flesh, without action, motion, love or life. If you were the last person to know them, you could bury them in a time capsule, and a society could discover them ten thousand years from now, and carry on ‘the faith’. That’s why a gnostic faith is a dead faith, because it is constituted by mere abstractions.

But the former use treats the faith as something organic, living, uninterruptible, and necessarily contiguous, not an abstract set of propositions, but a divine Person indwelling a human society. The only way to find the word of that Person is to find it in that society. But the other approach treats the abstract words as the formal and sufficient identifier of the Church, and hence in that approach the Church need have no history at all; it need only be conformed to one’s own interpretation of Scripture.

A conception of the Christian faith that treats it as something essentially *formal* (i.e. a message, a set of truths, fundamentally a body of doctrines to be known) is, by that very fact, gnostic (not necessarily in the matter-is-evil sense, but at least in the devoid-of-matter sense), and not organic. That’s because anything that is purely formal, by its very nature need have no organic and uninterrupted relation to the early Church. A set of propositions could [in theory] have been buried in the ground for the last two-thousand years, and we could rediscover it, and then carry on ‘the faith’ of the Apostles.

But if the faith is more than a set of propositions, and necessarily includes the divine life of the incarnate Son, and the mission and authority He gave to His Apostles, then the faith has to be related to the early Church by a continuous and organic relation, and couldn’t (in theory) have been reduced to a book and buried in the ground for any number of years.

Next you wrote:

3) The key weakness (and perhaps I ought to have placed it first, so bored readers would find it) to Bryan’s response is that he is comparing the whole governing authority of the solo person to a part of the governing authority of the RC person. In other words, where he ought to compare (Scripture, Oral Tradition, and the Magisterium) to (Scripture) he compares (Scripture, Oral Tradition, and the Magisterium) to (Scripture), hiding the Oral Tradition and Magisterium from consideration. In the process, Bryan himself conflates the finality of communication with the finality of authority, as noted above. The true comparison would be that for the solo person the Scriptures are the final authority, whereas for the RC person (per Bryan) the final authority is the Magisterium.

In our article Neal and I did not “hide” the oral Tradition or the Magisterium. The ‘governing’ authority for a Catholic cannot be divided into parts, except by abstraction. Scripture, Tradition, and Magisterium all inseparably function together as our unified governing authority. Nor did we conflate “the finality of communication with the finality of authority.” We in fact distinguished them, as the quotation at the top of this comment shows. To claim that for a Catholic “final authority is the Magisterium” [and not also the Tradition and Scripture], would be to set up a straw man.

Lastly you wrote:

4) Does Bryan really mean to say that the Magisterium is above Scripture in a military-like hierarchy? Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) 86 states:
“Yet this Magisterium is not superior to the Word of God, but is its servant. It teaches only what has been handed on to it. At the divine command and with the help of the Holy Spirit, it listens to this devotedly, guards it with dedication and expounds it faithfully. All that it proposes for belief as being divinely revealed is drawn from this single deposit of faith.” (Quoting from Dei Verbum, Section 10, paragraph 2) Interestingly, Bryan’s analogy is the usual Reformed criticism of the RC position, whereas CCC 86 is the usual response by Roman Catholic proselytizers and apologists.

We did not claim that the Magisterium is above Scripture. But your suggestion (in the form of a question) that we did so, is an example of sophistry. The better approach for fruitful rational dialogue is not to read into one’s interlocutor’s statements something that he did not say, and then criticize him for saying what he did not in fact say. The better approach, in such cases, is to ask him. The point is not to score crowd-points, but to arrive at the truth together. Sophistry does the former, but genuine rational dialogue does the latter.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
lojahw December 23rd, 2009 7:16 pm :
Bryan,

Your objections to my posts seem to be based on what Mathison explicitly claims about sola scriptura vs. what is implicitly entailed in his claims. My comments about “the whole of Scripture” are implicitly entailed in Mathison’s statement that Scripture is the final authoritative norm of doctrine and practice. In other words, the norm is not based on any particular arbitrary subset of the norm, but on the whole. Therefore, my statement that “Self is subordinate to the totality of Scripture in sola scriptura is not ad hoc, but a recognition that Scripture itself is the norm.

Blessings.
Bryan Cross December 23rd, 2009 7:33 pm :
lojahw, (re: #597)

Nothing about solo scriptura, as defined by Mathison, implies that according to solo scriptura, Scripture is not the final authoritative norm of doctrine and practice. Likewise, nothing about solo scriptura, as defined by Mathison, implies that anything less than the whole of Scripture is the norm of doctrine and practice. Hence your claim that according to sola scriptura the individual is constrained by the whole of Scripture, while according to solo scriptura the individual is not constrained by the whole Scripture, is ad hoc.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
lojahw December 23rd, 2009 7:46 pm :
Spencer wrote:

can’t a person argue a false position and make good exegetical defenses for it from the whole of Scripture?

To answer your question, one must recognize that Scripture is clear about some things and not clear about others (cf. 2 Pet. 3:15). Hence, I agree with you:

there are indeed some issues in which the opposing sides are both carefully reading Scripture and still coming to different conclusions

What one must then ask is: are the issues in which opposing sides are both carefully reading Scripture essential to salvation? Sola scriptura adherents answer “no,” assuming that proper exegetical disciplines are exercised by both sides. You mention a good example of such an issue: the significance of baptism.

Reformed Presbyterians emphasize the covenantal significance of baptism, whereby one is recognized (in lieu of circumcision) as a member of the covenantal community of faith, whereas Baptists emphasize the experiential significance of baptism as a sign and testimony of the individual’s new spiritual birth. There is indeed Scriptural support for both positions, so perhaps conflicts over the two represent a false dilemma. Why cannot baptism be viewed as both/and instead of either/or?

Such an “in-house” debate, however, does not make one side or the other unfaithful to an essential of salvation: both observe what Jesus commanded the disciples. Both groups faithfully baptize their members.

I hope this is helpful.

Blessings.
lojahw December 23rd, 2009 7:51 pm :
Bryan,

Can you give me an example where solo scriptura has NOT exhibited the characteristics I have mentioned?

Blessings.
lojahw December 23rd, 2009 8:14 pm :
Bryan wrote:

If you think that all interpretive authority is ipso facto fallible, then you’ll have to retract your original claim in #537 that “sola scriptura recognizes the subordinate interpretive authority of the Church and its leaders or else you’ll need to claim that your Church’s leaders (whom you have not yet named) are infallible”

The above is a false dilemma, Bryan. A fallible authority can indeed be a subordinate interpretive authority under an infallible norm – being subject to correction by Scripture, as Paul claimed in 2 Tim. 3:16-17.

So, yes, we agree that an interpretive authority does not have to be infallible.

“Whose determination of what is Christ and the Apostles’ interpretation of Scripture’s interpretation of Scripture, is authoritative?”

Scripture teaches that qualified presbyteroi/episkopoi have authority over those under their spiritual charge (cf. 1 Tim. 3:1-7; Heb. 13:17). This authority, however, does not extend beyond the teaching of Chirst (2 John 9) nor does it apply to those who teach a different gospel than that which the Apostles taught (Gal. 1:8-9).

Blessings.
Bryan Cross December 23rd, 2009 8:36 pm :
lojahw, (re: #600)

Positions and practices are two different things. Practices can be (or not be) consistent with positions, to varying degrees. The definitions given by Mathison are of positions. And the argument in our article is about those positions, and thus only derivatively about the practices corresponding to those positions.

As for an example, pretty much everyone in the Pentecostal tradition in which I was raised would fall under Mathison’s definition of solo scriptura. No one believed that the Church (as Pentecostals define ‘Church’) had authority, because we all had the Spirit. Persons who disagreed with the pastor just went to a different Pentecostal ‘church’, or started their own ‘house church.’ But we all believed that we were constrained by the whole of the Bible.

There are still two questions I’m waiting for you to answer: the second question at the end of #589, and the question at the end of #592.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Bryan Cross December 23rd, 2009 8:41 pm :
lojahw (re: #601)

You wrote:

The above is a false dilemma, Bryan.

Yep. My mistake. I mistyped a word in #589. It should have read as follows:

If you think that all interpretive authority is ipso facto infallible, then you’ll have to retract your original claim in #537 that “sola scriptura recognizes the subordinate interpretive authority of the Church and its leaders”, or else you’ll need to claim that your Church’s leaders (whom you have not yet named) are infallible.

Sorry!

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
lojahw December 24th, 2009 7:58 am :
Bryan,

It sounds like you have described a principled difference between solo scriptura as found among Pentecostals and sola scriptura. You say that Pentecostals do NOT recognize any interpretive authority of church leaders, whereas Mathison and I agree that church leaders have such authority, albeit subordinate to Scripture, undersola scriptura. In my only experience with Pentecostals, the church had elders who were recognized as having such authority and members were accountable to them.

I can only see some of the post numbers – could you repeat your question in 589?

Regarding your question in 592, please refer to my post #268.

Now that is Christmas Eve, I would like to wish all a blessed Christmas. (I’ll check in again after Christmas.)

Blessings.
T Ciatoris December 24th, 2009 4:31 pm :
Dear lojahw,

Many moons ago (or so it seems) you wrote (#581):

You want to engage me in a controversy over some supposed Sola Scriptura interpretation on unspecified essentials that would cause me to switch Churches. Can you give me an example?

Well, the point at issue was whether or not you’d logically refuted the article’s claims, not whether we could point to concrete examples of the equivalence of solo scriptura and sola scriptura.

But still, yes, I’ll give you several examples: the full coequality and coeternity of the Son and the Spirit with the Father; their subsistence as separate hypostases from the Father; justification by faith; sacred images; the nature of the Church; the nature and effects of baptism; the nature and effects of the Eucharist.

These are the giants I’m tilting at. Unfortunately, I’m under no illusion that this is going to get us anywhere. You’ll turn each of these giants into windmills by making use of two tactics. One tactic is to deny that the issue is “essential,” as you’ve done already with regard to the nature and effects of baptism. The second is to gerrymander your definition of “solo scriptura” so as to exclude those who claim to adhere to sola scriptura but disagree with you on a point you consider essential.* Thus you can pretend that there is a broad consensus on essentials among practitioners of sola scriptura, because you’ve defined away any potential deficiencies in the consensus.

The fact that you can employ these two tactics rhetorically to transform the “giants” I’ve mentioned into “windmills” helps me understand why my claim that you’re tilting at windmills (which I do think you are doing) appears to you like the pot calling the kettle “black.”

As to your wish for a blessed Christmas, I wholeheartedly concur!

TC
1 Cor 16:14

* In order to “prove” to you that heresies such as Arianism and Modalism are potentially consistent with sola scriptura, understood as the formal sufficiency of Scripture, I’d have to actually perform such reading in their entirety. That’s not a reasonable thing for me to try to do in a combox. But I do think it can be done, and I think it has been done in the past. I know you’ll simply say, “No, it can’t.” If anybody knows of a way for lojahw and me out of this impasse, I’d be grateful to learn of it.
Bryan Cross December 26th, 2009 1:07 am :
lojahw (re: #604)

I couldn’t find the list of essentials in your comment #268. I’m looking for the precise number (not one more or one less), of those “essentials of salvation”, as you called them, and see them listed out. (You said there that the list is short, but you didn’t provide the list.) So that’s one question that’s still unanswered.

In #537 you wrote:

sola scriptura recognizes the subordinate interpretive authority of the Church and its leaders.

So in #541 (and again in #589) I asked:

Who, presently, are the “leaders” of “the Church”? What are their names?

That is my other unanswered question.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
lojahw December 26th, 2009 1:41 pm :
Bryan,

It is ironic that you press me for a definitive list of essentials and a list of whom I consider to be church leaders when you have failed to answer my oft repeated question:

why is it “absolutely necessary for the salvation of every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff”? (Boniface VIII, Bull Unam Sanctam, fourteenth century)

If this were “absolutely necessary” for salvation, why was this “essential” never articulated by the Apostles or by anyone in authority in the Church for over a thousand years? Your vague comments about the relationship of the keys of the kingdom and soteriology fail to show how this statement “abides in the teaching of Christ” and does not “go forward” from it (2 John 1:9). How does the teaching of Christ even remotely resemble Boniface’s declaration?

“The one who comes to Me [Jesus] I will certainly not cast out. . . . For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life, and I Myself will raise him up on the last day. . . . Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes has eternal life.” (John 6:37, 40, 47)

And, “”My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me; and I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.” (John 10:27-29)

How can anyone (including the Roman Pontiff) come between Jesus and one who believes in Him? According to the Apostle whom Jesus loved, all Christians should shun Boniface because he has “gone forward and not remained in the teaching of Christ” (cf. 2 John 1:9-11).

For a succinct statement of the essentials of salvation, how about:

John 3:36, “He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.”

As for church leaders, I recognize Jesus, the Apostles and writers of Scripture, the same early church fathers that you recognize, and a number of others, such as John Stott and J. I. Packer. These should be sufficient as interpretive authorities subject to the ultimate authority of Scripture as the norm of doctrine and practice.

Blessings.
lojahw December 26th, 2009 1:43 pm :
Bryan wrote:

Positions and practices are two different things. Practices can be (or not be) consistent with positions, to varying degrees. The definitions given by Mathison are of positions. And the argument in our article is about those positions, and thus only derivatively about the practices corresponding to those positions.

Yet, the crux of the article’s argument that there is no principled difference between sola scriptura and solo scriptura is based on practice:

“The indirect way of making oneself one’s own ultimate interpretive and magisterial authority is more complicated and subtle. In this case the individual, based upon his own interpretation of Scripture, either establishes or chooses an ecclesial community that conforms to his own interpretation in matters he considers to be essential or important. Then, he ’submits’ to this institution so long as it continues to speak and act in accordance with his own interpretation of Scripture. If it deviates from his own interpretation of Scripture in matters he deems important, he repeats the process of either establishing or choosing an institution or congregation that conforms to his own interpretation in matters he considers to be essential or important.”

The article therefore argues from practice rather than the positions stated by Mathison:

1) Scripture is the sole source of revelation; 2) Scripture is the final authoritative norm of doctrine and practice; 3) Scripture is to be interpreted in and by the church; 4) it is to be interpreted according to the regula fidei.

Further, in order for Scripture to be the final authoritative norm of doctrine and practice, all interpretations must be subject to the entirety of Scripture. However, the article suggests that individuals appeal to their own interpretations of Scripture – which can be empirically shown to be based on isolated proof-texts and poor exegesis. Thus, the thesis of the article is not supported by the positions stated by Mathison.

Blessings.
lojahw December 26th, 2009 1:55 pm :
TC,

I concur that you have listed some “giants” and I agree that 1) discussion of them is beyond the scope of this combox; and 2) it is unlikely that you and I will see eye to eye on the sufficiency of Scripture to resolve the issues. Perhaps, however, you have some thoughts on my latest post about positions and practice. I don’t believe the thesis of the article has been sufficiently defended.

Blessings.
Bryan Cross December 26th, 2009 2:46 pm :
lojahw,

In #607 you wrote:

For a succinct statement of the essentials of salvation, how about:

John 3:36, “He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.”

So are you saying that there is only one essential: believing in the Son? If so, that would entail that Arians, Pelagians, and Nestorians are not heretics. And, since Catholics also believe in the Son, this would entail that the Protestant separation from the Catholic Church in the 16th century was unjustified, since Protestants were dividing from the Church over non-essentials.

You continued:

As for church leaders, I recognize Jesus, the Apostles and writers of Scripture, the same early church fathers that you recognize, and a number of others, such as John Stott and J. I. Packer.

I assumed you understood that I was asking only about presently visible church leaders, not persons already in heaven. On what basis (other than that you agree with their interpretation of Scripture) are Stott and Packer “church leaders”?

Regarding Unam Sanctum, I already answered that question #213 and #542.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Bryan Cross December 26th, 2009 4:21 pm :
lojahw, (re: #608)

You are claiming that the “crux” of our argument is based on practice rather than on the position stated by Mathison.

There is a difference between practice that is accidental to a position, and practice that is essential to a position. The practice of ‘finding the Church’ [without apostolic succession] in the indirect way [we described] is essential to sola scriptura, for the reasons we explained — there is no other way (given the denial of apostolic succession) of locating ‘the Church’. But the practice of not embracing the whole of Scripture is not essential to solo scriptura (as defined by Mathison), but is only accidental to it. We are not basing our argument on some accident or contingency, but on what is essential to sola scriptura.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
lojahw December 27th, 2009 11:46 am :
Bryan,

I would appreciate an answer to my long-standing question of your pope’s interpretive authority as represented in Unam sanctam.

Believing in Jesus and obeying Him entails all that He taught, including the revelation He attributed to the Holy Spirit throughout the Scriptures. Heresies don’t fit.

I beg to differ on the extent of Mathison’s “final authoritative norm of doctrine and practice.” It is NOT accidental that the Word of God encompasses the WHOLE of the Bible. (You wouldn’t accept mere portions of any other literary work to authoritatively represent the whole.) Furthermore, the practice of finding a church according to sola scriptura entails submission to the “final authoritative norm of doctrine and practice,” the whole of Scripture.

Your insistence on asking about only church leaders now living is inconsistent with your own position which requires recognition of all leaders going back to the apostles. As I stated in earlier posts, I am an Anglican: John Stott and J. I. Packer are Anglican leaders. And just as in days of the Apostles, the collegial leadership of the Church continues and is not bounded by affiliations within the global Body of Christ; I even recognize Benedict XVI as a Church leader, but not as an ultimate authority. And yes, I have a local pastor, but his name would mean nothing to you. What is your point?

Blessings.
Bryan Cross December 27th, 2009 2:30 pm :
lojahw (re:#612),

Your reply doesn’t show me what you think are the essentials of salvation. Here’s a very simple way of putting the question: How many essentials are there? Just one, or more than one?

Regarding the present (visible) leaders of the Church, my asking a question about the identity of presently visible Church leaders is not inconsistent with recognizing all Church leaders going back to the Apostles. I understand that you are Anglican. My question is this: On what basis (other than that you agree with their interpretation of Scripture) are Stott and Packer “church leaders”? You haven’t answered that question.

Imagine that someone says to me, “As for present leaders of the Church, I recognize Todd Bentley and Benny Hinn.” Then I say to him “On what basis (other than that you agree with their interpretation of Scripture) are Bentley and Benny Hinn “church leaders”? He replies, “I am charismatic; Bentley and Hinn are charismatic leaders”. At that point I would say, “I understand that you are charismatic. But telling me that you are charismatic, and that Bentley and Hinn are leaders of the charismatic movement, doesn’t explain the basis for their leadership, other than that you (and people who interpret Scripture like you) agree with their interpretation of Scripture.”

So likewise, when you tell me that Stott and Packer are present leaders of the Church, having interpretive authority, my reply is quite the same. I understand that you are Anglican. But telling me that you are Anglican, and that Stott and Packer are Anglican leaders doesn’t explain the basis or ground for their leadership, other than that you (and people who interpret Scripture like you) agree with their interpretation of Scripture. You seem to be exemplifying precisely what we wrote about in the article, i.e. the indirect way of acting as one’s own ultimate interpretive authority, by identifying as “church leaders” those who share one’s own interpretation of Scripture.

As for your “long-standing” question about Unam Sanctum, what, exactly, is your question?

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
lojahw December 27th, 2009 5:29 pm :
Bryan,

Your responses in #213 and #542 are simply weak arguments from silence (as I said previously). Such responses fail to explain how Unam sanctam, after over a thousand years of bishops and Ecumenical Councils, suddenly declared it “absolutely necessary for the salvation of every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff.” If this really were “absolutely necessary,” it would have been taught in the creeds and canon law of the Church, as well as by all “approved” church fathers, from the beginning – but it never was. It thus fails St. Vincent’s criteria of antiquity (which you said you accept). It represents an innovation, an addition, and therefore cannot legitimately be part of the Catholic Faith “which was once for all delivered to the saints.”

I have identified a number of essentials in an attempt to find common ground, with which you neither agreed or disagreed that they are essential. We haven’t made progress on either the “absolutely necessary” condition declared by Boniface VIII or on the essentials I have listed. It is important to deal with old questions before moving on.

John Stott and J. I. Packer are recognized Church leaders according to the global community of Anglican bishops, clergy, laity, as well as many other Christian Churches. I don’t recognize them simply because I agree with them. In fact I don’t 100% agree with them, but that doesn’t mean I don’t recognize them, or R. C. Sproul, or John McArthur, or Charles Stanley, Henry Nouwen, or Pope Benedict XVI, for that matter, as Church leaders. You seem to be trying to fit me into your mold: that the only reason a Protestant can recognize someone as a Church leader is because he agrees with one’s own interpretation of Scripture. ‘Sorry, but I do not fit your mold.

Where to from here?

Blessings.
lojahw December 27th, 2009 5:32 pm :
‘Sorry about the misspelling of Henri Nouwen. I appreciate his writings as well.
Bryan Cross December 27th, 2009 8:27 pm :
lojahw (re: #614)

How many essentials of salvation are there? (If you don’t know how many essentials there are, then how do you know you believe them all? And if you don’t know that you believe them all, then how do you know you are saved?)

You wrote:

John Stott and J. I. Packer are recognized Church leaders according to the global community of Anglican bishops, clergy, laity, as well as many other Christian Churches. I don’t recognize them simply because I agree with them. In fact I don’t 100% agree with them, but that doesn’t mean I don’t recognize them, or R. C. Sproul, or John McArthur, or Charles Stanley, Henry Nouwen, or Pope Benedict XVI, for that matter, as Church leaders.

I understand that Stott and Packer are believed by many Anglicans to be church leaders. But I assume that you are not suggesting that merely being believed by many to be a “church leader” is sufficient to make someone a church leader. Bentley and Hinn are believed by many to be “church leaders.” So what I’m asking is the basis or ground for Stott and Packer being “church leaders”, other than that you agree (for the most part) with their interpretation of Scripture. So far, you haven’t provided any other reason for Stott and Packer being “church leaders” except that you mostly agree with their interpretation of Scripture. (If you mostly disagreed with their interpretation of Scripture, you surely wouldn’t count them as “church leaders”.)

You wrote:

Your responses in #213 and #542 are simply weak arguments from silence (as I said previously).

I did not offer any argument from silence in #213 or #542.

You wrote:

If this really were “absolutely necessary,” it would have been taught in the creeds and canon law of the Church, as well as by all “approved” church fathers, from the beginning

The apodosis does not follow from the protasis. Your claim is logically equivalent to saying that if Christ were absolutely necessary for salvation, then He would have been explicitly revealed in the Old Covenant. But clearly that conditional is false. Similarly, an Arian could say that if belief in homoousious were absolutely necessary, it would have been explicitly revealed by the Apostles. Yet it wasn’t. Nevertheless, in AD 325 belief in homoousius did become absolutely necessary. To deny homoousius is to deny the Creed of the Church and ipso facto become a heretic. Does that mean that someone who has never heard of the Creed (or homoouious) cannot be saved? No. So the sense of ‘absolute’ in Unam Sancum has to be understood according to this qualified sense, as what belongs to the deposit of faith according to its latest stage of development, just as homoousious is absolutely necessary to believe.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
lojahw December 27th, 2009 11:58 pm :
Bryan,

According to Jesus, only a few things are necessary, really only one (Luke 10:42; cf. Matt. 7:21-23). That is: to be His disciple, with all that entails (cf. Matt. 28:19-20; John 1:12-13; John 3:15-36; John 10:27-29; etc.). You want a list? Are you married? Is there an authoritative list of requirements to be a husband – or for any other relationship? To whom much is given, much is required: I do not believe there is a fixed comprehensive list. It starts with: “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved” (Acts 16:31). A disciple then spends his lifetime learning to “observe all that I commanded you” (Matt. 28:20). Creeds are good reference points, as Mathison states, but they merely point one to the Word of God for the “whole counsel of God.” To follow Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior cannot be reduced to a fixed set of beliefs or practices.

However, I am willing to be taught what I do not know: what does your Church teach about the essentials of salvation?

You asked why John Stott and J. I. Packer are considered Church leaders, and I told you: the Anglican Church recognizes them as Church leaders. That is independent of my personal interpretation of Scripture. You did not question my acceptance of Henri Nouwen or any of the others as Church leaders. Why not?

I said your arguments in #213 or #542 were arguments from silence because you said the absence of a condition for salvation (which you applied to being “subject to the Roman Pontiff”) did not exclude it.

Your argument about Christ not being revealed in the Old Testament is surprising for one with so much learning. How is it that the Gospel writers and Christ repeatedly referred to the Old Testament to prove that He was the Christ, the Son of God, for example:

“For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace”

There are more than 200 Old Testament prophecies about Christ, from which Jesus and the Gospel writers demonstrated that God clearly revealed His Son throughout the Scriptures. “You search the Scriptures [the Old Testament] because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me” (John 5:39). And what did the Old Testament teach about salvation?

And a lawyer stood up and put Him to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” And He said to him, “What is written in the Law? How does it read to you?” And he answered, “YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND; AND YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.” And He said to him, “You have answered correctly; DO THIS AND YOU WILL LIVE.” (Luke 10:25-28)

One who truly loves God loves the Son, because, as Jesus said: “I and the Father are one.”

No, the absence of the name “Jesus” from the Old Testament is NOT equivalent to the absence of any teaching that remotely resembles: it is “absolutely necessary for the salvation of every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff.” Your argument for “stages of development” of doctrine is no more than relativism in disguise.

The use of homoousios to describe the combination of attributes of Christ which the bishops at the Council of Nicea listed from Scripture is a valid description of His divine nature, just as using the term Trinity is a valid description of the Godhead as taught in Scripture (cf. Isa. 48:12-16; Matt. 28:19; Luke 3:21-22; Eph. 2:17-18). No “stages of development” were required to apply these terms to clear Scriptural teaching.

In Christ alone is My salvation.
Bryan Cross December 28th, 2009 12:34 am :
lojahw (re: #617)

The reason I asked you for the number of “essentials of salvation” is that in #573 you wrote the following:

This is why we speak of the perspicuity of the Scriptures regarding the essentials of salvation

But it turns out that you don’t even know how many “essentials of salvation” there are. In fact, you say (in #617), “I do not believe there is a fixed comprehensive list.”

That statement makes hash of your original claim (in #573) that Scripture is perspicuous about “the essentials of salvation”. If Scripture is perspicuous about the essentials, then you should know them all, and have no trouble rattling them off. And, if Scripture is perspicuous about the essentials, then the number of essentials shouldn’t be changing; it should be fixed, precisely because Scripture is not changing. So, it turns out, given what you have just said, that Scripture is not perspicuous about the essentials. And if that is so, then this is one more reason why Christ established His Church with a Magisterium.

When asked for the list of essentials, instead of listing essentials, you point to a practice (i.e. “being a disciple”), which in itself entails absolutely no single doctrinal claim and forbids (as heretical) no set of beliefs. Every heretic in the history of the Church would have been delighted to hear that there is no complete list of essentials, that the only ‘essential’ is being a disciple. It would allow them to remain in the Church, and allow the heretical nature of their heresy to remain hidden. Such a position entirely guts historic Christianity. This, apparently, is where your sola scriptura position leads.

In #537 you wrote:

sola scriptura recognizes the subordinate interpretive authority of the Church and its leaders.

When asked for the names of these leaders, you point to Stott and Packer. And when asked for the basis for their interpretive authority as “church leaders,” you claim that the “Anglican Church recognizes them as Church leaders”. The problem with that answer, as I pointed out, is that charismatics recognize Bentley and Hinn as “church leaders”. So it just pushes the question back. What makes recognition by the Anglican Church legitimate, and recognition by charismatics illegitimate, when it comes to grounding church leadership, if not that you (mostly) agree with the Anglican interpretation of Scripture, but (mostly) don’t agree with the charismatic interpretation of Scripture?

Finally, you said:

Your argument about Christ not being revealed in the Old Testament is surprising for one with so much learning.

I didn’t fail to notice your ad hominem. But the larger problem with your statement is that you misrepresented what I said, by rephrasing it in your own words, in such a way that it isn’t what I said at all. Here’s what I said:

Your claim is logically equivalent to saying that if Christ were absolutely necessary for salvation, then He would have been explicitly revealed in the Old Covenant.

Notice the word “explicitly”, which I have here put in bold font. That’s altogether different from saying that Christ is not revealed in the Old Testament.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
lojahw December 28th, 2009 11:34 pm :
Dear Bryan,

You seem to be unsatisfied with the answers of Jesus and the Apostles to the question: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” – i.e., what is essential to salvation? Do you think that there is a specific list of doctrinal questions that everyone must answer to be saved? What about little children and the mentally retarded? If they cannot answer all of those doctrinal questions, will Jesus turn them away? Yet Jesus said: “All that the Father gives Me shall come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out” (John 6:37). Why is the below not enough?

And a lawyer stood up and put Him to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” And He said to him, “What is written in the Law? How does it read to you?” And he answered, “YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND; AND YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.” And He said to him, “You have answered correctly; DO THIS AND YOU WILL LIVE.” (Luke 10:25-28)

As to the Anglican Church, I answered your question a while back: it meets the ancient requirements of an Apostolic Church: all churches, whether founded by an apostle or “later in time” without the benefit of an apostolic successor, must teach what was then called the Regula fidei, referred to by Mathison. Below is a second century version of this Rule of Faith, written by Irenaeus (a precursor of the later creeds):

“the faith in one God, the Father Almighty, who made the heaven and the earth and the seas and all the things that are in them; and in one Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who was made flesh for our salvation; and in the Holy Spirit, who made known through the prophets the plan of salvation, and the coming, and the birth from a virgin, and the passion, and the resurrection from the dead, and the bodily ascension into heaven of the beloved Christ Jesus, our Lord, and his future appearing from heaven in the glory of the Father to sum up all things and to raise anew all flesh of the whole human race . . .” (Against All Heresies, 3.4.1-2)

I accept the interpretive authority of recognized leaders of apostolic churches according to the above criteria.

As to Christ being explicitly revealed in the OT, I gave this quote:

“For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace”

Why is this not enough? It is undeniable that the above OT prophecy refers to Christ.

As for Boniface VIII’s ”it is absolutely necessary for the salvation of every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff” in Unam sanctam, please recall the context of these words:

“We are informed by the texts of the gospels that in this Church and in its power are two swords; namely, the spiritual and the temporal. For when the Apostles say: ‘Behold, here are two swords’ that is to say, in the Church, since the Apostles were speaking, the Lord did not reply that there were too many, but sufficient. Certainly the one who denies that the temporal sword is in the power of Peter has not listened well to the word of the Lord commanding: ‘Put up thy sword into thy scabbard’. . . . Therefore whoever resists this power thus ordained by God, resists the ordinance of God “

Boniface thus asserts that the temporal authority of kings be subordinated to his spiritual authority as Roman Pontiff. By quoting Romans 13 out of context he distorts the Scripture wherein the Apostle Paul exhorts Christians to be subject to civil authorities. Boniface’s insistence on making every human creature subject to himself as if to a king having power over the temporal sword stands in sharp contrast to Jesus’ denial that His kingdom is of this world, and to Peter’s exhortation to bishops:

”shepherd the flock of God among you, exercising oversight not under compulsion, but voluntarily, according to the will of God; and not for sordid gain”

(1 Pet. 5:2).

Is Unam sanctam really an example of infallible interpretive authority?

In Christ alone is my salvation.
wilkins December 29th, 2009 8:59 am :
For a succinct statement of the essentials of salvation, how about: John 3:36, “He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.”

and

According to Jesus, only a few things are necessary, really only one… That is: to be His disciple, with all that entails… You want a list? … To whom much is given, much is required: I do not believe there is a fixed comprehensive list. It starts with: “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved”… A disciple then spends his lifetime learning to “observe all that I commanded you”…

and

You seem to be unsatisfied with the answers of Jesus and the Apostles to the question: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”

lojahw, i can’t imagine Bryan “wants” a list or is “unsatisfied with the answers of Jesus and the Apostles”—right? Honestly, it’s uncharitable how you pretty consistently twist up what Bryan says in order to point a finger at the error you yourself have introduced—you and not Bryan. i can’t help but detect the same strident manipulation in your abuse of the Boniface quotation. As Bryan has already said, the more you do this the more you illustrate the wisdom of (and need for) the very sacramental authority this CTC article supports.

You’ve referred to ‘essentials’ more than once, so it’s perfectly reasonable to insist that you share, as a definitive list, what those Christian ‘essentials’ are. Given that you’ve also argued pretty extensively that disagreement between Protestants is actually quite minor—essentially inconsequential—i’ve been excited to compare your list with those i’ve heard from Baptists, Presbyterians, Pentecostals, Methodists over the course of 30+ years of Protestant life.

On the one hand, you’ve moved from “essentials” to “only a few things” to “really only one” essential, namely discipleship; on the other hand, you’ve also included the phrase “with all that entails,” which invites us to imagine the many essential elements of this discipleship which remain strategically unstated.

i’ve recently been reading the Dake bible some very dear Protestants gave me several years ago, and i think it’s safe to say that Protestant Dake would very seriously disagree with Anglican lojahw’s assertion that there’s only one essential. Dake can point to 100k hours of Scripture study in ‘discipleship’ over the course of 43 years, the culmination of which is his reference bible packed with 9k headings, 500k cross-references throughout 35k notes and comments, 8k subject outlines, 2k illustrations and a great deal more (i’m getting all this from his own preface).

Is Dake’s example of ‘discipleship’ the kind of discipleship you’re referring to? Should a Christian follow the interpretations of a disciple and leader like Packer or Stott instead of Dake? i’m trying to illustrate the fact that disagreement among Protestants is, in fact, substantial, and appeals they (you) make to “the essentials” help stave off a thorough and honest examination of the incoherence of sola scriptura.

w
lojahw December 29th, 2009 10:31 am :
w wrote:

lojahw, i can’t imagine Bryan “wants” a list

w, Brian indeed insisted multiple times for a list of essentials:

When asked for the list of essentials, instead of listing essentials, you point to a practice (i.e. “being a disciple”), which in itself entails absolutely no single doctrinal claim and forbids (as heretical) no set of beliefs.

My response was honest. As I previously wrote, to whom much is given, much is required. Not everyone can comprehend the great truths of the faith. Hence, Jesus’ answer to “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?” is a true response to the question of what is essential to salvation.

On the question of essential confessional truths of the Christian faith, I have consistently referred to the ancient Regula fidei which has been universally agreed to by Christians since the Apostles. I quoted a second century version of this Rule of Faith in #619 to demonstrate the continuity of these beliefs long before even the Council of Nicea.

As to Dake, he might be a man of great learning, but sola scriptura submits everything by the final authoritative norm of doctrine and practice, the Bible. It is tiring to keep hearing questions on this thread about which person to accept as a final interpretive authority. Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Dake all have good things to say, but none of them are final interpretive authorities.

Roman Catholics often appeal to various church fathers for authority, but perhaps the most noted among them, Augustine, wrote:

“Do not be willing to yield to my writings as to the canonical Scriptures.” (De Trinitate, 3 pr. 2)

Blessings.

Blessings.
Devin Rose December 29th, 2009 12:33 pm :
lojahw,

You wrote “As to the Anglican Church, I answered your question a while back: it meets the ancient requirements of an Apostolic Church: all churches, whether founded by an apostle or “later in time” without the benefit of an apostolic successor, must teach what was then called the Regula fidei, referred to by Mathison…I accept the interpretive authority of recognized leaders of apostolic churches according to the above criteria.”

But the Anglican Church teaches that infant baptism is true and good, yet I recall you are a credo-baptist, so 1) you do not accept their interpretive authority on this important issue (one of the two sacraments (in your beliefs) that Christ instituted and commanded us to do) and 2) it means that “an Apostolic Church” teaches falsehoods as truth.

Anglicans also ordain women priests (and now bishops), which I recall you also believe is against the Bible (“I do not permit a woman to have authority over a man” etc.).

It seems to me that in reality you do not accept their interpretive authority. But you say that you do, so how do you reconcile that apparent contradiction?
lojahw December 30th, 2009 1:21 pm :
Hi Devin,

I hope you & your family are well – it’s been a while since we talked!

To answer your questions, in brief, the key is the regula fidei. This determines whether a church is apostolic and upholds the essential truths of the Christian faith. One is not permitted to contradict these. However: “In the essentials unity, in the non-essentials liberty, in all things charity.”

I do agree that baptism is important. The Anglican Church practices it, and thus “observes what Christ commanded.” That is the first order of importance. A church that does not practice baptism is disobeying the clear command of Christ, and thus is apostate. Regarding my own views: the Anglican Church does not deny baptism to those who come in faith as Jesus’ disciples; in fact, in my particular church people may choose either pedo-baptism or credo-baptism (the rector has a preference for the latter, but also freely baptizes infants). As I wrote earlier about interpretive traditions on baptism:

Reformed Presbyterians emphasize the covenantal significance of baptism, whereby one is recognized (in lieu of circumcision) as a member of the covenantal community of faith, whereas Baptists emphasize the experiential significance of baptism as a sign and testimony of the individual’s new birth. There is indeed Scriptural support for both positions, so perhaps conflicts over the two is a false dilemma. Why cannot baptism be viewed as both/and instead of either/or?

A number of Protestant traditions, including the Anglican communion, are inclusive of the practices of both covenantal- and credo-baptism.

The ordination of women is also an important topic. Since this is not defined in the regula fidei, it is a matter of liberty. Indeed, the vast majority of Anglican Churches do not ordain women as priests or bishops; it is a matter of “in-house debate.” On the other hand, neither Scripture nor the early church excluded women from the deaconate. The “in-house debate” is not about whether women can hold church office, but about which offices are appropriate. I agree with most Anglican Churches that Scripture defines limits for the ordination of women, e.g., 1 Timothy 3:2, “An overseer [bishop] must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, …”

As to the question of whether an apostolic church can teach falsehood, please note that I accept the RCC as apostolic, yet I have given an example of a much more important issue (what is essential for salvation) for which I strongly believe the RCC has taught falsely. There is no contradiction in accepting the subordinate interpretive authority to Church leaders under the clear teaching of Scripture. There will always be areas of “in-house debate” – and that is OK as long as they are over non-essentials.

Blessings.
lojahw December 30th, 2009 1:38 pm :
To recap some important points, the position and practice of sola scriptura cleary differ from those of solo scriptura.

The sola scriptura position: 1) Scripture is the sole source of revelation; 2) Scripture is the final authoritative norm of doctrine and practice; 3) Scripture is to be interpreted in and by the church; 4) Scripture is to be interpreted according to the ancient regula fidei.

The solo scriptura position: 1) Scripture is the sole source of revelation; 2) equal authority of interpretation of Scripture is vested in everyone who claims to have the Holy Spirit; 3) the final authoritative norm of doctrine and practice depends on #2.

The differences are substantial. Because solo scriptura recognizes no higher interpretive authority than the individual, nor does it require that Scripture be interpreted according to the ancient regula fidei, there are many conflicting interpretations of Scripture – often extending to the essential truths declared by the regula fidei.

The differences in practice are well described in Bryan’s description:

pretty much everyone in the Pentecostal tradition in which I was raised would fall under Mathison’s definition of solo scriptura. No one believed that the Church (as Pentecostals define ‘Church’) had authority, because we all had the Spirit. Persons who disagreed with the pastor just went to a different Pentecostal ‘church’, or started their own ‘house church.’

On the basis of the above, there are indeed principled differences between the two.

On the question of ultimate interpretive authority, the Holy Spirit has provided all we need on the essential truths of the faith in the Scriptures.

What more important topic is there to test this than: “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?” The article claims that Scripture does not interpret Scripture, yet Jesus’ answer to this question is just one of scores of examples where the New Testament interprets the Old. Have you ever thought about how the numerous Old Testament quotations in the New Testament are there for the purpose of interpreting the faith? How would we know that Jonah’s three days in the belly of the fish was a sign of Jesus’ death and resurrection apart from Jesus’ explanation in Matthew 12? How would we know that Immanuel meant “God with us” unless Matthew told us? Hebrews is full of interpretations, including the salvation of Old Testament saints by faith, consistent with Jesus’ answer in Luke 10. The list goes on and on. When Jesus said, “you are mistaken, not understanding the Scriptures nor the power of God,” He made no reference to an external infallible interpretive authority.

The example from Luke 10:25-28 on what is essential for salvation demonstrates both the continuity of salvation as taught by Scripture and the discontinuity of interpretation given by Boniface VIII in Unam Sanctam. The Old Covenant testified to a better New Covenant, in which Jesus’ incarnation gave new meaning to the “Greatest Commandment.” To obey the Greatest Commandment in the New Covenant context entails being Jesus’ disciple: to believe in Him and to obey Him. However, there is no prophecy in the New Covenant about future changes in God’s plan of salvation; rather, it represents “the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints.” Regarding the continuity of the plan of salvation, the writer of Hebrews says about the Old Testament saints: “And all these, having gained approval through their faith, did not receive what was promised [on earth], because God had provided something better for us, so that apart from us they should not be made perfect” (Heb. 11:30-31). The salvation of the OT saints by faith is thus inseparably linked with the salvation “once for all” made possible through the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. There never were “stages of development” in the Christian faith that could later redefine what is “absolutely necessary for the salvation of every human creature.” Hence, Unam sanctam represents a false interpretation of Scripture regarding what is essential for salvation.

“In the essentials unity, in the non-essentials liberty, in all things charity.”

Blessings.
Bryan Cross December 30th, 2009 2:24 pm :
lojahw,

In #607 you claimed that there is only one essential, believing the Son. In #614 you claimed that there are a “number of essentials”. In #617 you claimed that the only essential is being Christ’s disciple, adding that you don’t think there is a “fixed comprehensive list” of essentials. In #619 you take as the only essential something any Jew could affirm (because Jesus is there drawing from the Old Testament). So your latest answer to the “essentials of salvation” question is one that is not even uniquely Christian.

Your multifarious answers to this question show that when proponents of sola scriptura talk about the “essentials of salvation”, they are speaking of a shape-shifting chimera, something that has no principled basis, something that can be whatever they want it to be, based on their own private interpretation of Scripture.

My other question was about the identity of the present “leaders of the Church”, and the basis for their interpretive authority. You claim that Stott and Packer are present “leaders of the Church”, because the “Anglican Church recognizes them as Church leaders”. I pointed out that charismatics recognize Bentley and Hinn as “church leaders”. So your answer just pushes the question back: What makes recognition by the Anglican Church legitimate, and recognition by charismatics illegitimate, when it comes to grounding church leadership, if not that you (mostly) agree with the Anglican interpretation of Scripture, but (mostly) don’t agree with the charismatic interpretation of Scripture? Your reply (in #619) is that the Anglican Church “meets the ancient requirements of an Apostolic Church, i.e. it teaches the regula fidei. But, again, this pushes back the question: Whose determination of the regula fide is authoritative? You quote the following from St. Irenaeus:

“the faith in one God, the Father Almighty, who made the heaven and the earth and the seas and all the things that are in them; and in one Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who was made flesh for our salvation; and in the Holy Spirit, who made known through the prophets the plan of salvation, and the coming, and the birth from a virgin, and the passion, and the resurrection from the dead, and the bodily ascension into heaven of the beloved Christ Jesus, our Lord, and his future appearing from heaven in the glory of the Father to sum up all things and to raise anew all flesh of the whole human race . . .” (Against All Heresies, 3.4.1-2)

If you think this quotation is a compete summary of the regula fidei, then the problem is that this quotation could be affirmed not only by Bentley and Hinn; it could also be affirmed by any Arian. So, do you consider the leaders of the Jehovah’s Witnesses to be leaders of the Church? If not, then why not?

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Bryan Cross December 30th, 2009 2:29 pm :
lojahw

In #624 you claimed:

On the basis of the above, there are indeed principled differences between the two.

Could you name one (just one) principled difference between sola scriptura and solo scriptura?

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
lojahw December 30th, 2009 9:35 pm :
Bryan,

You’re confusing different questions: what is “essential for salvation” is not the same thing as “essential truths of the Christian faith.” Jesus defines what is essential for salvation in terms of one’s personal relationship with God and his neighbor. If you will remember, I said the “one thing” is “to be Christ’s disciple, with all that entails.” “With all that entails” differs according to one’s circumstances and abilities. Jesus told the rich young ruler to sell all that he had. No one argues that this is normative for all Christians. He told another man not to go bury his father. He told the woman caught in adultery to go and sin no more. To the thief on the cross, he said, “Today you will be with me in paradise.” As I said, there are great truths of the Christian faith which those who are able must also confess and defend, but not all are able to do so. When talking about salvation (eternal life) Jesus didn’t ask anyone to recite a particular doctrinal litany.

The essential truths of Christian faith are those things which Christ’s disciples confess and defend according to their ability. A little child or a severely retarded person cannot be expected to confess and defend all of the same things as a seminary graduate. There is no contradiction in addressing these questions (what is essential for salvation and what are the essential truths of the Christian faith) separately.

Regarding the regula fidei, the reality is that present-day Churches that qualify as members of “the one holy catholic and apostolic church” ascribe to the regula fidei that has been passed down by the fathers of the Church: the Nicene Creed and/or the Apostles Creed (some also include the Athanasian Creed) – none of which the Jehovah’s Witnesses or the others you mentioned confess.

Blessings.
lojahw December 30th, 2009 9:46 pm :
Bryan,

Having listed the differences in the two positions and in their practice, I don’t know how to be any clearer. The components of sola scriptura are demonstrably different than those of solo scriptura. The former, constrained by interpretation consistent with the regula fidei and the authority of Church leaders to interpret Scripture (subordinate to Scripture itself) and the requirement that Scripture is the final authoritative norm of doctrine and practice are all absent in the latter.

Please explain in plain terms why you do not believe these are principled differences.

Your brother in Christ.
Bryan Cross December 31st, 2009 1:59 pm :
lojahw (re: #627),

You claim that the Nicene Creed (and/or Apostles Creed) are the regula fidei. The problem for the sola scriptura position, however, is that given sola scriptura, the only basis for the Creed’s being the regula fidei is that it agrees with your interpretation of Scripture. Otherwise, you would accept the fifth, sixth, and seventh ecumenical councils.

But if the authority of the Creed is based on its agreement with your interpretation of Scripture, then for the Arian whose interpretation of Scripture is at odds with the Creed, the Creed is non-authoritative.

If you disagree with what I’m saying here [in this comment], then what is the basis for the Nicene Creed’s authority, other than that it agrees with your interpretation of Scripture?

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
lojahw December 31st, 2009 4:36 pm :
Bryan,

It does not follow that the authority of the creeds is based on my interpretation of Scripture, nor that accepting them has anything to do with accepting the canons of later councils (none of which replaced the Symbol of Nicea with other creeds).

The historic regula fidei has been universally recognized by all orthodox Christians as consistent with the deposit of faith handed down by the Apostles. Because the regula fidei is a brief summary of doctrinal truths – that pre-existed the Reformation and summarizes the faith that has been “believed, everywhere, always, by all” approved Christian leaders since the time of the Apostles – orthodox Protestants accept it. Why do you think it is contingent on my personal interpretation of Scripture rather than that it informs my interpretation of Scripture? I learned the creeds before I read the Bible.

Blessings.
lojahw December 31st, 2009 4:57 pm :
Bryan wrote:

given sola scriptura, the only basis for the Creed’s being the regula fidei is that it agrees with your interpretation of Scripture.

This statement contradicts your article, which quotes Mathison as saying that sola scriptura entails interpreting Scripture according to the regula fidei, among other things.

It seems like you are trying to revise the claims of sola scriptura in order to defend your own private interpretation of sola scriptura. Why can’t you accept the definition given by those who follow it?

Blessings.
Bryan Cross December 31st, 2009 6:00 pm :
lojahw (re: #631),

I asked you: “What is the basis for the Nicene Creed’s authority, other than that it agrees with your interpretation of Scripture?”

You replied:

The historic regula fidei has been universally recognized by all orthodox Christians as consistent with the deposit of faith handed down by the Apostles.

That just pushes back the question: What is it, except your interpretation of Scripture, that determines what is “orthodoxy” and what is “heresy”? Since you are defining the regula fidei
in terms of “all orthodox Christians”, then you can’t define “orthodoxy” in terms of the regula fidei without arguing in a circle (defining A in terms of B, and defining B in terms of A). So now you need a basis for ‘orthodoxy’ and ‘heresy’ other than “agrees with my definition of Scripture” and “disagrees with my interpretation of Scripture”, respectively.

In #629 I wrote: given sola scriptura, the only basis for the Creed’s being the regula fidei is that it agrees with your interpretation of Scripture.

In #632 you replied:

This statement contradicts your article, which quotes Mathison as saying that sola scriptura entails interpreting Scripture according to the regula fidei, among other things.

My statement doesn’t contradict any claim in our article. (Here’s a piece of advice for dialogue. When you claim that someone has contradicted himself, show the contradiction, don’t just assert that there is a contradiction. Assertions are a dime a dozen. Rather than merely asserting a contradiction, show how the claim is logically incompatible with something we previously claimed to be true. That requires placing the two allegedly contradictory propositions adjacent to each other, and showing how if one is true the other must be false, and vice versa.)

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Bryan Cross December 31st, 2009 6:25 pm :
lojahw (re: #624)

You wrote:

The sola scriptura position: 1) Scripture is the sole source of revelation; 2) Scripture is the final authoritative norm of doctrine and practice; 3) Scripture is to be interpreted in and by the church; 4) Scripture is to be interpreted according to the ancient regula fidei.

The solo scriptura position: 1) Scripture is the sole source of revelation; 2) equal authority of interpretation of Scripture is vested in everyone who claims to have the Holy Spirit; 3) the final authoritative norm of doctrine and practice depends on #2.

The differences are substantial. Because solo scriptura recognizes no higher interpretive authority than the individual, nor does it require that Scripture be interpreted according to the ancient regula fidei, there are many conflicting interpretations of Scripture – often extending to the essential truths declared by the regula fidei.

The two alleged differences are “solo scriptura recognizes no higher interpretive authority than the individual” and solo scriptura “does not require that Scripture be interpreted according to the regular fidei. Now that the conversation has continued on a bit, it is clear why those two alleged differences are no difference at all. Regarding the first alleged difference, sola scriptura does not actually admit any higher interpretive authority than the individual, precisely because given sola scriptura, those admitted to have interpretive authority are only those who generally agree with one’s own interpretation of Scripture. Regarding the second alleged difference, given sola scriptura, what is allowed to count as the regula fidei is only what agrees with one’s own interpretation of Scripture.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
lojahw December 31st, 2009 6:36 pm :
Bryan,

Thank you for pointing out that Jehovah’s Witnesses and other heretics could use Irenaeus’ words in a manner he never intended. I’m sure you wouldn’t rank him among Arians or other heretics. But this also illustrates the point that sola scriptura safeguards against such distortions by insisting that Scripture itself is the ultimate regula fidei, the final norm of doctrine and practice. One must interpret Irenaeus’ words in light of what the Scriptures tell us about them. The Lord Jesus Christ in Irenaeus’ statement is the same Lord Jesus Christ expounded by the Gospels and Epistles, and could never be equated with the Arian heresy.

Also, following the Scriptures as the final norm of doctrine and practice, one should never be led astray by false prophets and charlatans like Jehovah’s Witnesses or Benny Hinn or Todd Bentley. “My hand will be against the prophets who see false visions and utter lying divinations. They will have no place in the council of My people” (Ezek. 13:9), and “You will know them by their fruit.”

Blessings.
lojahw December 31st, 2009 6:51 pm :
Bryan,

It is ironic that after I told you that I learned the creeds before I read (past tense) the Bible that you persist in telling me that the only reason I accept them is because they agree with my interpretation of the Bible. You are confusing correlation with causation. I have honestly told you that I believed the creeds before I read (past tense) the Bible.

As to your statement about sola scriptura contradicting the article, you wrote:

given sola scriptura, the only basis for the Creed’s being the regula fidei is that it agrees with your interpretation of Scripture.

The article (section III) says:

Mathison defends what he calls ‘sola scriptura,’ namely, the position that “Scripture [is] the sole source of revelation; that it [is] the final authoritative norm of doctrine and practice; that it [is] to be interpreted in and by the church, and that it [is] to be interpreted according to the regula fidei.”

What is the last claim of sola scriptura above? It is that the Scripture is “to be interpreted according to the regula fidei.” It does not say that the creeds are optional, depending on one’s interpretation of Scripture.

I hope this clears up any misunderstanding.

Blessings.
Devin Rose December 31st, 2009 7:02 pm :
lojahw,

(Writing from the hospital room with wife and new baby…)

Your personal belief (on baptism) is very general, such that “as long as a ‘church’ does it, they’re good.” With that broad a requirement for a church, I can understand why you do not think that what baptism does or doesn’t do or what a particular Christian tradition teaches about what baptism does and is is that important. (Same with the Eucharist I conjecture.)

I would challenge one part of your later comments concerning the Nicene Creed by bringing up the clause “one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.” It is not just one baptism, but one baptism with a purpose, that actually accomplishes something, through which God forgives sins. But you do not believe that God forgives sins through baptism, so when you say you accept the Nicene Creed, you do not accept this part of it in full, or else you must think that one baptism for the forgiveness of sins means something else. The early Christian witnesses and the unanimous teaching of the Fathers and of the Church has been that baptism regenerates, that sin is forgiven through it. How do you reconcile this apparent contradiction?

Your definitions of matters of the Faith are sufficiently elastic so as to encompass a broad range of theology and doctrine held by different Christian traditions, making it hard to “pin you down” on specifics, as you can just wave them away as being “unimportant” or “non-essential.” Your _particular beliefs_, on the other hand, are specific and do not coincide with, say, the Anglican Communion on many issues, but to you those issues are non-essential; the problem is that nowhere in the Bible is there a bulleted list of what the “essentials” are.

Someone with an even more elastic set of definitions than you have could classify Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons as Christians because they believe in (this person’s) one essential thing: “belief in Jesus.” “As long as the church teaches that you have to ‘believe in Jesus’ it’s a good one,” and it is “unessential” (to them) as to what the specifics are of what the church teaches _about_ Jesus other than that he “can save us.” You would take issue with them because this is too elastic, too broad, but they just insist that “the essentials” are just what they say, and they can show you the Bible verses to prove it (love God, love neighbor, believe in Jesus, “end of story”). It is an impenetrable position but one that doesn’t help us to know what, exactly, is truth on matters of faith and morals (what they are, what they aren’t, how God wants us to do things, what his commands mean, etc.)

What say you to this challenge? (And I hope this helps the discussion along.)
Bryan Cross December 31st, 2009 7:09 pm :
lojahw (re: #635)

You wrote:

It is ironic that after I told you that I learned the creeds before I read (past tense) the Bible that you persist in telling me that the only reason I accept them is because they agree with my interpretation of the Bible.

Actually, I never claimed anything about *you*. I’m talking about the basis for the authority of the creeds, given sola scriptura. Of course people can come to believe the creeds before ever cracking a Bible. That’s entirely consistent with my claim that given sola scriptura, the only basis for the Creed’s authority is that it agrees with one’s own interpretation of Scripture.

You wrote:

As to your statement about sola scriptura contradicting the article, you wrote:

given sola scriptura, the only basis for the Creed’s being the regula fidei is that it agrees with your interpretation of Scripture.

The article (section III) says:

Mathison defends what he calls ‘sola scriptura,’ namely, the position that “Scripture [is] the sole source of revelation; that it [is] the final authoritative norm of doctrine and practice; that it [is] to be interpreted in and by the church, and that it [is] to be interpreted according to the regula fidei.”

What is the last claim of sola scriptura above? It is that the Scripture is “to be interpreted according to the regula fidei.” It does not say that the creeds are optional, depending on one’s interpretation of Scripture.

There is no contradiction between what I said in my comment, and what we said in the article. Given sola scriptura, the only basis for the authority of the Creed is its agreement with one’s own interpretation of Scripture. If you think that the Creed has some other basis for its authority, other than agreement with one’s own interpretation of Scripture, please explain that basis for authority. Catholics and Orthodox have another basis of authority to which to appeal (other than “agreement with one’s own interpretation of Scripture), precisely because we believe in apostolic succession. But sola scriptura, because it denies apostolic succession, does not have any other basis for the Creed’s authority than agreement with one’s own interpretation of Scripture.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Bryan Cross December 31st, 2009 7:22 pm :
lojahw,

You seem to have two different ideas about what is the regula fidei. In #627 you wrote:

Regarding the regula fidei, the reality is that present-day Churches that qualify as members of “the one holy catholic and apostolic church” ascribe to the regula fidei that has been passed down by the fathers of the Church: the Nicene Creed and/or the Apostles Creed (some also include the Athanasian Creed) – none of which the Jehovah’s Witnesses or the others you mentioned confess. (my emphasis)

Likewise, in #630 you wrote:

Because the regula fidei is a brief summary of doctrinal truths – that pre-existed the Reformation and summarizes the faith that has been “believed, everywhere, always, by all” approved Christian leaders since the time of the Apostles…. (my emphasis)

In #634 you wrote:

But this also illustrates the point that sola scriptura safeguards against such distortions by insisting that Scripture itself is the ultimate regula fidei, the final norm of doctrine and practice. (my emphasis)

So in #627 and #630 you claim that the regula fidei is the Creeds, i.e. “a brief summary of doctrinal truths”. But in #634 you claim that the regula fidei is “Scripture itself.” So which is it?

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Sean Patrick December 31st, 2009 8:07 pm :
Congrats Devin!
lojahw January 1st, 2010 11:40 am :
Bryan,

Your argument that agreement with one’s interpretation of Scripture is the basis of authority for the Creeds, when in fact, the former comes after belief in the latter, makes absolutely no sense.

You pose a false dilemma: that only the individual’s interpretation of Scripture or your Magisterium can be the basis of authority for the Creeds. If I haven’t said it explicitly before: the basis of authority of the Creeds is two fold: 1) agreement with the Scriptures (there is universal agreement that the creeds are consistent with “the Word of Truth” and no one has ever demonstrated that they contradict this infallible Word); and 2) the secondary authority of the “one holy catholic and apostolic” Church. Neither of these is contingent on any individual’s interpretation of Scripture.

If you disagree, please explain how the above is contingent on any one individual’s interpreation of Scripture.

Blessings.
Bryan Cross January 1st, 2010 12:14 pm :
lojahw (re: #640),

You wrote:

If I haven’t said it explicitly before: the basis of authority of the Creeds is two fold: 1) agreement with the Scriptures (there is universal agreement that the creeds are consistent with “the Word of Truth” and no one has ever demonstrated that they contradict this infallible Word);

The Arians claimed that their position was in “agreement” with the Scriptures. So there wasn’t “universal agreement” with the Creed, or that what is contained in the Creed is what Scripture taught.

In this lecture (starting around 9’30”), Prof. Feingold explains precisely why Scripture was insufficient at the Council of Nicea.

Dr. Lawrence Feingold on St. Athanasius’s Battle Against Arianism

To get “universal agreement”, (as I already explained in #632), you have to restrict the set of persons, so that it does not include those who disagree. And given sola scriptura, the only way to restrict the set of persons is on the basis of those who generally agree with one’s own interpretation of Scripture. So, given sola scriptura and this first criteria (that you offer), the basis for the Creed’s authority would be that it agrees with one’s own interpretation of Scripture.

Second, you wrote:

and 2) the secondary authority of the “one holy catholic and apostolic” Church. Neither of these is contingent on any individual’s interpretation of Scripture.

The problem is, as we explained in the article, that given sola scriptura, what counts as the “one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church” is that set of persons who sufficiently agree with one’s own interpretation of Scripture. So, given sola scriptura and this second criterion (that you offer), the Creed would be authoritative only if it agrees with one’s own interpretation of Scripture.

Therefore, given sola scriptura, both of the criteria (that you offer) make the authority of the Creed contingent on its agreement with one’s own interpretation of Scripture.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
lojahw January 1st, 2010 12:18 pm :
Congratulations, Devin. Blessings to you & your family!

“One baptism for the forgiveness of sins” is a not really a problem for me because:

Peter {said} to them, “Repent, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off, as many as the Lord our God will call to Himself.” (Acts 2:38-29).

I affirm the statement in the Creed because forgiveness of sins is indeed promised to all who repent and are baptized.

Your definitions of matters of the Faith are sufficiently elastic so as to encompass a broad range of theology and doctrine held by different Christian traditions, making it hard to “pin you down” on specifics

What you perceive as elasticity is limited by the essential truths declared by the Creeds. Cults do not accept the essentials truths of the Creeds. If you were to read all of the church fathers, you would find that no two agree 100% with any other, and when you carefully consider all of their writings, unanimity of belief is limited to the articles of the Creeds. There are exceptions among the church fathers even about the things you think they agreed on about baptism and the Eucharist.

To declare something essential is to exclude anyone who has ever had a different opinion on it from being recognized as a Christian. I am not willing to deny the legitimacy of one’s Christian faith simply because I disagree with them on matters beyond the Creeds. This is what the ancients said defined an apostolic church: to teach and agree with the historic Rule of Faith, which represented the Apostles’ teaching.

Blessings.
lojahw January 1st, 2010 12:21 pm :
Bryan,

I recognize both the historic association of the term regula fidei with the Creeds and the broader application of the term to Scripture as the final norm of doctrine and practice. As our previous exchange pointed out how Jehovah’s Witnesses and heretics are able to distort the meaning of the Creeds, interpretation of the Creeds must be consistent with the infallible Word of God.

Blessings.
lojahw January 1st, 2010 12:43 pm :
Bryan wrote,

The Arians claimed that their position was in “agreement” with the Scriptures. So there wasn’t “universal agreement” with the Creed, or that what is contained in the Creed is what Scripture taught.

Bryan, the Arians claims were refuted by the 318 bishops at Nicea, and notwithstanding Feingold’s arguments, the basis of the Nicene refutation was indeed the Scriptures, as Theodoret testified in his account of the Council.

Your arguments entail a disavowal of the ancient Church. Sola scriptura entails no such rejection, but you want to define it in your own terms rather than how its adherents define it. In other words, your interpretation of sola scriptura is incorrect. By acknowledging the Church and its historic Creeds, Sola Scriptura encompasses them. Your continued insistence that sola scriptura cannot do this looks more and more like a sophist argument for argument’s sake rather than an attempt to seek the truth.

It seems you are trying to make an obscure philosophical argument which does not correspond with reality (e.g., that the authority of the Creeds, which are believed first, is contingent on an individual’s interpretation of Scripture, which follows).

Your brother in Christ.
Bryan Cross January 1st, 2010 1:28 pm :
lojahw (re: #644),

The term ‘refute’ means “shown an argument to be unsound”. The bishops did not ‘refute’ Arianism; they condemned it, by defining the Faith by way of an extra-biblical term: homoousious. They were unable, by Scripture alone, to refute Arianism. The Arians could affirm every single verse of Scripture. That’s precisely why the bishops had to require affirmation of the term homoousious. So if the bishops had no authority by way of apostolic succession, then their requirement of affirming homoousious would have had no more authority than its denial by the Arians. Scripture alone was insufficient to resolve the dispute, precisely because both sides could affirm every verse in Scripture. And since sola scriptura denies the transfer of authority by way of apostolic succession, therefore the Council of Nicea and the Creed, given sola scriptura, only have authority if you agree with its interpretation of Scripture.

Your arguments entail a disavowal of the ancient Church.

How so? Mere assertions are a dime a dozen.

Sola scriptura entails no such rejection,

Yes it does, for the reasons I have already explained.

but you want to define it in your own terms rather than how its adherents define it.

That is a statement about *me*, and not about the argument I have given.

In other words, your interpretation of sola scriptura is incorrect.

How so?

By acknowledging the Church and its historic Creeds, Sola Scriptura encompasses them.

More assertions. I’ve already explained why, given sola scriptura, what counts as ‘the Church’ are those who sufficiently agree with one’s own interpretation of Scripture. If you disagree, show the alternative basis for identifying the Church.

Your continued insistence that sola scriptura cannot do this looks more and more like a sophist argument for argument’s sake rather than an attempt to seek the truth. It seems you are trying to make an obscure philosophical argument which does not correspond with reality (e.g., that the authority of the Creeds, which are believed first, is contingent on an individual’s interpretation of Scripture, which follows).

Ad hominem duly noted. You are attacking me (“your insistence …” “you are trying … ” ); my arguments, however, stand unrefuted.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Devin Rose January 1st, 2010 3:56 pm :
Thanks lojahw for the congratulations!

I have a brief moment to respond and mention that I was using “unanimous consent” of the Fathers, not in a generic lay definition, but in the _specific Catholic definition_ meaning their interpretation of Scripture (on baptism), where “unanimous” does not necessarily mean every single one without any difference at all but a strong, overwhelming consensus. ((Protestant pastor) William Webster was confused on this point as well in his book “The Church of Rome at the Bar of History”.) Baptismal regeneration is unanimously taught in this sense, something that even Webster concedes in his book, forcing him to conclude that “the Church went off the rails” and into serious error from the very beginning on baptism.

You mention the verses from Acts and give your own interpretation of them to explain how you can accept the Nicene Creed (which does not mention the repentance but just the baptism itself). I think this is an indication of why it is problematic that you equate _your interpretation_ of Scripture with “the objective truth God himself intended to convey through Scripture.” Is it plausible that your interpretation here could be correct and thus allow us to read into the Nicene Creed “one baptism (and repentance) for the forgiveness of sins?” Sure, it is plausible in the sense of it is in the realm of possibility, but does your interpretation align with the successors of the Apostles in the early Church on baptism _itself_? And as I mentioned, it does not, since baptismal regeneration was taught, and children were included in baptism even in the early Church. So of course we all agree for adult converts that repentance is necessary, but for children below the age of reason baptism is all that is needed for regeneration, and the Nicene Creed demonstrates this, significantly without adding the words “and repentance” to the “one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.”

Since you think that your specific beliefs are the same as the objective meaning of the Scriptures, it is exceedingly difficult to show you that you are actually making interpretations of the Scriptures which are not in line with the Faith of the Church, even in the early centuries.

Peace in Christ,
Devin
lojahw January 1st, 2010 7:42 pm :
Bryan,

I beg to differ on the question of the bishops’ refutation of the Arian heresy at Nicea, and won’t say more here since I already addressed Theodoret’s account of their refutation and the Scriptural foundations for their use of “homoousios” (see post #267).

You said all of my statements are mere assertions, such as:

By acknowledging the Church and its historic Creeds, Sola Scriptura encompasses them.

As I’ve said before, the apostolic Church is recognized by adherence to the regula fidei, e.g., the Nicene Creed. Please explain how this depends on one’s individual interpretation of Scripture?

Why do you not accept what Mathison and I have told you about sola scriptura?

the position that “Scripture [is] the sole source of revelation; that it [is] the final authoritative norm of doctrine and practice; that it [is] to be interpreted in and by the church, and that it [is] to be interpreted according to the regula fidei.”

How can one interpret scripture according to the regula fidei (e.g., the Nicene Creed) if one does not first acknowledge the authority of the Creed?

I’m really having trouble understanding how you think individual interpretation functions in the above context.

Blessings.
lojahw January 1st, 2010 9:46 pm :
Hi Devin, ‘Happy New Year & a happy home-going for you & yours!

Please understand that I intentionally used “unanimous” in a different sense than the RCC sense associated with “unanimous consent.” But I was not using “unanimous” with respect to everything the Church teaches, but only with respect to essential doctrines, because:

To declare anything essential is to exclude anyone who has ever had a different opinion from being recognized as a Christian. I am not willing to deny the legitimacy of one’s Christian faith simply because I disagree with them on matters beyond the Creeds.

For example, the baptismal procedures documented by Hippolytus in the third century were incompatible with infant baptism (catechumens must “hear the word for 3 years”). If one were to say that infant baptism was “essential,” then Hippolytus and all others who did not practice it would be considered “outside of the Church.”

Regarding your analysis of my comments on baptism, do you believe that “Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved” is limited by the words alone (cf. John 3:36)? Neither of us should second guess the Apostle or the bishops at Constantinople (the phrase about baptism was not part of the AD 325 creed). And do you know that the early church fathers separated baptism from repentance? They didn’t appear to in Hippolytus’ day.

I understand baptismal regeneration as Paul taught:

““Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, in order that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, that our body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin; for he who as died is freed from sin. Now if we have died with Christ; we believe that we shall also live with Him…” – Rom 6:4-8

Yet, can one claim the promises of Romans 6:4-8 without believing?

“Whoever has believed and has been baptized shall be saved; but whoever does not believe will be condemned.”Mark 16:15-16

Can one truly be regenerated and not believe?

Blessings.
lojahw January 2nd, 2010 12:01 am :
Bryan wrote:

And since sola scriptura denies the transfer of authority by way of apostolic succession, therefore the Council of Nicea and the Creed, given sola scriptura, only have authority if you agree with its interpretation of Scripture.

You left out an important fact: the Arian bishops at the time of the Council of Nicea claimed apostolic succession as well. There was no difference in “credentials” between the Arian bishops and the orthodox bishops who met at Nicea. It was the authority of the totality of the Scriptures carefully studied that convinced the bishops at Nicea that Arius contradicted the truth about Christ.

Blessings.
Bryan Cross January 2nd, 2010 1:01 am :
lojahw,

In #647 you wrote:

As I’ve said before, the apostolic Church is recognized by adherence to the regula fidei, e.g., the Nicene Creed. Please explain how this depends on one’s individual interpretation of Scripture?

Because without apostolic succession, the only remaining basis for the Nicene Creed’s authority is that it agrees with one’s own interpretation of Scripture. If you disagree, then please specify the alternative basis for the Nicene Creed’s authority. You can’t say “the Church”, because you have just defined “the apostolic Church” in terms of that which affirms the Nicene Creed. So if you tried to base the authority of the Creed on its being promulgated by the Church, you would have just reasoned in a circle: i.e. the Creed is authoritative because the Church taught it, and the Church is identified as that which adheres to the Creed. Any cult or sect could set up their own circular system, and since no circle is any better than any other circle, this would reduce Christianity to the status of every other cult or sect.

You wrote:

Why do you not accept what Mathison and I have told you about sola scriptura?

This is not about *me*, so don’t make it about me. (That would be an ad hominem.) It is not about my accepting or rejecting anything. It is about what is true. Here’s the claim:

the position that “Scripture [is] the sole source of revelation; that it [is] the final authoritative norm of doctrine and practice; that it [is] to be interpreted in and by the church, and that it [is] to be interpreted according to the regula fidei.”

As we already explained in the article, and as I’ve explained numerous places in the comments above, when we analyze the terms ‘church’ and ‘regula fidei ‘, given sola scriptura, we find that both terms are ultimately defined in terms of agreement with one’s own interpretation of Scripture. So the statement ends up reducing to this: Scripture is the sole source of revelation; it is the final authoritative norm of doctrine and practice; it is to be interpreted in and by [those who generally agree with one’s own interpretation of Scripture]; and it is to be interpreted according to [the summary of doctrine that agrees with one’s own interpretation of Scripture].

You wrote:

How can one interpret scripture according to the regula fidei (e.g., the Nicene Creed) if one does not first acknowledge the authority of the Creed?

Easily, by using the Creed as a handy guide that can be tossed aside (or modified at will) if and to the degree that one finds it to be in disagreement with one’s interpretation of Scripture. Many people hear the Creed and assume it is authoritative, but don’t stop to think about the basis for its authority. Protestants who treat the Creed as authoritative have not realized that given sola scriptura, there is no basis (in their theological system) for the Creed’s authority. They are free to disagree with it or modify it or make up their own, because given the denial of apostolic succession, the Nicene Council has no more authority than the individual reading the Bible at his kitchen table.

In #649 you wrote:

You left out an important fact: the Arian bishops at the time of the Council of Nicea claimed apostolic succession as well. There was no difference in “credentials” between the Arian bishops and the orthodox bishops who met at Nicea.

I didn’t leave out that fact. I addressed it in multiple places in the comments above. Other than the episcopal successor of Peter, apostolic succession does not guarantee that any particular bishop is infallible. But apostolic succession does guarantee that the decisions of the Church, in ecumenical council, are authoritative on all Christians, and infallible in matters of faith and morals. Hence the error of the individual Arian bishops (having apostolic succession) is fully compatible with the binding authority (and infallibility) of the decision of the Council and the Creed they produced.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
lojahw January 2nd, 2010 10:37 am :
Bryan,

Your last post essentially admits that the article’s use of the term “apostolic succession” amounts to special pleading since your Magisterium teaches:

“The Churches which, while not existing in perfect communion with the Catholic Church, remain united to her by means of the closest bonds, that is, by apostolic succession and a valid Eucharist, are true particular Churches … they lack full communion with the Catholic Church, since they do not accept the Catholic doctrine of the Primacy.” (Dominus Iesus, 17)

Please note that nothing herein has anything to do with individual interpretation.

Blessings.
lojahw January 2nd, 2010 10:38 am :
Instead of making assertions and counter-assertions about the Arian heresy, consider the following sample of the Arian position (courtesy of Athanasius) and the Scriptural responses:

Arians:

in the Proverbs, “The Lord created me the beginning of His ways, for His Works.” Therefore, “the Word [is] alien and unlike in all things to the Father’s essence and propriety,’ but belongs to things originated and created, and is one of these.”

“There once was when he was not.”

This is the crux of the Arian position. How did Scripture enable the bishops at Nicea to refute the Arians?

“All things came into being by Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being” (John 1:3)
And: “For by Him all things were created, {both} in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities–all things have been created through Him and for Him.” (Col. 1:16)
And: “yet for us there is {but} one God, the Father, from whom are all things and we {exist} for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we {exist} through Him. (1 Cor. 8:6)

NOTHING CAME INTO BEING THAT HAS COME INTO BEING APART FROM HIM! Therefore, Arians wrongly interpreted what Proverbs 8:22-25 taught about “Sophia” to mean that the “Logos” in John 1 was created.

“We beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14)

Likewise: “He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish” (John 3:16; cf. John 3:18; Heb. 11:17; 1 John 4:9)

,

The ONLY BEGOTTEN who makes the glory of the Father visible to human beings is of the same nature as the Father. Therefore, the Word is not “alien and unlike in all things to the Father’s essence;” He was NOT created. What is made is not of the same nature as its creator.

‘He that has seen Me, has seen the Father” (John 14:8-9)
and “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30)

To see the Father in Christ proves that He is not “alien and unlike in all things to the Father’s essence and propriety.” The Son and the Father cannot be one if the Son is “alien and unlike in all things to the Father’s essence and propriety.” The Father is uncreated; likewise, the Son must be if to see Him is to see the Father.

‘Who being the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature’ (Hebrews 1:3)

Hence, He cannot be “alien and unlike in all things to the Father’s essence and propriety.”

‘Glorify Thou Me, O Father, with the glory which I had with You before the world was [John 17:5)
And: “I am the LORD, that is My name; I will not give My glory to another, Nor My praise to graven images.” (Isaiah 42:9).

Whereas Jesus possessed God’s glory before creation – since God shared His glory with Christ – then Christ cannot be another “alien and unlike in all things to the Father’s essence and propriety.”

And:

‘Who being in the form of God … emptied Himself, taking the form of a man’ (Phil. 2:6-7)

Christ cannot both be in the form of God and “alien and unlike in all things to the Father’s essence and propriety.” Furthermore, no created thing can be “in the form of God.”

Finally, the Arians asserted: “He is not unalterable, as the Father is, but alterable in nature, as the creatures.”

Athanasius wisely observed: if the Father is unalterable as the Arians claim and Scripture teaches, then He is eternally the Father and His Son is eternally begotten. He never was ‘not Father’ and His only-begotten Son was never ‘not only-begotten.’

“Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever.” (Heb 13:8) He doesn’t change just as the Father “with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow” (James 1:17) never changes. The great “I AM WHO I AM” never changes.

On the basis of all of the above, the bishops at Nicea concluded that Christ was begotten, not made, having the same nature as His Father. Thus they adopted the term ‘homoousios’ to make clear that the Son is of the same (uncreated) nature as the Father.

Note: modern-day Arians say that John 1:1 should be translated, “And the Word was a god.” Aside from all of the above arguments to the contrary, they are inconsistent with their own translation of John 1:6, 12, 13, 18. Also, ‘en’ (was) in John 1:1 has a different meaning than ‘egeneto’ (became) in John 1:14. The Word was God but became flesh. Also, leaving out the article with ‘theos’ avoids Sabellianism, which claims the Father and the Word are interchangeable, while placing the predicate nominative ‘theos’ first, together with verse 3 (“apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being”) avoids Arianism. The Word is distinguishable from God and yet the Word was God, of Divine nature – not ‘a God,’ which John’s Jewish readers would have considered to be blasphemy.

On what basis do you assert:

They were unable, by Scripture alone, to refute Arianism.

By casting doubt on the ability of Scripture to refute Arianism, you effectively belittle the Scriptures, the Word of God.

Blessings.
Bryan Cross January 2nd, 2010 10:52 am :
lojahw (re: #651),

How exactly, does the statement from Dominus Iesus show that our use of the term ‘apostolic succession’ “amounts to special pleading”?

(Remember, if you think a position or claim is in error, don’t just assert it to be in error; show it to be in error.)

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Bryan Cross January 2nd, 2010 12:03 pm :
lojahw (re: #652),

The Arians were able to affirm all the verses that you cite. In addition, Scripture itself does not specify which verses are the hermeneutical standard for interpreting other verses. This is why Scripture alone was not sufficient to resolve the Arian controversy. (Scripture was never intended to do away with the need for councils.) In addition, Scripture does not provide the term ‘homoousious‘; in that respect, Scripture is insufficient. The Council made affirmation that the Son is homoousious with the Father one of the essential articles of the faith. If Scripture had been sufficient to resolve the controversy, this act by the Council would have been unnecessary, as would the making of the Creed, and the Council itself.

We’re up to 650+ comments. I suggest that you take a break from commenting, step back and spend some time reflecting carefully on the article and all the comments. What I wrote in #650 sums up the flaw we have argued in our article is intrinsic to sola scriptura.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
TurretinFan January 2nd, 2010 3:37 pm :
Bryan:

In response to your comments above that the Scriptures were not sufficient to defeat Arianism, I’d respectfully disagree with you for the reasons I’ve set forth in a separate post (link) since that seems to get us a bit away from the main topic of your article.

I’ve read your responses to me above (about 50 comments up the page, by now, I think), and I am preparing a detailed reply (hence the delay).

-TurretinFan
Devin Rose January 2nd, 2010 3:43 pm :
lojahw,

I need to bow out of our discussion at this point. I’ll look to continue our discussion either in-person or with a different topic in the next Called to Communion article.

God bless!
Bryan Cross January 2nd, 2010 5:07 pm :
TurretinFan, (re: #655)

I didn’t find any “reasons” in your post at the link. I see an ad hominem directed at me (something we don’t permit here on CTC, and something you don’t do when you are here), a challenge to me, an assertion that my claim is “absurd”, and a number of patristic quotations that when understood correctly, are fully compatible with what I said.

Of course homoousius is present in Scripture in one sense, even though not present in another sense. It is present materially, even though not present formally. This is the sense in which Scripture does show the error of Arianism, and is the sense in which the quotations you cite are stating that Scripture is opposed to Arianism. This is the way in which Scripture was used (by the orthodox Catholics) to show the error of Arianism. In addition, those quotations are not saying that Scripture, separated from Tradition, answers the debate between the orthodox Catholics and the Arians. Scripture, as informed by the apostolic Tradition, provides the proper understanding of “I and the Father are one” and the other relevant passages (e.g. John 1). This is how we can know, for example, that in this verse Jesus is not teaching modalism or social trinitarianism. The living Tradition of the Church, guided by the Holy Spirit, allows the Church to see and understand rightly what is materially (but not formally) present in Scripture. In addition, none of these patristic quotations shows that Scripture, apart from the Magisterium of the Church, is sufficient to resolve the Catholic – Arianism debate. None of these Fathers thought the Nicene Council superfluous or unnecessary.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
TurretinFan January 2nd, 2010 5:19 pm :
Bryan:

The reasons are historical reasons, as well as the reasons contained within the historical evidence provided. I’m sorry that the way I explained that in my post struck you as ad hominem. The post already explains it pretty well, and your comments about “tradition” and the “magisterium” aren’t responsive to the issue regarding Scripture and apostolic succession. As for formal sufficiency, none of the fathers I quoted make the formal/material sufficiency you are attempting to draw – quite the contrary.

-TurretinFan
lojahw January 3rd, 2010 10:48 pm :
Before I leave the discussion, I would appreciate answers to my questions in #647 and elsewhere (restated & paraphrased here):

Starting with Mathison’s claims (with which I concur) about sola scriptura:

the position that “Scripture [is] the sole source of revelation; that it [is] the final authoritative norm of doctrine and practice; that it [is] to be interpreted in and by the church, and that it [is] to be interpreted according to the regula fidei [the Creed, in this context].”

1) How can the a priori requirement that Scripture “be interpreted according to the regula fidei” [the Creed] give one the authority to deviate from the Creed based on one’s interpretation of Scripture?

2) Given that the (apostolic) “Church” is recognized by its adherence to the Creed, and that Scripture is a priori to “be interpreted in and by” such a Church, how can one appeal to individual interpretation of Scripture to look for others who share a common deviation from the Creed in order to either start or join a different Church?

3) If you disagree that the Creed covers the essential truths of the faith, please explain.

Blessings.
Francis Beckwith January 4th, 2010 9:19 pm :
What Bryan is saying is really uncontroversial: the Arian reading of Scripture is not obviously irrational. It is, of course, heretical. But that does not mean that a fully informed person of good will, with knowledge of the languages, could not have come up with the Arian reading of Scripture. In fact, Augustine–who embraced Nicea without remainder–saw wiggle room when it came to the scope of the biblical canon. (Interestingly, Augustine seems to imply that canonical Scripture is a species and not the genus of “sacred writings” or the equivalent of “Scripture”). This is because the Church was logically, and chronologically, prior to the Scripture as a single whole (for obviously, the OT predates the Church):

But let us now go back to consider the third step here mentioned, for it is about it that I have set myself to speak and reason as the Lord shall grant me wisdom. The most skillful interpreter of the sacred writings, then, will be he who in the first place has read them all and retained them in his knowledge, if not yet with full understanding, still with such knowledge as reading gives—those of them, at least, that are called canonical. For he will read the others with greater safety when built up in the belief of the truth, so that they will not take first possession of a weak mind, nor, cheating it with dangerous falsehoods and delusions, fill it with prejudices adverse to a sound understanding. Now, in regard to the canonical Scriptures, he must follow the judgment of the greater number of Catholic churches; and among these, of course, a high place must be given to such as have been thought worthy to be the seat of an apostle and to receive epistles. Accordingly, among the canonical Scriptures he will judge according to the following standard: to prefer those that are received by all the Catholic churches to those which some do not receive. Among those, again, which are not received by all, he will prefer such as have the sanction of the greater number and those of greater authority, to such as are held by the smaller number and those of less authority. If, however, he shall find that some books are held by the greater number of churches, and others by the churches of greater authority (though this is not a very likely thing to happen), I think that in such a case the authority on the two sides is to be looked upon as equal.

13. Now the whole canon of Scripture on which we say this judgment is to be exercised, is contained in the following books:— Five books of Moses, that is, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy; one book of Joshua the son of Nun; one of Judges; one short book called Ruth, which seems rather to belong to the beginning of Kings; next, four books of Kings, and two of Chronicles— these last not following one another, but running parallel, so to speak, and going over the same ground. The books now mentioned are history, which contains a connected narrative of the times, and follows the order of the events. There are other books which seem to follow no regular order, and are connected neither with the order of the preceding books nor with one another, such as Job, and Tobias, and Esther, and Judith, and the two books of Maccabees, and the two of Ezra, which last look more like a sequel to the continuous regular history which terminates with the books of Kings and Chronicles. Next are the Prophets, in which there is one book of the Psalms of David; and three books of Solomon, viz., Proverbs, Song of Songs, and Ecclesiastes. For two books, one called Wisdom and the other Ecclesiasticus, are ascribed to Solomon from a certain resemblance of style, but the most likely opinion is that they were written by Jesus the son of Sirach. Still they are to be reckoned among the prophetical books, since they have attained recognition as being authoritative. The remainder are the books which are strictly called the Prophets: twelve separate books of the prophets which are connected with one another, and having never been disjoined, are reckoned as one book; the names of these prophets are as follows:— Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi; then there are the four greater prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, Ezekiel. The authority of the Old Testament is contained within the limits of these forty-four books. That of the New Testament, again, is contained within the following:— Four books of the Gospel, according to Matthew, according to Mark, according to Luke, according to John; fourteen epistles of the Apostle Paul— one to the Romans, two to the Corinthians, one to the Galatians, to the Ephesians, to the Philippians, two to the Thessalonians, one to the Colossians, two to Timothy, one to Titus, to Philemon, to the Hebrews: two of Peter; three of John; one of Jude; and one of James; one book of the Acts of the Apostles; and one of the Revelation of John.

( https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/12022.htm )
Alex January 5th, 2010 12:08 am :
Enabling followup comments to be sent to email. Thanks
Michael Liccione January 5th, 2010 1:24 am :
At the end of the day, all sola-scripturists who also accept the Nicene Creed must say that Scripture is not only materially but also formally sufficient to yield Nicene orthodoxy. That is the clearest formulation and application of the doctrine of the “perspicuity” of Scripture. It is the position Dr. William Witt of Trinity School for Ministry took, and stuck to, in his long exchange with me in 2008-9. It is also the position defended by every Reformed apologist I’ve dealt with. As one of them put it, “orthodoxy is rationally inevitable, given simply the canon of Scripture.”

I have always taken that result to be a reductio ad absurdum of the Nicene sola-scripturist view, which is why I no longer dispute the matter in detail with people who hold that view. It is simply absurd to suggest that only the Nicene-orthodox hermeneutic of Scripture is rationally plausible. If things were otherwise, then the Council of Antioch in 268, the biggest hitherto in the Church’s history, would not have rejected the term homoousios. It would not have taken decades after Nicea I in 325, which adopted that very same term as a shibboleth of orthodoxy, for the Nicene hermeneutic to prevail among the Eastern bishops. It would not have taken a century-and-a-half after the the first Council of Constantinople in 381 to roll back Arianism definitively. To hold that dissenters from Nicene orthodoxy were wrong is one thing; to imply that they were too dull, ignorant, or ill-willed to see what was rationally inevitable is quite another.
Philologus January 5th, 2010 2:51 am :
“To hold that dissenters from Nicene orthodoxy were wrong is one thing; to imply that they were too dull, ignorant, or ill-willed to see what was rationally inevitable is quite another.”

But this is, in fact, how the debate eventually ends up. If you don’t agree with my position, there exists not merely a possibility that you are too stupid to see it as I do, but a likelihood that you are simply devoid of God’s Spirit. For if you had the Spirit of God, you would see the same “plain teaching” of scripture that I see.

This is why I find Protestant ecclesiology so mind-numbingly frustrating. There is no arbiter. We’re back at Sinai arguing over the meaning of the law written in stone. If we disagree, there is no recourse; no referee to tell the players who is reading the rules correctly; no parents to settle the childrens’ dispute and reconcile them. We must label our opponents ignorant/incapable or even satanic, part ways, and eventually invent some new definition of “church” and “unity” so that we may justify our disunity and feel somehow connected to those whose error we find least despicable.
Andrew McCallum January 5th, 2010 8:09 am :
It would not have taken decades after Nicea I in 325, which adopted that very same term as a shibboleth of orthodoxy, for the Nicene hermeneutic to prevail among the Eastern bishops. It would not have taken a century-and-a-half after the the first Council of Constantinople in 381 to roll back Arianism definitively. To hold that dissenters from Nicene orthodoxy were wrong is one thing; to imply that they were too dull, ignorant, or ill-willed to see what was rationally inevitable is quite another.

Mike,

You are making some rather surprising statements for someone who has spent so much time discussing the matter with Protestant apologists. Being “dull, ignorant…” has nothing to do with the matter (have you run across Reformed apologists who thought this was the case?). For a start the persistence of Arianism has as much to do with the politics of the era as you likely know. The statesmen who defended and promoted Arianism did so for political expediency rather than theological or logical consistency. They often had little regard for what the theologians of the era thought.

In any science errors often exist for many centuries. We look back at those errors and sometime wonder why the defenders of those errors could not see them given the base data under consideration. The science of theology as it focuses on the topic at hand here is no exception. But in the end we can go back and defend the orthodox position from the Scriptures and only from the Scriptures. Unless you want to make the case that Fathers at Nicea ultimately appealed to something that had no basis in Scripture, I don’t understand your complaint about the position that the Scriptures are formally sufficient in terms of this particular question. Each and every element of the creed can be rigorously defended from Scripture. Nicea is merely an assembly of these elements into a nice tight theological/philosophical package. The verbiage and construction of the creed are unique to the Nicean Fathers, but there is nothing holy or special about the way they chose to state the matter, right? The creed itself is not theopneustos, correct?
Michael Liccione January 5th, 2010 9:49 am :
lojahw (#659):

You continue to miss Bryan’s point completely. If one is a sola-scripturist, then the requirement that Scripture be interpreted according to “the regula fidei ” can only be justified by arguing that said RF conforms with Scripture as interpreted in a manner logically prior to the creed. For a sola-scripturist such as Mathison, no other means, such as appeal to the authority of the Church, can be used to justify the RF-as-hermeneutic without implicitly abandoning sola-scriptura. So either one sticks to sola-scriptura, thus judging the RF in terms of a prior understanding of Scripture, or one accepts the RF as a normative expression of the faith of the Church, and proceeds to interpret Scripture in terms of it. You can’t eat your cake and have it. So either way, Mathison’s position is untenable. Sola and solo end up in the same place.
Bryan Cross January 5th, 2010 12:10 pm :
lojahw (re: #659)

You wrote:

1) How can the a priori requirement that Scripture “be interpreted according to the regula fidei” [the Creed] give one the authority to deviate from the Creed based on one’s interpretation of Scripture?

As I’ve already explained above, apart from apostolic succession, any ecclesial document can be authoritative only insofar as it is ‘derived from’ Scripture. But all derivations from Scripture (except direct quotations) are interpretations of Scripture. As Mathison said, “All appeals to Scripture are appeals to interpretations of Scripture. The only real question is: whose interpretation? People with differing interpretations of Scripture cannot set a Bible on a table and ask it to resolve their differences. In order for the Scripture to function as an authority, it must be read and interpreted by someone.” Without apostolic succession, there is no Magisterium (interpretive authority) to provide the authoritative interpretation of Scripture. Hence it follows that given the absence of apostolic succession, a document other than Scripture is ecclesially authoritative only insofar as it agrees with one’s own interpretation of Scripture. Even the Creed therefore, given the denial of apostolic succession, is authoritative only insofar as it agrees with one’s own interpretation of Scripture.

But, you reply, affirmation of the Creed is built into sola scriptura by the very definition of sola scriptura. That’s what you mean by “a priori requirement.” However, the definition [of sola scriptura] in which affirmation of the Creed is required is, without a Magisterium, no more authoritative than the definition [of sola scriptura] in which affirmation of the Creed is not required. So the answer to your question, “How can the a priori requirement …?” is, “It can’t.” No a priori requirement gives the individual the authority’ to deviate from the Creed. The problem is more fundamental than that: what you call the “a priori requirement” itself has no authority; it is a mere man-made stipulation. Hence no one needs to be given authority to deviate from it, because everyone already has the authority to deviate from what has no authority. Your question amounts to the following: “How can the requirement [that Scripture be interpreted according to the Creed] affirmed by those who agree with this requirement, give someone the authority to reject this requirement?” Of course “the requirement” does not give anyone the authority to do anything; it cannot give what it does not have. So the question is ill-formed. The absence of apostolic succession entails that the ‘requirement’ itself has no authority. Without apostolic succession, adherence to the ‘requirement,’ and thus adherence to the Creed, is entirely optional.

2) Given that the (apostolic) “Church” is recognized by its adherence to the Creed, and that Scripture is a priori to “be interpreted in and by” such a Church, how can one appeal to individual interpretation of Scripture to look for others who share a common deviation from the Creed in order to either start or join a different Church?

Apart from apostolic succession, your “given” is entirely stipulative and without authority. It amounts to your table-pounding assertion that “People need to follow the Church, picked out by its adherence to the Creed.”

“Says who?”, someone asks.

“Says me”, you reply.

And then the obvious reply, “Who are you to define the marks of the Church, and her identity conditions?”

“I’m just a guy with a Bible.”

Int. “Ok, so am I. And I don’t see in Scripture the requirement that the Church be defined or marked by its adherence to the Creed, so thanks but no thanks. For example, my friends and I don’t see “baptism for the forgiveness of sins” in Scripture. We don’t see the word “catholic” in the Bible either. And we don’t see all that “eternally begotten” stuff in the Bible either. We’re meeting in this school auditorium on Sundays; you should join us.”

“I would never think of doing such a thing. You can’t just start your own Church. You need to follow the Apostolic Church.”

Int. “That’s exactly what we’re doing, following the teaching of the Apostles. You should read Luther and Calvin — they didn’t intend to start their own Church; they were just following the teaching of the Apostles, as they found it in Scripture.”

“But you have to follow the Creed.”

Int. “Why?”

“Because that’s what defines the Church.”

Int. “Says who?”

“That’s intrinsic to sola scriptura. Sola scriptura includes adherence to the Creed, and adherence to the Church-as-recognized-by-adherence-to-the-Creed.”

Int. “Says who?”

“The Reformers.”

Int. “Why should I follow them on this point? They were wrong about some things.”

“Because on this point they were right.”

Int. “Says who.”

“Says Scripture.”

Int. “Well, if your stipulation that we should follow the Creed, the “Church-as-defined-by-the-Creed, your definition of sola scriptura, and the Reformers, all comes down to your own interpretation of Scripture, then what authority do you have, that I should trust your interpretation of Scripture over my own?

“My point is, if you want to adhere to sola scriptura, then you need to adhere to the Creed, and the Church-as-recognized-by-adherence-to-the-Creed.”

Int. “Well, my point is, I don’t see why I must “adhere to sola scriptura.”

“Of course you are free to practice solo scriptura, but sola scriptura includes affirmation of the Creed and the Church-recognized-by-adherence-to-the-Creed.”

Int. “That doesn’t answer my question. Besides, we’re already part of the Church. We don’t need the Creed.”

“Fine. But your Creed-less practice is not sola scriptura.”

Int. “Why should I care?”

“Because the Creed is the rule of faith.”

Int. “Says who?”

“All orthodox Christians, of all places and times.”

Int. “And what definition of “orthodox” are you using, if not that they affirm the Creed?”

(pause)

Int. “I mean, you’re just saying that all those who affirm the Creed, affirm the Creed. That’s a worthless tautology.”

“For those of us who affirm sola scriptura, affirmation of the Creed and the Church-as-marked-out-by-the-Creed, is an a priori requirement.”

Int. “Well, for those who don’t hold your definition of sola scriptura, those affirmations are not a requirement.”

“At least you haven’t refuted sola scriptura.”

Int. “Perhaps not. But I think I have shown that the only basis for believing sola scriptura, as you have defined it, is that the Creed agrees with one’s interpretation of Scripture, and that therefore others should agree with the Creed. I’m just not so arrogant as to attach a Latin phrase to my own stipulated requirement for others to agree with my interpretation of Scripture.”

“You totally don’t understand.”

Int. “What don’t I understand?”

“It is not my interpretation. It is what Scripture itself teaches.”

Int. “Like I said already, there are certain things in the Creed that I just don’t see in Scripture. But what I find arrogant is your referring to your own interpretation as “what Scripture itself teaches.” We can disagree about whose interpretation is better, but don’t tell me that the word “catholic” in the Creed is “what Scripture itself teaches” — it is your interpretation of what Scripture teaches. If you’re not directly quoting Scripture, then you’re interpreting Scripture. And much of the Creed is not directly quoting Scripture, and is therefore an interpretation of Scripture.”

“But the Creed is not just my interpretation of Scripture — it is the Church’s interpretation.”

Int. “There you go again, reasoning in circles. You say that the Creed is the Church’s interpretation of Scripture, and you define the Church as that which is recognized by its adherence to the Creed. I wasn’t born yesterday, you know.”

“My point is just this, you haven’t refuted sola scriptura. For us, it is a requirement to affirm the Creed and the Church-as-recognized-by-its-adherence-t0-the-Creed.”

Int. Notice the “For us”. You’re just saying: “Those who agree about affirming the Creed and the Church-as-recognized-by-its-adherence-t0-the-Creed, hold it as a requirement to affirm the Creed and the Church-as-recognized-by-its-adherence-t0-the-Creed.” It is no surprise that those who affirm x interpretation of Scripture, hold that it is required to hold x interpretation of Scripture. Like I said, my buddies and I could do the same, and slap a Latin label on it, and belittle those who aren’t members of our interpretive club.”

“I’m not belittling you.”

Int. “You seem to think that there is some principled difference between your position and mine, and that you haven’t ‘fallen’ into the error of solo scriptura. But in fact, there is no principled difference between your interpretive stance, and mine. I could call my position sola scriptura, and say that those who affirm the Creed have fallen from sola scriptura. But all that would mean is that you have a different interpretation of Scripture than I do. Of course every person thinks his own interpretation (call it HOI) is correct, and that other persons who leave HOI have fallen into error. But on my side of things, we’re honest and clear-headed enough to see that it is just our own interpretation from which the other person has ‘fallen’. But you, on the other hand, think that when others depart from your own interpretation, it is not just your interpretation from which they have departed; it is from sola scriptura that they departed, as though sola scriptura is something more than your own interpretation of Scripture (and that of those who share your interpretation). You don’t seem to realize that sola scriptura is just a label for your interpretation of Scripture, conjoined with any additional ad hoc selections from Church history that agree with your interpretation of Scripture.

“You still haven’t refuted sola scriptura.

Int. “If you mean that I haven’t falsified the tautology that those who believe that Scripture must be interpreted according to the Creed believe that Scripture must be interpreted according to the Creed, then I concede the point. I’m simply pointing out that without apostolic succession, your insistence that Scripture be interpreted according to the Creed is no more authoritative than my insistence that Scripture not be interpreted according to the Creed. Your insistence that the Church is marked by adherence to the Creed is no more authoritative than my insistence that the Church is not marked by adherence to the Creed. Without apostolic succession, the only basis for the Creed’s ‘authority’ is its agreement with your interpretation of Scripture, and therefore your position is ultimately based on your interpretation of Scripture no less than my position is based on my interpretation of Scripture. You just throw some other stuff in (that agrees with your interpretation of Scripture) and claim that this stuff is authoritative. But it is only ‘authoritative’ because it agrees with your interpretation of Scripture, so it is no more ‘authoritative’ than any ‘Creed’ me and my buddies make up. You and I are in the same boat, but you don’t realize that, and you try to construe your position as somehow not ultimately based on your own interpretation of Scripture, when in fact it is.

Lastly, you wrote:

3) If you disagree that the Creed covers the essential truths of the faith, please explain.

The Creed of AD 325 is not identical to the Creed of AD 381. This shows that it belongs to the Church to determine what is the faith, and thus what are the essentials of the faith. That process of clarifying and defining dogma did not end in 381. It continues to this day. But this is possible only on the basis of apostolic succession. Without apostolic succession, no council has any authority to define dogma or lay out definitively and authoritatively for all Christians the essentials of the faith. And since the rejection of apostolic succession is intrinsic to sola scriptura, therefore, given sola scriptura, there is no basis (other than “According to my interpretation of Scripture, the Creed lists the essentials of the faith”) for saying that the Creed presents the essentials of the faith.

You claimed in #651 that our use of the term ‘apostolic succession’ “amounts to special pleading.” You claimed this because apostolic succession is had by some [particular] Churches not in full communion with the Catholic Church, and because these [particular] Churches do not agree with the Catholic doctrine regarding the infallibility of the Church. But that doesn’t show any ‘special pleading’ on our part. The fallacy of special pleading involves criticizing one’s interlocutor’s position regarding x, and then making some ad hoc exception or exemption for one’s own position when x is pointed out to be true of one’s own position. But our use of the term ‘apostolic succession’ does not make any exception or exemption for our own position, regarding a criticism we have leveled at someone else’s position. So our use of the term ‘apostolic succession’ does not “amount to special pleading.”

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Michael Liccione January 5th, 2010 12:41 pm :
Andrew (#664):

I don’t know that the motives of Arian bishops were either more or less “political” than those of orthodox bishops. The temporal fortunes of each party alternately waxed and waned for decades if not centuries. And in any case, explaining the position of one’s opponents in terms of their worldly motives is not a game I’m interested in playing.

Like many Reformed types I’ve debated before, you have misunderstood my position. I do not hold that Nicene orthodoxy has no basis in Scripture or that it is not rationally defensible in scriptural or other terms. What I do hold is that, in the absence of appeal to church authority, there is no way to establish it as de fide rather than merely as one rationally defensible opinion among others. I could generalize the same point to many other theological positions that either have been or are controversial.

This is why I am a Catholic not a Protestant. As I read church history, Protestantism of whatever variety has no way, even in principle, to distinguish consistently between propositions that call for the assent of divine faith and propositions expressing plausible opinions which might well turn out to be wrong. Catholicism does have such a way, and has followed it consistently. I defend that assertion rationally by arguing, case by case, that there is no instance of doctrinal development in which theological propositions which end up being rejected had still managed to satisfy the Church’s stated criteria for infallible teaching.
Francis Beckwith January 5th, 2010 1:09 pm :
For a start the persistence of Arianism has as much to do with the politics of the era as you likely know. The statesmen who defended and promoted Arianism did so for political expediency rather than theological or logical consistency. They often had little regard for what the theologians of the era thought.

Do you really want to go there? First, this is a circumstantial ad hominem fallacy. It may very well be that the statesmen had less than noble motives. But that does not mean that Arius’ arguments were irrational. Second, the political-interest argument has been used by Catholic apologists to explain the protections that Luther received from the German princes, whose interests were in property and lucre and not sola fide. Of course, it could be that God used these bad folks, just as God used Pilate and Balaam’s Ass.

If you want to play the “philosophy of suspicion” historical hermeneutic based on the self-interest of the actors, why exempt yourself? After all, you are a Protestant and you want Protestantism to be true. How do we know that you are not, down deep, just like the government meanies that piggy-backed on Arius’ theology?

What is being played-out here on this blog is the legacy of nominalism and Enlightenment epistemology, both of which focus on the thinking self as the locus and meaning of my encounter with the world (assuming there is one). Thus, short of a pure, clear and distinct idea–e.g., a sola scriptura untouched by man or church–it could all very well be a ruse of Descartes’ evil demon. This is why, by the way, various versions of the Cartesian circle keep popping up in the combox. The Protestant wants his indubitable starting point, but he’s trapped in an appalling loop. If he appeals to sola scriptura that requires a book consisting of over 5 dozen books. But the book appears in time, and not all at once, but incrementally. And this requires someone to sift through the competing texts, to determine which of them belongs in the book, since the book itself does not yet exist as a whole (though its parts are found here and there in the Christian world) and if it did, the whole does not contain in any of its parts the list of what books should be in the book.

But suppose you finally figure out what the whole book should look like. Where do you go from there? Numerous questions arise:

Is it appropriate with the book’s purpose to translate it into various languages? After all, things get lost in translation.

What happens when the book does not specifically address a question that pertains to Christ’s commands to love God and neighbor? For example, what do we do with folks that deny Christ and want back into the Church. The Bible does not mention cloning, abortion, euthanasia, or necrophilia. Are those permitted? What about more theological doctrines? Is social trinitarianism permissible? It seems inconsistent with Nicea. But if the Arians were supported by politically motivated leaders, perhaps Constantine, who convened the first Nicean council, was just as bad. And what about Nestorianism? Chalcedon rejects it. But it does not reduce to Arianism and is not necessarily inconsistent with the Nicean creed. And what about eternal damnation? If God was reconciling the world to himself through Christ, perhaps the whole world will eventually be saved and the “eternal” in “eternal damnation” is an adjective of quality and not quantity? If, after all, all you need is one bad idea trapped in the DNA of the Church and believed for centuries–as the commentator above believes–perhaps sola scriptura is that sort of bad idea. Who knows? (If you’re going to do the philosophy of suspicion, why hold back?)

I was at ETS during the debates about the Openness of God dispute and the attempt to remove Boyd, Pinnock, and Sanders from the society. What a mess. These gentlemen all believed in sola scriptura, and so what the debate degenerated into was a proof-texting war, with each side marshaling its case against the other. Both sides carefully avoided the obvious: the Christian doctrine of God is not merely the consequence of reading the Bible and putting the pieces together. It is an exercise in reading Scripture while reflecting on the question of what it means for a being to be God (which is precisely what Augustine, Aquinas, and Anselm did). But this would mean that sola scriptura was not enough. Looking back, I can see now that this was the beginning of my shifting back to the Catholic Church, though I did not realize at the time.
Tom Riello January 5th, 2010 5:50 pm :
Dr. Beckwith,

Excellent point. I was reminded again of this recently when reading St. Thomas regarding the question “Does God have a body?” The reason we so easily dismiss the notion of God not having a body is not based on the bible alone. When we act as though these issues can be handled by the bible alone we usually end up volleying texts back and forth with no end in sight.
Dreadlord January 6th, 2010 1:00 am :
I’m hardly traditionally reformed but also quite a ways from Catholic, but I troll around on puritanboard (out of some kind of masochism) enough to understand what is going through the mind of the average New Calvinist (you know, the ones who read Piper, John before Calvin, John). They are rabid on Sola Scriptura, BUT, and they would never phrase it this way (I can’t even parody their actual discourse), if they are convinced they are part of ‘the elect’, often their full understanding of the ‘Doctrines of Grace’ (‘the ‘correct’ interpretation of scripture’) is implied (sometimes outright stated) to come from their regeneration itself and thus their status as elect is how their interpretation of scripture isn’t ‘chaos’. It’s as circular and impotent as the argument for Sola Scriptura itself. If only I could be convined of Infallability of the Church or Infallability of the Pope…
Sola Scriptura or Solo Scriptura? « Divine Life – A Blog by Eric Sammons January 6th, 2010 8:41 am :
[…] Cross over at Called to Communion is the author of such audacity and the topic of the article is Solo Scriptura vs. Sola Scriptura. Over the past decade or so, Catholic apologists have been very successful showing the weaknesses […]
Ames January 6th, 2010 11:35 am :
Dreadlord, I don’t see how the Calvinist/Puritanboard version of Sola Scriptura is actually different from the (Calvinist) Mathison version. I’m not sure any Sola Scriptura defender thinks that the Bible is perspicuous to non-Christians without the aid of the Holy Spirit, and bringing “elect” status into the discussion is just another way of saying that. But I think you’re right that Calvinism sometimes intensifies the defense that those who disagree may not have the Holy Spirit.

I used to think that occasional discussions among Calvinists about whether Arminians are truly saved might be uncharitable. I was wrong about that. When Calvinists speculate about the salvation status of those who disagree with their interpretation of Scripture, they are logically working out a firmly-held commitment to Sola Scriptura (and thus perspicuity). Unfortunately, as good as a Calvinist’s intentions may be in questioning the salvation of the non-Reformed in order to safeguard the perspicuity of Scripture, such thinking is hardly conducive even to the most basic level of unity. Most Reformed folks I know see this problem and try to avoid drawing uncharitable conclusions about non-Calvinists who profess Christ. But the difficulty for any Calvinist is that there are trade-offs and tensions at every corner — charity versus doctrinal purity, especially — and no one is equipped to figure out the right course.

I don’t think the doctrine of the elect is itself the source of this problem. Any Protestant group that, like the Reformed, emphasizes purity of doctrine without allowing for any guarantee of correct doctrine (such as papal infallibility) will run up against the dilemma between preserving “the faith” (as that person understands it) and preserving visible unity. Calvinists, commendably, seem to emphasize correct doctrine more than most Protestants, so they are also more likely to face the trade-off between doctrinal purity and visible unity.

Typical evangelicals are probably quicker than Calvinists to acknowledge Catholics as brothers, but the inherent tensions in the Calvinist position, I think, make serious Calvinists much more likely to become Catholic. Once a Calvinist realizes that, if his system is correct, (a) getting the doctrines right, especially the doctrines of justification, is very important, and (b) in the end, even though you have the (fallible) Westminster Confession and the (fallible) Three Forms of Unity to help, it’s up to you to make the decision — the whole Sola Scriptura system starts to seem unworkable. He understands what it feels like to be “tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine.” (Eph. 4:14)
Michael Liccione January 6th, 2010 1:17 pm :
Dreadlord (#670):

Allow me to address your last sentence.

As a Catholic, I don’t believe that the infallibility of the Church can be proven from Scripture and Tradition, if by ‘proof’ one means an argument that is not only objectively sound but also compels personal assent. Of course it’s not hard to produce deductively valid arguments for any article of faith. But given the subject matter of theology, it’s always possible to question or re-interpret the data forming the premises of such arguments, so that the premises don’t establish the desired conclusion. Hence no proof in the above-described sense is possible. Nor, I would argue, is it even desirable. Articles of faith are just that–not articles of reason. One can always give reasons to believe an article of faith, but they do not compel assent. To deny that is mere rationalism, not the attitude of the disciple.

That said, I accept the doctrine of infallibility as the Church teaches it because there seems to me no other way to distinguish consistently between propositions calling for the assent of divine faith and propositions expressing plausible opinions or interpretations that might turn out to be wrong. Without the authority of a visible body identifiable as “the” Church, all we have is an ongoing debate about what the data of Scripture and Tradition mean and whose opinions they best support. Of course, even within the Catholic Church there is much ongoing theological debate, and thus room for various opinions. But thank God that’s not all there is. That’s why I’m Catholic.

Best,
Mike
Tom Riello January 6th, 2010 1:29 pm :
Mike,

Great point. I once heard someone say “Catholics believe more simply” and by that it was meant that Catholics trust the Church simply out of confidence in Christ who would never leave nor forsake His Church. Thus, we Catholics will pray the “The Act of Faith”: “O MY GOD, I firmly believe that Thou art one God in Three Divine Persons, Father, Son and Holy Ghost. I believe that Thy Divine Son became Man, and died for our sins, and that He will come to judge the living and the dead. I believe these and all the truths which the Holy Catholic Church teaches, because Thou hast revealed them, Who canst neither deceive nor be deceived. “
Andrew McCallum January 6th, 2010 10:59 pm :
I don’t know that the motives of Arian bishops were either more or less “political” than those of orthodox bishops.

No argument here. The whole debate was steeped in the politics of the empire. My point was that that it was not about one side or another pre-Nicea being ignorant. We are not arguing for that.

What I do hold is that, in the absence of appeal to church authority, there is no way to establish it as de fide rather than merely as one rationally defensible opinion among others.

Two problems I see to your idea here. First, we all hold any number of things to be true without saying that they were formulated infallibly. Take laws the describe electric and magnetic behavior. We can speak of their truthfulness and have absolutely no reason in the world to doubt their truthfulness, yet we don’t say that such formulations are stated infallibly. So likewise we say that the Nicean understanding of the Trinity is true and there is no reason to doubt this truth, but this does not mean that the peculiar formulation of Nicea was infallible. But saying this does not really impinge upon our surety of the doctrine. If it did why is there not more controversy within Reformed camps or even within Evangelicalism in general on this issue? Could you at least grant that your critique is purely academic?

What I do hold is that, in the absence of appeal to church authority, there is no way to establish it as de fide rather than merely as one rationally defensible opinion among others.

And here is the second problem. Stating that Church guarantees the fidelity of the doctrine just backs the problem up one step. There is no way for the RCC to establish as de fide her interpretation of tradition – it is just one rationally defensible position among others.
Michael Liccione January 7th, 2010 1:13 pm :
Andrew:

First, we all hold any number of things to be true without saying that they were formulated infallibly. Take laws the describe electric and magnetic behavior. We can speak of their truthfulness and have absolutely no reason in the world to doubt their truthfulness, yet we don’t say that such formulations are stated infallibly. So likewise we say that the Nicean understanding of the Trinity is true and there is no reason to doubt this truth, but this does not mean that the peculiar formulation of Nicea was infallible.

For two reasons, your analogy is inapt. First, in physics, certain propositions confirmed as “laws” do not describe precisely what happens; as abstract, mathematized generalizations, they depict what would happen if nothing interferes. We can be justifiably confident about the approximate truth of such generalizations because we can and do confirm them as hypotheses by experimentation. Yet they they cannot be asserted irreformably, and thus infallibly, because they remain open to revision by the same means. Now the question at issue between us is how to identify the propositionally expressible content of divine revelation so that we can have justified certainty about what that content is. That question belongs to the subject matter of theology not physics. And in theology, what settles any particular instance of that question is not a process of experimentation which either confirms or disconfirms a mathematically expressed hypothesis. When reason is employed to settle such questions, the reasoning relies for its premises on sources taken as authorities: Scripture and Tradition. Disputes arise in the first place because there is disagreement about precisely what the relevant, propositionally expressible data drawn from those authorities actually mean. This is either not a problem in physics or, when it is, can be settled scientifically by reason alone through generally accepted means.

Second, the aim of theological reasoning is to identify the content of divine revelation as an object for the assent of divine faith, by taking a particular construal of the data as one intended by a God who, we agree, can no more deceive than be deceived. Such a God, precisely as Revealer, is infallible. Accordingly, we can be sure that a particular construal of the data in the agreed-upon sources truly expresses divine revelation just in case we can be sure that it accurately expresses what God intends for us to understand through those data. And since we can be sure that what is divinely revealed has ipso facto been set forth infallibly, we can be sure that a particular construal of the sources is divinely revealed just in case we can be sure it has been set forth infallibly. That is why, given the widespread dissensus about such construals, there has to be a way of adjudicating irreformably, and thus infallibly, among them, if the corresponding data are to function as objects of divine faith rather than human opinion. That is what the Magisterium, as the Catholic Church understands it, is for. Otherwise we are left only with fallible human opinons about how to interpret the sources; and since there would be no generally accepted means for adjudicating among them, such opinions are not nearly as helpful as fallible but well-confirmed hypotheses in physics.

Stating that Church guarantees the fidelity of the doctrine just backs the problem up one step. There is no way for the RCC to establish as de fide her interpretation of tradition – it is just one rationally defensible position among others.

It’s nice to see you concede that the Catholic position is rationally defensible. That’s more than I get from some Reformed types!

As I’ve already said to Dreadlord, there is indeed no way to prove the Catholic doctrine of the Magisterium from Scripture and Tradition, “if by ‘proof’ one means an argument that is not only objectively sound but also compels personal assent.” Nor does the Catholic Church expect us to believe otherwise. But that fact doesn’t leave us where you seem to think.

If, as I’ve already argued in this comment, an infallible authority is necessary to adjudicate with the requisite definitiveness among competing interpretations of the sources, it does not follow that such an authority is by itself sufficient to establish that any particular theological proposition is a truth in itself. This is why Vatican II says that Scripture, Tradition, and the Magisterium “are so linked and joined together that one cannot stand without the others,” which is true as a matter of history whether or not it is also true as a matter of doctrine. It seems to me, as it did to Newman and has to many others, that for the Christian inquirer striving to decide whether to be Catholic or Protestant, the salient question to consider is which approach to doctrine is best suited to settling hermeneutical disputes as they arise over time. But Protestantism rejects, on principle, the very idea that any visible authority can do the adjudicating definitively and infallibly. Everything thus remains open to question to a greater extent than in physics, even if “Scripture,” alone or in combination with some regula fidei, be taken as inerrant in itself. The Catholic Magisterium, on the other hand, does not just claim that it is divinely protected from teaching falsehoods when proposing certain construals of the sources as objects of divine faith definitively and irreformably for the whole Church. It makes the same claim about how it settles certain questions which arise down the road about those very same, prior construals. Thus, its overall hermeneutical methodology is both richer and more definitive than what one can find in Protestantism of whatever variety. And that is a weighty reason to entertain the claims of the Magisterium seriously, as a prolegomenon to making a reasonable act of divine faith in her claims as articles of faith themselves.
Francis Beckwith January 7th, 2010 1:57 pm :
Michael, well said. When I was wrestling with whether to return to the Catholic Church, the main issue for me was whether Catholicism or Protestantism best accounted for the content of the Christian faith, including its Scripture, the Church, and creedal orthodoxy. It seemed to me that although there is much to commend Protestant thought and spirituality (I would hope that my 30 years as an Evangelical speaks well of that truth), Catholicism as a metanarrative of the Christian story that not only could give a compelling account of Scripture, the Church, and creedal orthodoxy, it also could account for Protestantism (a la Louis Bouyer) in a way that Protestantism itself could not. Moreover, Catholicism did not require ad hoc hypotheses, as does Protestantism, to account for the fact that the ancient church seemed far more Catholic than Protestant in its liturgical practices, its ecclesiology, its understanding of doctrinal development, and what it considered the canon of Scripture. And of all things, the view of grace that permeated the ancient church was both sacramental and realist. That is, it saw grace as a divine quality and not merely as a divine decree. Add to this the apostolic, sacramental and non-Protestantism of the Eastern Rite Churches–those virtually untouched by the philosophical categories that dominated Western theology–and it seemed to me that the natural home of Western Christians is the Catholic Church. Yet, it seemed to me that the only way I could resist the logic of this internal dialectic that had gripped my soul was to play the axiom game and just posit sola scriptura and the Protestant interpretations of that scriptura as normative and definitive. But that would mean that I would have to ignore the Church in which the Scripture arose and the Catholic liturgies and sacramental practices that employed these Scriptures as integral to these numerous rites. Moreover, I would have to confess that the leaders of that Church (from as early as the time of St. Ignatius of Antioch), to a man, were entirely ignorant of the Scripture’s secret, hidden meanings that would only be fully divulged in the 16th century and shown in fact to condemn the rites, sacraments, practices, and ecclesiology, shared by both East and West, the two halves of Christendom from which the authoritative Scripture arose. That is, in order for me to hang on to Protestantism I had to cease reading the Scripture with the Church that had in fact discovered, preserved, protected, promulgated, and integrated that Scripture into its practices. I had to ignore how the first readers of Scripture and their legacy understood themselves, the Church, and the Scripture. This was not very compelling to me. So, I crossed the Tiber, and the rest is history.
Andrew McCallum January 8th, 2010 11:38 am :
Mike Liccione says:

For two reasons, your analogy is inapt. First, in physics, certain propositions confirmed as “laws” do not describe precisely what happens

I think you are missing my point here but let me try to come at it from different way. The question I am asking in general is whether God has created us such that we need to have infallibility surrounding a certain belief or belief system in order to have epistemological certainty. Whether the specific matter at hand is the hard sciences or theology or whatever does not really change the question or the answer that I can see. We often get into these discussions with Catholics where they will tell us that we cannot know something because we don’t have an infallible standard to give us this 100% epistemological certainty on the matter. We will then point out to our Catholic friends that there are any number of matters which we can all agree on without needing the belief in question to have a stamp of infallible authority placed on it. Again, the question over the epistemological category does not really reflect on the issue. And then specifically we point out that there is no actual extension of their theory in reality. The one that always gets batted around in this regards is that of the assurance we have of the canon. We will be told that we cannot be assured that the canon we hold to is correct because we don’t have this infallible stamp of judgment by the Church. Apart from the theoretical theological errors being made in these sorts of arguments, the practical reality is there is no debate among the Reformed, or for that matter the Evangelical world on the assurance of the canon. So why Catholics try so hard to make these theoretical epistemological arguments that have no extension in the real world, I just don’t know. But I would have thought that at some level the reality that there is no practical outworking of their theory would give them pause to reconsider. So, now back to your argument that we cannot be sure of the truths of Nicea unless the RCC stamps her official imprimatur on this formulation (the way you put it was, What I do hold is that, in the absence of appeal to church authority, there is no way to establish it as de fide rather than merely as one rationally defensible opinion among others.). Firstly I am trying to show you that in general we don’t need metaphysical certainty in order to be assured of the truth of something. Secondly, your theory has no practical manifestation. It is a demonstrated fact that there is no lack of assurance on this matter not just in the Reformed world but in Evangelicalism at large. I’m interested to know if this lack of agreement between your theory and reality create any questions in your mind as to whether the theory needs to be rethought.

If, as I’ve already argued in this comment, an infallible authority is necessary to adjudicate with the requisite definitiveness among competing interpretations of the sources, it does not follow that such an authority is by itself sufficient to establish that any particular theological proposition is a truth in itself…..

It is here where I think you are touching on something that Bryan really missed (or at least insufficiently emphasized) in his essay above. I tried to bring this up early in this discussion but it did not go anywhere. Bryan talks about how sola and solo collapse together in the end and I agreed with him. But Bryan was speaking of the individual assessment of theological truths which as I pointed out was not the focus historically of the doctrine of sola scriptura. Sola scriptura does have some implications for how we as individuals look at the doctrines of the Church, but historically the question we look at when we speak of sola scriptura is what standard the Church should use in making her judgments. The Church does have an infallible standard and the question that sola scriptura addresses is what it is. The Scriptures are theopneustos and thus must be infallible. The question then is whether there is any other body of data which rises to this infallible level of not. If not then we are left with Scripture alone as the base set of knowledge that serves as the standard for the Church’s judgments. Again, it’s not about our assessments of the Church’s doctrines, but rather about what the Church ought to use as the criteria for her assessments.
Andrew McCallum January 8th, 2010 11:47 am :
Do you really want to go there? First, this is a circumstantial ad hominem fallacy. It may very well be that the statesmen had less than noble motives. But that does not mean that Arius’ arguments were irrational. Second, the political-interest argument has been used by Catholic apologists to explain the protections that Luther received from the German princes, whose interests were in property and lucre and not sola fide. Of course, it could be that God used these bad folks, just as God used Pilate and Balaam’s Ass.

Francis,

Do you understand that I just trying to answer Mike’s suggestion that we are in effect accusing the pre-Nicean ECF’s of ignorance when they did not come to the exact assessment that was arrived at in Nicea? Yes, there are multitude of different philosophical, cultural, and yes political assumptions and beliefs that affect the work of the theologians of the past. And often these factors pull the minds and hearts of those who are considering these matters away from the truth. But this happens in every age in every intellectual discipline. My only point here is that the history of the pre-Nicean debates over the nature of God was no exception. Thus there really is no cause to be saying that the Protestant understanding of these debates necessitates that we hold these early ECF’s to be ignorant.
Michael Liccione January 8th, 2010 4:08 pm :
Andrew:

The question I am asking in general is whether God has created us such that we need to have infallibility surrounding a certain belief or belief system in order to have epistemological certainty. Whether the specific matter at hand is the hard sciences or theology or whatever does not really change the question or the answer that I can see.

That’s precisely the problem. As Aristotle was the first to point out, as Aquinas was always pointing out, and as Newman saw well in terms of his own epistemology, different disciplines have different standards of epistemic justification that vary with the subject matter. Now as I said, “the question at issue between us is how to identify the propositionally expressible content of divine revelation so that we can have justified certainty about what that content is.” That content is primarily a Person and what he did, but it is necessarily expressible through a set of statements purporting to tell us what that Person wants us to accept as true expressions of what he, his actions, and his own words revealed. Theological disputes are about what statements belong in that set and about what they mean. And, since that Person is himself an infallible Revealer, we have justified certainty about what statements belong in the set and what they mean just in case we are justified in saying that they have been infallibly asserted, by either him or those whom he has so authorized. Hence “revealed” theology, unlike natural theology or any other human discipline, must identify a set of statements as infallibly asserted.

You and many other (but by no means all) Protestants want to say that that set is Scripture and Scripture alone. Thus you argue:

The Church does have an infallible standard and the question that sola scriptura addresses is what it is. The Scriptures are theopneustos and thus must be infallible. The question then is whether there is any other body of data which rises to this infallible level of not. If not then we are left with Scripture alone as the base set of knowledge that serves as the standard for the Church’s judgments. Again, it’s not about our assessments of the Church’s doctrines, but rather about what the Church ought to use as the criteria for her assessments.

What I’ve been trying to get you to see is that the Arian controversy, and many other controversies before and since, shows that Scripture alone just isn’t enough for the purpose at hand, and was never meant to be. People can and do take the same set of books, and agree on what many of its forms of words mean when expressed or interpreted propositionally, without being able to reach rationally unassailable agreement on questions of the greatest significance for determining what, exactly, is thereby revealed. That is why, if Nicene orthodoxy were rationally necessitated by Scripture alone, the Arian controversy would either not have arisen at all or would have been easily resolved just by scholarly means. But that’s not what happened, and there’s no arguing with fact. One gets Nicene orthodoxy out of Scripture as a binding creed, rather than just as a rationally defensible hermeneutic, only if one already relies on certain extra-Scriptural sources as authoritative means of interpreting Scripture.

That, I should have thought, would be clear just as a matter of historical fact. It was by the mutually supporting authorities of Tradition and the Magisterium, not by its alleged assertoric content alone, that believers of the pre-Nicene period came to accept just the canon of Scripture we now have as theopneustos and thus as “infallible.” For it was precisely by those means that some writings did and some did not get identified as worthy of admission into the canon. It is precisely by the mutually supporting authorities of Tradition and the Magisterium that Nicene orthodoxy was propounded by the Church as divine revelation rather than just as a defensible interpretation of Scripture. But it’s not open to Protestant churches to talk that way because of their self-imposed requirement that their interpretations of Scripture could always be wrong. So we get as many interpretations as denominations, and we get so many denominations precisely because we get so many interpretations.

That’s why it really is a problem for you that “sola” and “solo” amount to the same thing. That fact precludes what you want to do, namely distinguish authoritatively between individual interpretations of Scripture and the regula fidei that “the Church ought to use as the criteria for her assessments.” Of course we agree that the Church ought to use Scripture for such assessements, and she does. But the issue is whether Scripture alone is to be used as such a criterion. If it is, then there are no authoritative, as distinct from scholarly, criteria for adjudicating among competing interpretations of Scripture on matters of the greatest significance. Yet we already have such criteria: Tradition and the Magisterium, both of which are as essential as Scripture for identifying the deposit of faith that Scripture records.
Neal Judisch January 8th, 2010 5:54 pm :
Andrew M,

Hi. Sorry to inerject myself into your discussion with Mike L. and Francis B. But just briefly, I want to try to clear up a possible confusion about an aspect of the “Catholic critique” (regarding ‘certainty’, the canon, etc.) that I’ve noticed in your most recent and in some of your previous remarks. You argue that Reformed and evangelical Christians aren’t subject to Catholic criticisms to the effect that they (evangelcials) can’t be completely sure about what should be in the canon, and you point out, as evidence for this claim, that you don’t know of many (any?) such Christians who are doubtful about the canon they’ve received. And so you say that the criticism in question has “no real world application” and should be re-thought. But hopefully you can see, on reflection, that this rejoinder does not connect with or engage the “Catholic critique” appropriately. What that critique says is that evangelical Protestants aren’t epistemically justified regarding their beliefs about the canon. (That is a substantial claim, and it needs argumentation and support. It isn’t “just obvious.” You are therefore right to bring up the neighboring epistemological questions about certainty and justification and so forth.) But it’s clear that, whether or not the “Catholic critique” is ultimately correct about this, the mere fact that most Protestants don’t entertain doubts about the canon they’ve been handed does not conflict with or at all undermine the contention that such Protestants are nevertheless not justified in their beliefs about the canon, or at any rate that they don’t possess epistemic certainty regarding the canonical status of some writings. This is so for the simple reason that a person can be, in acutality, epistemically unjustified in believing that p, or such that they cannot justifiably claim to be epistemically certain about p, even if they’ve got no present doubts (“on their radars”) about the truth of p and even if they have never entertained doubts about it.

Say I’m a presuppositionalist apologist. Call me Francis. I tell some atheist, “You are not epistemically justified in your beliefs about causality, the vericality of reason, or your moral beliefs. You cannot be certain about any of your views here, because you adopt a metaphysical “worldview” that cannot account for these things and which, in fact, tends to undermine them by removing your justification for holding them.” Okay. Now suppose my atheist replies, “Nah, Francis, you should rethink your arguments here, because I know lots of atheists who don’t entertain any doubts at all about such things as causation or human reason or moral right and wrong. We’re just not worried about it. So your theory has no real world application and your arguments are specious.” What’s gone wrong here? The same thing that goes wrong, when you claim that the fact that evangelicals accept the canon their parents or pastors hand to them without a second thought somehow demonstrates that evangelicals enjoy epistemic certainty concerning their canon. Maybe the do; maybe the Catholic critique is misguided. But if it is, it’s not misguided for that reason. I think, if I may, that you need to attend more carefully to the distinction between epistemic justifiation/epistemic certainty and psychological certitude, which often has a different etiology and does not make the same sorts of demands upon those who possess it. The great majority of evangelicals no doubt do have feelings of psychological certitude about the canon, as they do about a good many other things. It doesn’t follow that they’re justified in their beliefs or that they have epistemic certainty about them. Does that make sense?

Best,

Neal
Andrew McCallum January 9th, 2010 1:40 am :
Neal J said:
Hi. Sorry to inerject myself into your discussion with Mike L. and Francis B.

Good Evening Neal – No interruption at all, good to hear from you.

Now suppose my atheist replies, “Nah, Francis, you should rethink your arguments here, because I know lots of atheists who don’t entertain any doubts at all about such things as causation or human reason or moral right and wrong.

If the atheist here is arguing that he knows some folks who believe like he does then I’m going to point out that atheism/agnosticism tends to churn out all sorts of different ethical belief systems from the really nice neighbor sorts to the mass murderers. He knows some folks who don’t entertain doubts but I imagine that if I do any sort of searching I will find atheists who believe just the opposite. So the critique from the presuppositionalist is going to be that he has happened onto a certain epistemology that many atheists don’t share and it’s really a crap shoot when you come across an atheist as to what they will believe concerning ethics. However, if my atheist friends can demonstrate that virtually no atheist ever has the sorts of philosophical beliefs that I would predict from what I know of atheist theoretical thought, then I think I would drop the particular example in question as being relevant to our discussion.

So we Protestants are a little puzzled about critiques of what we can be certain about concerning the canon and the Trinity. To me these don’t seem like good examples for the Catholic apologist to use. And I really do try to deal with the theoretical arguments that the Catholics raise here, but I also think it’s fair to look at the practical implications for such arguments. To use an old but still interesting example, if you come to me with very good reasons why the earth is at the center of the universe I will try to deal with your theological and philosophical arguments, but at some point I will try to persuade you to look in my telescope and tell me what you see.
Andrew McCallum January 9th, 2010 1:51 am :
Mike L said:
That’s precisely the problem. As Aristotle was the first to point out,….

Mike,

And I fully appreciate these sorts of Aristotelian categories. There are and ought to be different levels of certitude as we move from metaphysical to scientific to political to poetic forms of knowledge. But you have not explained to me why we need an infallible interpreter of an infallible text in order to have the certainty God expected us to have. We have the source of wisdom in the Scriptures. We then have men who come along and tell us what they think this wisdom means. You want to say that in effect their particular formulation of this truth rises to the same level of infallibility as the Scriptures themselves. But what does this do for us rather than give us another body of truth that is infallible that must be interpreted? We say that the final bar of infallible truth is the Scriptures while you say that it is Scripture + tradition. But how is the later a better source than the former? Tradition, even dogmatic tradition, still needs to be interpreted.

What I’ve been trying to get you to see is that the Arian controversy, and many other controversies before and since, shows that Scripture alone just isn’t enough for the purpose at hand, and was never meant to be. People can and do take the same set of books, and agree on what many of its forms of words mean when expressed or interpreted propositionally, without being able to reach rationally unassailable agreement on questions of the greatest significance for determining what, exactly, is thereby revealed.

And here you are trying to persuade the Protestant that what he can prove to be true isn’t really true unless the RCC comes behind him and tells him that it is true. Come on Mike, I’ve been through numerous debates with the JW’s. It does not take much to disprove them as anyone coming out of the JW’s will attest to. Why do we need the RCC to tell us something that is clearly demonstratable from Scripture? Do you really feel that, for instance, you cannot prove to someone from Scripture alone that Son is truly God? And if you can do this, what of the fact that there are a thousand and one anti-trinitarian groups that will twist Scripture to their own ends? The problem with such cults is that they can’t prove rationally from Scripture that the Son is not God. They believed it for whatever reason but it is not rationally derivable from Scripture.

That, I should have thought, would be clear just as a matter of historical fact. It was by the mutually supporting authorities of Tradition and the Magisterium, not by its alleged assertoric content alone, that believers of the pre-Nicene period came to accept just the canon of Scripture we now have as theopneustos and thus as “infallible.”

And we don’t believe that the canon rests on the Scripture alone. And I have written on this here ad nauseum but I don’t have the time or energy to take it up again right now.

Of course we agree that the Church ought to use Scripture for such assessments, and she does. But the issue is whether Scripture alone is to be used as such a criterion. If it is, then there are no authoritative, as distinct from scholarly, criteria for adjudicating among competing interpretations of Scripture on matters of the greatest significance.

You are saying this but I don’t see what proof you bring to bear. The Church at the time of Nicea never claimed to be infallible in her specific formulations of doctrine, and let’s say that for argument that she really wasn’t. In this case how was she not authoritative? Why does authority necessitate infallibility here? For us, we understand the authority of the Church but there is nothing holy about the peculiar formulations that Nicea chose to express what was in Scripture. As Augustine said to the Donatists, Scripture was always superior to the pronouncements of even an ecumenical council of the Church and the council could always be corrected by Scripture.
Neal Judisch January 9th, 2010 1:34 pm :
Andrew,

Thanks; I’ll probably bow out again after this. But I think you’re either centering upon imagined incidental features of a potential illustration and responding to those things as opposed to my point, or maybe just missing the point. That evangelicals are by and large acting as though the canon was infallibly formed by somebody or other with the authority to make judgments about it, that many of them aren’t perceiving any difficulties for themselves on the point, is consistent with the claim we are making, that there are difficulties for them here, and that their authority structures aren’t such as to allow them justifiably to hold their unique beliefs with the epistemic certainty you claim they possess. (Incidentally, you should be alive to the fact that some erstwhile evangelicals do perceive problems like this and eventually find their evangelicalism untenable; I’d therefore be careful with the invitation to look through your telescope, because unless you’re just wanting to direct it upon yourself and some hand-selected others, we won’t be able to sustain the general claims your making about what ‘evangelicals’ uniformly think and do.)

I don’t think you were intentionally dodging the point, but that’s the point, and it can be made directly and clearly enough, I think, that we can just drop the examples that are supposed to illustrate it in other contexts.

Best,

Neal
Michael Liccione January 9th, 2010 5:09 pm :
Andrew:

But you have not explained to me why we need an infallible interpreter of an infallible text in order to have the certainty God expected us to have.

Since it was the main intent of my post to provide just such an explanation, either mine wasn’t clear enough in itself, or it was clear enough but, for whatever reason, you didn’t understand it. All I can do is try one more time in the hope that the problem is the former rather than the latter.

As I argued, it is the chief aim of revealed theology to identify a set of statements as infallibly asserted. The purpose of that is to know what has been definitively revealed to us by an infallible Revealer, so that we can apprehend divine revelation itself as an object for the certain assent of faith, as opposed to apprehending just a set of historical data about which we can have more or less reasonable opinions. Perhaps a better way of framing the issue between us would be this: is the needed set of statements identifiable only in Scripture and what is rationally necessitated by statements which express the assertoric content of Scripture? Or is something else needed too?

Your answer to that first question is yes, and mine is no. I hold that the pertinent set must also include statements which can be understood as authoritative and infallible interpretations of Scripture that are not, themselves, rationally necessitated by Scripture as a whole. And I hold as much partly because, while I do believe that Nicene orthodoxy is a rationally defensible way of interpreting Scripture, it is not the only rationally defensible way.

Your primary objection to that appears to be this:

… you are trying to persuade the Protestant that what he can prove to be true isn’t really true unless the RCC comes behind him and tells him that it is true…Why do we need the RCC to tell us something that is clearly demonstratable from Scripture? Do you really feel that, for instance, you cannot prove to someone from Scripture alone that Son is truly God? And if you can do this, what of the fact that there are a thousand and one anti-trinitarian groups that will twist Scripture to their own ends? The problem with such cults is that they can’t prove rationally from Scripture that the Son is not God. They believed it for whatever reason but it is not rationally derivable from Scripture.

This is the crux of the matter. You believe that what Protestants of your stripe take to be orthodox trinitarianism can be “rationally demonstrated” on the basis of Scripture alone, and I don’t. As a Catholic, of course, I happen to share what you take to be orthodox trinitarianism. But I hold that without the authority of a visible body identifiable as “the” Church, authorized by the Lord to teach definitively and infallibly in his name, your opinion and mine will, along with five bucks, get you a decent latte. I learned as much when I took courses on Scripture and the history of doctrine as an undergraduate at a secular university. In that environment, the whole business appeared to be, and was treated as, a matter of opinion allowing for other rationally defensible opinions too. The history of liberal Protestantism alone shows how the process works. And of course this problem is ancient as well as modern. Some of the pre-Nicene fathers were subordinationist, which set the stage for Arianism and other heresies; the Nestorian and Coptic schisms that arose from Ephesus and Chalcedon respectively are still with us; and we see many other versions of “heterodox” trinitarianism among serious biblical scholars and theologians even today.

People who call themselves Christians but who reject Nicene and/or Chalcedonian orthodoxy are not all fools, knaves, or cultists, and never were. Yet, if you were right about the rational demonstrability of Trinitarian and Christological orthodoxy from Scripture alone, then heresy could only arise on the basis of ignorance, stupidity, or ill will–a consequence that not only I, but you yourself, reject. Not everybody who disagrees with you is “anti-trinitarian,” unless you stipulate that whoever disagrees with you is anti-trinitarian, which would patently beg the question. There are versions of trinitarian Christianity which, at some important points, are logically incompatible with what we take to be orthodoxy, and yet are not obviously wrong-headed. But I reject them as options for the same reason I don’t accept sola Scriptura: I don’t believe that the content of orthodoxy can be identified as an object for the assent of divine faith, as opposed to plausible human opinion, merely from a fixed set of texts that people have been chewing over and arguing about for over 1,500 years. Ecclesial authority is also needed.

You seem to agree with that, but without conceding that the authority in question must be infallible under certain conditions. Thus:

The Church at the time of Nicea never claimed to be infallible in her specific formulations of doctrine, and let’s say that for argument that she really wasn’t. In this case how was she not authoritative? Why does authority necessitate infallibility here? For us, we understand the authority of the Church but there is nothing holy about the peculiar formulations that Nicea chose to express what was in Scripture. As Augustine said to the Donatists, Scripture was always superior to the pronouncements of even an ecumenical council of the Church and the council could always be corrected by Scripture.

You’re running together three issues that need to be kept distinct before they can be properly interrelated. The issues are: Do we need ecclesial authority to make a particular hermeneutic of Scrpture authoritative? If so, does that authority need to be infallible? And what regulative role does Scripture play in either case?

If you’re right about the rational demonstrability of orthodoxy from Scripture alone, then the answer to the first question is a qualified “no.” The authority of reason alone would be enough to establish definitively and irreformably, on the basis of Scripture alone, what we take to be orthodoxy. In that case, the role of ecclesial authority would be to keep that knowledge alive and to punish or exclude people who, for whatever perverse reason, still don’t get it. That’s pretty much how ecclesial authority seems to function in the more conservative Reformed churches. But if such authority isn’t infallible, then the only basis it has for claiming authority all the same is its non-infallible insistence that its interpretation of Scripture is rationally demonstrable from Scripture alone. The reaction not only of Catholics, but of many Protestants too, to that position is roughly: “Are you kidding?” You’ve granted that not all of us are fools, knaves, or cultists for viewing the “authority” in question as simply that of people who are just doggone convinced that their reading of Scripture is correct, even though they admit they might be wrong. You will undersand why we don’t see the Church as the body of people, visible and invisible, who happen to share the opinions of your church’s leadership.

That is just one reason, beyond the more abstract one I began this conversation by giving, for arguing that the question how God intends for us to understand</i Scripture on disputed points can only be settled by an authority established from the beginning by the Lord himself to teach infallibly in his name. If the ecclesial authority in question is always fallible, then the only real authority it has, if any at all, is that of reason alone. But not everybody is convinced by that alone; and given the nature of the subject matter, nobody should be convinced by that alone. It matters not that the I-word wasn’t used in the first millennium by the authorities of the Church; the Magisterial doctrine of infallibility developed over time in order to make more explicit the fact that the authority of the ecumenical councils of the first millennium was that of God himself, the infallible revealer–not just of fallible men who, in the opinion of some, happened to be his instruments at the time.

You agree with Augustine that the authority of Scripture is “superior” even to that of councils. The Catholic Church teaches the same even today, and hence I agree too. As Vatican II says:

Sacred tradition and Sacred Scripture form one sacred deposit of the word of God, committed to the Church. Holding fast to this deposit the entire holy people united with their shepherds remain always steadfast in the teaching of the Apostles, in the common life, in the breaking of the bread and in prayers (see Acts 2, 42, Greek text), so that holding to, practicing and professing the heritage of the faith, it becomes on the part of the bishops and faithful a single common effort.

..the task of authentically interpreting the word of God, whether written or handed on, has been entrusted exclusively to the living teaching office of the Church, whose authority is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ. This teaching office is not above the word of God, but serves it, teaching only what has been handed on, listening to it devoutly, guarding it scrupulously and explaining it faithfully in accord with a divine commission and with the help of the Holy Spirit, it draws from this one deposit of faith everything which it presents for belief as divinely revealed.

It is clear, therefore, that sacred tradition, Sacred Scripture and the teaching authority of the Church, in accord with God’s most wise design, are so linked and joined together that one cannot stand without the others, and that all together and each in its own way, under the action of the one Holy Spirit, contribute effectively to the salvation of souls.
Andrew McCallum January 10th, 2010 5:17 pm :
Mike,

I don’t think the case is that I don’t understand you. I understand the words you are saying, at least I think I do. But as I follow through your argument it seems to me that you are trying unsuccessfully to make the case for an infallible interpretive authority. I am trying to make the case that in the context of Nicea we don’t need an infallible interpretive authority.

But I hold that without the authority of a visible body identifiable as “the” Church, authorized by the Lord to teach definitively and infallibly in his name, your opinion and mine will, along with five bucks, get you a decent latte.

If you’re right about the rational demonstrability of orthodoxy from Scripture alone….

You talk about my arguments as if I think that all we need is the raw data and that by rational means we can defend the doctrine of the Scripture from rational principles alone. Is this what you think? Well if so, this is wrong. What I believe is that the Word of God speaks via the Church as the Church is defined in Scriptures. So at Nicea we have the truth of Scripture expressed through the Church. She judged the matter and we can understand the rational basis for this decision. My understanding of “rational” is not that we can judge the matter purely via our rational capacity, but rather that the Church gave logically consistent sound reasons from the text of the Scriptures to defend her positions. This does not boil down to rationalism but neither does it war against rationality. So, the Church demonstrated what the Scriptures say on this matter. Now the peculiar spin that the RCC puts on this is that Nicea speaks infallibly on the specific formulations of the matters she addresses. And this belief is why I asked you in my previous post to assume for sake of argument that Nicea was not speaking infallibly. You did not pick up on this but perhaps you could now. The question is again could the Church have spoken authoritatively if she was not infallible (on de fide matters as this is qualified by RCC theologians later in the history of the Church)? It seems to me that you are really arguing for the authority of the Church but you are slipping in infallibility without good rationale. I am interested for you to consider this mostly because I am questioning your reasons to posit infallibility in order to have authority, but secondarily because I see nothing historically at this point in time to suggest that the Church believed that she could speak infallibly outside of stating the Scriptures. It seems to me that you are imposing infallibly on the Early Church here in a way that the ECF’s at this point in time would not have resonated with. At least I find nothing in their writings which would argue for infallibility as the RCC later defined it.

Concerning Augustine and your comparison with VII, in practical terms, if the RCC is the final interpreter of the Scriptures, in what way does the RCC “serve” the Scriptures? No matter what the Bible might or might not say, the RCC is going to tell us what the Bible says, end of story. Anyway, Augustine said (On Baptism, Against the Donatists, Book II)) that the Scriptures are superior along with his argument that even ecumenical councils could be corrected. So this is essentially our argument. The ecumenical councils, Nicea in this case, were not perfect, they could be corrected. It was only the Scriptures which were infallible and no matter what mistakes might have been made in the tradition of the Church, she always had the infallible standard of Scriptures to look back on and correct her errors.
K. Doran January 11th, 2010 9:22 am :
Dear Catholics,

Andrew said: ” but secondarily because I see nothing historically at this point in time to suggest that the Church believed that she could speak infallibly outside of stating the Scriptures. It seems to me that you are imposing infallibly on the Early Church here in a way that the ECF’s at this point in time would not have resonated with. At least I find nothing in their writings which would argue for infallibility as the RCC later defined it.

Concerning Augustine and your comparison with VII, in practical terms, if the RCC is the final interpreter of the Scriptures, in what way does the RCC “serve” the Scriptures? No matter what the Bible might or might not say, the RCC is going to tell us what the Bible says, end of story. Anyway, Augustine said (On Baptism, Against the Donatists, Book II)) that the Scriptures are superior along with his argument that even ecumenical councils could be corrected. So this is essentially our argument. ”

The context of the Donatist Schism, the actual wording of Augustine’s statement, and the other writings of Augustine all point away from Andrew’s interpretation of Augustine’s statement about scripture in Against the Donatists. Anyone scandalized by this should feel free to email me: KBDh02@yahoo.com. Augustine made it very clear in another passage that he held at least the Church’s condemnation of Manicheanism to be so infallible that if the gospels were ever able to definitively disprove this condemnation, he would lose faith in the gospels and the Church at the same time. This means Augustine believed the Church had attempted to define some things infallibly (the authority of the gospels, and the condemnation of Manicheanism) , such that the authority of each definition depends on the non-contradiction between the two, and such that the authority of scripture itself would be lost of such a contradiction ever occurred. If this is not an ECF believing in infallibility, I don’t know what could convince someone. Finally, popes in this exact era (such as Pope Zosimus) had already said publicly that the authority of the popes was so great that no one can contradict what a pope has already defined. As far as I know, no one excommunicated Zosimus for this claim. Email me if interested: KBDh0@yahoo.com
Michael Liccione January 11th, 2010 12:12 pm :
Andrew (#686):

Since your reply neither identifies nor addresses the core of my argument for “infallible interpretive authority” (IIA) I now believe you actually have misunderstood that argument. But your reply does indicate what you believe the issue to be. We seem to have sharply different conceptions of what the issue actually is. So I shall now address that difference.

I hold that we need IIA because, without it, presenting a church-approved set of books as somehow containing the infallibly asserted statements we need is simply idle. What good is it to say that the Bible is an inerrant record of divine revelation if there is no “infallible rule” (Aquinas’ phrase) for interpreting it? Without such a rule, upheld by ecclesial authority and including such authority, we are left simply with various groups of people interpreting the Bible in different and logically incompatible ways, each claiming they “know” what God wants us to know by understanding the Bible. In such a situation it is impossible, even in principle, to distinguish between human opinion and divine revelation–even granted that the Bible is, at some level, inerrant.

What I didn’t get at first is why you don’t seem to see things that way. But your explanation of what you mean by saying that Nicene orthodoxy can be rationally “demonstrated” from the Bible makes your position even more puzzling to me than it was before. You say:

What I believe is that the Word of God speaks via the Church as the Church is defined in Scriptures. So at Nicea we have the truth of Scripture expressed through the Church. She judged the matter and we can understand the rational basis for this decision. My understanding of “rational” is not that we can judge the matter purely via our rational capacity, but rather that the Church gave logically consistent sound reasons from the text of the Scriptures to defend her positions. This does not boil down to rationalism but neither does it war against rationality. So, the Church demonstrated what the Scriptures say on this matter.

What you now seem to mean by saying that Nicene orthodoxy can be rationally demonstrated from the Bible is no more than what I mean by saying that Nicene orthodoxy is a rationally defensible way to interpret the Bible. But as I said, that and five bucks will get us a decent latte. If all one means by ‘rationally demonstrable’ is ‘logically consistent’, then there are other rationally demonstable ways to interpret the Bible that nevertheless are not logically compatible with Nicene orthodoxy. The Arians, Nestorians, and Copts were right about that, as certain liberal biblical scholars are on their own account even today. You have not even attempted to show otherwise, which is good, because the attempt would be futile.

That brings me to the main difficulty. You write:

The question is again could the Church have spoken authoritatively if she was not infallible (on de fide matters as this is qualified by RCC theologians later in the history of the Church)? It seems to me that you are really arguing for the authority of the Church but you are slipping in infallibility without good rationale. I am interested for you to consider this mostly because I am questioning your reasons to posit infallibility in order to have authority, but secondarily because I see nothing historically at this point in time to suggest that the Church believed that she could speak infallibly outside of stating the Scriptures.

In the second paragraph of this comment of mine, I have restated my “good rationale” for IIA, which I thought I had made clear already. That the Church never used the “i-word” in the first millennium is irrelevant. Why?

If the teaching authority of the ecumenical councils of that millennium understood itself to be lacking divine protection from error when binding the whole Church to a dogma, then it could not have presented its conclusions as anything more than a rationally defensible interpretation of the Bible which might be wrong. What authority would there have been in that, other than the fallible authority of human reason backed by the coercive power of the Empire? You seem to be attempting to answer that question by saying that “the Word of God speaks via the Church as the Church is defined in Scriptures.” But that presupposes prior agreement both on what the Bible means by ‘the Church’ and on who speaks definitively for and to the Church so understood. The heretics could always say, and in effect did, that they had plenty of legitimately ordained bishops on their side, so that they had as much claim to speak definitively for and to the Church as the self-styled “orthodox.” What could the “orthodox” say in reply? That they had more votes at the councils? What authority is there in that, other than political? Prevailing politically is not enough; rational defensibility is not enough. On reflection, what’s needed is an IIA; otherwise the faithful are left with nothing more than a perpetual clash of opinions. That’s why the Catholic Church developed her doctrine of infallibility over time, and applied it retrospectively to the “ecumenical” councils of the first millennium.

It is of course perfectly true that the Fathers and the councils acknowledged the superior authority of the Bible. But they never said, nor should they have said, that the Bible could be correctly understood without being interpreted through the Church’s tradition, as upheld by the divinely authorized successors of the Apostles, who thus enjoyed protection from interpretive error under certain conditions.
Andrew McCallum January 12th, 2010 1:40 am :
Mike L says:

If the teaching authority of the ecumenical councils of that millennium understood itself to be lacking divine protection from error when binding the whole Church to a dogma, then it could not have presented its conclusions as anything more than a rationally defensible interpretation of the Bible which might be wrong.

Yes, I understand the words above, but I disagree that the second phrase above logically proceeds from the first. This is not true in any area of thought so why should it be true in theology? In general when people work from a set of data that is logically coherent they may develop a theory from it. They don’t present their theory as “this is logically consistent with the data, but it might be wrong because there are other theories that are also logically consistent with the data.” They rather are likely to say something like “this theory is logically consistent with the data and correct and all other theories are not.” And nobody questions a scholar when they say something like this and if their theory gains enough adherents then it is generally held that it is true. And if the theory holds for long enough it becomes paradigmatic and few or nobody questions its veracity. So in the case we are talking about, we start with a logically consistent set of data (the Bible) and we can formulate theories based on that data. Of course unlike other subjects we have the efficacy of the Church and the Spirit working through the process which means that we can be even surer of this sort of thing than any kind of physical law that we all take for granted as true. And we can be entirely certain that the Scriptures are a logically consistent whole unlike so many other sets of information. So on Nicea, have the statements of Nicea not stood the test of time and has it not been demonstrated time after time after time throughout history that they are a faithful reflections of the words of Scripture? If not, tell me historically where the really cogent arguments (that is, those that given the biblical data are equally rationally consistent with orthodoxy) are against Nicean orthodoxy?

What you now seem to mean by saying that Nicene orthodoxy can be rationally demonstrated from the Bible is no more than what I mean by saying that Nicene orthodoxy is a rationally defensible way to interpret the Bible.

No, I am saying that it is the only rational way to interpret the Bible. The Bible is logically consistent and does not teach two or three or four or more possible ways to interpret who the Son, Father, etc is. It teaches one truth about God. If you are correct that there are more than one rational possible interpretations about the Son in the Bible (that the Church then needed to sort out) then the Scripture would be contradicting itself and thus God would be contradicting Himself. But we hold that God teaches one truth about Himself and sets this down in Scripture and the truth He teaches about Himself is rationally comprehensible. Of course, the means He has ordained to communicate this truth to His people is through the agency of the Church as the elements of the Church are outlined in Scriptures. Note the entity I am speaking of doing the rational interpretation is the Church, not the individual.

At Nicea, since we can find no record of theologians of that time arguing for the truth of the things Nicea taught based on an appeal to claims of ecclesiastical infallibility of de fide pronouncements, it is hardly likely that any of the theologians who came to side with Nicea came to their understanding in this manner. I think it far more likely that they found the biblical and rational arguments for the Trinity to be persuasive. I know where I find commentaries on the Scriptures from the ECF’s at this point in time discussing the Trinity. Do you want to tell me that these ECF’s felt that the Arians had equally logically consistent arguments as the ECF’s and it was then up to the Church to sort out this mess? I’m not expecting you to be able to come up with an ECF using a term that equates to infallibility, but I think you should have some sort of justification from the primary sources to back up your argument.

Why you continue to bring up liberals and heretics I don’t know. There are many highly intelligent scholars who tell us that Isaiah did not write the Book of Isaiah. Should I assume that their theory is as rationally consistent with the orthodox theory and that the Church needs to be infallible in order to sort out the pro-Isaiah and anti-Isaiah theories since they are both rationally consistent? Or perhaps you could give me a better example from one of the Catholic or Protestant liberals to illustrate your point about liberals.

To try to keep on topic, I am not going to comment on your points about canon or ecclesiology.
K. Doran January 12th, 2010 11:47 am :
Andrew M said: “At Nicea, since we can find no record of theologians of that time arguing for the truth of the things Nicea taught based on an appeal to claims of ecclesiastical infallibility of de fide pronouncements, it is hardly likely that any of the theologians who came to side with Nicea came to their understanding in this manner.”

Athanasius said: “the word of the Lord pronounced by the ecumenical synod of Nicaea stands for ever” (Ep. ad Afros, n. 2)

And again, Athanasius said: “[H]old fast, every one, the faith we have received from the Fathers, which they who assembled at Nicaea recorded in writing, and endure not those who endeavour to innovate thereon. And however they may write phrases out of the Scripture, endure not their writings; however they may speak the language of the orthodox, yet attend not to what they say; for they speak not with an upright mind, but putting on such language like sheeps’ clothing, in their hearts they think with Arius, after the manner of the devil, who is the author of all heresies. For he too made use of the words of Scripture, but was put to silence by our Saviour. . . . the character of apostolical men is sincere and incapable of fraud. (Circular to Bishops of Egypt and Libya 8; NPNF 2, Vol. IV)”

Did Athanasius believe that he who interprets scripture in a manner contrary to a representative synod of bishops, united to the pope, which has made a decree with the binding formula “it has seemed good to the holy spirit and to us,” is in fact ipso facto breaking the rule of truth that Christ has established through his Church? Perhaps. This interpretation is certainly quite consistent with statements of the sort above. Perhaps he didn’t. Perhaps his rule of ecclesial infallibility was different than the Catholic one of today. Or perhaps his words above just mean that he really really liked the Council of Nicea, and he liked it so much that he decided it should “stand firm forever,” even though it wasn’t infallible.

We can never know what he really believed. He’s dead. And if God wanted us to know for sure what he believed he would have sent us to his century, instead of our own. But everyone who comes to the ECFs must be aware that their “Catholic”-sounding statements did not start at any particular period in history — they go back, in one form or another, in seed or in bud, to the beginning. So there is no use in using the ECFs to _casually_ claim that ecclesial infallibility is a corruption of the deposit of faith. You will need a more subtle argument, along the lines of your non-ECF-based philosophical discussion.

I think Michael L. does need to flesh out each step in his argument more clearly to the uninitiated, but the outline he has already made gives you a sense of how we Catholics see a philosophical, theological, and practical need for infallibility, deeply tied to the need for unity among believers (in the present, and with the past and future).

Sincerely,

K. Doran
Michael Liccione January 12th, 2010 2:00 pm :
Andrew:

Given that this comment thread is already and by far the longest I’ve ever seen on a blog, it is not the place to “flesh out,” in K. Doran’s words, all the argumentative steps of my case for ecclesial infallibility. I shall confine myself at this point mostly to my basic criticisms of your particular manner of thinking about the related issues.

I find it telling that you don’t understand why I keep bringing up “liberals and heretics.” In the context of the general theological epistemology you’ve just adumbrated, your expressed puzzlement suggests to me that you don’t find any hermeneutic of Scripture other than yours worth treating as rationally plausible. Now if you were right, the truth of Nicene orthodoxy should be as obvious to theologically well-educated Christians in general as, e.g., the laws of physics are to physicists in general. But that is clearly not the case. And that is yet one more reason why it seems to me that, if your theological epistemology were correct, one could only explain heresy as the result of ignorance, stupidity, or ill will. Since you no more think that all heresy is thus explicable than I do, you need to consider the possibility that your theological rationalism is unjustified.

You claim that Nicene orthodoxy is the only rationally defensible hermeneutic of Scripture. But of course, not only do many liberals and heretics reject that claim; many of us who share your Nicene orthodoxy also reject it. That was the case even in the fourth century. Unless we are all ignorant, stupid, or ill-willed, the only way to account for that fact is to grant that more than one hermeneutic of Scripture is rationally defensible, i.e., makes sense of the data and is logically self-consistent. That seems as obvious to me as your own position does to you. Of course I do think that, when interpreted in the way the Catholic Church has always interpreted it—i.e., in the context of Tradition and the teaching of the Church—Scripture affords better support for Nicene orthodoxy than for any of the alternatives. If I didn’t think that, I’d be as much of a fideist as you are a rationalist. But the suggestion that Scripture alone makes any other hermeneutic rationally indefensible seems to me utterly absurd. And I am far from alone: many Protestants and Orthodox, as well as many Catholics, agree with me. The Nicene hermeneutic of Scripture gains clear purchase only if one grants, on independent grounds, the binding normative force of extra-scriptural sources. Thus, there has to be prior agreement on precisely what counts as “the” Church, on how her “rules of faith” are to be understood, and on what makes them normative. You and I don’t have even that much agreement. You and most Protestants don’t even have that much agreement.

Now a neutral observer might well ask at this point: “Who cares about what you two, as individuals, find to be obviously true or obviously false? What we want to know is the objective truth, not what you or anybody else finds subjectively compelling.” That’s the right thing to say. The reason I believe in ecclesial infallibility, as distinct from the sort of approach you advocate, is that it affords a consistent way to draw that distinction, and yours doesn’t.
Tim A. Troutman January 12th, 2010 4:26 pm :
Dr. Liccione,

You said :

there has to be prior agreement on precisely what counts as “the” Church, on how her “rules of faith” are to be understood, and on what makes them normative.

Absolutely. That is why we discussed ecclesiology before getting into hermeneutics, etc. There were little or no direct challenges to any of the arguments posted in the ecclesiology articles. I predicted that the challengers would remains silent on the crucial foundations, and then raise a hellstorm when we got to the typical stuff we Catholics and Protestants like to fight about. My prediction has turned out to be true.

Thanks for taking the time to make these arguments. They’re spot on.
K. Doran January 12th, 2010 8:12 pm :
Hey Michael,

When I said you “need to flesh out each step in [your] argument more clearly to the uninitiated,” I was just letting Andrew know that you were only outlining a couple main points. The word “need” was ambiguous, sorry about that. I meant “Michael would need to flesh it out more clearly to uninitiated people if this were to be his complete argument, but of course we know (or should know) that he has already done so in other places.” Andrew probably knew this already, but I wanted to make sure he didn’t think your combox answers were all you had to say on the matter. I like your stuff a lot — keep up the great work!

Sincerely,

K. Doran
Jared Brattoli January 12th, 2010 8:46 pm :
If I may butt in…

I just don’t understand how infallibility needs to be demonstrated in respect to the Church’s authority. To me it seems a first principle, i.e. something so logically necessary that it shouldn’t need demonstration–such that I wouldn’t necessarily expect to find it in the scriptures or early church history unless or untill someone was objecting to it. I would like to know how fallibility can be demonstrated from the scriptures and the early church if we should believe it; infallibility appears to be the norm and the given theological assumption throughout the history of the church, and in scripture. I believe the burden of proof/demonstration rests on Protestants, and that the benefit of the doubt should be granted to the Catholic Church.

It seems that the Protestant gets his notion of church authority from the type of authority he sees exercised in the world, e.g. civil governments and the like. He therefore assumes, because natural authorities are fallable and can error, when it comes to matters of authority in the church, that she will do likewise. But the Church has *supernatural* authority generated and derived, and also the power thereof, from the Godhead, and therefore necessarily must be infallible, since God is not fallible.

It is good if a doctrine can be rationally understood, and understood correctly, but the fact that no one reasons correctly all the time, nor recognizes correct reasoning all the time, there shouldn’t be any doubt that an authority that rests on rational demonstrability cannot be a real or effective authority at all. And, since the doctrine of Sola Scriptora depends on that kind of authority, then it therefore cannot and should not be our rule of faith.
Tap January 12th, 2010 10:05 pm :
Have you guys started on the Canon article yet? Its the next on your list, Plus, Keith Mattison says it will take weeks for him to respond given his ongoing problems (re # 468).
Andrew McCallum January 12th, 2010 11:46 pm :
Mike Liccione said this: I find it telling that you don’t understand why I keep bringing up “liberals and heretics.” In the context of the general theological epistemology you’ve just adumbrated, your expressed puzzlement suggests to me that you don’t find any hermeneutic of Scripture other than yours worth treating as rationally plausible.

Mike,

I don’t that’s fair. My reason for questioning you about bringing up liberals was that they explicitly and openly reject any basis for intelligible interchanges. They assume for instance that the Bible is myth and Christianity is a search for personal relevance and so on. They have given up the common assumptions that enable us to debate. It’s like a research scientist who comes across someone who believes that the physical world is controlled by fairies and demons. The two have no shared assumptions about the subject matter under discussion. So, the case of the liberals you used several time were not examples where I really could say much of anything. Perhaps a better example of a difference would be that of baptism as it is perceived historically by Baptists and Presbyterians. Now here is an example of a difference between two groups where there is a base set of common beliefs and assumptions. This would be a better example for you to utilize.

Now if you were right, the truth of Nicene orthodoxy should be as obvious to theologically well-educated Christians in general as, e.g., the laws of physics are to physicists in general. But that is clearly not the case.

Hmmm…, I’m honestly trying to figure out who you are speaking of. Are you using the term “Christian” in a general sort of way to mean anyone who says they are a Christian? My statement originally was that the elements of Nicea were held by every Reformed and even Evangelical group I know of. The statements about the deity of Christ for instance are no something that nobody in these groups doubts that I know of, at least no “well educated Christian” as you put it.

many of us who share your Nicene orthodoxy also reject it. That was the case even in the fourth century. Unless we are all ignorant, stupid, or ill-willed, the only way to account for that fact is to grant that more than one hermeneutic of Scripture is rationally defensible, i.e., makes sense of the data and is logically self-consistent.

The fortunes of Arianism in the fourth century had as much and probably more to do with folks like Theodosius than with Athanasius. The political forces that kept Arianism going and then later squashed it, as well as the powerful pagan philosophies with attendant biases against deified humanity shouldn’t be discounted as powerful cultural forces that colored the orthodox/Arian debates. But concerning those orthodox theologians of the time who argued against Arianism from the Scriptures, I think it would hard to demonstrate that they believed that the orthodox and the variety of anti-orthodox beliefs would have been equally demonstrable just given the biblical data. I don’t even know how you would begin to go about trying to prove your argument here. But I don’t think there is any reason to say that the other side should be judged ignorant, they were just pulled more by philosophical, political concerns than they were strictly exegetical ones. And it still seems to me that you are saying that there are equally rationally valid arguments for and against Arianism in the Scriptures and the Church then sorted it out. If this is true then there are equally valid but contradictory positions within the Scriptures that some outside group must adjudicate somehow.

OK, just briefly on ecclesiology, I think you are making too much about the differences between Protestant groups. Even for those who don’t care too much about the historical grounding of the Reformed family of churches, there are generally not methodological differences between us when it comes to exegetical and hermeneutical matters. Of course there are clear differences between Protestant and Catholic on what defines the Church and yes, these certainly do have implications for this discussion. What I hear you saying is that God does not and in effect cannot work through a fallible Church (of course qualifying infallible as the RCC does). But this is philosophical assumption about the nature of theology that does not seem to us to have any basis in either the apostolic age nor that which immediately followed it. God can work through a Church that makes errors even in ecumenical councils if she will admit to those errors and correct then via the infallible standard that God has given to her. But I think you want to say not just that this state of affairs did not happen, but also that it could not happen. The problem we see is just that the RCC says that she is irreformable and therefore cannot err. But if this assumption is incorrect than the RCC is destined to carry error into the future since there is no way to remove it.
Andrew McCallum January 13th, 2010 12:11 am :
I just don’t understand how infallibility needs to be demonstrated in respect to the Church’s authority. To me it seems a first principle, i.e. something so logically necessary that it shouldn’t need demonstration–such that I wouldn’t necessarily expect to- I find it in the scriptures or early church history unless or untill someone was objecting to it.

Jared – I think you have hit the nail squarely here. Infallibility is an assumption for the Catholic theologian. The nature of theological work is such that there must be an infallible human authoratative body judging on matters. When Mike defends this idea he is not that I see trying to prove it historically, he is I think in effect saying that it is an epistemological presupposition that is unassailable. Now of course we are questioning this assumption and at least trying to suggest that it is conceptually possible to have a fallible interpretive body. That would be a start.

We Protestants operate from a different sort of assumption and that is that we don’t ascribe infallibility to anything without very good justification. Scriptures are breathed by God and thus must be incapable of error. This is proof that is beyond dispute at least for us conservative Catholics and Protestants. So when someone says that there is another body of data that is also infallible we would like to know what the basis for such a claim is. We are rather uncomfortable with putting man’s words in effect on par with God’s without very good reason.

K. Doran – I think you are speaking of theologians who claim that a given position is true or maybe even inerrant. But this is different than saying that it is infallible.
Francis Beckwith January 13th, 2010 1:48 am :
Andrew writes:

We Protestants operate from a different sort of assumption and that is that we don’t ascribe infallibility to anything without very good justification.

I’m glad you cleared that one up. We Catholics just believe stuff for any old reason. I was trying to keep it a secret. But Andrew took the lid off. :-)

Scriptures are breathed by God and thus must be incapable of error. This is proof that is beyond dispute at least for us conservative Catholics and Protestants.

And what proof is that? For the Catholic, the Scriptures arise from the Church in an organic fashion in union with its practices and liturgy. How do you Protestants think we got the Bible without the Church’s cooperation in the process?

It seems to me that your “proof” will only be as strong as your weakest link. And since none of your links in the chain of custody is infallible in securing the collection of books we now call “the Bible,” your “proof” will always be in principle inferior to the Catholic proof. Remember, when the canon was closed, there was only one universal church. So, anything you say that is critical of the Catholic view of what constitutes the Scriptures diminishes the Protestant confidence that we have the right collection of books. For the Church that claimed to have discovered the canon is in fact the Church, the Catholic Church, from which Protestantism sprang. Marcion, for example, claimed a canon. The Church disagreed and declared his view heretical. But the basis for that judgment could not be the Scriptures themselves since the dispute was over the question of what constituted the Scriptures. (And besides, the canon was not even fixed at that time). As St. Ireneaus writes in “Against Heresies,” III.3-4 (emphasis mine):

3. The blessed apostles, then, having founded and built up the Church, committed into the hands of Linus the office of the episcopate. Of this Linus, Paul makes mention in the Epistles to Timothy. To him succeeded Anacletus; and after him, in the third place from the apostles, Clement was allotted the bishopric. This man, as he had seen the blessed apostles, and had been conversant with them, might be said to have the preaching of the apostles still echoing [in his ears], and their traditions before his eyes. Nor was he alone [in this], for there were many still remaining who had received instructions from the apostles. In the time of this Clement, no small dissension having occurred among the brethren at Corinth, the Church in Rome dispatched a most powerful letter to the Corinthians, exhorting them to peace, renewing their faith, and declaring the tradition which it had lately received from the apostles, proclaiming the one God, omnipotent, the Maker of heaven and earth, the Creator of man, who brought on the deluge, and called Abraham, who led the people from the land of Egypt, spoke with Moses, set forth the law, sent the prophets, and who has prepared fire for the devil and his angels. From this document, whosoever chooses to do so, may learn that He, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, was preached by the Churches, and may also understand the tradition of the Church, since this Epistle is of older date than these men who are now propagating falsehood, and who conjure into existence another god beyond the Creator and the Maker of all existing things. To this Clement there succeeded Evaristus. Alexander followed Evaristus; then, sixth from the apostles, Sixtus was appointed; after him, Telephorus, who was gloriously martyred; then Hyginus; after him, Pius; then after him, Anicetus. Soter having succeeded Anicetus, Eleutherius does now, in the twelfth place from the apostles, hold the inheritance of the episcopate. In this order, and by this succession, the ecclesiastical tradition from the apostles, and the preaching of the truth, have come down to us. And this is most abundant proof that there is one and the same vivifying faith, which has been preserved in the Church from the apostles until now, and handed down in truth.

4. But Polycarp also was not only instructed by apostles, and conversed with many who had seen Christ, but was also, by apostles in Asia, appointed bishop of the Church in Smyrna, whom I also saw in my early youth, for he tarried [on earth] a very long time, and, when a very old man, gloriously and most nobly suffering martyrdom, departed this life, having always taught the things which he had learned from the apostles, and which the Church has handed down, and which alone are true. To these things all the Asiatic Churches testify, as do also those men who have succeeded Polycarp down to the present time,— a man who was of much greater weight, and a more steadfast witness of truth, than Valentinus, and Marcion, and the rest of the heretics. He it was who, coming to Rome in the time of Anicetus caused many to turn away from the aforesaid heretics to the Church of God, proclaiming that he had received this one and sole truth from the apostles—that, namely, which is handed down by the Church. There are also those who heard from him that John, the disciple of the Lord, going to bathe at Ephesus, and perceiving Cerinthus within, rushed out of the bath-house without bathing, exclaiming, Let us fly, lest even the bath-house fall down, because Cerinthus, the enemy of the truth, is within. And Polycarp himself replied to Marcion, who met him on one occasion, and said, Do you know me? I do know you, the first-born of Satan. Such was the horror which the apostles and their disciples had against holding even verbal communication with any corrupters of the truth; as Paul also says, A man that is an heretic, after the first and second admonition, reject; knowing that he that is such is subverted, and sins, being condemned of himself. Titus 3:10 There is also a very powerful Epistle of Polycarp written to the Philippians, from which those who choose to do so, and are anxious about their salvation, can learn the character of his faith, and the preaching of the truth. Then, again, the Church in Ephesus, founded by Paul, and having John remaining among them permanently until the times of Trajan, is a true witness of the tradition of the apostles. (https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103303.htm)

Thus, without an authoritative magisterium (successors of the apostles) to issue definitive judgments against Marcion and his followers, the finality of these judgments seems incomprehensible.

Andrew writes:

So when someone says that there is another body of data that is also infallible we would like to know what the basis for such a claim is.

There is not “another body of data” for the Catholic. There is simply the Church and its Scriptures. The bifurcation between Church and Scriptures is not part of the Catholic conceptual framework. I no doubt believe that it is integral to Protestantism. So, for us, the real question is: So when someone denies that the Scriptures arise from the Church in an organic fashion in union with its practices and liturgy, we would like to know what the basis for such a claim is. Because we reject Protestantism as the default Christianity, we think the burden is on you, and not on us. We look at the history of the Christian Church and we see an historical, theological, and ecclesiastical continuity between the ancient Church and the Catholic Church. And when we look at the ancient Church as it developed into the early Middle Ages and into the beginning of the second millenium, we see an understanding of the relationship between Scripture and Church that is, well, Catholic. The radical break with this understanding occurs in the 16th century in Germany. Of course, I know that you reject this narrative But we as Catholics find it compelling. Thus, we see no reason why your question is logically prior to ours.
K. Doran January 13th, 2010 9:53 am :
Andrew,

Dude, you’ve been speaking about the ECFs as if there is NO evidence for a “Catholic” interpretation of their statements on church authority. For instance, you said: “at Nicea, since we can find no record of theologians of that time arguing for the truth of the things Nicea taught based on an appeal to claims of ecclesiastical infallibility of de fide pronouncements. . .”

“No record”? I pointed out that their statements are quite consistent with a catholic interpretation of church authority. For instance, when Athanasius says: “[H]old fast, every one, the faith we have received from the Fathers, which they who assembled at Nicaea recorded in writing, and endure not those who endeavour to innovate thereon. And however they may write phrases out of the Scripture, endure not their writings; however they may speak the language of the orthodox, yet attend not to what they say; . . . the character of apostolical men is sincere and incapable of fraud.” This could mean that he believes that Nicea was infallible, or just that he believes it is true. It isn’t technically what one would say if scripture is the only infallible authority, since then you would always want to leave wiggle room to “attend” to people who “write phrases out of scripture” with the aim to “innovate” on the “faith” of Nicea. But maybe he just spoke inaccurately and he really did not believe in infallibility, as I mentioned. The point is, as I mentioned above, that you are completely inaccurate to say that there is “no record” of ECF’s arguing the case for Nicea based on ecclesial infallability. Depending on what ECFs meant in their “Catholic” sounding passages, maybe there is such a record and maybe there isn’t.

To which you responded: “I think you are speaking of theologians who claim that a given position is true or maybe even inerrant. But this is different than saying that it is infallible.”

This is the whole point, Andrew. You think. You don’t know. You think. You haven’t proved that they don’t. You just think they don’t. So stop pretending that the ECFs obviously can’t provide any support for a Catholic view of infallibility. ECFs need to be interpreted, and the Catholic interpretation is neither jejune nor self-contradictory. Thus, you will need to concentrate on philosophy to convince Catholics that our idea of infallibility is incorrect. Our idea of infallibility cannot so casually be excluded from the confines of the historical data.

On several occasions you have made the mistake of relying on rather inaccurate protestant histories for your references to the ECFs (Chalcedon, for example), or on simplifying the ECF evidence in order to make one-off rejections of Catholic views (the ECFs don’t say ANYTHING about this idea [infallibility, etc], so HOW can you expect us to believe it is part of the deposit of faith?). I encourage you to either read some Catholic histories (I say you haven’t read them because I don’t see how you can make some of the broad nuance-free historical claims you have made if you have) or concentrate on the philosophical discussions. I appreciate your input. I think it will be more productive if you take a more nuanced view of the data of history.

Sincerely,

K. Doran
TurretinFan January 13th, 2010 10:46 am :
K. Doran:

I appreciate your suggestion (in #699) that we take “a more nuanced view of the data of history.” I did so with respect to the two quotations you had advanced from Athanasius (in #690, one of which gets repeated in #699). Since whether you are right or wrong about Athanasius doesn’t seem to impact directly on the soundness or relevance of Bryan/Neal’s article, I’ve posted the nuanced analysis on my own blog (link).

Francis Beckwith:

You stated: “The bifurcation between Church and Scriptures is not part of the Catholic conceptual framework.”

However,

a) historically there has been. Recall, for example, when it was claimed that it was not necessary for the English people to have an English Bible?

and

b) even this article reflects such a bifurcation. Recall that the article states:

The problem with this dilemma is that it ignores the qualitative ontological distinction between persons and books, and so it falsely assumes that if a book needs an authoritative interpreter in order to function as an ecclesial authority, so must a living person.

You also wrote: “For the Catholic, the Scriptures arise from the Church in an organic fashion in union with its practices and liturgy.”

But, the CCC states:

105 God is the author of Sacred Scripture. “The divinely revealed realities, which are contained and presented in the text of Sacred Scripture, have been written down under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.” “For Holy Mother Church, relying on the faith of the apostolic age, accepts as sacred and canonical the books of the Old and the New Testaments, whole and entire, with all their parts, on the grounds that, written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God as their author, and have been handed on as such to the Church herself.”

(internal footnotes omitted – emphasis added)

-TurretinFan
Francis Beckwith January 13th, 2010 1:10 pm :
I said this: “For the Catholic, the Scriptures arise from the Church in an organic fashion in union with its practices and liturgy.”

And then TF offers this, from the CCC, apparently to rebut what I had written (presumably to show that I got Catholic doctrine wrong):

105 God is the author of Sacred Scripture. “The divinely revealed realities, which are contained and presented in the text of Sacred Scripture, have been written down under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.” “For Holy Mother Church, relying on the faith of the apostolic age, accepts as sacred and canonical the books of the Old and the New Testaments, whole and entire, with all their parts, on the grounds that, written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God as their author, and have been handed on as such to the Church herself.”

Ironically, this is part of a larger section of the Catechism–“Chapter Two: God Comes to Meet Man”–that actually articulates the view I was presenting. The passage that TF quotes is from part 1 of article 3 of chapter 2, which appears after the CCC has already presented in article 2 of chapter 2 the organic relationship between Church of Scripture. The passage quoted by TF is in a section that is specifically written to address the nature of Scripture qua Scripture after its organic relationship with the Church had already been addressed. So, I am mystified as to why TF would offer such a passage in rebuttal. Perhaps I am missing something. In any event, here is the entirety of article 2 (noted omitted):

ARTICLE 2
THE TRANSMISSION OF DIVINE REVELATION

74 God “desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth”: that is, of Christ Jesus. Christ must be proclaimed to all nations and individuals, so that this revelation may reach to the ends of the earth:

“God graciously arranged that the things he had once revealed for the salvation of all peoples should remain in their entirety, throughout the ages, and be transmitted to all generations.”

I. THE APOSTOLIC TRADITION

75 “Christ the Lord, in whom the entire Revelation of the most high God is summed up, commanded the apostles to preach the Gospel, which had been promised beforehand by the prophets, and which he fulfilled in his own person and promulgated with his own lips. In preaching the Gospel, they were to communicate the gifts of God to all men. This Gospel was to be the source of all saving truth and moral discipline.”

In the apostolic preaching. . .

76 In keeping with the Lord’s command, the Gospel was handed on in two ways:

– orally “by the apostles who handed on, by the spoken word of their preaching, by the example they gave, by the institutions they established, what they themselves had received – whether from the lips of Christ, from his way of life and his works, or whether they had learned it at the prompting of the Holy Spirit”;

– in writing “by those apostles and other men associated with the apostles who, under the inspiration of the same Holy Spirit, committed the message of salvation to writing”.

. . . continued in apostolic succession

77 “In order that the full and living Gospel might always be preserved in the Church the apostles left bishops as their successors. They gave them their own position of teaching authority.” Indeed, “the apostolic preaching, which is expressed in a special way in the inspired books, was to be preserved in a continuous line of succession until the end of time.”

78 This living transmission, accomplished in the Holy Spirit, is called Tradition, since it is distinct from Sacred Scripture, though closely connected to it. Through Tradition, “the Church, in her doctrine, life and worship, perpetuates and transmits to every generation all that she herself is, all that she believes.” “The sayings of the holy Fathers are a witness to the life-giving presence of this Tradition, showing how its riches are poured out in the practice and life of the Church, in her belief and her prayer.”

79 The Father’s self-communication made through his Word in the Holy Spirit, remains present and active in the Church: “God, who spoke in the past, continues to converse with the Spouse of his beloved Son. And the Holy Spirit, through whom the living voice of the Gospel rings out in the Church – and through her in the world – leads believers to the full truth, and makes the Word of Christ dwell in them in all its richness.”

II. THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TRADITION AND SACRED SCRIPTURE

One common source. . .

80 “Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture, then, are bound closely together, and communicate one with the other. For both of them, flowing out from the same divine well-spring, come together in some fashion to form one thing, and move towards the same goal.” Each of them makes present and fruitful in the Church the mystery of Christ, who promised to remain with his own “always, to the close of the age”.

. . . two distinct modes of transmission

81 “Sacred Scripture is the speech of God as it is put down in writing under the breath of the Holy Spirit.”

“And [Holy] Tradition transmits in its entirety the Word of God which has been entrusted to the apostles by Christ the Lord and the Holy Spirit. It transmits it to the successors of the apostles so that, enlightened by the Spirit of truth, they may faithfully preserve, expound and spread it abroad by their preaching.”

82 As a result the Church, to whom the transmission and interpretation of Revelation is entrusted, “does not derive her certainty about all revealed truths from the holy Scriptures alone. Both Scripture and Tradition must be accepted and honored with equal sentiments of devotion and reverence.”

Apostolic Tradition and ecclesial traditions

83 The Tradition here in question comes from the apostles and hands on what they received from Jesus’ teaching and example and what they learned from the Holy Spirit. The first generation of Christians did not yet have a written New Testament, and the New Testament itself demonstrates the process of living Tradition.

Tradition is to be distinguished from the various theological, disciplinary, liturgical or devotional traditions, born in the local churches over time. These are the particular forms, adapted to different places and times, in which the great Tradition is expressed. In the light of Tradition, these traditions can be retained, modified or even abandoned under the guidance of the Church’s Magisterium.

III. THE INTERPRETATION OF THE HERITAGE OF FAITH

The heritage of faith entrusted to the whole of the Church

84 The apostles entrusted the “Sacred deposit” of the faith (the depositum fidei),45 contained in Sacred Scripture and Tradition, to the whole of the Church. “By adhering to [this heritage] the entire holy people, united to its pastors, remains always faithful to the teaching of the apostles, to the brotherhood, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. So, in maintaining, practicing and professing the faith that has been handed on, there should be a remarkable harmony between the bishops and the faithful.”

The Magisterium of the Church

85 “The task of giving an authentic interpretation of the Word of God, whether in its written form or in the form of Tradition, has been entrusted to the living teaching office of the Church alone. Its authority in this matter is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ.” This means that the task of interpretation has been entrusted to the bishops in communion with the successor of Peter, the Bishop of Rome.

86 “Yet this Magisterium is not superior to the Word of God, but is its servant. It teaches only what has been handed on to it. At the divine command and with the help of the Holy Spirit, it listens to this devotedly, guards it with dedication and expounds it faithfully. All that it proposes for belief as being divinely revealed is drawn from this single deposit of faith.”

87 Mindful of Christ’s words to his apostles: “He who hears you, hears me”, the faithful receive with docility the teachings and directives that their pastors give them in different forms.

The dogmas of the faith

88 The Church’s Magisterium exercises the authority it holds from Christ to the fullest extent when it defines dogmas, that is, when it proposes, in a form obliging the Christian people to an irrevocable adherence of faith, truths contained in divine Revelation or also when it proposes, in a definitive way, truths having a necessary connection with these.

89 There is an organic connection between our spiritual life and the dogmas. Dogmas are lights along the path of faith; they illuminate it and make it secure. Conversely, if our life is upright, our intellect and heart will be open to welcome the light shed by the dogmas of faith.

90 The mutual connections between dogmas, and their coherence, can be found in the whole of the Revelation of the mystery of Christ. “In Catholic doctrine there exists an order or hierarchy of truths, since they vary in their relation to the foundation of the Christian faith.”

The supernatural sense of faith

91 All the faithful share in understanding and handing on revealed truth. They have received the anointing of the Holy Spirit, who instructs them53 and guides them into all truth.

92 “The whole body of the faithful. . . cannot err in matters of belief. This characteristic is shown in the supernatural appreciation of faith (sensus fidei) on the part of the whole people, when, from the bishops to the last of the faithful, they manifest a universal consent in matters of faith and morals.”

93 “By this appreciation of the faith, aroused and sustained by the Spirit of truth, the People of God, guided by the sacred teaching authority (Magisterium),. . . receives. . . the faith, once for all delivered to the saints. . . The People unfailingly adheres to this faith, penetrates it more deeply with right judgment, and applies it more fully in daily life.”

Growth in understanding the faith

94 Thanks to the assistance of the Holy Spirit, the understanding of both the realities and the words of the heritage of faith is able to grow in the life of the Church:

– “through the contemplation and study of believers who ponder these things in their hearts”; it is in particular “theological research [which] deepens knowledge of revealed truth”.

– “from the intimate sense of spiritual realities which [believers] experience”, the sacred Scriptures “grow with the one who reads them.”

– “from the preaching of those who have received, along with their right of succession in the episcopate, the sure charism of truth”.

95 “It is clear therefore that, in the supremely wise arrangement of God, sacred Tradition, Sacred Scripture and the Magisterium of the Church are so connected and associated that one of them cannot stand without the others. Working together, each in its own way, under the action of the one Holy Spirit, they all contribute effectively to the salvation of souls.”

IN BRIEF

96 What Christ entrusted to the apostles, they in turn handed on by their preaching and writing, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, to all generations, until Christ returns in glory.

97 “Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture make up a single sacred deposit of the Word of God” (DV 10) in which, as in a mirror, the pilgrim Church contemplates God, the source of all her riches.

98 “The Church, in her doctrine, life and worship, perpetuates and transmits to every generation all that she herself is, all that she believes” (DV 8 § 1).

99 Thanks to its supernatural sense of faith, the People of God as a whole never ceases to welcome, to penetrate more deeply and to live more fully from the gift of divine Revelation.

100 The task of interpreting the Word of God authentically has been entrusted solely to the Magisterium of the Church, that is, to the Pope and to the bishops in communion with him.

And, in 113, in the section immediately following section from which TF quotes, the CCC reads: “Read the Scripture within `the living Tradition of the whole Church’. According to a saying of the Fathers, Sacred Scripture is written principally in the Church’s heart rather than in documents and records, for the Church carries in her Tradition the living memorial of God’s Word, and it is the Holy Spirit who gives her the spiritual interpretation of the Scripture (`. . . according to the spiritual meaning which the Spirit grants to the Church’).”

Again, perhaps I am missing something. But I don’t see what TF apparently sees.
TurretinFan January 13th, 2010 1:24 pm :
Francis Beckwith,

You are probably as unaware as I was that this blog’s commenting policy disfavors third person references to participants in the dialog.

The issue of “organic” is not the problem. You will recall that you worded the matter as that the “Scriptures arise from the Church” whereas the CCC indicates that “they have God as their author, and have been handed on as such to the Church herself.” I would assume that you are able to understand the difference between “handed on … to the Church” and “arise from the Church.” Consequently, I’m not sure what was unclear about the contrast between your description and the description that the CCC provides.

– TurretinFan
Bryan Cross January 13th, 2010 2:05 pm :
TurretinFan (re: #702)

You wrote:

You will recall that you worded the matter as that the “Scriptures arise from the Church” whereas the CCC indicates that “they have God as their author, and have been handed on as such to the Church herself.” I would assume that you are able to understand the difference between “handed on … to the Church” and “arise from the Church.” Consequently, I’m not sure what was unclear about the contrast between your description and the description that the CCC provides.

You are [mis]-interpreting the CCC by reading it through Protestant either/or lenses. It is true that the Scriptures have God as their author. They also have the Church as their author, because men of the Church, inspired by the Holy Spirit, spoke and wrote the Scriptures. The Scriptures having God as their author is fully compatible with their also having men as their author, just as Christ is fully divine and fully human. This is why there is no contradiction between the Scripture arising from the Church and being handed on to the Church. What you see as dichotomy (saying, “where as the CCC indicates …”) is, through Catholic eyes, a beautiful and true mystery, like that of the incarnation.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Francis Beckwith January 13th, 2010 2:24 pm :
What Bryan says.

As I wrote in a recent post on the Return to Rome blog ( https://romereturn.blogspot.com/2009/11/justification-and-analogy-with_02.html ):

(Note to RR readers: With all this Reformation talk over the last couple of days, I thought I would share with the RR crowd an idea I’ve had for a while, but never published, on the initial issue over which the Reformation began, Justification, and the Theory of Inscripturation).

Is the Bible 100% God’s Word? The answer, according to Dei Verbum, is “yes.” And yet, the Bible was written by human beings, with their own distinct writing styles and personal touches. As the Baptist NT scholar Dr. Rodney Decker puts it:

Inscripturation is the work of the Holy Spirit by which He guided the minds of the human authors and writers so that they chose the precise words necessary to accurately reflect the exact truth God intended, while reflecting their own personality, writing style, vocabulary, and cultural context. Inspiration refers to the God-breathed character of the written autographs of Scripture which constitute the exact expression of God’s revealed truth. In other words, inscripturation refers to the Spirit-directed process by which the Bible was put into writing, whereas inspiration refers to the product—the character of the written text that was inscripturated.

So, even though the authors of Scripture cooperated with the production of Scripture, and even though their cooperation was a necessary condition for the Bible that resulted, the Bible is 100% God’s Word. In order to make sense of this, one must bring to bear on this analysis the distinction between secondary and primary causality. That is, in the work of inscripturation, God is the primary cause of Scripture, but he is not the secondary cause. In fact, the secondary cause consists of all the human authors of the Bible. Because what resulted is precisely what God intended, the fact that he employed secondary causes in order to achieve this end, means that the final product is 100% God’s Word. But, in a sense, we can also say that because the secondary causes he employed were human agents with rational powers, therefore, St. Paul wrote Romans, I Corinthians, and Galatians, St. John penned the Gospel of John, I, II, and III John, and other Bible writers authored the other books, and so forth. This understanding does not diminish the divine authorship of Scripture, but neither does it diminish the human contribution to it. So, the Bible is 100% God’s Word, even though it is entirely authored by human beings. In the same way, Jesus of Nazareth (the Eternal Word) is 100% God while being 100% human, and the fact that this one person consists of two natures does not diminish the integrity of either nature. For this reason, it would be wrong to say that God’s glory is somehow compromised because the Son of God took on a human nature that cannot in principle contribute anything to his divine nature since the divine nature lacks nothing.
TurretinFan January 13th, 2010 2:38 pm :
Bryan,

Doesn’t your statement “You are [mis]-interpreting the CCC by reading it through Protestant either/or lenses” sound a bit ad hominem to you? It does to me, but I acknowledge I’m a bit biased in my evaluation of your argument as it touches on my person.

Getting to the substantive issue, you state: “They also have the Church as their author, because men of the Church, inspired by the Holy Spirit, spoke and wrote the Scriptures.” That’s your interpretation of the CCC, but it is not correct.

Actually the CCC acknowledges human authors, but does not indicate that the Church should be considered an author of Scripture. Furthermore, one reason why it does not say that the Church should be considered an author is that many of the human authors of Scripture predate the Church. Another reason why it does not say that the Church should be considered an author is that the human authors were inspired, not by the Church, but by God. While the human authors of the New Testament were (in RC theology) in the Church, they were not acting according to the direct inspiration of the Spirit, not the Spirit mediated through the Church.

Furthermore, as a simple grammatical point, if the Church were to be considered the author, it would not make sense to say “handed over to the Church.”

In short, your interpretation of the CCC on this point is wrong, and accusing me of having Protestant lenses isn’t a valid response. It would be nice if the CCC were a person so that we could just ask her to tell us which interpretation (yours or mine) is correct. But she is not.

-TurretinFan
Tim A. Troutman January 13th, 2010 2:38 pm :
TurretinFan,

You wrote:

I would assume that you are able to understand the difference between “handed on … to the Church” and “arise from the Church.”

It is handed on to the Church, and in a different sense it arose from her. In the sense of final cause, it did not arise from the Church but was handed on to her. In the sense of material cause, it arose from her and was not handed on to her.
wilkins January 13th, 2010 2:48 pm :
K Doran said,

I encourage you to either read some Catholic histories (I say you haven’t read them because I don’t see how you can make some of the broad nuance-free historical claims you have made if you have) or concentrate on the philosophical discussions. I appreciate your input…

…and for what it’s worth, Henri de Lubac’s Medieval Exegesis is a good example of the kind of Catholic history that systematically undercuts statements Andrew (and others) have made about “historical evidence” and ECFs.

In order to believe that Augustine rejects (or can be used to refute infallible Church)—or to accept as true the characterization of Catholicism as advocating “that there is another body of data that is also infallible”—I must necessarily believe that Henri de Lubac was uninformed, was lying, or was deceived when he wrote his Medieval Exegesis (1959-64). And not just de Lubac either. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger in a small but incredibly powerful book entitled God’s Word (originally written in the 60s) makes it perfectly clear that Catholicism does not teach the thing Andrew attributes to Catholicism:

…the Church opposed to Gnosticism the living diadoké, which (as we have said) is traditio and successio in one—the word closely linked to the witness, and the witness closely linked to the word—that did not mean that, for her own part, she intended to canonize orally transmitted doctrine alongside Scripture; on the contrary, she did this so as to defend herself, with the help of this principle, against the Gnostics, who maintained they had a paradosis… However the case my be with the terminological dependence, paradosis (diadoké) meant something quite different to the two sides, in fact, the very opposite. In Gnosticism, it meant doctrinal content that is allegedly of apostolic origin; in the theology of the Church it meant the close relation of the living faith to the authority of the Church, embodied in the succession of bishops. The Church invoked the diadoké not in order to set unwritten apostolic doctrine alongside Scripture but precisely in order to dispute the existence of any such secret heritage.

And when I first read that as a Protestant, I was pretty shocked to connect the dots (as I saw it) and wonder to what extent my Protestantism had assumed a Gnostic form in so far as it placed ‘Reformation’ doctrines (mere interpretations of Scripture) alongside Scripture and gave both equal weight.
TurretinFan January 13th, 2010 3:38 pm :
Tim:

You wrote: “In the sense of material cause, it arose from her and was not handed on to her.”

As I noted (in #705), the church is also not the material cause. Holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit, as Holy Scripture tells us.
wilkins January 13th, 2010 4:52 pm :
TurretinFan,

You wrote,

As I noted (in #705), the church is also not the material cause. Holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit, as Holy Scripture tells us.

Do you mean that these “holy men” must be understood as entirely distinct in every possible way from “Church”?

You wrote,

…as a simple grammatical point, if the Church were to be considered the author, it would not make sense to say “handed over to the Church.”

I don’t understand what you mean by “grammatical” point. In other words, in what way precisely is what you’ve said here a “grammatical point”?

Finally, you wrote,

the CCC…does not indicate that the Church should be considered an author of Scripture…because many of the human authors of Scripture predate the Church.

What does that mean and to whom does it refer? Also, is this assertion you’re making a thing you think the CCC teaches?

I’m not trying to make any rhetorical points or anything, just seeking clarification to understand what you’ve said.

Thanks,
w
Tim A. Troutman January 13th, 2010 5:12 pm :
TurretinFan, You didn’t mention anything about material causes in #705. If you were correct in your statement in 708, then the Church is not the material cause of anything whatsoever since only her members actually do anything. But we say the “Church” does something on account of her members doing something just as we say “Best Buy sells televisions” although it is actually the employees of Best Buy selling them. In that sense, the Church is the material cause of the Scriptures just as Best Buy is the material cause of televisions sold.

If I’m fumbling my causes up, which I sometimes do, one of the trained philosophers will correct me I’m sure. But in no way is anything Bryan or Dr. Beckwith said inconsistent with the Catechism.
Francis Beckwith January 13th, 2010 5:26 pm :
Actually the CCC acknowledges human authors, but does not indicate that the Church should be considered an author of Scripture.

There is a parts-whole confusion here. What the Catechism is teaching, if I understand it correctly, is that the development of the canon, and our interpretation and application of the Scripture, is organically dependent on the Church. That is, the question of what collection of books as a whole should be ascribed the title “Scripture” is authoritatively declared by the Church. After all, if I don’t have the whole Bible all at once, I do not posses the “scriptura” of “sola scriptura.” “Bible Happens” is not an intellectually satisfying answer.

Without the Church and its magisterium, it is difficult to make sense of the condemnation of Marcion (as presented by Ireneaus) or the universally understood normative status of the canons of the catholic councils. (I purposely did not say “catholic creeds,” since the councils published more than just the creeds; they issued canons that included binding rules for a number institutions and practices, including the priesthood, Holy Communion, and Penance, that is simply incomprehensible within a sola scriptura conceptual scheme).
TurretinFan January 13th, 2010 5:39 pm :
Mr. (I assume) Wilkins,

You asked: “Do you mean that these “holy men” must be understood as entirely distinct in every possible way from “Church”?”

Please note that when I am saying “Church” here I am treating the matter within Roman Catholic categories. From the Roman Catholic standpoint, “the Church” is conceptually distinguishable from the faithful (believers). For example, CCC871:

“The Christian faithful are those who, inasmuch as they have been incorporated in Christ through Baptism, have been constituted as the people of God; for this reason, since they have become sharers in Christ’s priestly, prophetic, and royal office in their own manner, they are called to exercise the mission which God has entrusted to the Church to fulfill in the world, in accord with the condition proper to each one.”

Additionally, within Roman Catholic theology, “the Church” is something that Christ founded on Peter (do I really need to cite evidence here?).

Now, the Old Testament human authors came prior to “the Church.” Thus, their writings (even considered as theirs rather than as God’s) can’t really be said to “arise from the Church.” Furthermore, even if we were limited to the New Testament, the authors were (as far as we know) among the faithful, but they were speaking to the Church, not for the Church. And indeed, as I’ve noted a couple of times the CCC confirms that I’ve rightly understood RC theology on this, by characterizing the matter as “atque ut tales ipsi Ecclesiae traditi sunt” which is translated: “and (atque) have been handed on (traditi sunt) as such (ut tales) to the Church herself (ipsi Ecclesiae).”

You’ll notice that Ecclesiae there is in the dative case, which indicates that she is the one receiving the Scriptures. That’s the reason for the “to” in the English. The point is that the Scriptures as such (ut tales) are given to the Church. That’s the opposite action of arising from the church. That’s the grammatical point. I realize that the one thing that the CCC could have done to make it more clear is to specifically say, “and they don’t arise from the Church,” but such a request would seem a little pedantic.

You also asked: “What does that [“many of the human authors of Scripture predate the Church”] mean and to whom does it refer? Also, is this assertion you’re making a thing you think the CCC teaches?” My comment refers to folks like Moses and David who penned Scripture before Christ founded his church on Peter (viewing the matter from the Roman Catholic standpoint, of course). I don’t recall a specific teaching in the CCC on the fact that Moses and David predated the Church. If someone doubts that RC theology teaches this …

-TurretinFan
TurretinFan January 13th, 2010 7:42 pm :
Tim Troutman:

You wrote: “If you were correct in your statement in 708, then the Church is not the material cause of anything whatsoever since only her members actually do anything.”

There’s an important distinction that your response overlooks.

1) Every act of the church is an act by at least one member of the Church.

That is (afaik) the RC view. However, so is the following.

2) Not every act of every member of the Church is an act of the Church.

Thus, for example, when Pope Honorius I advocated monothelitism, the ordinary RC explanation is that he did so in a private capacity – that is to say, not acting for the Church. If you want a more positive example, though certain Roman Catholics presently promote the idea of Mary as Co-Redemptrix it would not be accurate to say that “the Church” promotes that idea. If we want to take an absurdly extreme example, when a deacon gets a cold, the Church is not ill.

Recall your example:

But we say the “Church” does something on account of her members doing something just as we say “Best Buy sells televisions” although it is actually the employees of Best Buy selling them. In that sense, the Church is the material cause of the Scriptures just as Best Buy is the material cause of televisions sold.

The employees are agents of Best Buy, just as the pope can serve an agent of the Church in RC theology. However, when the guy who sells TVs takes a smoking break, “Best Buy” is not inhaling nicotine. In other words, just because someone is a Best Buy employee doesn’t make their every act attributable to Best Buy.

Even if we restricted our consideration, then, to the New Testament period, it does not follow from the bare fact that the human authors of Scripture were members and leaders of the Church that consequently they were acting as agents of the church in writing the Scripture. Quite to the contrary, as noted above, it is both the truth and Roman Catholic theology that they were serving in a direct capacity on behalf of the Holy Spirit – not a capacity mediated through the Church.

Francis Beckwith:

I read your additional comment about parts-whole confusion (#711). Passing over the question of whether your comments in #711 are correct, they don’t seem to be addressed to the issue of whether “the Scriptures arise from the Church” is at odds with what the CCC says about the Scriptures being “handed on … to the Church.”

As for your comment: “What the Catechism is teaching, if I understand it correctly, is that the development of the canon, and our interpretation and application of the Scripture, is organically dependent on the Church,” that seems to be an accurate picture of the Catechism’s theology.

– TurretinFan
Andrew McCallum January 14th, 2010 12:21 am :
K. Doran, says after the Athanasius quote:
This could mean that he believes that Nicea was infallible, or just that he believes it is true. It isn’t technically what one would say if scripture is the only infallible authority, since then you would always want to leave wiggle room to “attend” to people who “write phrases out of scripture” with the aim to “innovate” on the “faith” of Nicea. But maybe he just spoke inaccurately and he really did not believe in infallibility, as I mentioned.

OK, so from a historical standpoint you are saying that whether or not Athanasius was defending ecclesistical infallibility is inconclusive. So what I was asking here is if the historical evidence is incconclusive, on what basis does the Catholics believe in an infallible human interpretive authority? Mike L answers by defending this ecclesiastical infallibility as a necessary epistermological presupposition. I understand his position but obviously I don’t agree with it, and what I was trying to demonstrate by my comments was that in the case we were discussiong, philosophically the formulation of the theology of Nicea does not require an infallible human interpreter. And then further I argued that Scripture presents us with one idea about God, not multiple ideas about God that are equally rationally defensible that the Church needs to resolve.
wilkins January 14th, 2010 2:29 am :
#712 thanks TurretinFan for the responses.

i’m still unclear about your objection to Beckwith’s “arise from” and the other bit too from #698, where he says

There is not “another body of data” for the Catholic. There is simply the Church and its Scriptures. The bifurcation between Church and Scriptures is not part of the Catholic conceptual framework.

He’s right.

In your #702 the argument seems to be that God “authoring and handing on” is entirely incompatible with any notion of “arising from,” hence the crusty

I would assume that you are able to understand the difference between “handed on … to the Church” and “arise from the Church.”

I certainly understand the difference, and it’s precisely that difference which allows me to appreciate what “Church” means—to whom it refers—from different points of view. You don’t need to show the difference here; what you need to do is explain why only one of these two and admittedly different ideas may apply to “Church.”

Bryan offered

…the Scriptures have God as their author. They also have the Church as their author, because men of the Church, inspired by the Holy Spirit, spoke and wrote the Scriptures. The Scriptures having God as their author is fully compatible with their also having men as their author, just as Christ is fully divine and fully human.

But you responded in #705 that this was merely Bryan’s interpretation; the CCC, you said,

does not indicate that the Church should be considered an author of Scripture.

one of the reasons you gave:

…many of the human authors of Scripture predate the Church.

And sure, in a manner of speaking, there might be some element of truth to that. Moses lived before the gathering at Pentecost. But consider CCC passages such as

God created the world for the sake of communion with his divine life, a communion brought about by the ‘convocation’ of men in Christ, and this ‘convocation’ is the Church

where “Church” is understood as creation’s goal (I’m borrowing that from Cardinal Schonborn). Looked at from that perspective, it’s just not right to say the Scriptures predate the Church. The New Covenant is already in the Old: everywhere we look in Christian tradition, we’re told the Old Testament testifies to Christ, right? Is there a testimony to Christ that explicitly excludes his Church?

At T=0, when God created, he wasn’t thinking of “Church” as signifying some far-off plan B abstraction contingent on a number of historical accidents (cf Col 1:16-ff). I mean, I can’t help but suspect that Cardinal Schonborn is right about this. He quotes Fr Marie-Eugène de L’Enfant Jésus,

In eternity God already saw ‘the whole Christ’ (totus Christus), the Church… from the beginning of creation, God has been bringing all things to the fulfillment of his Christ.

Loving the Church (by Cardinal Schonborn) and Henri de Lubac’s The motherhood of the Church provide 500 or so pages of support showing that Fr Marie-Eugène de L’Enfant Jésus isn’t articulating a theological novelty.

I love de Lubac’s description of Pentecost:

From the day of Pentecost…it is at the call of Peter and his companions, “invested with power from above,” that the first nucleus of faithful assembled. They entered, we maintain, a Church which was calling them together; they did not create her by their arrival.

and then quoting from Yves de Montcheuil,

“The source of her life and of her unity does not arise from the desire to live in common on the part of the individuals she gathers together; it is she who communicates it to them.”
Michael Liccione January 14th, 2010 1:09 pm :
Once again, the debate returns to the fundamentals of ecclesiology. I could take the time to show in detail how that works in the discussion between me and Andrew McCallum, but I do have to earn my living today.

I shall close my contribution to this thread by noting that we’re dealing here with a clash of paradigms. According to the Catholic one, no merely intellectual exercise on texts, the data of history, and the varieties of epistemology could suffice, even in principle, to exhibit the full content of the deposit of faith as anything more than a rationally defensible set of human opinions. On that showing, something called ‘the Church’ is needed to resolve, in a definitive manner with authority acknowledged as divine, disputes about what the texts and the history are really telling us. Accepting such an authority, like the virtue of faith in general, is a gift; when accepted, it yields a kind of certitude which, given the subject matter of theology, reasoning on the data of texts and history can never attain. Arguments merely dispose or indispose us to accept the gift. According to the other paradigm in play here–I won’t call it ‘Protestant’ tout court, because any such generalization would be unjustified–Scripture alone affords us all we need to exhibit the full content of the deposit of faith as an object for the assent of faith, as distinct from merely a set of rationally defensible opinions about what the texts and the surrounding historical data mean. I have always found the former paradigm far more rationally defensible than the latter. My apologetical activity is designed to explain why.

Unfortunately, there is no way to formulate, from within one of those paradigms, an argument that could appear rationally decisive within the other. To my mind, that fact is itself a major reason why I find the Catholic one, as described above, more illuminating. But the uncommitted inquirer simply has to decide for himself with prayer and ascesis, and after all the arguments he has time to hear, which paradigm he finds more illuminating. If one chooses the Catholic sincerely and self-consistently, then one chooses to conform one’s judgments to those of the Magisterium when it claims to bind the faithful definitively. If one chooses the other paradigm sincerely and self-consistently, then one reserves to oneself the right to decide when any teaching authority’s decisions are justified and when they are not.
Andrew Preslar January 14th, 2010 5:26 pm :
Turretin Fan,

Thanks for raising some good points. I completely agree that Sacred Scripture is the word of God written to the Church. As such, its source is not in the Church. Sacred Scripture is not a case of the Church talking to herself. It is a decisive self-revelation of the holy and ineffable God. The fact of Sacred Scripture is a deep mystery.

The Church is, however, prior to the written word of God in the sense that Sacred Scripture, both Old and New Covenants, is addressed to a chosen people already existing, gathered together in, and constituted by, the name of the LORD.

The Church is also prior to Scripture in a more mystical, hence, more difficult to understand sense: the Church is the Body of Christ, and the scriptures are about Christ. So the Church, as a whole, stands in a unique, not merely human, relation to the written word of God.

It is possible for those who are estranged, to one degree or another, from the elect community of God to read the word of God to their great profit. This is due to the inherent intelligibility of the texts and the fact that these texts are, on some level, addressed to every descendant of Adam.

It seems to me that the key differences between us are (1) the identity of the Church, in the New Covenant sense of the mystical Body of Christ, and (2) the relation of the Church to the Word of God, including the written word of God.

Obviously, these two differences are closely related. The first question strikes me as an historical and theological question with deep hermeneutical implications. It sometimes seems to me as if Protestants simply fail to consider the hermeneutical implications of the pre-existence and the nature of the Church relative to the written word of God.

Catholics believe that the Church is the mystical Body of Christ, visible upon earth. As such, the Church, having the mind of Christ, is most intimately related to the Word of God and cannot err in the dogmatic expression of her understanding of the Word.

Protestants identify the mystical Body of Christ primarily as an invisible set of persons and groups of people who agree with one’s own identification and interpretation of the written word of God. On this model, the infallibility of the Church is reducible to the infallibility of the individual, who sets the bar for the Church. Most Protestants do not (consciously) affirm their own infallibility in identifying and interpreting the word of God. Therefore, they do not affirm the infallibility of the Church.

The confidence that Protestants clearly have in their own fallible identification(s) and interpretation(s) of the word of God is explicable in various ways. I tried one kind of explanation in the post, A Grammar of Conversion. I think that Catholics can and should wish Protestants to enjoy more of this kind of confidence. On the other hand, some expressions of confidence in a particular interpretation of divine revelation tend to strike us as a form of hubris, mere self-assertion.

Not all Catholics are humble (obviously!), but submission to an interpretive authority that can “bind the faithful definitively” ought to be as humbling as it is enlightening. It is a strange thing to be under authority, where that authority can definitively contradict my own opinions, rendering me obligated before God and man to change my mind.
rfwhite January 14th, 2010 7:00 pm :
Andrew Preslar: I would like to understand better your statement that “The Church is, however, prior to the written word of God in the sense that Sacred Scripture, both Old and New Covenants, is addressed to a chosen people already existing, gathered together in, and constituted by, the name of the LORD.”

How does your statement apply to Israel, for example? That is, would you say that, prior to the issuance of the written word of God to the exodus generation at Sinai, Israel was “a chosen people already existing, gathered together in, and constituted by, the name of the LORD?” If so, in what sense?
Fredericka January 14th, 2010 9:26 pm :
“All appeals to Scripture are appeals to interpretations of Scripture.”

Seems like I’ve heard it before:

“The removal of the Author…is not merely an historical fact or an act of writing; it utterly transforms the modern text…The Author, when believed in, is always conceived of as the past of his own book…The Author is thought to nourish the book, which is to say that he exists before it, thinks, suffers, lives for it, is in the same relation of antecedence to his work as a father to his child. In complete contrast, the modern scriptor is born simultaneously with the text, is in no way equipped with a being preceding or exceeding the writing, is not the subject with the book as predicate; there is no other time than that of the enunciation… ” (Roland Barthes, The Death of the Author).

Personally I like the older idea, that the meaning and the interpretation are two altogether different things, with the meaning inseparable from the intent of the Author. In the older paradigm, the interpretation(s) cluster about the Author’s meaning as a penumbra. The cloud of bullet holes surround the bull’s eye, but they are not the bull-eye; the bull’s eye predates them. Fortunately that way the Author also gets to predate the text, which is nice when you’re talking about God.
Andrew Preslar January 14th, 2010 9:31 pm :
rfwhite,

My statement seems to apply to Israel in that, prior to the law inscribed upon stone at Sinai, the LORD referred to the descendants of Abraham as “my people” (Exodus 3:10). In anticipation of the Church that would come into being through the Incarnation of the Son and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon all flesh, the children of Israel were constituted a “church,” a chosen assembly from among the Egyptians, being gathered together in the name of the LORD through faith in the testimony of Moses and Aaron (Exodus 4:30), baptism in the Red Sea, and participation in the Passover, which were types of the greater sacraments of the New Covenant, the latter being founded upon better promises (Hebrews 8:6, 9-10).

A similar priority applies to the Church, the mystical Body of Christ, which was constituted the Israel of God in the name of Jesus, through faith and the sacraments, before the New Testament was written. This temporal priority of the people of God to the written word of God does not negate a certain primacy of the written word, but it does begin to suggest an argument for sacred tradition as the proper context in which the written word is to be interpreted, the former being a broader category than the latter, and containing within itself that revelation handed down by means other than writing.
rfwhite January 15th, 2010 11:06 am :
Andrew Preslar: thank you for your response. I am understanding your position. Would you say that Scripture emerges as a sequel to and consequence of God’s work of salvation and judgment?
Andrew Preslar January 15th, 2010 2:02 pm :
rfwhite,

Most definitely. The written word (and here the human aspect of Scripture and a certain priority of the Church emerges) is a witness to what God has done, being an interpretation of his mighty deeds on behalf of his chosen people, a collection of their responses to God’s manifestation among them. Of course, upon reflection, over time, the people of God find certain writings to be themselves a manifestation of God’s presence among them, a written revelation.

The Catholic Church’s understanding of Sacred Scripture (in itself, in relation to tradition and the human work of interpretation, etc.) is set forth, among other places, in Providentissimus Deus (1893), Divino Afflante Spiritu (1943), and Relationship Between Magisterium and Exegetes (2003). The last document is a reflection upon Catholic biblical studies in the light of the ascendancy of critical scholarship in the previous half-century.
Andrew Preslar January 15th, 2010 2:39 pm :
Fredericka,

Your comment appears to be based upon something written by another participant in this discussion, but please allow me to say: I hear you loud and clear.

Personally I like the older idea, that the meaning and the interpretation are two altogether different things, with the meaning inseparable from the intent of the Author.

Catholics can absolutely affirm the objectivity of meaning, in the sense that meaning resides in the text, and in the sense that the author of the text is the one who put it there.

It is the peculiar nature of Sacred Scripture, having a divine author (which makes for a rather unique, not strictly synchronic, sort of authorial intent), and being a revelation of the things of God (which in themselves are beyond our merely natural competency to understand), that calls for the hermeneutical position of Catholicism. We do not deny the possibility, or the necessity, of personal interpretation of Scripture, according to merely human wisdom, but we do deny the sufficiency of historical-critical exegesis when it comes to the things that pertain to our salvation.

Interestingly, it is not so much the meaning of Sacred Scripture that is dependent upon the readers as it is the questions addressed to Sacred Scripture that are dependent upon the readers. Catholics can affirm that Scripture is materially sufficient to address all questions pertaining to life and godliness. But it requires a rare kind of sensitivity to the Word of God to perceive in the ancient texts definitive answers, the kind of answers that demand the full assent of faith, to the various fundamental questions which arise centuries and even millenia after the texts were written.

We believe that the Body of Christ, having the mind of Christ, has the requisite sensitivity to the meaning of Scripture to be able to discern that meaning, and proclaim it in a manner that is definitive for all people, in cases where that meaning is not explicitly expressed relative to a particular question pertaining in a fundamental way to godliness. Of course, such discernment takes us beyond the confines of scientific (historical-critical) exegesis, but not beyond the intention of the divine author, which is not bound in the same way that the intentions of the human authors of Scripture are bound.
Fredericka January 15th, 2010 9:25 pm :
Andrew,
Thank you for your response. I’m responding to the original article, I didn’t read the comments. The Reformed author your authors cite said, “All appeals to Scripture are appeals to interpretations of Scripture. The only real question is: whose interpretation?”

Your authors mistake his comment for “a fundamental insight.” But this excursion into post-modernism leads nowhere. Instead of conceptualizing ‘interpretations’ as layers added atop the text, we should return to the earlier understanding of ‘interpretation’ as a mining operation, seeking the vein of gold buried beneath the text. The meaning is sought and, it is hoped, found, not invented or developed. Counter-cultural as it may be nowadays to avoid your authors’ relativism, Biblical interpretation cannot actually go anywhere from the post-modern ‘Death of the Author.’ An ‘interpretation’ is either a hit or a miss; either it corresponds, in part or whole, to the author’s ‘meaning,’ which was already there before we began our interpretive ventures, or it does not. With human authors, of course, there may be questions of unconscious meaning, ‘you revealed more than you realized,’ misconstrued meaning or even meaninglessness. With a divine Author there can be no unconscious mind so ‘Meaning’=’Intent.’ ‘Interpretation’ seeks to uncover ‘Meaning.’

This distinction between ‘meaning’ and ‘interpretation,’ contra post-modernism, is the Ariadne’s thread that must guide us through the maze. ‘Interpretations’ are not compared only with one another; they must be matched up against the original, to which they either correspond or they do not. Admittedly this raises the vexed question of how an ‘intrepretation’ can be known to be accurate, when the ‘meaning’ lays hid just beyond our grasp. But at least holding on to our Ariadne’s thread, we can avoid your authors’ category error of answering a question about knowledge with an organizational chart.

Your authors point out that certain persons are “divinely authorized to preach and teach.” This is certainly true; for example under the old system the Sandhedrin were granted jurisdictional competence over disputed cases, as Jesus confirms: “Saying, The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat” (Matthew 23:2). Authority to interpret was granted, but accuracy of interpretation was absent. These authorities’ interpretations were so bad as to lead to their own damnation: “Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?” (Matthew 23:33). Did they not sit in Moses’ seat? Yet, but they misinterpreted. Is it not apparent that authority to interpret is not the same as accuracy of interpretation?

A bishop must be “apt to teach,” so studying and interpreting scripture fall within the bishop’s job description. But this does not guarantee every try is a hit; the Nicene Creed was a hit, the Blasphemy of Sirmium a miss. Your authors equate being tasked with a job with successful job performance. Certainly no one would ever need to complete a Performance Review if these two were indeed the same. History records plenty of heretic bishops, even bishops of Rome; these folks’ Performance Review will be unsatisfactory. They misinterpreted. How, then, can their having been tasked with a job at which they failed be the very criterion of success?
Andrew Preslar January 16th, 2010 12:56 am :
Fredericka,

You wrote:

Counter-cultural as it may be nowadays to avoid your authors’ relativism, Biblical interpretation cannot actually go anywhere from the post-modern ‘Death of the Author.’

In fact, the authors of this post do not embrace relativism:

We do not agree with Mathison that solo scriptura necessarily entails relativism. The person holding solo scriptura may believe firmly that his own interpretation is objectively true, and that everyone who disagrees with his interpretation is wrong. But we agree with Mathison that there is some truth to the connection between solo scriptura and relativism. That is because it is difficult in our present fluid culture to sustain the notion that anyone who disagrees with one’s own interpretation is wrong. The continual encounter with those of obvious intelligence and sincerity revering the very same book, and yet interpreting it differently from oneself, makes some form of relativism attractive without a principled basis for believing that one’s own interpretation is the authorized interpretation. So in this way, solo scriptura lends itself to a ‘practical relativism,’ which easily slides into an unqualified relativism. (Footnote #10, above)

Clearly, Bryan and Neal do not take the “all appeals to Scripture are appeals to interpretation of Scripture” in an unqualified sense. They can speak for themselves on that point. I have already pointed out that, over the centuries since Scripture was written, many questions have arisen which are not explicitly raised in Scripture. In these cases, appeals to Scripture, as a means of answering those questions, will inevitably involve appeals to interpretations of Scripture. And this is where the trouble starts–not because of the inherent unintelligibility of the texts, or the death of the author(s), but because of the recondite subject matter, i.e., the deep things of God, the mystery of our salvation, and because of the ways in which the questions themselves have often been formulated. Many fundamental questions concerning Christian faith and practice do not admit of a definitive answer based upon historical-critical exegesis alone.

Your comments about divinely authorized teachers in the Church are scatter-shot. I gave a short summary in my last comment of one reason why the Church’s definitive teaching on faith and morals is not subject to error: the Church is the mystical Body of Christ, having the mind of Christ, and therefore has a privileged insight into the things of Christ, including written revelation.

Your comments about objectivity in interpretation are appreciated. As for the rest, instead of casting about with bald assertions about failed “Performance Reviews,” you might engage the (admittedly rudimentary) arguments concerning biblical interpretation and the Church that I set out in my last comment. Better yet, you might engage the article’s argument that sola scriptura is reducible to solo scriptura, and consider the untoward consequences of the latter, which involves setting up oneself as the final interpretive authority (i.e., the ultimate Performance Reviewer) in matters of Christian faith and morals.
Fredericka January 16th, 2010 5:11 pm :
“In fact, the authors of this post do not embrace relativism”

Andrew, I agree with you that these authors do not ultimately embrace their post-modernism, but that is only because they introduce a ‘deus ex machina’ at the end, out of complete left field. The bishops, not previously mentioned, sail in from the clear blue sky. Since they are authoritative interpreters, they solve the otherwise insoluble dilemma of interpretation. Up to that point, your authors’ analysis of the problem of meaning and interpretation tracks word-by-word with that of the post-modernists, which is a problem for me, because I don’t see the problem.

“I have already pointed out that, over the centuries since Scripture was written, many questions have arisen which are not explicitly raised in Scripture.”

I agree with you that something like ‘stem cell research’ is not explicitly mentioned in scripture and may raise perplexing moral dilemmas. But I don’t think your authors want to talk about issues like ‘stem cell research,’ I think they want to talk about foundational doctrines like the Trinity, which they claim is not established in scripture. I’m not sure why they want to bring that one up. Don’t you think it odd, if the bishops are the answer to everything, that your church had to turn to Tertullian, who was not a bishop, and who was not even in communion with Rome at the time he wrote ‘Against Praxeas,’ for clarity on such an important matter? If the bishops know all, why did you have to sub-contract this very important problem out to the Pentecostals?
Michael Liccione January 16th, 2010 6:06 pm :
I know I said I’d concluded my contribution to this thread, but I feel compelled to weigh in here

Fredericka, you wrote: Don’t you think it odd, if the bishops are the answer to everything, that your church had to turn to Tertullian, who was not a bishop, and who was not even in communion with Rome at the time he wrote ‘Against Praxeas,’ for clarity on such an important matter? If the bishops know all, why did you have to sub-contract this very important problem out to the Pentecostals?

That misunderstanding of Catholic doctrine on the authority of the Magisterium is all too common and needs correction.

The Catholic Church does not claim that bishops, merely as such, are better theologians or exegetes than non-bishops. St. Maximus the Confessor, for example, was a layman who led the opposition to monothelitism well before the third Council of Constantinople, relying largely on him, got the issue right. Although it is desirable, and indeed is typically the case, that most bishops as individuals know the deposit of faith better than most non-bishops as individuals, it is by no means always the case that a given bishop knows the deposit of faith better than a given non-bishop. What the Catholic Church claims, rather, is that, when the college of bishops as a whole teaches a doctrine as one to be held definitively by all the faithful, said college is preserved from error by divine grace. History indicates that, if that doctrine is true, the preservation from error sometimes occurs more in spite of than because of the bishops. The authority of the Magisterium is thus charismatic, not that of “experts.” That, I believe, is just what one should expect if the Church and her authority are of divine rather than human origin.

The standard retort to that position is that no good reason can be given for preferring the authority of bishops to that of theologians and/or “charismatic” but non-ordained persons. But such a reason can be given. Without a divinely established authority that speaks both for and to the Church in Christ’s name–i.e., the bishops in apostolic succession–even those non-bishops whom the Spirit has led to the truth, and who themselves are used by the Spirit to lead the bishops to the truth, cannot speak authoritatively both for and to the Church. Apart from the bishops, they have no authority to bind believers to what they teach, even if what they teach happens to be the truth.
Neal Judisch January 16th, 2010 7:58 pm :
Fredericka,

Hi there. I’m a little unsettled by the charge of postmodernism and relativism. (Speaking of things “coming out of left field,” I must say that you are the very first person I’ve ever met who has charged me of anything like this! It isn’t, to understate, among the objections I’d anticipated hearing.) I thank you for saying that we do not ‘ultimately embrace’ postmodernism (though it is still, evidently, ‘our’ postmodernism?). But I’m wondering how much in the postmodernist/poststructuralist genre you have read, and how it is you perceive an affinity between it and what we’re doing in this article.

Andrew has kindly given a defense of us, by pointing out a footnote in which relativism is discussed by us. But I’d urge you, too, to consider the structure of the article and the arguments contained within it, if you’re really, genuinely concerned that we are moved by various postmodernist influences. Were we (alethic?) relativists, it isn’t clear (to me, anyway), why we’d bother confronting and attempting to refute someone who has offered up for our consideration a view we deem to be false (‘false’ tout court). Were we postmodernists, it isn’t clear why we’d discuss his views in the ways that we have, as opposed to, say, deconstructing his remarks with an eye toward uncovering the psychological or sociological substructure that is supposed to be underlying them, or whatever. Suppose for a minute we weren’t postmodernists or relativists; how would our article look different? How would its structure and strategy be changed?

In reality, we agree with you that there’s meaning there in the text; that some interpretations of the text constitute a ‘hit’, others a ‘miss’; that textual meaning isn’t a function of whatever meaning a given reader might wish to imbue the text in question with; that the meaning of Scripture is a function rather of authorial intent, human and divine; that there is, therefore, and for this reason only, a “vexed” question that confronts us (you and me and everyone) concerning the actual meaning of Scripture, given the plurality of conflicting interpretations on the offing. If we did not believe these things, I reckon we wouldn’t perceive a problem here that needs addressing, and most certainly we wouldn’t make bold to claim that Catholic theology provides us with a uniquely satisfying and, indeed, uniquely accurate or correct answer to this vexed question.

Perhaps you will remain skeptical, and maybe you will prefer to stick with the hermeneutics of suspicion that has led you to diagnose and subsequently to pronounce upon our “real motives,” and therefore to determine what our article “really says” and what we “really mean” when we endorse Mathison’s remark to the effect that appeals to Scripture are inevitably appeals to someone’s interpretation of it, and so forth. But, as one of the authors of this article, I believe, and I think you will agree, that I am in a position to disabuse readers of inaccurate interpretations of our article and incorrect assessments of our theoretical commitments, in cases where such readers miss the mark and fail to perceive the meaning of our words, in accordance with the intent with which we penned them. So I’d ask you, then, as a courtesy, as a request from one realist/nonpostmodernist to another, to please refrain from attempting to read between the lines so as to unearth the psychological or theoretical presuppositions that are, according to your interpretation and diagnosis, driving us, and to instead accept at face value our repudiation of relativism and the like.

We consider that the question of interpretive authority is important only because we think it’s linked to the “vexed question” concerning whose interpretations are to be afforded rational credence, given our individual epistemic limitations and the obvious fact that a bunch of conflicting positions cannot all be right (or “right in their own way” or whatever), since some of them might ‘hit’ while others ‘miss’; and we consider this vexed question very important to consider and satisfactorily to answer, because we would very much like to know what the Bible says (what it ‘really means’).

I appreciate your correspondence. I hope you can allow for the possibility that what I intend by my words does not correspond with what you think I intend by them; that you have, in this instance, ‘missed’, at least as a matter of interpretation; and I hope you can try to exercise trust in us enough (I know it’s hard, not knowing us) to refrain from explaining to us and to others what our “real” theoretical and philosophical convictions “really are,” despite the fact that we aren’t at all prepared to recognize them as our own, still less to endorse them. That sort of game, as I’m sure you well know, can be played at any level by anyone, and no matter how cleverly it’s played it leads only to unilluminating and fruitless dead-ends. (What a nice analogy for postmodernism as a whole, don’t you think?)

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to clarify the meaning of our remarks and, by extension, the article we’ve posted.

All best,

Neal

PS: Re ‘counter-culture’. I know of no other more radical way of being counter-cultural than being a traditional Catholic. Perhaps one day you’ll appreciate from experience what I mean.
Fredericka January 18th, 2010 6:53 pm :
Neal Judisch wrote,

>”But I’d urge you, too, to consider the structure of the article and the arguments contained within >it, if you’re really, genuinely concerned that we are moved by various postmodernist influences.”

It seems to me that your analysis of the problem of interpretation is the same as theirs, except that they don’t think it is a problem and you think you have a solution. You both do not think there are any natural means by which a text can be explicated so as to reveal the author’s meaning. You, not they, then offer a supernatural solution, that bishops are recipients of revelation ex officio. (So I understood, but the prior poster has corrected this to require some sort of ‘averaging.’) The post-modernists do not embrace your solution to your mutual dilemma. I say, ‘what dilemma?’

Fredericka
rfwhite January 24th, 2010 6:07 pm :
Bryan Cross / Neal Judisch: Was there a counterpart to the Magisterium prior to Christ, and did God grant to it the charisms that He grants to the Magistrium today? If you have addressed these questions elsewhere, I’ll be happy to be redirected to that place. Thanks.
Neal Judisch January 25th, 2010 12:15 am :
Dear Professor White,

This is a good and important question. It’s a little weird for me to “tell you” what the answer to this question is, because you’re a Biblical scholar and I’m not. But I can tell you what I think the answer is supposed to be, at any rate.

There is an OT counterpart(s), there are OT types that prepare us for a New Covenant priesthood, but it isn’t true that the prerogatives or distinctives we may assign to the New Covenant priesthood must be no different than or precisely the same as whatever prerogatives or distinctives we may assign to the Old Covenant priesthood. In particular, it can be the case that whereas there are definite correspondences between the Old and the New in this regard, we need not and in some cases should not assume that whatever was true about the Old must be true about the New, and vice versa.

The remark is an ‘abstract’ one, but I think it’s important for us to agree on this straightaway, if possible. I say this because if we deny the point, then that will set us up to conclude what you might be driving at, namely, that since the OT priesthood wasn’t blessed with the ‘charism of infallibility’, therefore the NT priesthood isn’t blessed with it either. But I think we aren’t in a position to justify this inference, because there are salient points of continuity as well as salient points of discontinuity between the Old and the New. So whereas it might be tempting to argue that since things were a certain way under the Old Covenant, they must be precisely the same way under the New Covenant, I don’t think we can reflectively endorse any sort of general theological or Biblical principle that would support that idea.

With that thought or caveat in the air, I think we can and should certainly affirm that there were various OT ‘counterparts’ for the Magisterium, but that we’ve got no reason to affirm the idea that if the OT counterparts were not in the possession of a particular grace or covenantal promise, then things must be exactly the same for their New Covenant ‘counterparts’ — that the New Covenant guys must have no greater graces, no better promises. (The continuities are there, but there are discontinuities, and the discontinuities invariably “favor,” so to speak, the New Covenant.)

The OT counterparts aren’t confined (I don’t think) to the Levitical priesthood only. The structures of succession are in evidence in the very beginning, with the patriarchs who have blessings to pass on to certain others (only because they’ve received those blessings and promises from God, ultimately). Those who get them rejoice, the others weep and shudder, etc. Moses, too, lays his hands on Joshua, so as to establish the latter’s authority when the former passes on. The Levites (as you know) end up being the only Israelites from which priests might be drawn, after the golden calf incident. Even when the kingdoms were divided, the priesthood wasn’t ever up for grabs. Structures were in place. Some of these priests were simply rotten morally speaking, and some of them (like Caiaphas), when they did truly “prophesy,” in a manner consonant with their office, did so only by “accident,” or by God’s providential design, and quite in spite of themselves. Jesus told the guys gathered round him to obey those people because they sat on Moses’ seat, and this despite the fact that they were no better than blind-leading-blind, and were actually rather worse than that.

None of this provides evidence that the OT priesthood (e.g.) was supposed to be ‘infallible,’ just that they had some sort of authority, and that the authority they had was something that depended upon succession or lineage or whatever. And it’s clear that the authority they had didn’t at all entail doctrinal or moral rectitude. Nevertheless, these were the structures in the background when Jesus does His thing. He appoints 12, as Moses had done. He sends out 70(-ish!), as Moses had done, when he “created” the “Sanhedrin.” (Catholic and Protestant scholars have both remarked on this subversive move by Jesus, appointing 70 as He did, since it seems He was self consciously, if only symbolically, setting up a “counterpart” to rival the Sanhedrin. The subversion evidently wasn’t lost on them. This is when they start getting really ticked off.) Move ahead to Luke’s institution narrative, where we hear about the 12 sitting on 12 thrones and judging the 12 tribes, and again to the post resurrection narrative in John, where Christ ‘covenants’ the kingdom to the apostles, just as the Father had covenanted a kingdom to Him, where Christ sends them out just as Christ had been sent out by the Father, where Christ invests them with the Spirit who enables them to forgive sins or to retain them, etc. Consider these things against the OT backdrop, and I think it’s plausible to see how salient continuities between Old and New are retained, and also how they are fulfilled and transformed in a way that takes them to a higher level, and which (just as Pentecost had done) prepares us for the possibility that Christians are in a better position than OT Israelites/Jews, that the Church is somewhat better off than the nation of Israel, and, indeed, that the New Covenant priesthood is the recipient of greater graces and promises than were their OT ‘counterparts’.

This – these remarks of mine – aren’t supposed to amount to a “proof” for the infallibility of the Magisterium. But I do think they are essential data (though not all the essential data) that should be kept in view, when we consider the possibility that the New Covenant priesthood is similar to but blessed beyond the Old Covenant priesthood. That they are so blessed does not entail that there is such a thing as an ‘infallible’ Magisterium’. But it does, I think, undermine the argument that the New Covenant priesthood must be considered in every respect on par with their OT ‘counterparts’.

I know that you see a fulfillment of sorts as well, because you view Christ as the fulfillment of the High Priestly office (which of course He is). But we don’t infer from this that Christ must be the only priest, and we don’t think that, if there are any other (New Covenant) priests, the collection of these priests must be pretty much in the same situation as any old OT priest was. Things have changed, through Christ’s institution, mandate, and establishment of the NC priesthood, and Pentecost “seals the deal,” bringing about that state of affairs for which Jesus prayed in Jn 17 etc.

Again, you’re the Biblical scholar here, so don’t take this as an attempt to instruct you. I’m just trying to answer your question concerning what I thought about this stuff. Bryan will no doubt have a better answer.

Best,

Neal
Bryan Cross January 25th, 2010 10:42 am :
rfwhite,

What Neal said is very much what I would say, though not as well as him. ;-)

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
rfwhite January 25th, 2010 1:14 pm :
Neal and Bryan: thanks much for the comments. Certainly we are agreed that the OC/NC continuities and discontinuities have to be worked out and not presumed. Granting that necessity, my interest is to see the extent to which you men have integrated those discontinuities and continuities into your thesis in the lead post. Follow-up: if the Magisterium and its charism are matters of discontinuty, what bearing does that discontinuity have on the OC community and its hermeneutical situation?
Michael Liccione January 25th, 2010 2:26 pm :
…if the Magisterium and its charism are matters of discontinuty, what bearing does that discontinuity have on the OC community and its hermeneutical situation?

Since this is a challenge I’ve faced several times elsewhere, I’d like to answer it in a way that I expect Bryan and Neal would approve.

The Magisterium, as it understands itself, is no more and no less “discontinuous” with the OC than Jesus’ reconstitution of the people of God by means of appointing “twelve” apostles, mirroring the old tribes of Israel, or sending out “seventy” preachers, mirroring the seventy sent out by Moses among the people, etc. Jesus was treating the institutions of the OC as figurae for what he, as God, did by way of fulfilling them. More generally, the apostolic hermeneutic of the OT did the same in his name. Most Jews at the time thought of that as discontinuous with their religion in such a way as to be incompatible with their religion. Most still do. Only, it wasn’t and isn’t.

The chief difference between the old leadership of Israel and the Magisterium arises from the fact that divine revelation was definitively completed in Jesus, whereas it had only been unfolding gradually under the OC. Hence, the old leadership had the charism of authority, as Jesus said, but there is no suggestion that it had the charism of infallibility. The new leadership did and does, however, at least under certain conditions. If it didn’t, then the question whose interpretation of the sources conveying the definitive and complete revelation is binding as a matter of faith, rather than more or less persuasive as a matter of opinion, could not be answered with anything more than–well, opinions. We would be limited to the latter-day equivalents of warring parties like the Pharisees, Sadduccees, Essenes, etc. That would not compatible with the transmission of a complete deposit of faith from God in the flesh, or with the unity of his Body, the Church.
rfwhite January 25th, 2010 4:44 pm :
Michael, thanks for chiming in. You have helped me sharpen the formulation of my question? If the charism of infallibility was indeed absent in the pre-NC era, how did believers in that era know whose interpretation of the sources given in the pre-NC era was binding?
rfwhite January 26th, 2010 11:38 am :
Michael Liccione: Another way to frame my question is to pose it this way: if the Magisterium with the charism of infallibility was indeed absent in the pre-NC era, would that circumstance not mean that the people of God in that era were subject to the condition that Bryan has called Ecclesial Deism?
Michael Liccione January 26th, 2010 1:15 pm :
…if the Magisterium with the charism of infallibility was indeed absent in the pre-NC era, would that circumstance not mean that the people of God in that era were subject to the condition that Bryan has called Ecclesial Deism?

No it wouldn’t.

For one thing, the identity of God’s people–or, if you like, his covenant family–was not in doubt in the OC. Belonging to that people was a mostly a matter of physical descent. Being a faithful member of that people was a matter of fidelity to the Law, a concept whose content was not in dispute either. Until the Pharisee/Sadducee/Essene split developed in the century or so before Christ, the two primary matters of dispute were how to apply the Law when in cases where it was not explicit, and how much weight to give the post-Mosaic “prophets” and the “wisdom literature.” Such disputes could not be resolved in the OC, which is why the Jews never developed a biblical “canon” beyond the Pentateuch until the challenge of Christianity caused them to. But that was not “ecclesial deism” because the identity of God’s people was not in dispute even as divine revelation was still in the process of unfolding. Revelation was not complete and definitive as yet, and the fullness of God’s people, i.e. the Church, had not yet developed. Hence, it was natural and inevitable that the Jews would get certain important matters wrong, which is one reason why Jesus and the Apostles had to set them right.

The situation became different once the Church was established as a covenant family open to all peoples, entrusted with the task of preserving, transmitting, and interpreting the complete and definitive divine revelation. At that point, it became crucially important for people to be able to identify, as a visible body not maintained by physical descent, God’s new covenant family as such before they could understand what the definitive divine revelation was. If the situation were reversed–that is, if people were in the position of having to identify and interpret the complete deposit of faith as individuals, so that they could then decide which visible body counted as the Church faithful to that deposit–then there could be no criteria other than personal opinion for determining which ecclesial community is the unitary, visible, historically continuous people whose leadership speaks with divine authority. Yet, as Bryan’s “Ecclesial Deism” article showed, that is exactly the situation that Protestantism as such leaves its adherents in. Such ecclesial “authority” is no authority at all.

Accordingly, infallibility in the NC is necessary if fidelity to the complete, definitive deposit of faith is to be anything more than fidelity to one’s own fallible interpretation of “the sources.” One must first be able to identify some visible body as “the” Church, the Body of Christ on earth speaking with his authority, before one can know by what authority disputed doctrinal matters can be resolved.
Zoltan January 27th, 2010 6:13 am :
I realize that I am simply “jumping in” here on a long thread but I think we need to look at this issue at a more fundamental level. What I see here primarily is a lot of reasoned argument heavily drawing on philosophical categories of propositional truth. However, at the heart of this issue lies the question “What is truth”. The answer is not propositional argument but a Person, namely Christ. Therefore truth is more incarnational from a biblical point of view and His very hypostatic nature gives us an idea of the depth of divine truth. It cannot merely be argued but it must first be revealed and it is actually living among us. Scripture teaches that Christ would send the Holy Spirit to reveal all truth to the Church. We are also commanded in Scripture to imitate Christ and the Apostles and not merely believe what they said in a propositional sense. Furthermore, Jesus told us that we would know false teachings “by their fruits” which again speaks to a living witness not merely propositions.

I believe the epistemology being assumed here, specifically that of Natural Law arguments and strict either/or categories, is flawed for the reason that Scripture teaches what I have termed incarnational truth above. A good example of this is found when Paul wrote in Romans 7:7 that he would not have known about coveting unless the law taught “thou shalt not covet”. In other words, there is nothing discernibly wrong with coveting per se to the “natural mind” but it is arguably the root of all other sins. Christ rejected Natural Law in a sense in the Sermon on the Mount when He taught that simply being angry at your brother without cause or lusting after a woman broke the 6th and 7th commandments of God respectively. I do not believe any other religion engages in casuistry at this depth because sins of the heart are not the purview of common ethics.

So my point is this. Protestants and RC’s are really both looking through eyes of “faith” in the promises of God which is of course supported by reasoned argument but not solely based upon it. We both believe that we have accepted God’s version of how truth is revealed. RC’s are faced with a tautology when you point to Matt 16:18 for validation of the authority of the papacy in Scripture. There are other viable interpretations which, given the broader witness of Scripture, are more reasonable in my view but you accept the RC dogma on this point from which follows every other RC Church doctrine you accept from purgatory to indulgences to the immaculate conception. That is reasonable given the premise you have accepted regarding authority. However, how do you know that this is the correct interpretation of that passage? It seems you accept it because your infallible pope has told you that this means he is infallible and therefore it is the infallible interpretation.

From a protestant perspective, I believe we have a model of discerning truth revealed to us repeatedly by Christ and the Apostles and that is what I seek to imitate. When Paul spoke to the Bereans in Acts 17:11, they were called “noble minded” because they examined the Scriptures eagerly to see if what Paul said was true. Repeatedly we see Christ and the apostles argue from Scripture and not mere authority of personal infallibility (cf Acts 24:27). Those who received the Word did so not because they were more reasonable, but because the Holy Spirit worked in them to discern and God gave them eyes to see. Luke specifically wrote his gospel to one man (Theophilus) so that he would know “the exact truth” (Luke 1:4) of what he had been taught.

So the Protestant doctrine of Sola Scriptura involves a divine both/and principle not the strict either/or categories you seem to insist upon ie: that it is either the solo believer discerning truth or the Church. The Scripture is the only infallible standard we have because it is the Word of God and from it Christ and the apostles argued for authority. Jesus, however, also told the people to obey the Sanhedrin (Matt 23:2-3) but then He turned around and chided that they taught man-made traditions as the traditions of God (Matt 15:6). The apostles bore real authority but as we know, they were still fallible beings. The Church has real authority as well but it is subordinate to the Scripture in the same way that a court derives its authority from the constitution it interprets but the court itself could infringe on that constitution.

Therefore, I ask you RC brothers and sisters, how do you know that what you believe about papal infallibility is true? As a Protestant, I believe the Scriptures are perspicuous by the grace of God working through the Holy Spirit on the heart of all believers. You seem to want it neatly worked out so that we can all be certain of the minutiae of doctrines and whose opinions are infallible. Well, think about God’s method of revealing His Word to us. If any of us chose to write the Bible it would look a lot more like a text of systematic theology or the RC catechism. The Bible however, is a story and not a very organized one at that but a complex story. Why then do you insist upon a cleaner system of truth than God designed in the first place? I see no Scriptural example of an infallible authority given to any human office and I am bound by Christ to see if what you say is true by the Scriptures (Luke 24:25).
rfwhite January 27th, 2010 7:03 pm :
Michael: Still seeking understanding … Granted that you posit a linkage between the identification of God’s people and the understanding of definitive divine revelation, on what do you base your statement that “the identity of God’s people … was not in doubt in the OC”? Thanks for your help.
Michael Liccione January 27th, 2010 7:41 pm :
In the OC, God’s people were understood to be Abraham and his descendants. Given that physical bond, there was no dispute among God’s people about what the phrase ‘God’s people’ denoted. Accordingly, there was no dispute among about just which collectivity God had chosen as the special object of his love and the bearer of his self-revelation to man.

All that is, or ought to be, obvious. So I’m not sure of your point in raising your question.
rfwhite January 28th, 2010 1:29 pm :
Michael Liccione: Allow me to back up a step in the hope of communicating more effectively and understanding your views more accurately. I go back to what you have said above: there was no infallible Magisterium among the leadership of God’s people in the pre-NC era. Granted there was no doubt about the identity of the old covenant people of God, is it not the case that that people had the duty to submit only to the God-anointed kings, priests, and prophets and not to apostate kings, apostate priests, or false prophets who lacked God’s anointing? If so, how did this proper submission take place in the absence of an equivalent to the Magisterium?
Michael Liccione January 28th, 2010 3:28 pm :
I shall back way up, so as to distinguish what is truly at issue from what is not.

The purpose of the Magisterium is to ensure that the teaching of the Church identifies, transmits, and helps us to understand divine revelation rather than just human opinion. I am Catholic because I believe that, once divine revelation was definitively given and completed in Jesus Christ, the teaching authorities of the Church needed the charism of infallibility in order to carry out that purpose. If the Magisterium could always be wrong in its doctrinal determinations, then it would always and ultimately be up to the individual believer to decide which church leaders were orthodox and which were heretical, so that it would always and ultimately be up to individuals to decide who are the legitimate authorities of “the Church” and who are apostates and usurpers. In the final analysis, it would always be up to individuals to decide, on the basis of their own doctrinal opinions, which body of people is truly “the Church” founded by Christ and which bodies were only pretenders. That was the central issue in the controversy between Tertullian and Pope Callistus in the early third century.

On Catholic doctrine, it is not up to “the faithful,” as individuals or in groups, to decide who are the legitimate authorities of the Church. The legitimate authorities of the Church are the bishops who stand in unbroken apostolic succession through the laying on of hands by other bishops. Accordingly, “the Church” is the communion of visible churches founded by and presided over by such bishops; and doctrinal orthodoxy is what the collegium of those bishops says it is, when it intends a teaching to bind the faithful as a whole. A necessary condition for identifying which teachings satisfy that condition is that said collegium be in full communion with the successor of Peter, the bishop of Rome. Without the charism of infallibility in those circumstances, the whole setup would be sheer effrontery, and believers would be left with no alternative but to determine orthodoxy, and therefore the identity of the true Church, on their own. Which, of course, is the essence of Protestantism.

The situation in OT times was different. The identity of the ecclesia, the “assembly” of the people of God, was not in question, and what counted as fidelity to the covenant was not in question either. Fidelity to God was fidelity to the Law, which was mostly about doing certain things and avoiding others. A Jew knew when a leader was unfaithful to the covenant when that leader–be he priest, prophet, or king–violated the Law himself and/or caused others to do so. It was quite important for Jews not to follow that example, and it was not a difficult matter for the average Jew to decide; but it was only the “faithful remnant” which persevered, because the siren song of “the world” was too seductive, as it is for many today.

To be sure, there were always legitimate, duly recognized authorities in the OC, which is why Jesus preached (Matt 23): “The scribes and the Pharisees have taken their seat on the chair of Moses. Therefore, do and observe all things whatsoever they tell you, but do not follow their example. For they preach but they do not practice.” That such authorities were not preserved from error, and did not think of themselves as so preserved, when they pronounced on disputed matters of doctrine, was not a flaw of the OC, because the problem in the NC that submission to the Magisterium prevents did not exist, in anything like the same form, for the Jews of the OC. I’ve already explained, in this and previous posts, why that is the case.
Andrew Preslar January 28th, 2010 4:52 pm :
Mike and rfwhite,

Perhaps you have already discussed this, but allow me to wonder out loud whether the ongoing possibility of further revelation to ancient Israel obviated the need for an infallible Magisterium. That is, if those who had been endowed with the OT magisterium did attempt to bind the people of God in a definitive way to doctrinal error, God could raise up a prophet with new revelation to correct course. This is indeed what happened. This at least begins to address rfwhite’s question about how the Old Covenant people submitted to their religious leaders sans an infallible Magisterium.

However, since the Word made flesh is the ultimate revelation of the Father, in the Holy Spirit, poured out upon all flesh, no additional public revelation of God is to be vouchsafed to his people in the (future) course of time. Therefore, no new prophet can rise up with a public revelation from God to the whole Church in order to call her back from self-destruction (e.g., dogmatically teaching error). So, with the cessation of public revelation, how does the Church, as a whole, adjudicate between doctrinal truth and error when disputes arise? How does Our Lord preserve his Church from dogmatically teaching error and / or becoming divided? The Protestant answers are: (a) sola scriptura (private interpretation proceeding along lines of scientific exegesis), and (b) he doesn’t. The Catholic answer is the sacramental, teaching Magisterium.
rfwhite January 28th, 2010 5:18 pm :
Michael Liccione: If time allows, perhaps I’ll have some thoughts on your explanation of the problem in the NC that submssion to the Magisterium provents. For now, let me observe that you may be quite right that “[it] was quite important for Jews not to follow that example [i.e., the examples of unfaithfulness in prophets, priests, and kings], and it was not a difficult matter for the average Jew to decide.” Difficult matter or not, the fact that “it was a matter for the average Jew to decide” at all seems to express the very heart of the threat against which the lead post was written.
TurretinFan January 28th, 2010 6:05 pm :
Mike:

I’ve read your last comment above (#742) at least three times but there are a few comments that you make where I remain unclear about what you mean by what you say.

1) You wrote that for the OT Jew, what counted as fidelity to the covenant was not in question. Do you believe that what is fidelity to the new covenant is in question? This is a little confusing to me.

2) You also wrote that for the OT Jew, fidelity to God was fidelity to the law. What do you believe is fidelity to the new covenant?

3) You further wrote that for the OT Jew, fidelity (as per 2 above) was mostly about doing certain things and avoiding other things. How do you view this as different from the NT situation (as per your answer to 2)?

-TurretinFan
Michael Liccione January 28th, 2010 6:30 pm :
Andrew (#743):

Yes indeed. I made that point in #737, but perhaps did not give it enough emphasis.

Best,
Mike
Michael Liccione January 28th, 2010 6:33 pm :
rfwhite (#744):

Difficult matter or not, the fact that “it was a matter for the average Jew to decide” at all seems to express the very heart of the threat against which the lead post was written.

That’s superficially plausible, but ultimately both anachronistic and question-begging.

For the average Jew under the OC, the pertinent question was whether the leaders of God’s people at any given time were following the precepts of the Law or not. To what extent were the leaders doing the specific things the Law prescribed and avoiding the specific things the Law forbade? That was not a hard question for any faithful Jew to answer in principle–if and whensaid Jew had the written Torah available to him, and also had the relevant information about what his leaders were doing. Now in one respect, the same is true for average Christians in the NC. If and when they know what church leaders should be doing and avoiding, it’s not that hard for average Christians to find out what their leaders are actually doing and avoiding, and then to assess their performance accordingly. E.g., Catholics today know that their bishops should be doing all they can to ensure that their clerical buddies keep their pants zipped around young people. We were outraged when that turned out not to be the case, and it would probably do the Church in the US some good if our bishops were held as accountable as the Irish bishops are. (I think of Cardinal Mahony in particular, but he’s about to retire anyway. Should have been forced out years ago.) But the controversial question for our purposes is how to fill out that ‘if and when’ clause when the matter at hand is what doctrines the leaders should be teaching as belonging to the deposit of faith, and what doctrines they should be condemning as incompatible with the deposit of faith.

When that is the question, average Christians have nothing so clear and simple as a rather small body of texts containing explicit commandments to do such-and-such things and avoid others. Christians have a larger body of data, written and otherwise, conveying not merely the preparatory stages of divine revelation that we find in the OT, but the complete and definitive revelation in the God-man Jesus Christ. Hence it is of critical importance that there be a way of resolving doctrinal disputes which doesn’t leave believers merely with a human opinion about how to interpret the sources, but with statements that bear the credentials of Christ’s authority itself. That is what the Magisterium, as I described its purpose in my previous post, does in and for the Church. Hence, when the questions are which doctrines belong to the deposit of faith, which are merely opinions, and which are positively incompatible with the deposit of faith, it is not ordinary believers who can determine what the Magisterium ought to teach; it is the Magisterium that determines what ordinary believers are to believe.
Michael Liccione January 29th, 2010 11:20 am :
TF (#745):

Answering your questions adequately would require me to explain what I believe it means to be a good disciple of Jesus Christ in full communion with his Church. Unless you’re willing to settle for epigrams, which I rather doubt, making such an explanation adequate would require a book. Since I don’t have time to write that book, and wouldn’t write it here even if I did, I shall instead suggest Karl Adam’s The Spirit of Catholicism.

My purpose in my exchange with Prof. White is very specific: to block the argument that infallibility is no more necessary in the NC than it was in the OC. As best I can tell from his terse comments, he seems to think that positing magisterial infallibility, as the Catholic Church understands that idea, precludes the average believer from holding bishops and popes to account. On the basis of my experience and study as a Catholic, I can assure him that such is not the case.
rfwhite January 29th, 2010 11:57 am :
Andrew Preslar: Thanks for your comment in #743. See further below.

Michael: Picking up on Andrew’s point, which restates your own point in #737, is it correct to say, in summary, that there was no need or provision for an infallible Magisterium until public revelation ceased, inasmuch as God was providing infallible revelation through prophets and apostles?
rfwhite January 29th, 2010 12:30 pm :
Michael: since our posts passed in the ether, allow me to say in response to #748 that my interest is to figure out what gives systemic (organic) stability to the ecclesiology and pneumatology expressed in the provocative lead article. As I understand it, that requires me to I listen to your exposition of the needs of the covenant community (old and new) as well as your exposition of the provisions that the Spirit of God has made to meet those needs during the historical administrations of the divine covenant. To this point, I’ve learned that there are continuities and discontinuities between the pre-NC era and the NC era. Among those discontinuities is the absence of an infallible Magisterium from the pre-NC era. To my mind, this yields a hermeneutical situation indistinguishable from the lead article’s description of sola scriptura, and so I sought confirmation of that observation. In any case, granted the linkage posited between the cessation of public revelation and the need and provision for the Magisterium, this prompts questions about the historical point at which the hermeneutical situation changed for the covenant community.
TurretinFan January 29th, 2010 1:06 pm :
Mike:

Thanks for your response, although I’m sure you anticipated that I wouldn’t find it particularly satisfying or even helpful. I infer (not wrongly I hope) from your answer that you would respond to my first question affirmatively (namely that you do think that “what is fidelity to the New Covenant” is in question).

With respect to the other questions, you referred us to Adam’s book (of which I have a copy – so if you have a particular chapter in mind, please feel free to be specific). However, the form of your recommendation has lead me to a further question:

Do you think that Adam’s book provides a more adequate answer to the questions regarding what constitutes “fidelity to the new covenant” than the New Testament does? Surely you are aware that we think that the New Testament has an answer to that question that is sufficient.

-TurretinFan

(I apologize if this being posted twice – I encountered some odd errors the first time I hit “Submit Comment”)
Michael Liccione January 29th, 2010 3:44 pm :
rfwhite:

…granted the linkage posited between the cessation of public revelation and the need and provision for the Magisterium, this prompts questions about the historical point at which the hermeneutical situation changed for the covenant community.

That’s fair enough. I believe it must be said that the hermeneutical situation changed at the point of what some theologians call “the Christ event”: the incarnation, life, passion, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus, along with the teachings and commission he gave the Apostles during that time. This was the high point and fulfillment of the divine revelation that had begun over a millennium earlier with Abraham. With the foundation of the Church, the “apostolic hermeneutic” of the Old Testament, which Jesus had inaugurated during his earthly life and continued on the road to Emmaus, and thus handed on to the Apostles in embryonic form, objectively supplanted that of other Jewish teachers and other authorities at the time. The transformation continued at Pentecost and on through the death of the last apostle, John.

Two pertinent things need to be said about that. The first is that one can see the apostolic hermeneutic developing throughout the New Testament, in such a way that there is no one point in the New Testament where one can safely say that no more questions need be asked, no more of the truth needs to become manifest over time. To be sure, the objective content of divine revelation was complete and definitive with the death of the last apostle. This means that whatever was to become formally manifest later was already contained at least implicitly and materially in the oral and written teaching of the Apostles. But the Holy Spirit did not stop leading the Church, the “pillar and bulwark of truth,” into all truth when the last Apostles died.

The second point that must be stressed is that such a situation required that the duly ordained leadership of the Church inherit the authority of the Apostles to teach in Christ’s name and with his authority. If that were not the case, then the Church would have ceased being the pillar and bulwark of the truth, and that role would have been narrowed down, uselessly, to the writings that the Church leadership agreed were of apostolic origin. But we find no evidence in the second-century Church that any such narrowing was taking place or was meant to take place. Instead we find a strong emphasis, in such writers as Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, Polycarp of Smyrna, and Irenaeus of Lyons, on the need for following one’s bishop in matters pertaining to the faith and order of the Church. Those guys all knew and approved each other’s writings, as well as the writings, read at liturgies, that in due course were incorporated into the NT. St. Polycarp had even known the Apostle John himself, and St. Irenaeus knew Polycarp. There is no evidence in any of the above-mentioned writers that the Apostles had thought that their degree of authority ended with their deaths. Rather, said writers all spoke as though they had inherited from the Apostles the same mantle of authority in and by the Holy Spirit.
Randy January 29th, 2010 7:39 pm :
Mt 23:1-4 says:
1Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples: 2″The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. 3So you must obey them and do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach. 4They tie up heavy loads and put them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them.

But rfwhite wrote:

Difficult matter or not, the fact that “it was a matter for the average Jew to decide” at all seems to express the very heart of the threat against which the lead post was written.

Jesus does not sound like he want his followers to judge the pharisees. He made the 2 points together. First, the pharisees are lousy leaders. Second, they must be obeyed anyway because the “seat of Moses” must be respected. So how different is that from obeying fallible leaders in the NC?
Zoltan January 30th, 2010 5:41 am :
I wanted to draw your attention to my post at 738 for consideration since it was posted late after clearing “moderation”, it may have been missed.

Michael, it seems to me that the RC position you espouse, is primarily based on a priori necessity from your presuppositions and logic rather than divine revelation of truth or God’s character. This is evident when you wrote:

“The purpose of the Magisterium is to ensure that the teaching of the Church identifies, transmits, and helps us to understand divine revelation rather than just human opinion. I am Catholic because I believe that, once divine revelation was definitively given and completed in Jesus Christ, the teaching authorities of the Church needed the charism of infallibility in order to carry out that purpose”

This is only partly true. God ordained that the truth should always be established by two or three witnesses. In this way, it is necessary to have the infallible Word (Christ) and the living Church (yet to be perfected) bearing witness of the former as the “bulwark and pillar of truth” that you alluded to. However, infallibility now is not a necessary prerequisite for the Church to fulfill her mission. I would argue that Paul stated as much when he wrote that we see in part and we prophesy in part.

You then go on to write: “If the Magisterium could always be wrong in its doctrinal determinations, then it would always and ultimately be up to the individual believer to decide which church leaders were orthodox and which were heretical, so that it would always and ultimately be up to individuals to decide who are the legitimate authorities of “the Church” and who are apostates and usurpers.”

This is not so because you have completely neglected the work of the Holy Spirit in the Church. The argument you are making is essentially that in order for the Holy Spirit to work effectively and guide the Church into all truth as Christ promised He would, we MUST have an infallible Magisterium. Why? Is it not possible that the truth of the Gospel could be worked out through the ages “precept upon precept” (cf Isaiah 28:9,10) corporately through the Church without an infallible Magisterium but rather through the power of the Holy Spirit working in all believers as we are all a royal priesthood? Is this not more in keeping with the Scriptural model of leaven gradually working through the loaf as we are led into all truth (Matt 13:33, 2 Cor 3:18)? For one to deny this, is it not tantamount to binding God by our presuppositions and logic? Analogously, one might level that it made no sense for Christ to remain in heaven after the Ascension but rather it is necessary that He return immediately here in bodily form to lead His Church so that the truth of the resurrection would be manifest to all (such teaching was erroneously taught in NT times cf: 2 Tim 2:18).

Now I believe Prof White has been arguing that if God’s truth revealed in the OC did not require an infallible Magisterium, then why is it necessary now? If it becomes necessary in the NC how is that compatible with the promises made about the NC? Your position effectively makes the NC LESS mature than the OC when the opposite is supposed to be the case.

Allow me to elaborate. Romans 13:4 tells us that the OT Scriptures were primarily written for our benefit in the NC. The Law is fulfilled and transformed in Christ but it is not radically done away with. Moses lamented that the people of Israel’s hearts were hardened and they did not have the Holy Spirit (cf: Num 11:29, 2 Cor 3:13 to 18). The promise of the NC was that God would pour out His Spirit on all flesh and Peter said that promise was being fulfilled at Pentecost (Acts 2). The Holy Spirit did not, however, fall upon the apostles only (as it was exclusively on Moses and the elders) but rather all believers present and God does not give the Spirit by measure (John 3:34). Furthermore, when we read the epistles we see that they are written to entire churches, not just the Magisterium and they were read publicly even addressing individuals or subgroups within that Church (cf 1 John 2:14). In them, the apostles would address all believers not merely bishops. This is the fulfillment of another OC promise that in the NC we would no longer require teachers telling us “know the LORD” for we would all know Him from the greatest to the least (Jer 31:34 cf Heb 8:11).

Now getting back to my point in posting 738, we should assess the validity of doctrine not by sheer reason alone or even our personal interpretation of Scripture alone (as interpretations may be false) but also corporately as the Church and by fruit. What was the fruit of the RC doctrine of the Magisterial/laity divide through the Middle Ages? Well, it resulted in barring laity from partaking of wine. It sought to reimpose a division which Christ eliminated when He tore the veil of the Temple at His crucifixion. I recall seeing this in the architecture of many European churches where the front is off limits to the laity and we effectively have another “Holy of Holies”. This should be an affront to the gospel as there is no such division in the Body of Christ.

Therefore, I see the RC doctrine you espouse as regressive. The Body of believers are perpetually infantile. We need an infallible Magisterium telling us what to believe down to every secondary doctrine. We need not wrestle with the truth as believers, we need not concern ourselves to even know the Bible. Instead, we need only obey the rules laid out by the authorities God set over us and all will be well – this is child like (cf Heb 5:11 to 14; Gal 4). I believe Mathison’s book does well to show us once again the glorious both/and scriptural principle of how the Holy Spirit works in the individual believer and the Church.

Grace and Peace
Zoltan January 30th, 2010 2:56 pm :
Randy, I believe the answer lies in how Christ’s mission was being fulfilled. That was not the time as the Holy Spirit had not yet been given. Moreover, when Jesus said that they were to obey the Pharisees, that was certainly not a blanket statement on all their judgments. Otherwise His indictment against them in Mark 7:8-13 would be contradictory. In short, they were to remain in submission for a time but not blindly follow all their traditions especially since many transgressed the very Word of God (which was the standard then and remains so).

Now, once the Holy Spirit was given, God used Stephen the first martyr, to speak to and judge the Sanhedrin completely thus breaking their authority. Peter and John also refused to submit to their orders not to speak the gospel for that would contradict what God had commanded them to do (Acts 4:19). According to RC doctrine, such is impossible now and these are merely historical curiosities I suppose but not examples to follow.

However, in the Scriptures and indeed throughout Church history, God has sent prophets and teachers who speak against corruption and heresy. The standards we have to judge such prophets are clear. We have the Scriptures and we have their fruits to look at both with the aid of the Holy Spirit (Deut 13, Matt 7:15 – 23, 2 Pet 2, 1 John 4). Historically it seems to me that RC tradition often looks more analogous to the pharisees and assertions of pedigree such as were made when Christ first came when they claimed righteousness by virtue of their lineage from Abraham. For those who consider of paramount importance a strict lineage of apostolic succession, please review Mark 9:38 to 40.
Michael Liccione February 1st, 2010 3:10 am :
TF (#751):

Do you think that Adam’s book provides a more adequate answer to the questions regarding what constitutes “fidelity to the new covenant” than the New Testament does? Surely you are aware that we think that the New Testament has an answer to that question that is sufficient.

The NT provides an adequate answer if properly interpreted. The point of the original post, however, was to show that sola scriptura boils down to solo scriptura, and the latter is by no means an adequate way to ensure that Scripture is properly interpreted.

Adam’s book indicates that all which falls under the heading of Tradition, especially as manifest in the liturgy and the lives of the saints, is indispensable for learning what it means to be a faithful disciple. Thus Tradition is essential for interpreting Scripture correctly. But of course the question is “Whose Tradition?”, and the answer is “the Church’s.” Thus knowing the identity and authority of the Church is equally important for the purpose at hand. Which is why Vatican II says: “Scripture, Tradition, and the Magisterium of the Church are so linked and joined together that none can stand without the others, and each in its own way, under the guidance of the one Holy Spirit, contributes effectively to the salvation of souls.”
TurretinFan February 1st, 2010 3:25 pm :
ML (re: #756),

Thank you for the answer, and for the confirmation of Scripture’s adequacy. However, I was actually aiming at a comparison, though perhaps you have answered me implicitly. When you say, “if properly interpreted,” I understand you to be saying that the New Testament itself doesn’t clearly explain what constitutes “fidelity to the new covenant” and consequently some further guidance (from Tradition and/or the Magisterium to use the categories of Dei Verbum) would be required. In contrast, it seems that you believe Adam’s book clearly explains what constitutes “fidelity to the new covenant.” Have I understood you correctly?

– TurretinFan
Zoltan February 1st, 2010 3:41 pm :
Michael (#756) – I hope you do not mind my addressing you further on this point as I know I am jumping into your interaction with TF. Feel free to respond to any of my posts.

From my perspective as a reformed catholic, I can agree for the most part with your quote from Vatican II. No one is asserting that the Church is not essential for the gospel and for salvation. As Calvin wrote “no one can claim God as his Father without the Church as his mother”. Here “Church” would of course include Tradition and the shepherds God has placed over her. That is the essential point of Mathison’s book which I found excellently researched and written. It was a repudiation of the idea that one simply needed their Bible and a prayer closet without secondary creeds and confessions (which everyone has by default whether they admit it or not).

The point I would advance, and Mathison is making in my understanding, is that where we differ with RCs is the “Tradition and Magisterium” alluded to in Vatican II is not infallible or on equal footing with Scripture, nor does it need to be to fulfill her mission as God is capable of revealing truth over time even through flawed vessels. What is essential doctrine for salvation (the simple declaration of the gospel and orthodox understanding of God’s nature) is clearly laid out in the Bible and affirmed by the ecumenical creeds which were formulated by the Church under divine guidance by the Holy Spirit. Sola Scriptura properly understood, means that a Christian submits to these and to his/her pastor and Church teaching in accordance with the very command of Scripture but does not see them as necessarily infallible. In this is more humility, as it is easier to submit to one you believe to hold infallible office than to a peer in a certain sense (which is why so often the apostles address Christians as “brothers”.)

However, God has always allowed for the prophetic voice to address corruption and heresy in special circumstances. This is done through the guidance of the Holy Spirit and we discern that from the Scriptures and from fruit as Christ commanded. We are to “test the spirits” as John commanded and imitate the noble-minded Bereans. I believe if one strived to look at church history objectively (though no one can be completely objective) the work of the Holy Spirit in the Reformation is undeniable in the literal explosion of theologians, musicians and people that flocked to the Reformed faith. This could not have been by mere human effort and the Providential fact that this happened to occur when the printing press was invented in Europe, meant that it could not be contained.

Church history, however, has never been clear cut. In Athanasius’ day, the Arians were in the majority at times in much of Christendom including many bishops which resulted in his multiple exiles and the coining of the phrase “Athanasius contra mundum”. Nicaea was not convened and decided by papal decree, for the Roman bishop did not function in that way at that time otherwise the controversy would not have lasted as long as it did, but rather it was emperor Constantine.

Now, I have looked earnestly at RC tradition and at one time considered becoming RC before I discovered the Reformed faith (for I was an evangelical from Baptist/Pentecostal roots). I read the patristics and loved what I saw. When I discovered Calvin, he was the foremost scholar of patristic writing in his day and he sought to recover teaching that had been lost since he was a child of the renaissance where the battle cry was “ad fontes”. This is not only evident from his Institutes but also in more polemic tomes like “the Bondage and Liberation of the Will” in which he brilliantly dismantles every argument of the RC apologist Pighius with not only Scripture but copious patristic references.

What I am trying to point out as erroneous about Cross’s assessement of Mathison’s book is therefore two-fold. First, I think there IS a real difference between Sola and Solo Scriptura because of the very action of the Holy Spirit you quoted from in Vatican II. If there is no Holy Spirit acting, then BOTH of our positions fail. So I see RC tradition as effectively limiting the power of God by maintaining that there cannot be a “ground and pillar of truth” in the Church without infallibility based on an evolved tradition and personal prejudice. Christians should understand that the Holy Spirit’s work can be more clearly discerned corporately over time than in a single individual’s thought or life. If so, this would lead to a fundamentally different ecclesiology than what we find in common evangelicalism today because of Solo Scriptura. There would be far less schismatic behaviour which I think is lamentable in the eyes of the Lord and shows clear ignorance of John 17. Thus the Sola vs Solo distinction stands as it would fundamentally affect the behaviour of believers (the manifest fruit).

The second point is that the refutation of the “Tu quoque” argument is spurious. I have tried to demonstrate that the RC position on tradition is by no means self-evident from Scripture or Tradition. Indeed you essentially revealed a presupposition that you hold to based not on divine revelation but as far as I can tell, by your own opinion when you wrote: “I am Catholic because I believe that … the teaching authorities of the Church needed the charism of infallibility in order to carry out that purpose.” Obviously the RC tradition fulfills what you personally deem necessary and you appreciate writers that write what is in accordance with that. “Teri” also said as much in a posting #56 so you are not unique in your RC predisposition.

It therefore stands in my view that Mathison’s exposition of Church tradition properly understood, shows that Church authority is vital but subordinate to Scripture and it therefore stands in contradistinction to Solo Scriptura where such secondary authority does not exist at all. Both result in a different ecclesiology. To point out that ultimately it still boils down to personal opinion is the same for both of us at the core and it completely ignores the work of the Holy Spirit as the Divine Person who can move as He deems fit not as we think would be best. Therefore, Cross is wrong in this critique.
Randy February 1st, 2010 5:26 pm :
Randy, I believe the answer lies in how Christ’s mission was being fulfilled. That was not the time as the Holy Spirit had not yet been given. Moreover, when Jesus said that they were to obey the Pharisees, that was certainly not a blanket statement on all their judgments. Otherwise His indictment against them in Mark 7:8-13 would be contradictory. In short, they were to remain in submission for a time but not blindly follow all their traditions especially since many transgressed the very Word of God (which was the standard then and remains so).

Mark 7 is about Jesus exhorting the Pharisees to use their authority well. Jesus does not say that their authority is nullified by the fact that they don’t. Indeed all authority would be nullified if it had to be exercised perfectly. Jesus knows (and even says in Matt 23) that the Pharisees are scoundrels. His point is obey them anyway. Otherwise authority is reduced to cases where the submitter agrees. That basically makes it pretty meaningless.

Now, once the Holy Spirit was given, God used Stephen the first martyr, to speak to and judge the Sanhedrin completely thus breaking their authority. Peter and John also refused to submit to their orders not to speak the gospel for that would contradict what God had commanded them to do (Acts 4:19). According to RC doctrine, such is impossible now and these are merely historical curiosities I suppose but not examples to follow.

The authority has changed hands. Peter and the apostles now have it and the Sanhedrin does not. But has the nature of the authority changed? Is it now dependent on agreement when in Mat 23 it was not? Given that authority that depends on agreement is logically absurd and that there is no hint anywhere else in the New Testament that this has changed then it makes sense to say that the notion of obeying imperfect leaders remains as Jesus described in in Mat 23.

However, in the Scriptures and indeed throughout Church history, God has sent prophets and teachers who speak against corruption and heresy. The standards we have to judge such prophets are clear. We have the Scriptures and we have their fruits to look at both with the aid of the Holy Spirit (Deut 13, Matt 7:15 – 23, 2 Pet 2, 1 John 4).

But we are not talking about the rare prophets. We are talking about every day preachers. The idea of every believer being required to judge the biblical integrity of the various pastors that are out there. It is simply the opposite of the situation Jesus commands His followers to accept in Mat 23. Rather than:
The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. So you must obey them and do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach
You now have:
b>Completely ignore Moses’ seat or any other divinely ordained office. So you must obey whoever you choose to obey for as long they practice what they preach and you agree with their reading of scripture

Jesus’ words give us one option: obey. The protestant corruption of Jesus’ teaching legitimizes a thousand excuses for not obeying. So you have changed the very essence of what Jesus said about authority.

Historically it seems to me that RC tradition often looks more analogous to the Pharisees and assertions of pedigree such as were made when Christ first came when they claimed righteousness by virtue of their lineage from Abraham. For those who consider of paramount importance a strict lineage of apostolic succession, please review Mark 9:38 to 40.

When there are blessings there are always temptations to become spiritually lazy. Certainly the problem Jesus pointed out in the Pharisees is still with us. It is especially a temptation for leaders. I would say both protestant and Catholic leaders. But just because it is possible to be a bad leader does not mean leadership is unimportant. The question is whether bad leadership justifies schism. The answer is No. Schism is often seen as a way to fix bad leadership. It can’t. The problem is sin. We cannot get away from sinful leaders. That is why we need God to grant our leadership special graces. Not because they are so holy but precisely because they are not holy enough. The worse the leaders are the more we rely on that grace.
Michael Liccione February 1st, 2010 7:15 pm :
TF (#757):

I understand you to be saying that the New Testament itself doesn’t clearly explain what constitutes “fidelity to the new covenant” and consequently some further guidance (from Tradition and/or the Magisterium to use the categories of Dei Verbum) would be required. In contrast, it seems that you believe Adam’s book clearly explains what constitutes “fidelity to the new covenant.” Have I understood you correctly?

I don’t think Adam’s book is the be-all and end-all. I just think it synthesizes the sources, and thus explains what is necessary for fidelity, better than most works of theology that are readily accessible to the general reader. I cite it only as an example. For the longer term, a study of the lives of the saints would probably serve even better. As for the broader issue, you have not understood me correctly. I find that rather puzzling, since I think you generally understand the Catholic position rather well. So, I shall try once again to make myself clear.

God authored the books of the New Testament by means of the authorities of the Church he established–to wit, the Apostles and those who wrote in their name. But that Tradition of which the NT is the most authoritative written record is wider and older than the NT. Hence, the NT can only be adequately understood in the context of that wider and older Tradition. Moreover, Tradition itself can only be properly received and interpreted with the mind of the Church to which it was entrusted. Therefore, it is a necessary condition for interpreting the NT adequately that one identify which visible body counts as “the” Church founded by the Lord, and then choose to conform one’s mind with hers. One can only do that by choosing to submit one’s judgment on matters de fide to those with divinely given authority to speak for and to the whole Church: those who hold and exercise the Magisterium. But such a submission would only be justifiable if in fact the Magisterium speaks with divine authority, and is not giving just its own opinions. Anybody can have opinions, but those are always provisional because always fallible. Divine authority, when exercised, is infallible, and thus its judgments are irreformable.

The NT is “adequate” only when prayerfully read in that context. It is of course possible for a person to simply read the NT on its own and learn a great deal of what’s necessary; in fact, I believe it happens a lot. But partly for the reasons given above, I don’t think it’s possible for anybody to assent by faith to the entire content of the deposit of faith in such a way. The history of Protestantism only confirms that judgment for me; in fact, the broad split between the Lutheran, Reformed, and free-church branches of Protestantism was already evident at the Colloquy of Marburg, a dozen years after Luther nailed his theses to the door. Thus, as St. Thomas had said, it is possible to learn by reading the NT alone much of that which is “of faith”; but unless one submits one’s judgment to that of the bishops in apostolic succession, one does not adhere “by faith” to what one thereby learns. For one has no way of knowing that what one learns is the actual faith of the Church rather than just one’s personal opinions. When one reads such early Fathers as Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, Polycarp of Smyrna, and Irenaeus of Lyons, one can see that such was already the attitude of the Church by the early 2nd century.
Zoltan February 1st, 2010 7:36 pm :
Randy:

You wrote: “Mark 7 is about Jesus exhorting the Pharisees to use their authority well. Jesus does not say that their authority is nullified by the fact that they don’t. Indeed all authority would be nullified if it had to be exercised perfectly. Jesus knows (and even says in Matt 23) that the Pharisees are scoundrels. His point is obey them anyway. Otherwise authority is reduced to cases where the submitter agrees. That basically makes it pretty meaningless.”

There is much agreement here. Remember, the Sola Scriptura position does not refute Church authority, which is real, but rather holds it subordinate to Scripture. Jesus was not just saying the Pharisees were imperfect examples (scoundrels), but also that their teachings and traditions at places was in error in Mark 7 and He rebuked them for that. Teachers who teach wrong doctrines also need correction. An appeal to Matt 23 is judgement against hypocrisy, but once again cannot be viewed as a command to do everything teachers tell you. Jesus many times preached about false teachers leading sheep astray. We differ on how one discerns the false vs true teacher. For RC tradition, it is essentially a pedigree, for the Protestant, it is Scripture with the help of the Holy Spirit revealing His truth gradually.

“The authority has changed hands. Peter and the apostles now have it and the Sanhedrin does not. But has the nature of the authority changed? Is it now dependent on agreement when in Mat 23 it was not? Given that authority that depends on agreement is logically absurd and that there is no hint anywhere else in the New Testament that this has changed then it makes sense to say that the notion of obeying imperfect leaders remains as Jesus described in in Mat 23.”

This is not true as I would again appeal to Mark 7 for example of wrong tradition. I would also point to the numerous warnings against false teachers. In Revelation 2, we read in fact of two churches at Pergamum and Thyatira, who held to some measure of false teaching. Jesus does not say they are not churches, but rather calls them to repent. Thus one may have a true church and still some measure of false teaching which over time must be dealt with.

I would also affirm that authority had changed hands in the case of Stephen and Peter but I think that puts Christ’s command in Matt 23 in a different light. However, we are not disputing this. We are discussing whether or not there is a continuation of apostolic infallibility through the Church magisterium. In the early church of the NT, there is no example of this. In fact, Apollos in Acts 18:24-28, received correction from Aquila and Priscilla and again, he used Scripture to refute the Jews not apostolic authority.

“But we are not talking about the rare prophets. We are talking about every day preachers. The idea of every believer being required to judge the biblical integrity of the various pastors that are out there.”

This is not entirely accurate. Every believer, even RC’s, should judge the intergrity of the teacher before them. There are individual RC’s priests who have taught wrong doctrines. Ought not the people hold them to account? I believe Michael argued as much in 748. The issue about “rare prophets” would pertain to someone like Luther. He was judged falsely and ordered to recant “All his writings” by Leo X which is absurd because much of what Luther wrote is held true by all Christians. He is an example of the rare prophet. The firestorm he started in Europe was beyond anything he anticipated because it was God’s doing. The Magisterium had erred but by definition, Luther was told they could not for all the reasons you and other RC’s give.

Now I would charge that the RC church was schismatic at the time of the reformation because rather than keep dialogue open for the sake of unity (which was the desire of most of the magisterial reformers), debate was quickly shut down, reformers were kicked out (they did not leave voluntarily so they were not schismatic) and we had the indictments against the reformed faith formalized in Trent.

So therefore Randy, I have not completely ignored any God-ordained authority – and the church leadership has real authority. In my Church, my pastor holds to certain views I do not share but I am still in submission to his teaching and the elders. For the sake of unity we “agree in the LORD” (1 Cor 1:10), I do not go about fomenting discord among brethren because there is much more that we do agree upon.

“Schism is often seen as a way to fix bad leadership. It can’t. The problem is sin. We cannot get away from sinful leaders. That is why we need God to grant our leadership special graces. Not because they are so holy but precisely because they are not holy enough. The worse the leaders are the more we rely on that grace.”

AMEN!

Grace and Peace
Randy February 2nd, 2010 12:06 pm :
Zoltan,
There is much agreement here. Remember, the Sola Scriptura position does not refute Church authority, which is real, but rather holds it subordinate to Scripture.
When you say “subordinate to scripture” it is important to note that means subordinate to my interpretation of scripture. Mathison says “All appeals to Scripture are appeals to interpretations of Scripture.”

Jesus was not just saying the Pharisees were imperfect examples (scoundrels), but also that their teachings and traditions at places was in error in Mark 7 and He rebuked them for that. Teachers who teach wrong doctrines also need correction. An appeal to Matt 23 is judgment against hypocrisy, but once again cannot be viewed as a command to do everything teachers tell you.
Even a command that says “do everything they tell you” cannot be viewed as a command to do everything they tell you?

Jesus many times preached about false teachers leading sheep astray. We differ on how one discerns the false vs true teacher. For RC tradition, it is essentially a pedigree, for the Protestant, it is Scripture with the help of the Holy Spirit revealing His truth gradually.
I would say for a protestant it is tradition. Sure their tradition is allegedly bible-based but false teachers can quote the bible as well. Even Satan quotes scripture. Catholics use the same but are more formal. False teachers were identified in scripture by the apostles. They didn’t make a biblical argument. They simply used their authority to declare them false. Bishops, as successors of the apostles, have that authority today. But often the bishop does not comment directly so we use scripture and tradition.

This is not true as I would again appeal to Mark 7 for example of wrong tradition. I would also point to the numerous warnings against false teachers. In Revelation 2, we read in fact of two churches at Pergamum and Thyatira, who held to some measure of false teaching. Jesus does not say they are not churches, but rather calls them to repent. Thus one may have a true church and still some measure of false teaching which over time must be dealt with.
But an error does not mean a lack of authority. Bishops can make errors. Jesus pointed out errors the Pharisees were making in Mark 7 and elsewhere. Still he affirms their authority in Mat 23. You keep wanting to ignore that text.

I would also affirm that authority had changed hands in the case of Stephen and Peter but I think that puts Christ’s command in Matt 23 in a different light. However, we are not disputing this. We are discussing whether or not there is a continuation of apostolic infallibility through the Church magisterium. In the early church of the NT, there is no example of this. In fact, Apollos in Acts 18:24-28, received correction from Aquila and Priscilla and again, he used Scripture to refute the Jews not apostolic authority.

I am not talking about infallibility here. Just an office of leadership that we are to respect today. The Jews never respected this authority so I would not expect Apollos to try and invoke it with them. As far as the NT and the early church. Where is it not evident? The book of Matthew is the authoritative teaching of the apostle Matthew. Almost all the NT and early church writings are bishops exercising the teaching authority of their office.

This is not entirely accurate. Every believer, even RC’s, should judge the integrity of the teacher before them. There are individual RC’s priests who have taught wrong doctrines. Ought not the people hold them to account? I believe Michael argued as much in 748.
The people can but they are not expected to. The bishop has that role.

The issue about “rare prophets” would pertain to someone like Luther. He was judged falsely and ordered to recant “All his writings” by Leo X which is absurd because much of what Luther wrote is held true by all Christians.
Why is that absurd? Pope Leo is not saying they are all false. Just that he should stop teaching until the appropriate authorities can sort out what is what. The problem was he did not obey. So he proved Pope Leo right. In church history there are many true reformers who did obey such orders and were eventually vindicated. It is hard but it is what he was called to do even if the pope was completely wrong.

He is an example of the rare prophet. The firestorm he started in Europe was beyond anything he anticipated because it was God’s doing. The Magisterium had erred but by definition, Luther was told they could not for all the reasons you and other RC’s give.
The Philistines were sent by God too. Does that make them prophets? Luther could have been a great reformer of the church but he failed because he lacked humility. Once he left the church he could not reform it. Especially when he published so much venom. Does a prophet of God make so many crude sexual insults?

Now I would charge that the RC church was schismatic at the time of the reformation because rather than keep dialogue open for the sake of unity (which was the desire of most of the magisterial reformers), debate was quickly shut down, reformers were kicked out (they did not leave voluntarily so they were not schismatic) and we had the indictments against the reformed faith formalized in Trent.
You need to learn what the word “schismatic” means. You can’t say the entire church was schismatic. Schism means cutting or separating. The reformers did that. They set up their own organizations with themselves as the head and called them “church”. The fact that they were not in good standing in the Catholic church does not justify that. It does not make it any less schismatic.

So therefore Randy, I have not completely ignored any God-ordained authority – and the church leadership has real authority. In my Church, my pastor holds to certain views I do not share but I am still in submission to his teaching and the elders. For the sake of unity we “agree in the LORD” (1 Cor 1:10), I do not go about fomenting discord among brethren because there is much more that we do agree upon.
Yes, most protestants don’t actually live Sola Scriptura. They have some unprincipled reason for obeying leaders when they disagree. But that does not make Sola Scriptura right. It just means you are living better than your creed. This is a good thing. Sola Scriptura is a bad creed and if you would follow it then it would be a complete disaster. So you, like most protestants, rarely follow it. Only when you really want to disobey which might never happen. So in practice you follow scripture, tradition, and a magisterium just like we do. The only difference is you have an inferior tradition and magisterium. That is a big difference because Jesus works most powerfully in His one true church.
Purify Your Bride » Blog Archive » Zoltan February 2nd, 2010 12:14 pm :
[…] reply to a commenter named Zoltan at CtC: There is much agreement here. Remember, the Sola Scriptura position does not refute Church […]
Zoltan February 3rd, 2010 5:42 am :
Randy,

“When you say “subordinate to scripture” it is important to note that means subordinate to my interpretation of scripture. Mathison says “All appeals to Scripture are appeals to interpretations of Scripture.””

*** This is not necessarily true. I believe you treat this issue as though we are dealing with abstract, propositional truth which is the wrong approach because as I outlined in my previous posts, we are dealing with Incarnational truth ie: the Living Truth who is Christ. Therefore, what we are really asking is how Christ reveals His truth not whose personal interpretation is right. If the Bible were a mere novel, then you would be quite right in pointing out that my interpretation of an author’s work is probably no better than anyone else’s. However, it is the Holy Spirit who reveals truth to the believer. Therefore, the issue is how and to whom (cf 2 Pet 20-21).

The RC tradition has in my view limited God. You are basically arguing that God MUST have a perpetual, infallible office present on this earth in order to reveal His truth reliably to His people. This is not self-evident and it cannot be proven by sheer reason or conclusively from Scripture. Neither can it be demonstrated in early Church history except for select passages which I think are cherry picked from certain patristics while ignoring others. Michael Liccione lays claim to Irenaeus for example but some of his writing was in line with Sola Scriptura as well (see: https://www.bible.ca/sola-scriptura-apostolic-fathers-irenaeus.htm).

Magisterial infallibility was by no means a developed doctrine in the early Church by any means and it was not uniformly held. Nevertheless, you believe yourselves to be the one true church and your pope is infallible, therefore Luther was wrong because he challenged that authority (even though more recently Pope Benedict has said that Luther was right in many respects which underscores the error of the question put to him at Worms in which he was asked to recant of “all his writings”. I maintain it was an absurd charge but his refusal to comply lead your true and infallible church to excommunicate him because by definition, she cannot err.)

As a reformed catholic, I reject the notion of personal or ecclesial infallibility. I reject that there is a continuation of apostolic infallibility. I reject these on the basis of Scripture and history as well as early church tradition. This view of infallibility clearly evolved over time and if it were so essential to the Church, it would have been settled clearly by the apostles themselves not with vague allusions but direct claims to magisterial infallibility passed down the line. Otherwise, you are in a tautology ie: your infallible pope tells you he is infallible, therefore he is.

“Even a command that says “do everything they tell you” cannot be viewed as a command to do everything they tell you?”

*** So then you maintain that Jesus was actually saying follow ALL their rules even the ones He said broke the commandment of God? That is not tenable. All Scripture must be read with ALL other Scripture in mind for there can be no contradiction or distinction. So when Christ said do not call anyone father, He meant we are sinning when we call our earthly fathers “father” or when you RCs call your priests father I suppose?

“I would say for a protestant it is tradition. Sure their tradition is allegedly bible-based but false teachers can quote the bible as well. Even Satan quotes scripture. Catholics use the same but are more formal. False teachers were identified in scripture by the apostles. They didn’t make a biblical argument. They simply used their authority to declare them false.”

*** Of course Protestants have tradition. The tradition of the Magisterial reformed church can be found in the NT and early Church (illustrated beautifully in Mathison’s book). Tradition is good and necessary. My point all along is that it is merely subordinate to Scripture and not infallible as Scripture is infallible, nor is it necessary for it to be so. Yes false teachers quote the Bible. Moreover, the apostles bore real authority to declare teachings as false. The dispute is not here. They of course did use Scripture to teach and refute, your point here is demonstrably false (cf Heb 4:11-13, Acts 17, Acts 18:28, Rom 15:4, 1 Tim 4:13).

“Bishops, as successors of the apostles, have that authority today. But often the bishop does not comment directly so we use scripture and tradition.”

*** Bishops/elders do have authority but it is not infallible or apostolic in the strict sense of the term. The NT repeatedly uses the term apostle in distinction to other church offices (cf Eph 4:11, 1 Cor 12:28, Acts 15:22-23).

“But an error does not mean a lack of authority. Bishops can make errors. Jesus pointed out errors the Pharisees were making in Mark 7 and elsewhere. Still he affirms their authority in Mat 23. You keep wanting to ignore that text.”

*** I do not ignore that text. I thought I made myself clear so allow me to state it again. Bishops/elders have authority. The Sanhedrin had authority until Christ took it away leaving their house “desolate”. I have never denied this. What I deny is infallibility apart from the apostles when the Spirit spoke through them authoritatively. You seem to have neatly side-stepped the point when it came to the erroneous teachings that existed in some NT churches.

“I am not talking about infallibility here.”

*** But I am because I believe that is where we actually differ.

“Just an office of leadership that we are to respect today.”

*** I agree that we must respect the office of leadership that God has put over us in accordance with the Scriptures (cf Heb 13:17). However, leaders can err in their teaching and so often in the Scriptures and history, God used people of inferior stature to rebuke their superiors. Remember that many bishops were actually Arians and God raised up Athanasius a mere deacon at the time to oppose them at Nicaea.

“The Jews never respected this authority so I would not expect Apollos to try and invoke it with them. As far as the NT and the early church. Where is it not evident? The book of Matthew is the authoritative teaching of the apostle Matthew. Almost all the NT and early church writings are bishops exercising the teaching authority of their office.”

*** Agreed.

“Why is that absurd? Pope Leo is not saying they are all false. Just that he should stop teaching until the appropriate authorities can sort out what is what. The problem was he did not obey. So he proved Pope Leo right. In church history there are many true reformers who did obey such orders and were eventually vindicated. It is hard but it is what he was called to do even if the pope was completely wrong.”

*** It is absurd because he was not just told to stop teaching until things are sorted out. That is totally inaccurate. He was told to RECANT which means to disavow or retract.

“The Philistines were sent by God too. Does that make them prophets?”

*** No, but God destroyed the Philistines in the end which is why I have been charging RC’s to consider the fruit of the reformation which Christ commanded us to do when looking at prophets. Nations where the Reformation was strongest flourished in accordance with the promises of Deuteronomy whereas RC nations have generally declined from former prominence. The contrast between primarily protestant North America vs primarily RC South America is a case in point. Now I believe the West has more recently lost its way but the blessing of prosperity cannot be denied and I believe judgement is coming.

“Luther could have been a great reformer of the church but he failed because he lacked humility. Once he left the church he could not reform it. Especially when he published so much venom. Does a prophet of God make so many crude sexual insults?”

*** I do not pretend to defend Luther at every turn. He had his warts and faults like us all. Remember also though the venom spouted against him by the RC’s. Was that humility? I also lament of what could have been if the RC magisterium would only have been more patient with Luther and really tried to understand his teaching.

“You need to learn what the word “schismatic” means. You can’t say the entire church was schismatic. Schism means cutting or separating. The reformers did that. They set up their own organizations with themselves as the head and called them “church”. The fact that they were not in good standing in the Catholic church does not justify that. It does not make it any less schismatic.”

*** Yes, schism does mean to cut or separate, so who did the cutting? It is undeniable that Rome kicked them out (separated them). If the reformers merely called the RC Church corrupt and left of their own accord to “set up their own organizations” then I would agree with you. In this light, Henry the VIII was schismatic. The magisterial reformers, however, wanted to reform the RC church back to what she once was before the many innovations of the Middle Ages crept in.

“Yes, most protestants don’t actually live Sola Scriptura. They have some unprincipled reason for obeying leaders when they disagree. But that does not make Sola Scriptura right. It just means you are living better than your creed. This is a good thing. Sola Scriptura is a bad creed and if you would follow it then it would be a complete disaster. So you, like most protestants, rarely follow it. Only when you really want to disobey which might never happen. So in practice you follow scripture, tradition, and a magisterium just like we do. The only difference is you have an inferior tradition and magisterium. That is a big difference because Jesus works most powerfully in His one true church.”

*** I think you misunderstand Sola Scriptura for the Solo Scriptura “tradition” Mathison refuted brilliantly. Have you read his book? Moreover, we both know that I would say a majority of RC’s the world over do not agree with all RC teaching at every point. Some even border on the heretical and still remain RC’s in good standing. Many prominent RC politicians reject the church’s teaching on abortion or homosexuality in the public forum. They are not excommunicated for this. In my church, they would be. So who is more faithful to their creed?

Grace and Peace
Randy February 3rd, 2010 2:49 pm :
Zoltan,

I replied on my blog here

https://www.purifyyourbride.stblogs.com
Zoltan February 11th, 2010 2:58 am :
Hey Randy, I cannot access your blog. Are there technical difficulties?

In Him,

Zoltan
St. Joseph’s Vanguard And Our Lady’s Train » Blog Archive » Lenten Penance-Reading James White’s Scripture Alone February 24th, 2010 10:40 pm :
[…] might be) must be “somehow” involved in the interpretation. Unfortunately (for them), the Called to Communion guys demonstrated that sola Scriptura reduces to solo Scriptura (i.e. the in… a conclusion that would make both White and Mathison very uneasy, since they view solo Scriptura […]
David Meyer March 30th, 2010 12:16 pm :
I just read all 767 comments in this combox. I also am almost done re-reading Keith Mathison’s book. The main contention of Bryan and Neal’s article still stands having been largely ignored in the comments. I say “largely ignored” because despite the sheer amount of words spilled by my fellow Protestants, they have infrequently here brushed the main point of a lack of a principled distinction between sola and solo scriptura.
The highlights (of Protestants) have been the interactions of Keith Mathison and R.F. White, but it seems as if Keith will not reply at this point. R.F. White was very precise and succinct in his comments and I found his to be the most interesting and thought provoking. Although Mr. White did not engage the article’s main point he seemed as if he might be refuting it gradually or perhaps conceding it and pointing at the OC as a sort of solo scriptura situation. I hope I am not off on my assessment here. My point is I would sincerely like some more comments from these gentlemen on this topic.

At this point, we Protestants must concede the point of this article and soberly look at the consequenses. For me it means an abandonment of the Reformed faith I have come to love and an embracing of Catholicism.

I want to thank all you guys at Called to Communion for your thoughtful and patient responses to the commenters. These responses really solidify the truth of this article.

I also wish to thank “lojahw” and TurretinFan for helping me decide to steer my family down the road to becomming Catholic. The guys here at CtC are just too polite to you I think. Your comments are verbose and usually not on topic. When your comments do approach the topic, you seem to my eyes to be trying to hang on to your tradition (sola scriptura) for it’s own sake, rather than admit defeat. As a fellow Protestant I urge you to step back, read the article again, and humbly admit defeat. Then let the chips fall where they may. That may mean Catholicism or EO or it may mean atheism, but if you cannot refute the simple point of this article (no principled distinction between sola and solo) AND you agree that solo is repugnant, then you must just submit to defeat. Your comments are longer than the article itself and I see no way in which you have made any convincing arguments against the article.

Hopefully Keith Mathison will be replying soon.

Peace brothers,

David Meyer
TurretinFan March 30th, 2010 1:53 pm :
“I also wish to thank “lojahw” and TurretinFan for helping me decide to steer my family down the road to becomming Catholic.”

I’m sorry my arguments were not more persuasive.
Francis Beckwith March 30th, 2010 2:12 pm :
“I’m sorry my arguments were not more persuasive.”

Lean not on your own understanding.

If God is sovereign, why worry?
TurretinFan March 30th, 2010 2:30 pm :
Prof. Beckwith:

My comments are not intended as a denial of God’s sovereignty. With Aquinas and Augustine I agree “that perseverance is a gift of God, whereby we persevere unto the end, in Christ.” I’m nevertheless sorry that my arguments were not more persuasive to Mr. Meyer, though I acknowledge that only God’s grace can make them so.

He, not I, is sovereign.

-TurretinFan
David Meyer March 30th, 2010 2:37 pm :
TF

Re-reading my comment, I was rude and I appologize. Keep in mind it took me many hours to read all the comments and I am a bit frazzled.

Just to clarify, I think your comments were as good as they could be considering what you are defending. I was hoping you and the other Protestants would refute the article but, as I said, I think refutation is not possible. So, it is not you who is lacking in argumentation, but sola scriptura which lacks defendability. (IMO of course) Your tenacity has not gone unoticed.

Peace,

David Meyer
TurretinFan March 30th, 2010 3:47 pm :
Mr. Meyer,

Thank you for your apology as well as for the kind words that accompanied them.

-TurretinFan
Zoltan March 31st, 2010 4:13 am :
To Prof Beckwith a short comment about an apparent strawman. God is sovereign as TurretinFan pointed out. Your point? Bryan Cross in comment #703 levelled the charge that Protestants view things through strict “either/or” categories. The truth is, both sides fall into this trap in various ways and here is a good RC example of how you fall into that. The Scriptures teach these two truths – God is sovereign (Ps 139) and man is responsible for his choices. Such an apparent paradox resolves itself in the way that the hypostatic nature of Christ is “resolved” ie: it is knowledge too wonderful for us we cannot attain it (just as David confessed in Ps 139). How Jesus Christ can be both fully God and fully Man is incomprehensible but that is God. Why is it then that you seem to assert some practical nestorianism when it comes to the mystery of life?

To David Meyer I am grieved by your choice but I do think you have missed some of the distinctions that were made in the comments. The essential argument is this. “Solo Scriptura” maintains that there is NO other authority except the Bible and Sola Scriptura asserts that Scripture is the only infallible authority and that the Church has secondary but nevertheless real authority in interpreting the Bible and disciplining the flock.

I would ask you to consider these analogies and if you are willing to still discuss them then we shall see where they lead. I would liken Solo Scriptura to a married woman who asserts that since she is created in the image of God (like her husband) she is therefore free to ignore the wishes of her husband and do whatever is right in her eyes (ie: however she perceives God’s will to be for her). Sola Scriptura is like a married woman who knows she is created in God’s image (like her husband) but accepts that her husband does exercise some authority over her. She knows well that he is not infallible in any sense but nevertheless submits to his judgement. However, if her husband thought proper discipline for the children was to beat them viciously to the point where lives were at stake (making some wild claim to Deut 21:21), she is then within her rights to appeal to another authority (in this case the state) for protection. Or, if he demanded that they stop attending church, then she could appeal to the elders of the church for protection.

Cross wants to draw an absolute distinction where none exists namely that either the Church has absolute and infallible authority over doctrine or she has no authority at all. This is demonstrably not true from argument, Scripture and history. As I argued in my posts, what we are really discussing here is the will of God. If His will can be discerned through mere sophistry then our minds must be equivalent to His and His ways would clearly be our ways.

Blessings in Christ,

Zoltan
Tim A. Troutman March 31st, 2010 8:54 am :
Zoltan – The inadequacy of the husband/wife argument is in part due to the analogy having no reference to identification of the husband (authority figure) whereas in the sola/solo discussion, the identification of the authority is paramount. You’re leaving out that part of the equation. Protestants identify “Church” based on their interpretation of Scripture (whatever agrees with my interpretation is the Church and I will “submit” to it).

In theory, as you said, Protestants will obey the Church only so long as Church leaders do not contradict the individual’s private interpretation of Scripture. The problem is two fold: 1. Church authority is still contingent upon private interpretation of Scripture. (We also agree that an individual may not violate his conscience, but his conscience must be conformed to the apostolic Church.) 2. (And most importantly) the Church has already been judged to be that which agrees with the individual’s private interpretation of Scripture so therefore this institution does not contradict one’s private interpretation, thereby giving the illusion that the individual is submitting to its authority. That “Church” could start teaching a new doctrine, contrary to the individual’s interpretation, and the individual would come to the conclusion that this body had ceased being “Church.” (This is exactly what happened, from a Protestant perspective, at Trent.) This is not subjecting one’s self to an authority.

So the marital analogy is not sufficient and does not solve the problem. David Meyer is correct; the thesis of this article has not been refuted. He is also correct in his observation that Dr. R.F. White has, by far, come the closest to a direct response.
TurretinFan March 31st, 2010 9:45 am :
I’ve arranged the responses I’ve provided via my own blog to discussions either in the article itself or in the comment box into a single index page. Some, as perhaps Mr. Tim Troutman has forgotten, deal directly with the issue of whether there is a principled distinction (and if not, whether it matters), while others address the article from other angles (link to index of responses). The latest of the responses is a seven-part series entitled “Is the Roman Catholic Magisterium More Sufficient than Sacred Scripture?”

That article directly responds to statements that Mr. Bryan Cross made in the comment box above, but is relevant to the argument of the article as well. Perhaps Mr. Meyer has already seen and read those responses, but they do highlight the reasons why Sacred Scripture itself is perfectly sufficient rule of faith.

– TurretinFan
herbert March 31st, 2010 10:18 am :
Mr. Troutman, Are you saying that Zoltan’s analogy is being misapplied due to the fact that his parallel to the Church (the abusive husband) CAN go astray, whereas the Church simply can’t lead the Faithful astray (due to Christ’s explicit guarantee of her indefectibility)? I think I understand your reasoning here. I am just seeking clarity. thank you.
Zoltan March 31st, 2010 10:54 am :
Tim I will respond to your posting more completely later but I think you have missed the main point I was trying to point out namely – is there a substantive difference between wife A and wife B or are they essentially the same since wife B holds that under extraordinary circumstances, she may go “over her husbands head” so to speak. We can discuss later on whether or not the analogy applies.

Blessings in Christ (must go to work),

Zoltan

PS – TurretinFan, I look forward to reading your blog. Thank you for your tenacity and love of truth.
Randy March 31st, 2010 11:04 am :
The husband/wife analogy is good. But there is authority there. She requires a higher authority to remove her obligation to obey her husband. That is good. But then she must have at some point a highest authority. What if that highest authority leads her wrong? Either it can or it can’t. If it can’t then she has the analog of an infallible pope. If it can then who decides whether this is such a case or not? She does. Then is she not higher than the highest authority? Then how is she different from the first woman who simply began and ended with here own judgment? There is some difference. She will submit to her husband in many cases. But when the submission gets really hard she can just opt out of it all. The ultimate criteria for that opting out is simply that she disagrees. So what is the principled difference? The difference is not one of principle but one that depends on how quickly the “opt out” option is exercised. It is an important practical difference but there is no principle that separates the two systems. That makes it hard to call one good and the other evil.
Tim A. Troutman March 31st, 2010 11:51 am :
Herbert,

Feel free to call me Tim if you prefer. No that is not what I’m saying although that is a good question to be asking. The point is that in his analogy, there is no question of who the husband is. In the solo/sola problem, the main issue with the supposed “Church” authority is that the “Church” is defined as one who agrees with the individual’s interpretation of Scripture so the conditional submission isn’t the same in-kind as the Catholic who submits to the visible Church that (he believes) Christ founded. The issue is over identification of Church (which aspect is lacking in Zoltan’s analogy). Also, as to whether there is a practical, albeit not principled, distinction between solo and sola scriptura as implied by Zoltan’s analogy, I answered that here.

Zoltan – I haven’t missed the main point of what you were saying. Whether or not the analogy applies is inseparably related to the legitimacy of the ‘main point’ of the analogy. If an analogy doesn’t apply to a thing, then the ‘main point’ of the analogy is false when you attempt to apply it to that thing. Hence, I argued that your analogy does not apply because it lacks the critical aspect of identification of authority inherent in this discussion. Therefore, the ‘main point’ of the analogy is false when applied to our discussion. So I did not miss your ‘main point,’ in fact, I contradicted it by arguing that the analogy altogether is misapplied.

The identification of authority is critical in this issue because, as Bryan and Neal argued in the paper, that is the precise difference in the Catholic and Protestant position. i.e. Catholics identify the Church to which they will submit with the assent of faith as the Church which is in succession from the apostles. Protestants identify Church based on whoever agrees with their interpretation of Scripture. Therefore the Protestant position is reducible to a position not distinct in principle from solo scriptura. Your analogy does not refute this.
Tim A. Troutman March 31st, 2010 11:54 am :
TurretinFan – I have not read your response on your blog to this article so I will qualify my statement that no one has directly refuted the arguments here on this thread.
Michael Liccione March 31st, 2010 12:32 pm :
This is not the only place lately that I’ve seen Protestant apologists use the spousal-abuse analogy to justify either the Reformation itself, as a historic separation from the Church, or doctrinal dissent from their own respective churches. That’s the sort of stance that leads to the limitless proliferation of denominations, and thus makes the unity of God’s people, in the form of a visible Church historically continuous with that of the Apostles. impossible prior to the Eschaton. Given Jesus’ prayer for unity, and the example of the early Church as recorded in the NT, I believe that consequence to be unbiblical. Of course that belief is typically dismissed as merely the “Catholic” opinion. But in a way, that response illustrates my point.

If God’s people are to exhibit the unity for which Christ prayed, and which the apostolic Church managed to exhibit despite heresies and factions, then there has to be a way to distinguish reliably between what is merely opinion and what is actually divine revelation. Pointing to a book as the repository of divine revelation just doesn’t cut it. For one thing, the writings it contains took several generations to be composed, collected, and recognized as normative in light of prior rules of faith, which were and remain the core of what’s called Tradition; and the dissensus since then has always been, at least in part, about how to understand that book once one follows Tradition by taking the book as inerrant. Adducing a particular interpretation of that book as rationally defensible, with or without appeal to the older and wider Tradition, isn’t enough either. For as long as such interpretations are presented as fallible, they have only the force of opinion, which is not the same as divine revelation. Nor will it do to appeal to the historic creeds as a normative hermeneutic. For if the authority by which such creeds were propounded is fallible, then they too represent only opinions that many people have shared, but which are not irreformable, and therefore cannot claim to transmit divine revelation in the form of propositions that, precisely as divinely revealed truths, must be taken as irreformable. So, whether we’re talking solo or sola scriptura, the question remains: how, absent an ecclesial authority that is divinely protected from doctrinal error under certain conditions, are Christians to distinguish reliably enough between human opinion and divine revelation to give the assent of faith to the latter?

I am a Catholic because my answer to that question is: “They can’t.” Of course conservative Protestants, at least as such, think they can; liberal Protestants are those who’ve already concluded that it’s all a matter of opinion, and therefore have no dog in this fight. But the conservatives’ reasons for thinking they can reliably make the needed distinction don’t bear sustained critical scrutiny. Whichever brand of conservative Protestantism you pick–be it Reformed, Lutheran, or one of the many free-church approaches that, it turns out, are incompatible both with the first two and with each other–the underlying stance is always the same: it is ultimately up to believers taken severally to assess the orthodoxy of something called “the Church,” rather than vice-versa. As long as that’s the stance, ecclesial unity is impossible. There will always be people who think the authorities of the Church–or whichever body such people happen to recognize as the Church—are in grave doctrinal error; as long as those authorities can claim no divine protection from doctrinal error under certain conditions, both sides are only expressing their opinions. Each side may believe, quite sincerely, that its opinions represent divine revelation; but absent even a claim to infallibility, that belief itself can have only the force of opinion. If Christ appointed no infallible teaching authority to persist in his Church until his return, we are left only with a clash of opinions. Liberal Protestantism has the singular merit of recognizing as much. And some liberal Protestants, I’m sorry to say, are formally members of the Catholic Church.

That said, the spousal-abuse analogy does raise a point: the indefectibility of the Church as a whole, and her consequent infallibility when teaching with her full authority, by no means precludes the most outrageous pastoral abuses by individual bishops or even the whole body of bishops, including the pope. I needn’t recount those abuses, past and present, for this audience; some here are only too happy to recount them. My response, however, is simply abusus non tollit usum. From the fact that those who hold authority in the Church often sin as individuals, or even as a body, it does not follow either that some dogmas they propound are false or that separation from the Church would be justified. Even Catholics can, and today especially they must, acknowledge that ecclesia semper reformanda. But if the needed “reforms” include rejection of the Church’s precise and limited claim to divine protection from error under certain conditions, then we’ve tossed out the baby with the dirty bath water. Despite the many and real abuses to which the Reformation was a response, schism is never justified. That’s one lesson that can be learned just by reading the New Testament.
Ray Stamper March 31st, 2010 12:39 pm :
Zoltan,

Sola Scriptura asserts . . . . . . that the Church has secondary but nevertheless real authority in interpreting the Bible and disciplining the flock.

Is this a fallible or infallible assertion?

If fallible:
If fallible, you must conceed that this assertion might be false (for that is what fallibility entails). If the assertion is false, then the “Church” (whatever you mean by that term) has no real authority. If the “Church” has no real authority, then your position reduces to SOLO not sola scriptura. Of course, maintaining that your assertion is fallible does not, ipso facto, mean your assertion is false: it might, in fact, to be true. But here is the rub. How can you KNOW it to be true by anything other than your own efforts at study, research, exigesis, etc. – all of which are predicated upon your personal potential for error (i.e. your personal fallibility)? Your very definitions of “the Church” and “real authority” must necessarily rest upon your own study, research, etc. – all of which, as I have said, are supported by nothing other than your own potential for error. This, is why Catholics, like myself, insist that you are performing a sort of intellectual slight-of hand by making assertions such as “the Church has secondary but nevertheless real authority in interpreting the Bible and disciplining the flock”; as if that assertion saves you from the accusation of SOLO scriptura, when in fact, the assertion itself is your individual (SOLO) intellectual construct.

Your only recourse would be to boldly postulate that your assertion is infallible but then . . .

If infallible:
If the assertion is infallible; then given your prior assertion “that Scripture is the “only infallible authority “; it necessarily follows that you must derive this assertion from scripture. But in such a case you will be forced to explain what scripture means by the term “Church” as well as explain where the concept and meaning of “real authority” are to be found strictly within the text of scripture. You will not be permitted to bring the “real authority” of “the Church” to bear when formulating your explanation because:

a.) these are the very terms needing explanation and to do so would be question begging
b.) since your view of the “real authority” of “the Church” is something less than infallibility; you cannot hope to establish an infallible assertion by means of the assistance of a fallible agent.

But the very act of explaining what scripture means without the assistance of the “real authority” of “the Church” is precisely what SOLO scriptura entails.

The bottom line is that your entire assertion about “the Church” and “real auhority”, as well as your definition of “the Church” and “real authority” have no more real athority than the person making the assertion or drafting the definitions. Since that person is you, and you (presumably) ackowledge your own fallibility, the appearance of SOLA (the notion that you are not acting alone, but in concert with some other clear authority) is in fact a smoke screen; precisely because the definition and understanding of this “Church” with “real authority” is a creation of your own, fallible intellect – that is, YOU have decided what counts for “Church” and what counts for “real authority”. Thus, what on the surface looks like SOLA, turns out, upon deeper inspection, to be nothing other than SOLO.

One will never avoid the accusation of subjectivism inherent in the pejorative SOLO by means of asserting the existence and role of other authorities whose identity and jurisdiction are the product of the very subjectivism one seeks to distance himself from. It is the dawning of this truth upon the theological intuition that explains why Catholics like myself have, with love and respect for our Protestant upbringing, returned to our ancestral home in the Catholic Church. We awake to the great inheretance Christ Himself left us by investing His own authority in the organic, historical family of the Catholic Church despite the ever present reality of sin found among her children – including her elder fathers and brothers, the clergy – including the successor of Peter, the holy father.
David Meyer March 31st, 2010 3:42 pm :
Zoltan said in 774:

To David Meyer I am grieved by your choice but I do think you have missed some of the distinctions that were made in the comments. The essential argument is this. “Solo Scriptura” maintains that there is NO other authority except the Bible and Sola Scriptura asserts that Scripture is the only infallible authority and that the Church has secondary but nevertheless real authority in interpreting the Bible and disciplining the flock.

Thank you for again distilling the “essential argument”.

Dude, (I figure I can call a guy named ZOLTAN “Dude”, hope that’s cool) I have not “missed some of the distinctions” that are being made. I became Reformed 9 years ago precisely because of those exact distinctions. Those distinctions are what makes Reformed theology far and away superior to white bread, dispensational evangelicalism. But they are distinctions without principled difference. Yes, one is better. Sola is better than Solo (although not better than Han Solo) but the exact moment real submission is required and necessary of a Sola believer like me, is the exact moment when I will see submission as impossible or unnecessary. This is what then brings Sola down to the level of Solo for that one, crucial exact moment when it makes the difference.

Example: My current session at my PCA church requires a “profession of faith” before my children can partake of the Lord’s Supper. I have come to understand the Bible to forbid this requirement and that my infant children have the Supper as their birthright. Long story short, I have stayed and ‘submit’ to their authority. But many of my friends have left my local church (some even starting a CREC church) over this and other issues. The “authority” exercised by my session only stopped me from schism because of my own choice to submit to them. My friends saw the session as having no authority to make them stay because from their perspective the session was not in line with scripture. This gives them not only the right, but in their mind the necessity to leave. They now go to other churches that of course staunchly (visualize chest pounding here) and proudly hold to Sola Scriptura, just like the last church they went to.

THIS IS YOU AND ME MAN! This is what Sola Scriptura means and it is absolutely INSANE! This means zero real authority. Yes, it is more authority than purpose-drivel Rick-Warren-evango-retard-down-the-street who believes in solo scriptura, but in the end when it counts, it is the same as him.

QUESTION:
My friends who left are either right or wrong in their conscientious reasons for leaving. No middle ground, correct? Here is my question to you dude:

From their own perspective how would they know if they are wrong in leaving my church?

And for the love of everything holy don’t say “search the scripture”, they have been there done that bought the tshirt. By the way, feel free to give up at this point and start looking for a conservative parish like I have!

Peace to my Reformed brothers,

David Meyer
Benjamin Keil March 31st, 2010 5:19 pm :
Dear All,

Slowly making my way through the article with much enjoyment. Since I don’t have enough time to read through all 785 comments (and counting!), I’ll ask my question and request your patience if it has already been addressed. If it has, please mention the relevant comments and I’ll be happy to read through them. :-)
Since Bryan took the time to write out his argument formally, and since I’ve done grad-level philosophical logic, I thought it at least worthwhile to see how Bryan’s argument is formally valid. At the very least, I figured this might help direct the conversation towards the thesis and (more interestingly,) which premises are actually doing work in the argument.
I’ve spent the last 45 minutes or so working over the formalization of the argument as presented midway through the article (helpfully titled “The Argument” and with points 1-10). I’m confused, though, since I can’t formulate points #1-10 as a logically valid argument. Since I suspect my formulation is wrong, however, I wanted to throw it out there and invite others to help correct my work.
Here’s what I’ve got (in symbolic logical terms, where “>” represents the traditional if/then “horseshoe”.

1: P
2: Q>R
3: S
4: T>U
5: V>W
6: W>Q
7: V>Q
8: V
9: X>R
———–
(Therefore) 10: U

If needed, I can make more explicit what each symbol stands for, but anyone who has done
symbolic logic should be able to follow along generally with what I’m doing. My problem is that there are a bunch of if/then claims, but only Premise #4 has the necessary consequent needed to reach the conclusion (“U”). Its antecedent, (“T”,) however, appears nowhere else in the argument as formulated. Is there a suppressed premise, or is my formulation wrong, or…? Any further thoughts/help would be appreciated! :-)

Benjamin (“Well, Protestantism might not be formally valid either…”) Keil ;-)
Kevin Branson March 31st, 2010 5:39 pm :
David Meyer wrote (and made me chuckle):

Dude, (I figure I can call a guy named ZOLTAN “Dude”, hope that’s cool)

“The Dude abides!” – The Dude, The Big Lebowski (love that movie)

and this:

THIS IS YOU AND ME MAN! This is what Sola Scriptura means and it is absolutely INSANE! This means zero real authority.

I’m a Catholic now so I think it borders on rude for somebody like me to say what you said so bluntly…but I sure do think it alot, and I remember the stunner it was for me as a former Reformed PCAer when I reached that point of realization. Talk about a paradigm shift.

That unsteady feeling you may have begun to notice under your feet is the world as you know it beginning to turn upside down. Enjoy the trip, Brother!

Blessings and peace.

KB
Bryan Cross March 31st, 2010 6:10 pm :
Benjamin,

This came up in the comments. (I can’t search the comments, because they are so long my computer freezes up if I do a search). The conclusion needs to be qualified with “concerning what he considers to be essential.” Also, to be precise there is an implicit premise between 3 and 4 and between 9 and 10, which I bring out below.

Symbolically, then it should read:

1: P (def of solo)
2: Q>R
3: S (def of sola)
[3.5]: T (“Sola scriptura is true”)
4: (T>R)>U
5: V>W
6: W>R
7: V>R
8: V
9: R
[9.5] T>R (from 3.5 and 9, given 5,6, 7, 8)
10: U (from 4 and 9.5).

If you don’t like 9.5, we can re-write the argument to properly include 8 in getting to 9.5. We’re writing to people who don’t accept apostolic succession. So the falsity of apostolic succession is basically a background assumption for the argument.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
TurretinFan March 31st, 2010 6:30 pm :
Mr. Keil:

You have highlighted an interesting problem from a formal standpoint. I’ll revise the argument, thus:

4. If sola scriptura entails that each individual is his own final interpretive authority concerning what he considers to be essential, then in this respect there is no principled difference between solo scriptura and sola scriptura.

9. If sola scriptura is true, then each individual is his own final interpretive authority concerning what he considers to be essential.

10. There is no principled difference between sola scriptura and solo scriptura.

or symbolically (following your convention)

4. T > U
9. T
therefore
10. U

Although 9 can be expressed as X>R, it happens that we can create a proposition

Y: “It is true that X>R”

and that proposition is equivalent to T. T states: “sola scriptura entails that each individual is his own final interpretive authority concerning what he considers to be essential” and “It is true that if sola scriptura is true, then each individual is his own final interpretive authority concerning what he considers to be essential” is obviously an expanded way of saying the same thing.

It should be noted, however, that actually 10 is U’ not U, because U has a feature, “in this respect” that U’ lacks. Thus, U’ is not U, rather it is an invalid generalization of U.

-TurretinFan
Zoltan April 1st, 2010 12:39 am :
Wow! I came home from work and my computer screen has exploded. Please forgive me if I do not have time to respond to every point made because time does not permit so I will therefore have to narrow this to what I think are the essentials. Good to see you back Randy – is Lent over? A blessed Holy Week to all.

First to Tim. I maintain that the analogy is valid in key ways here namely because it illustrates how secondary, fallible authority is still real authority and I think it shows a good distinction between how SOLO vs SOLA positions work. You discount the analogy because you claim that a SOLA Protestant decides for him/herself who the real church is. However, this is like pointing out that the woman had a right to choose her own husband (which she does). You have done the same in choosing Rome. My point is, that once she has decided, she must then submit to that husband. If the relationship is fractured, she looks to OTHERS for assistance – she does not merely leave her husband as the SOLO wife A does. Who does “she” appeal to in a church setting? Well Jesus commanded the model in Matt 18. She appeals to elders, the church of which she is a member and then to presbytery/classis/synod or whatever the case may be if necessary. If the highest authority rules against her, the SOLA (wife B) stays with her husband and submits to the ruling because she has acknowledged that others above her have such authority though she does not have to believe they are infallible. Is she still free to leave – well yes on a practical level but then she is probably showing herself to be more SOLO not SOLA in her understanding (and of course there are many RC’s who take upon themselves to “leave” Rome including sedevacantists and Old Catholics who consider themselves more RC than your current pope).

What happened at the Reformation was much more than one single person (SOLO) and as TurretinFan pointed out, in a sense you are making an invalid generalization. The Reformation was a groundswell movement whereby many clerics, theologians and laypeople joined together calling for reform. Rome responded like the Sanhedrin laying claim to “authority” by pedigree. Who had the blessing of God? I believe history shows that it clearly rested with the reformation in the literal explosion of writing, preaching of the gospel, transformation of society and blessed church music (even John Paul II had Bach played at his funeral). However, you maintain that by “this shall all men know you are my disciples” – if you follow Rome. Is that it?

I have pointed out in previous posts that what we are really dealing with here cannot be reduced to mere logical argumentation (though I am convinced that the reformation can be defended logically as TurretinFan has done well) because we are ultimately discussing how the infinite God has ordained the Church to function. That Church is an extension of His nature which is Triune and that Nature cannot reduce to mere formulae. RC apologists like to point out how Protestants violate John 17. Many do and I think it is to their shame. However, you violate it as well because Jesus prayed that we would be of one mind just as He and the Father are One. Is that oneness a relationship of fallible Jesus submitting to the infallible Father? Your position on John 17 is practical Monarchianism. Instead the Father and the Son are co-equal and co-eternal. The oneness in the Church must therefore model this with Christ as the Head and no vicarious head is necessary because He has sent His Holy Spirit upon all believers to lead us. We are commanded to submit ourselves one to another in a sense as equals. It is actually quite easy to submit to someone you truly believe has infallibility in their office.

This is where the essential difference lies David. What kind of Church did Jesus found on this earth? Can mere sophistry answer that question? Our sinfulness can corrupt anything so there is no “system” that does not have its flaws including Rome. However, the problem with Roman doctrine is primarily epistemological. Natural Law is simply inadequate to know the mind of God. The Truth is to be established by 2 or 3 witnesses. Who does Rome call upon for validation of her authority? Herself. There is no prima facie Scripture establishing the papal office. History also shows that the notion of papal infallibility was a doctrine which developed over many centuries (ie it was not self evident in the early church/councils nor was it practiced among the apostles that Peter had pre-eminence) and who made the final pronouncement as to papal infallibility’s veracity – the Pope himself in 1870. So you have the assurance of papal infallibility, coming from the one who says he is infallible with regard to doctrine in his office so therefore it is an infallible pronouncement. I would ask Ray Stamper to explain to me how this is not circular argumentation and begging the question. Not only is this false argumentation, the establishment of such a perpetual office is without ANY Scriptural precedent.

David (feel free to call me dude but do not call Tim that), our stories are not dissimilar. I came from a broadly evangelical background. I seriously considered becoming RC. A part of me desperately wanted it to be true because I was disillusioned with evangelicalism like you. I went with an open mind but became disillusioned with Rome’s claims. Then I discovered the reformed church. Epistemology was the dividing issue. How do we KNOW the will of God? Well I think at some level, we all believe that we receive it by faith. When I read the Gospels and the stories of the Apostles, something very striking becomes apparent – they do not argue mere propositional logic but rather what I call incarnational truth (since Christ IS the truth). Jesus repeatedly said “it is written” and He quoted Scriptures liberally. Those who were of His sheep heard and comprehended His voice without another mediator telling them what everything meant because there is one Mediator between God and man that is Christ – 1 Tim 2:5. Remember also the Bereans who were deemed “noble minded” in Acts 17 because they looked at the Scriptures to see if what Paul was teaching was true. Luke wrote his gospel to Theophilus so that in reading it he would have “certainty” about Christ. Can we no longer look to Scriptures without acting infantile as though we cannot understand them without the charism of papal infallibility to guide us? What about the promise that in the New Covenant we would all know God and no longer need such teachers?

Now, we are commanded to not just receive doctrine but imitate Christ and the Apostles (insofar as they imitate Christ). Therefore, we must be able to truly comprehend the Scripture stories as God intended them. If we had the Scriptures alone, we would have chaos because a written word only is insufficient (it is ONE witness). The other witness is the Holy Spirit who leads us into all truth and He writes the Word on our hearts. He was promised to ALL believers by the LORD and if RCs wrote the Bible I daresay at Pentecost, perhaps the Holy Spirit would have fallen on the apostles only to emphasize their special infallible charism to all. The final witness is the Church herself specifically through the fruit that she bears before the world as the salt and light of the world. Corporately, she is lead by the Spirit in a way that carries more weight than the individual. Can she err in doctrine? The Bible clearly teaches that she can for a time as we are repeatedly warned of false teachers and ravenous wolves leading many people astray. Galatians were deemed “foolish” by Paul for forsaking the teaching they received but the epistle is still written to a church. Moreover, we have the epistles of Christ to the seven Churches of Asia in Revelation – some of which had clear doctrinal problems but Jesus still called them Churches (unlike the current pope who said that as a Protestant I am not part of a church – no offense intended).

As far as I can tell, these passages are Scriptura emeritus to the RC. No current application because of course the RC church cannot err by definition. However, when the RC church makes pronouncements about the immaculate conception of Mary or the veneration of dead saints (which have no Scriptural basis whatsoever), we see clearly that this is an authority unto itself – something God never did in the past and truth cannot be established thus. There is nothing to judge her by and one is forced to merely adopt a posture of submission. That becomes the highest order command (not love which is mutual) and it is Islamic not Triune.

To wrap up for now, David, let me say this as well. You have told me that you love the Reformed Church. I am glad to hear it. In true love (ie: a covenantal bond of relationship) I urge you not to leave her on the basis of a propositional argument. Calvin taught that one cannot have God as Father without the Church as Mother. If someone were to point to my mother’s warts, that would not affect my love for her. Furthermore, it would take more than mere sophistry to prove to me that she is not my mother – I would need indisputable proof not a formula. Finally, I would also just add my lament to what is happening when Christians divide. This is what Mathison was arguing well against in his book as you know – it is the Solo impulse not the Sola impulse operating here. Realize this, that the Reformed Church was not always thus. There was greater unity before. I believe if we humbly submit ourselves one to another and listen, we will get back to the virtues of Sola Scriptura as when great divines saw it no contradiction (despite the arguments of Bryan Cross, who is asserting that it was effectively predicated on a fallacy) to write the Westminster Confession of Faith – a great document, meant to bear real but subordinate authority as a wonderful exposition of Scripture.

Blessings to all in Christ,

Zoltan

Sola Deo Gloria
Spencer April 1st, 2010 9:03 am :
Zoltan,

I don’t want to interrupt your dialogue with David and Tim (a very interesting one by the way), but while reading your latest post a few things struck me that I wanted to ask you about:

If the relationship is fractured, she looks to OTHERS for assistance – she does not merely leave her husband as the SOLO wife A does. Who does “she” appeal to in a church setting? Well Jesus commanded the model in Matt 18. She appeals to elders, the church of which she is a member and then to presbytery/classis/synod or whatever the case may be if necessary. If the highest authority rules against her, the SOLA (wife B) stays with her husband and submits to the ruling because she has acknowledged that others above her have such authority though she does not have to believe they are infallible.

Knowing that you’re using this as an analogy for a believer who operates by sola scriptura, let me ask you this: I assume from your posts that you are Presbyterian (forgive me if I’m wrong). If you, upon doing an in-depth study in Scripture, decided that Christians are under no obligation to keep the first day of the week as holy, or that infant baptism is not mandated by Scripture (both are positions explicitly affirmed by the WCF, as you know), and you brought this up to your elders and they told you that you had come to the wrong conclusion and that the WCF’s view was correct, would you submit to their judgment in spite of what the Scriptures seemed to say and affirm Sunday-keeping/infant baptism, or would you go with what the Scriptures seemed to say? And if you choose the latter, how is that not solo scriptura–elevating your private judgment over that of the authorities in your denomination?

RC apologists like to point out how Protestants violate John 17. Many do and I think it is to their shame. However, you violate it as well because Jesus prayed that we would be of one mind just as He and the Father are One. Is that oneness a relationship of fallible Jesus submitting to the infallible Father? Your position on John 17 is practical Monarchianism. Instead the Father and the Son are co-equal and co-eternal. The oneness in the Church must therefore model this with Christ as the Head and no vicarious head is necessary because He has sent His Holy Spirit upon all believers to lead us. We are commanded to submit ourselves one to another in a sense as equals. It is actually quite easy to submit to someone you truly believe has infallibility in their office.

Your argument here seems to be that since there is equality in the Trinity, there must be absolute equality in the Church, precluding a “vicarious head.” But using this line of reasoning, if there is complete equality between the Father and the Son (though the Son submits to the Father, at least during His incarnation), and the Church’s unity is supposed to be like that, doesn’t that also preclude the existence of any authority at all? Furthermore, it is (so far as I know) conceded by all, Protestants and Catholics, that the apostles were infallible in their preaching. Laying aside for the moment the issue of whether or not infallibility still exists in the Church today, if we agree that it did exist in the Church at one time, with the apostles, at a time when the unity Christ spoke of was most evident, how does that fit into your argument? The Church in apostolic times was more unified than at any other time, but there were infallible authorities to whom all believers had to submit. No one saw this as being opposed to equality in the Church.

If we had the Scriptures alone, we would have chaos because a written word only is insufficient (it is ONE witness). The other witness is the Holy Spirit who leads us into all truth and He writes the Word on our hearts.

I don’t want to sound like I’m belittling what you’re saying here, because I do appreciate the Reformed position on epistemology, but all Protestants say that they have the Bible and the Holy Spirit to guide them to truth. Why, then, is there the existing doctrinal division between Protestants?

Pax Christi,

Spencer
David Meyer April 1st, 2010 9:26 am :
Zoltan:

Thanks for your response. First a comment. Yes, I am making a change based partly on a propositional argument. (I am my own final authority for such and such reasons) Of course no decisions are that simple in life though. But if correct, this argument says I am not part of the true Church Christ Himself wants me to be in. That is an argument worth considering when I look around at the post apocalyptic wasteland of Protestant evangelicalism. (Intuition starts to play a role.) Worse yet, this argument says (and I strongly suspect) that I am in a state where I have no way outside my own private judgement to tell where the church is, because disunity with said church looks exactly the same as unity. The question you did not answer last post is related to this.
Here are the words of Calvin that show me where to find the TRUE church ( italics and text in parenthesis mine):

However it may be, where the preaching of the gospel is reverently heard and the sacraments are not neglected, (gee we all agree on sacraments RIGHT?!?)there for the time being(what a comfort) no deceitful or ambiguous(seriously Calvin? am·bi·gu·i·ty/ˌæmbɪˈgyuɪti/ [am-bi-gyoo-i-tee] –noun,plural-ties.
1.doubtfulness or uncertainty of meaning or intention: to speak with ambiguity; an ambiguity of manner.) form of the church is seen; and no one is permitted(so long as they agree with it’s gospel, sacraments etc.) to spurn its authority, flout its warnings, resist its counsels, or make light of its chastisements—much less to desert it and break its unity. For the Lord esteems the communion of his church so highly that he counts as a traitor and apostate from Christianity anyone who arrogantly(totally subjective) leaves any Christian society(based on my estimation of the above criteria), provided it cherishes the true(again, based on my estimation) ministry of Word and sacraments.

This boils down to: (my words) “To find the real church, look around for the real church, and then you will find the real church.”

Calvin also says somewhere that if a disagreement happens that “a synod of true Bishops should be convened” to resolve it. Yeah, lets get right on that. I’ll tell my session to call the other 45 Protestant denominations in the area and WE WILL GET RIGHT ON THAT.

So to ask my question again from my last post:

QUESTION:
My friends who left are either right or wrong in their conscientious reasons for leaving. No middle ground, correct? Here is my question to you dude:

From their own perspective how would they know if they are wrong in leaving my church?

Peace,

David Meyer
Tim A. Troutman April 1st, 2010 10:39 am :
Zoltan,

I maintain that the analogy is valid in key ways here namely because it illustrates how secondary, fallible authority is still real authority.

You’ve just re-stated the purpose of your analogy. I understood what the purpose of it was and what you thought it proved. I argued that it doesn’t prove that above and you did not address the reasons I gave. Dr. Liccione also gave strong arguments from another perspective and you didn’t address those either. These are the sort of argument tactics that have led David to the conclusion that you (I mean Protestants on this thread) don’t actually have a rebuttal.

However, this is like pointing out that the woman had a right to choose her own husband (which she does). You have done the same in choosing Rome.

There are two problems here: 1. choosing a Church is emphatically not like choosing a husband. Any husband becomes a woman’s rightful husband by the act of her choice. The same is not true for the Church. We cannot simply choose whichever Church we like and then it becomes the true Church for us (and subsequently we can truly submit to it). That’s not how it works. We must choose the correct Church and there is only one. 2. It is the same thing that I have done (in so far as it was a choice) but not the same in other important aspects. As explained in 1, it is not the same as choosing a husband. I chose the Catholic Church based on objective criteria of apostolic succession but you chose the Church based on your interpretation of Scripture. These are not the same things.

See the earlier comments (especially 18, 26, 28, 39, 40, and 93) where I’ve already dealt with this issue and no one has responded to those arguments. Also see my refutation of the idea that there is a practical difference, albeit not a principled one, between sola and solo in the article I linked to in 780.

David (feel free to call me dude but do not call Tim that)

What’s that supposed to mean? :-)
David Meyer April 1st, 2010 11:26 am :
Tim,

Nice comment dude.
Michael Liccione April 1st, 2010 11:31 am :
Zoltan:

As a Catholic, I agree with much of what you say about how Christians are to relate to Our Lord Jesus Christ as members of something called “the Church.” That is why it’s so telling that your admirable meditation neither answers, nor logically entails an answer to, the main question at issue in this lengthy debate. I raised that question in my previous comment (#782). To wit:

[W]hether we’re talking solo or sola scriptura, the question remains: how, absent an ecclesial authority that is divinely protected from doctrinal error under certain conditions, are Christians to distinguish reliably enough between human opinion and divine revelation to give the assent of faith to the latter?

It is precisely their respective answers to that question which fundamentally divide Catholics and Protestants. It is that very question to which the development of the Catholic doctrine of ecclesial infallibility is the answer. You do of course present arguments that something called “the Church” can err in matters of doctrine. But those arguments no more address the actual teaching of the Catholic Church about her own authority than they answer my question.

First, the Catholic Church does not teach that there cannot be “false teachers” and “ravenous wolves” in the Church, even among the bishops. There have always been such people, which is why the Vatican’s most powerful dicastery is the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith–heir of the Holy Office, which was itself the heir of the Roman Inquisition, which first was formed to deal with the Albigensian heresy of the 12th and 13th centuries. If there were no false teachers, there would be no need to enforce orthodoxy among Church leaders, which is one of the tasks performed by general councils as well as by the Vatican itself. As the book of Revelation indicates, it is even possible for entire local churches to fall into heresy.

Second, the Catholic Church has always affirmed that the Holy Spirit works in the hearts and minds of all the faithful, who, through prayer, their study of Scripture, and the way they live, themselves serve as witnesses to Truth himself. The question is not whether the Holy Spirit works powerfully among the faithful in general, but whether he does so in a particular way through the college of bishops, so as to preserve them from error when they collectively teach a doctrine as de fide, and thus as binding on all the faithful. Merely pointing out that Scripture and the Holy Spirit themselves are witnesses to the Truth for and among all the faithful does not address that question, any more than it addresses the question whether and why such an authority would be necessary in the Church.

Third, the present pope would not say, as you claim, that you “are not part of a church.” With the Second Vatican Council, he would say that, as a baptized believer, you in a kind of “communion” with the Church, i.e. the Catholic Church. Thus you are part of the Church, whether you recognize the Church as “the” Church or not. But he would also say that the particular “ecclesial community” of which you are formally a member is not a “church” in the strict sense of the term, because its leadership cannot claim apostolic succession and neither recognizes nor preserves all the sacraments. Hence, you are in only “imperfect” communion with the Church. Now as the example of the Orthodox (both “Eastern” and “Oriental”) shows, there are churches strictly speaking which are not also in full communion with the Holy See. Hence they too are in imperfect communion with the Church. But your “church” does not even rise to that level of imperfection. It has its merits, but those merits are parasitic on those of the Church whose authority it rejects.

Fourth, Catholics do not argue that their basis for accepting the papal claims is the papal claims themselves. To suggest that we rely on such a “circular” and “question-begging” argument (your words) is so silly as to border on insult.

Broadly speaking, what’s at issue in this lengthy debate is the question what independent reasons one might have for accepting the claims of the Magisterium for itself. Many converts to Catholicism have found such reasons in Scripture and/or Church history. And I agree with them to this extent: once one accepts the claims of the Magisterium, Scripture and Church history can be read to support them in a rationally plausible way. But of course, there are other rationally plausible ways to read Scripture and Church history too; if there weren’t, then nearly every Christian would be formally Catholic or choose to become so. The most powerful argument for a conservative Protestant like yourself for accepting the claims of the Magisterium for itself is the one I’ve already developed elsewhere on this site, and implied by raising what I called above “the main question at issue in this lengthy debate.” That is a strictly epistemological argument.

You do recognize, of course, that the fundamental issue is “epistemology.” But you don’t approach that issue in a way that advances the debate; instead, you give what you obviously find to be a rationally plausible way to read Scripture and Church history. But even on your own account, that is only an opinion. The real epistemological question is how Christians are to distinguish reliably between opinion and divine revelation. My argument is that the only way to do that is to accept the idea that Christ founded an authority within the Church which the Holy Spirit would preserve from doctrinal error under certain conditions. Nothing you have said serves as a rebuttal to that argument.
wilkins April 1st, 2010 12:36 pm :
hey Zoltan,

i hope you don’t mind me butting in, but you don’t need to show that the ‘solo’ position has certain undesirable qualities or characteristics, or is an extreme position, or anything like that. I mean, i could be wrong about this, but i suspect we all agree: ‘solo’ is undesirable.

also, because most (all?) here come from conservative pockets in the ‘reformed’ world, we totally get [Tim’s link in 780 notwithstanding] the difference you’re trying to highlight between ‘solo’ and ‘sola’; i suspect most (all?) of us (in our reformed protestant past) highlighted those perceived differences with as much passion (and sincerity) as you.

so… it isn’t especially helpful to respond to the ‘no-principled-difference’ argument with deeply held convictions about important distinctions. What you need to do is address, head-on, the apparent want of principled difference between ‘solo’ and ‘sola’. Short of that, Tim and David [and all the others] are plainly right, as far as I can tell:

These are the sort of argument tactics that have led David to the conclusion that…[(]Protestants on this thread) don’t actually have a rebuttal.

i pray God bless you on this Holy Thursday
Benjamin Keil April 1st, 2010 12:39 pm :
Thanks to Bryan (et al) for the clarification on the argument’s formal validity – I’m still puzzling over how the arg works & possible avenues for attacks on its validity/soundness, but one owes a good understanding to a problem before trying to reply to it. For help in getting that good understanding, thanks! :)

If I may, I have another confusion which I would appreciate clarification on. It seems as if roman catholicism claims that individual roman catholic bishops both a) are fallible and b) are guided in their faith by the Holy Spirit. So far so good (at least if I understand things correctly.) :) My confusion is regarding how these claims relate to church councils.

It seems metaphysically odd that, for church councils, if you get a bunch of fallible bishops (who have the Holy Spirit) together, their collective result is infallible. How does a group of fallible men already guided by the Holy Spirit produce an infallible document? (Put otherwise, if the Holy Spirit allows individual bishops to err, how is it that a group of them logically/modally cannot err?)

I say it’s metaphysically odd just because I’ve never heard such explained before, and if there are any Catholics who can do so, I’m sure they’re here on this blog :) (And obviously, even if it were metaphysically strange, that doesn’t mean it’s wrong…just that I’m confused and would like further explanation or a pointer to where it has already been explained.) Thanks so much!

~Benjamin (Hey, marriage is metaphysically odd too…) Keil :)

PS: Moderator, this thread is long enough to crash my computer. Any chance we could get it locked and move to new thread for more comments? :-p
Michael Liccione April 1st, 2010 1:07 pm :
Benjamin:

The Catholic Church teaches that the Church as a whole infallibly professes that which is de fide. As a practical matter, then, the question becomes who speaks for and to the whole Church on matters de fide. That cannot be bishops taken individually; for their authority as individual bishops extends only to their own dioceses, and is always subject to correction by an authority that speaks for and to the Church as a whole.

Ordinarily, those who speak for and to the Church as a whole are the bishops taken collectively, i.e. the “college” of bishops in communion with the Bishop of Rome. Vatican II says that, when the college teaches a doctrine consensually as one “to be held definitively” by all the faithful, they are preserved from error by the Holy Spirit. That is called “the infallibility of the ordinary and universal magisterium.” Merely as individuals, of course, the bishops “do not enjoy the prerogative of infallibility”; but so long as they teach in communion with the college on matters de fide, they are preserved from error by divine grace.

Sometimes, however—usually as a result of a potentially church-dividing theological controversy–the teaching of the ordinary and universal magisterium needs to be clarified in order to be understood in the right way by all the faithful. The usual way of doing that is through the dogmatic decrees of a “general” or “ecumenical” council representing the entire college of bishops. Those decrees are exercises of the “extraordinary” magisterium of the bishops, and the formal canons appended to such decrees bind all the faithful. The dogmatic canons of the extraordinary magisterium too are infallibly propounded when ratified by the Bishop of Rome, the pope.

Indeed, the primary exercise of papal infallibility is the ratification of conciliar dogmatic canons. As successor of Peter, the pope is granted such authority by God in virtue of his authority as chief bishop of the Church. Rarely, then, will a pope exercise such authority unilaterally, by issuing dogmatic canons simply on his own initiative; when he does, that is another instance of the “extraordinary” magisterium. But if popes frequently taught in that way, they would be abusing their office, whose chief function is maintaining the unity of the Church in truth and in practice. Yet when a pope does exercise his authority unilaterally and infallibly, he is ipso facto speaking for and to the college of bishops as a whole, and therefore for the Church as a whole, even if many individuals, clerical or lay, would otherwise be disinclined to believe what is thereby taught.

There is nothing “metaphysically odd” about that picture. The appearance of oddity only arises from a fallacy of composition: from assuming, that is, that whatever holds of each of the parts of a whole also holds of the whole. The fallacy of composition is easily shown to be a fallacy in many non-theological contexts. Don’t let it obscure your vision here.

Best,
Mike
Ray Stamper April 1st, 2010 4:06 pm :
Zoltan,

Thank you for your passionate response. In hopes of drawing closer together here are some thoughts relating to positions taken within each of your paragrapghs;

The Reformation was a groundswell movement whereby many clerics, theologians and laypeople joined together calling for reform

The question was not whether “reform” was needed, it certainly was, and had been sought for years (though there were also many holy clergy and laity alive at the time as well – a fact which helps explain the rapid and profound turn-around that took place via the counter-reformation within decades of the 95 Theses). The question is what kind of “reform” was needed – moral reform (always needed – but more acute at some times than others) or a complete doctrinal makeover? In short, a REFORM-ation or a DEFORM-ation. The Israelites, including their clergy, were very often practicing grave sin – but God neither encourages, nor condones the rejection of Israel as God’s people, with some idea of setting up a new “chosen people”. For one thing, He knew that choosing a new nation would solve nothing since sinfulness is a general condition of humanity. My point is that the crux here is the argument that the Church’s “teaching” had become deformed – that she had corrupted the “deposit of faith” – not that her members or clergy, at a given moment in history, were sinful or even very sinful. I hope you will agree that it is the doctrinal issue that is at stake here.

I believe history shows that it clearly rested [God’s blessing] with the reformation in the literal explosion of writing, preaching of the gospel, transformation of society and blessed church music (even John Paul II had Bach played at his funeral)

Of course this is not an argument but an assertion. Its like me saying “I believe history shows that God’s blessing clearly rested with the counter-reformation, since 493 years of lived Protestant history, grounded in the epistemic principal of Sola Scriptura, has led to doctrinal and denominational chaos embodied by the brute fact of 20,000 to 30,000 (depending on how you count) denominations”. The providential hand of God is subtle. It is not impossible for God to simultaneously judge the gross immorality of His Church AND those involved (even unknowingly at this point) in the error of schism via one catastrophic event – the Reformation – for which both the Catholic Church and those separated fom her are still suffering, albeit in different ways.

the Father and the Son are co-equal and co-eternal. The oneness in the Church must therefore model this with Christ as the Head and no vicarious head is necessary because He has sent His Holy Spirit upon all believers to lead us. We are commanded to submit ourselves one to another in a sense as equals.

Brother, this is the problem I was getting at in my first post – and which you have avoided addressing so far. You are putting yourself in the position of determining what the Church is and “how” she operates. This is second nature to you – as it used to be for me – but who gave you the authority to pronounce on such matters. As a Catholic, I see that the Church preceeds me – or my conception of her. I understand her nature and operation as something handed down to me – not something I sit back in my theological arm chair and determine.

What kind of Church did Jesus found on this earth

This is, indeed, the question. Did Jesus come to write a book? Did Jesus write anything? Did He tell his apostles “go forth and write some letters to all nations”? How many apostles actually wrote anything – 3, maybe 5 depending on authorship debates? Where is the verse that says “you are Peter and upon this rock, I will build my book”? or “The book is the pillar and foundation of the truth”? Was Jesus an invisible Church proponent, or does the Church as “the body of Christ” entail that she must have both a corporeal (human) and incorporeal (divine) aspect just like the God-man Whose extension she is? Comments like this won’t change your mind, but I think they should at least give some pause with regard to standard Protestant assumptions.

Our sinfulness can corrupt anything so there is no “system” that does not have its flaws including Rome

Yes our sinfulness can corrupt anything so long as God does not prevent it from so doing. Rome has its flaws: yes, but are these moral flaws common to all humanity (including the 12 apostles) or are they doctrinal flaws also? Have the successors to the apostles become false teachers? As a Protestant, you already acknowledge the ability of the Holy Spirit to supervene and stay the effects of sin to achieve the necessary good of an inerrant, infallible, revelation – namely sacred scripture. The apostles were sinful. They made moral mistakes (even grave ones); and yet they were used by the Holy Spirit as instruments for the writing of the inerrant, inspired scriptures. Yet, you deny to this same Spirit actively supervenes over the doctrinal pronouncements of the successors to the apostles during the battles with heresies that are found everywhere along the road of Christian history. He (HS) does this to preserve the original deposit of revelation from corruption as it travels down through the centuries. Belief in this ongoing “protection from error” was a “given” among Christians until the Reformation. I suppose Protestants argue that Catholics believe too much – but it often seems to me that Protestants believe too little.

The Truth is to be established by 2 or 3 witnesses

I hope you do not intend here to use a passage geared toward the discipline of individual Christians as a foundational paradigm for a Christian understanding of ecclesiology.

Who does Rome call upon for validation of her authority?

The authority of the apostles and the authority of St. Peter were established by Christ Himself. That this authority was intended to be handed on is established by scripture and ubiquitously affirmed by Christians from the earliest times (who often defended this “handing on” directly from scripture)

There is no prima facie Scripture establishing the papal office

You make several comments such as “Scripture establishing” or “Scripture clearly shows” in your post – all of which show your adoption of Sola (or Solo) Scriptura. But while the main article of this thread has been about whether sola reduces to solo; there is a further question as to how anyone can defend the use of EITHER as a means of establishing doctrinal orthodoxy. That is another debate, but I just want to acknowledge that it remains a MAJOR difference between us when having this discussion.. That being said, I have no problem meeting you on the “sola” playing field in the comments that follow.

As to the Papal office having no “prima fascia” scriptural support; this is a mere exegetical assertion. There is more scripture affirming the papal office (and some of it prima fascia) than there is for the doctrine of the Trinity – but then this highlights the problem of the interpretive lens that one brings to the text – the principal problem of solo (and yes sola) scriptura – a problem which you seem to duck.
If you are interested in checking out the Catholic exegesis on this subject:

Here is a scholary work of 431 pages dealing with nothing other than Petrine scriptural passages: “Jesus, Peter, & the Keys: A Scriptural Handbook on the Papacy”

History also shows that the notion of papal infallibility was a doctrine which developed over many centuries (ie it was not self evident in the early church/councils nor was it practiced among the apostles that Peter had pre-eminence)

Again an assertion that is just empirically incorrect. Cardinal John Henry Newman once said “that to be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant”. He had an encyclopedic understanding of patristics – and it was precisely that understanding that led to his conversion to the Catholic Church. It was endless hours of historical labors in patristics that led me (quite unwillingly) to acknowledge the claims of the Catholic Church. It is possibly the most common reason that MOST converts become Catholic. The evidence for papal authority is substantial – even in the first 4 centuries – and it only becomes more overwhelming in later centuries. It is one of the easiest doctrines to verify. Moreover, of the many patristic texts which affirm papal authority, many do so by appeal to passages in sacred scripture. But how strange this is if “There is no prima fascia Scripture establishing the papal office”. You must ask yourself who is in a better position to propound the correct meaning and intent of scriptural passages relating to Peter and the apostles: you in 2010, or Christians of the first 4 centuries? Again, in case you want to explore how it is that a Catholic like myself can stand baffled by your assertion, here are reference sources for the EARLY papacy alone if you are interested:

1.) Studies on the Early Papacy – John Chapman
2.) The Early Papacy to the Synod of Chalcedon in 451 – Adrian Fortescue
3.) The Faith of The Early Fathers (3 Vol)- William Jurgens

So you have the assurance of papal infallibility, coming from the one who says he is infallible with regard to doctrine in his office so therefore it is an infallible pronouncement. I would ask Ray Stamper to explain to me how this is not circular argumentation and begging the question

That IS a circular argument; however, I am not sure why you are asking me to confirm this for you since it is an argument I never have, or would make. The authority of the Church is embraced by looking at the scriptural, logical, patristic, historical, doctrinal, and practical claims of the Church. This is done the same way that one first embraces the existence of God, or the claims of Christ. The Church is a living organic reality animated by the Holy Spirit as the body of Christ.That is why the Church is one of the articles of faith in the Nicene creed. “We Believe in God the Father . . . in Jesus Christ . . . . in the Holy Spirit . . . .in one holy, catholic and apostolic Church . . .”. The reality of the Church is something to “believe in”! It is something to be believed before one’s Christian faith “get’s going”; just like embracing the existence of God or the Divinity of Christ are necessary before one’s Christian faith “gets going”. This is a watershed issue because one’s understanding of WHAT the Church IS colors the entirety of one’s Christianity. If the Church is established by Christ with the gift of His own authority; then we are in a place of humility and receptivity, receiving the entire deposit of faith from her. If Catholics are right about her, then to reject her knowingly, is to reject Christ who founded her and preserves her from teaching error.

One must decide this issue up front, for it ultimately boils down to whether the Church has authority over you as your teacher; or whether you have authority over her to determine WHAT she is and IF her teachings are true. To run head long into Christianity without stopping to address this fundamental option is to automatically choose the latter. When it comes to determining what constitutes “orthodox” doctrine, someone WILL BE the pope; if not the pope established with Christ’s own authority, then yourself, or your pastor, or your teachers, or . . . . . .

Can we no longer look to Scriptures without acting infantile as though we cannot understand them without the charism of papal infallibility to guide us?

That parts of scripture are clear and beyond dispute (like “Thou Shall Not Kill) is agreed on all sides. That other parts are unclear, debatable, etc. derives from the fact that scripture is not structured as a “systematic theology” – it is a collection of writings of different genres, with different authors at different times. The fact of historical heresies, the fact of ecumenical councils, the fact of the Reformation, the fact of over 20,000 different denominations all claiming to “understand” the scriptures, renders the need for the Petrine office established by Christ as anything but infantile – it is the deepest need of Christianity – look around!

What about the promise that in the New Covenant we would all know God and no longer need such teachers

You realize of course, that if you insist on this strange piece of exegesis, you will do away with any need for your own pastor or teachers and certainly for you theoretical respect for “the Church” with “real authority”.

The other witness is the Holy Spirit who leads us into all truth and He writes the Word on our hearts.

A sentiment shared by over 20,000 other Protestant denominations which all claim the HS guidance in coming to interpretations of the deposit of faith different from your own.

He was promised to ALL believers by the LORD and if RCs wrote the Bible I daresay at Pentecost, perhaps the Holy Spirit would have fallen on the apostles only to emphasize their special infallible charism to all

He also gave the “keys” to Peter, and special authority to “bind and loose” to all the apostles. I have yet to meet a Protestant who believes that he personally has received the injunction that “whosoever’s sins you forgive they are forgiven and whosoever’s sins you RETAIN, they are retained”. Do you insist, given the context, that Jesus words “He (HS) will guide you into all truth” are for each and every believer, or for the 12? Again the exegetical wars problem. Jesus does seem to be giving the apostles some special role among His Church on earth -no?

The only way around this is to say “well maybe so, but He never meant those prerogatives to be passed on by sacramental Holy Orders”. But then, Matthias replaces Judas because “His bishopric, let another man take” and the “laying on of hands” to establish new leaders seem to be going on in the latter epistles of the NT – but again more exegetical wars. Lastly, it is overwhelmingly held by the earliest Christian records that such prerogatives WERE intended to be passed on. Why must the fact that all believers receive the Holy Spirit compete with the fact that Jesus, through the same Holy Spirit, gives special charisms to those who lead His flock? Why the either/or here?

Can she err in doctrine? The Bible clearly teaches that she can for a time as we are repeatedly warned of false teachers and ravenous wolves leading many people astray

Again your are defining what the “Church” is. For, only if you include “false teachers” as part of “the Church” do these sentences imply that “the Church” sometimes teaches error. Can you not see that it is precisely because there IS a Church where “true” teachers can be distinguished from “false” teachers that makes sense of the warning against “false” teachers at all?. To say there are “true” and “false” teachers that constitute “the Church” will absolutely destroy and distinction between orthodoxy and heterodoxy. It is like saying that God is both good and evil – the net result is that the terms “good” and “evil” simply lose any distinctive meaning. The constant warnings against false teachers (heretics) found throughout the later part of the NT is (and has always been) a powerful argument in favor of the Catholic view of ecclesiology – I am surprised you would go this route.

immaculate conception of Mary or the veneration of dead saints (which have no Scriptural basis whatsoever), we see clearly that this is an authority unto itself – something God never did in the past and truth cannot be established thus

First, you are assuming Sola Scriptura . . . but never mind. Again, empirically and exegetically incorrect from a scriptural POV. This highlights the exegetical problem – again – where you are simply asserting your own scriptural interpretation; which, in fact, happens to run contrary to the scriptural exegesis of much of the patristic record. If you would like to get a handle on the scriptural basis of these doctrines through non-Protestant lenses:

Mary:
1) Hail Holy Queen: The Mother of God in the Word of God – 208 pages
2) Mary: The Church at the Source – Ratzinger (Pope Benedict), Balthasar – 177 pages
3) Mary – Mother of the Redeemer – 260 pages
4) Faith of the Early Father (again) – Jurgens

Veneration of Saints:
There are books, but the best is the book of HEBREWS
-not to mention the inscriptions in the catacombs dated to the first century where living Christians are asking for the intercession of martyred Christians

There is nothing to judge her by and one is forced to merely adopt a posture of submission. That becomes the highest order command (not love which is mutual) and it is Islamic not Triune

Yes, a posture of submission is required because the Church’s authority derives from Christ Himself. You do not say “the Scriptures force us to merely adopt a posture of submission . . . . it is Islamic not Triune”. Why, because you recognize the authority of the Holy Spirit HIMSELF inspiring the text of scripture (as do Catholics) DESPITE THE FACT THAT HE USED SINFUL MEN AS THE INSTRUMENTS OF THE WRITING THEREOF. Likewise, Catholics recognize the authority of the Church’s Magisterium because we recognize the authority of the Holy Spirit HIMSELF protecting their formal doctrinal and moral pronouncements from error DESPITE THE FACT THAT HE USES SINFUL MEN AS THE INSTRUMENTS OF SUCH PRONOUNCEMENTS.

As I said, the nature of the Church is a THE watershed issue – you and I really see “the Church” in vastly different ways. You see the Catholic Church as strictly a human institution rife with sinners as she trudges across 20 messy centuries of Christian history. This makes it hard to envision how such a messy thing as the “historical church” could, at the same time, be the living, organic society founded and authorized by Christ that we Catholic’s think she is. Secondly, you have adopted sola (or solo – take your pick) scriptura as the ONLY source of infallible revelation, when no such dichotomy as scripture or Magisterium was ever put forward by the fathers. Despite their DEEP respect for the inerrancy and authority of scripture, they speak just as much about the teaching authority of the bishops and especially the bishop of Rome. Why have you adopted this stance? The combination of viewing the Catholic Church as merely a human institution, along with your embrace of sola scriptura, makes it almost impossible to see, within the pages of scripture, the very doctrines that support the Church as the Catholic Church, or her distinctive teachings – even though these distinctive teachings were held from the earliest times and defended via scriptural exegesis by the fathers.

From my reading in patristics, the prevailing view seems to be that the charism of inspirationmade possible by the Holy Spirit through the original apostles (sinful men) in the special cases where they wrote sacred scripture, is the natural corollary to the charism of infallibility made possible by the same Holy Spirit through the living successors of the apostles (sinful men) in the special cases where they formally pronounce on matters of faith and morals. Both “inspiration” and “infallibility” are complementary charisms of the Holy Spirit that share a unified goal; namely to enable both the original giving of the deposit of faith via “inspiration” and the transmission and explication of the deposit of faith via the charism of “infallibility” so that men in every era have access to that deposit without fear of defect or misinterpretation.

Realize this, that the Reformed Church was not always thus. There was greater unity before. I believe if we humbly submit ourselves one to another and listen, we will get back to the virtues of Sola Scriptura as when great divines saw it no contradiction (despite the arguments of Bryan Cross, who is asserting that it was effectively predicated on a fallacy) to write the Westminster Confession of Faith – a great document, meant to bear real but subordinate authority as a wonderful exposition of Scripture

Yes, there was greater unity “before” because when you tear down one section of the guard rail of authority which alone allowed a principled definition of orthodox on the doctrinal road to eternity; it takes time for those who have benefited from the safety thereof to feel comfortable doing some “off-roading” – after all that road had been a well traveled route for over 1500 year. But once off the road, and with seemingly endless doctrinal vistas in every direction it is only a matter of time (say 493 years) before the scattering is far and wide.

I hope that the patristic and scriptural arguments for/against the Catholic Church and her teaching can help make headway in this debate at some point – maybe a diffeent thread though :>).

Peace and Good brother!

-Ray
Zoltan April 2nd, 2010 1:20 am :
Gentleman, I have only now had a chance to look at some of the postings. They deserve more attention than I am able to give at this time given church, family and professional obligations. I do not intend to blog over the Easter weekend but I may have a chance to come back to this on Easter Monday.

A blessed Easter Weekend to all.

Zoltan
Ray Stamper April 2nd, 2010 9:24 am :
A blessed Easter to you as well!
Zoltan April 5th, 2010 4:47 pm :
I have read through most of the postings on this blog since I last wrote. I would have to write and read more than I have time to, in order to do justice to all that was written. So please bear with me. I cannot respond to everything.

Tim, the reason I restated the purpose behind my analogy is because I think we are talking past each other to some extent because of essential differences in our epistemology. This is a case where you “prove” too much and too little. My analogy was picking up on a point TurretinFan was making which is that if there is no principled difference between SOLA and SOLO then there is effectively no authority in ANY secondary/fallible authority. You reject the validity of my analogy because you focus on the identity of “church” asserting that how one defines that is essential to the debate. I disagree. Not at this point necessarily. I think I know where you are coming from. If the ONLY way to dissent from the authority of a church one attends is to necessarily declare that they are not a church (in one’s personal opinion), then you would be correct but this is is false generalization. I suspect that those who broke away from the PCA church David Meyer attended are not saying that the entire PCA or even that church is not a true church, they just want to practice Paedo-communion? Is that correct? If so, then they are in a quandary since they are rejecting the ruling of their elders and you are mocking at a strawman. I would maintain that splitting a church over this issue is wrong. Now if this article were specifically addressing how one identifies the church (not the principled difference between SOLO/SOLA) then I would gladly concede the point that my analogy fails. However, I maintain it is not an essential part of this debate on the distinction between Sola and Solo Scriptura although it is related. I believe that TurretinFan has demonstrated this as well.

Consider my view here from another angle. The SOLO person sees Church as a helpful tool. A place of fellowship and support. Good sermons and worship time. I venture we have all met such. When it comes to doctrine, they believe they need the Bible and their prayer closet and do not care much for church history or confessions. Many SOLO Christians are probably not even members of a church. The SOLA person sees Church as an essential part of their Christian life. They study the official, historical confessions and creeds and bend their thinking to them in large measure (as I have done). They take classes. When they take on Church membership, they agree to submit to the authority of the elders/pastor in obedience to Scripture. In my Church, we are in agreement with the Apostle’s Creed, Nicene Creed, Athanasian Creed and Definition of Chalcedon. Post-reformation confessions are not uniform as you know but we officially acknowledge that there are other valid confessions ie: we are not the only true church.

So I would say that there are very real differences here between the two positions. My purpose in pointing them out (to answer Wilkins’ question), is to show that there is vastly different fruit from these two views. If the fruit is so different, then the trees must be principally different and your narrow “test” is a false test. If David wants to point to more exceptional circumstances that does not refute the rule. Most of the historical Reformed Churches have/had greater unity and when you try to pin the morass of some 20,000 to 30,000 denominations on Sola Scriptura, I have to say that is disingenuous and a false generalization. These divisions are because of sin not doctrine. I think you are being narrow in your epistemological approach ie: it is because of this one propositional argument that you feel justified in laying the fruit of Solo at the Sola door.

This is analogous to the false view that essentially equates Calvinism to fatalism. I recall Chesterton writing in What’s Wrong with the World “The difference between Puritanism and Catholicism is … about whether any word or gesture is significant and sacred”. Now this is a straw man unworthy of a mind like Chesterton but he, like Prof Beckwith perhaps, thinks it is an accurate illustration of the Calvinist mindset. Well, I have done some travel and seen many cultures including African and Muslim (both known for their fatalism) and the stark contrast in fruit between them and Calvinist influenced nations is irrefutable and polar opposite in every respect. The early colonists of the USA (overwhelmingly Calvinist) certainly did not live as though no gesture or word had significance. Therefore I charge that there is a general laziness in the RC mindset given to assessing truth claims propositionally and too often with a strict either/or perspective which is exactly what this article has done. Christ commanded that we judge trees by their fruit ie: we should be able to do that (and I know I am begging a huge question given my Calvinist/Sola presuppositions. I actually naively believe that Scripture is largely perspicuous to the Christian – that it is actually understandable and can be appealed to when it says it is a two-edged sword able to discern (Heb 4:12) or that it is good for proof, correction, doctrine so that the MAN (not church) of God may be complete – 2 Tim 3:16-17). The Scriptures also teach that we become like the “god” we serve (Ps 115:8). Well, if the Calvinist mindset guided the founding fathers of the USA, arguably the greatest nation presently on earth thanks in no small measure to George Whitfield, that should give pause that just perhaps Calvinism is not to be equated with fatalism in any sense and I would urge you all to consider that. Where do you get the notion that cultures can be better than their creed? Individuals perhaps but it reminds me of atheists who argue that they have no need of a “fairy god” telling them how to live morally. On an individual basis, this may be true but overtly atheistic nations (Nazi Germany, Stalinist USSR, Mao’s China and Pol Pot’s Cambodia) are overwhelmingly murderous. They are consistent with their creed that human’s are not made in the image of God.

(Side points to Tim. I stated that David should not call you “dude” as a mild tease not meant to offend. I find in the tone of your postings a certain unnecessary formality which may be construed as pretension – your allusion to “Dr Liccione” is a case in point. As for his previous posting, I did not respond to it not as a “tactic” but because I have not read it. It was not addressed to me. Previous postings he made I tried to interact with but even there he failed to ever address me directly. When I interacted with Randy on his blog, Michael wrote a comment “I admire your patience, Randy. My patience for this sort of exchange has grown more and more limited.” so I concluded that he did not wish to interact with me. If the eminent doctor deigns now to condescend and blog with a lesser mind such as myself, I thank him for his kindness but do not wish to bore him with my tedium.)

Let us now contrast what I see as RC corporate fruit. If it is truly a great blessing to pray for Mary’s intervention, then I believe I should see in such nations more righteousness, justice, faith and blessings (all the covenant blessings of Deuteronomy and the Sermon on the Mount) than in the rebellious Protestant nations. We actually see quite the opposite. One only need contrast North and South America to see the difference – Brazilians cannot even keep their clothes on it seems, Mardi Gras is like an orgy etc. I assume most of you are from NA and probably do not even realize how much you have benefitted from Protestant thinking/morality. The NA RCC has been greatly influenced in ways many would not realize by the reformation. When we look at SA, there is much greater government corruption, tyranny and immorality on a grander scale with the inevitable poverty that accompanies those realities. Liberation Theology (baptised Marxism) has its origins in SA RC thought. Predominantly RC nations (following the lead of the RC polity since the church leads the world) have historically been governed by centralized governments, absolute monarchs and dictators, whereas Protestant nations have tended to be constitutional monarchies and confederations (as Israel was before she sought a king “Like all the nations around” her.) The Protestant model leads to better governance and better fruit because it is more aligned with God’s will.

Blessings in Christ,

Zoltan
Zoltan April 5th, 2010 5:02 pm :
To Ray, your posting deserves more than I can give now quite frankly. Thanks for the reading suggestions. I may have time to check them out at some point but I do find it interesting that you cannot quote one Scripture to support the veneration of the host or praying to dead saints. It takes an entire book (thesis) to arrive at that conclusion. Here are some thoughts on your post though.

*** When I spoke of the blessings of the Reformation, I was echoing the words of Gamaliel who counseled the Sanhedrin that if what the apostles taught was from God, it would become evident by the fruit it bore and I think the fruit for the initial 2 to 3 centuries following the Reformation was largely good and it has transformed the world for the better including the Roman Church which is gradually moving to a more Scriptural dogma (like removing Veronica from the “Way of the Cross” or Ratzinger’s writings on the Eucharist). As Mathison pointed out in his book, the past 150 years have been more problematic for Protestants. Your attempt to reverse the argument is not valid because the Protestant movement is not monolithic and never lays claim to infallibility in any sense. “Ecclesia semper reformanda” and thus if you see rotten fruit, I agree, we need reformed doctrines, minds and hearts but you claim doctrinally that you do not. Therefore, if you want to lay the fruit of radical independent churches at my door, you have the wrong proverbial address. Your RC fruit, however, should be contrastingly better by far given the “unity” of your church and her apparent infallibility of doctrine. Orthodoxy would lead to orthopraxy. You claim you have the blessings of right sacraments and the unanimous support of all the saints making constant intercession for you. We have none of that according to you – we are rebels. Where is the contrasting fruit?

*** Your assessment of the patristics is more monolithic than history permits. I know it is possible to point to certain patristics who support what you say but to write that it was “ubiquitously affirmed by Christians from the earliest times” is not demonstrable because not all wrote about X or signed such a statement affirming Y. I know writings that would support a more Sola Scriptura position. I also know for example that Jerome did not view the apocrypha as canon and wrote openly of its errors. Now I know you will say that he was not speaking authoritatively for the church but that begs the question. If you only cherry pick patristics that suit your view and then use that to argue for a continuity to the current RCC doctrines, then we have not advanced the debate. I may be wrong in my understanding for I have not read ALL patristic writings and I thank you for your references for readings but “ubiquity” seems to be overstating the case.

***Calvin and the other great Reformers were not starting de novo. You have repeatedly referred to me personally in your posting as though I alone have made these pronouncements about Rome (because you want to equate me to SOLO) but this is far from true – I am standing on the shoulders of giants. I love this quote from Calvin when responding to Cardinal Sadoleto after the latter wrote to Geneva “I will not press you so closely as to call you back to that form which the Apostles instituted (though in that we have the only model of a true Church, and whosoever deviates from it in the smallest degree is in error), but to indulge you so far, place, I pray, before your eyes, that ancient form of the church, which as their writings prove it to have been in the age of Chrysostom and Basil, among the Greeks, and of Cyprian, Ambrose, and Augustine among the Latins; after so doing, contemplate the ruins of that church, as now surviving among yourselves. Assuredly, the difference will appear as great as that which the prophets describe between the famous church which flourished under David and Solomon, and that which under Zedekiah and Jehoiakim had lapsed into every kind of superstition, and utterly vitiated the purity of divine worship. Will you here give the name of an enemy of antiquity to him who, zealous for ancient piety and holiness, and dissatisfied with the state of matters as existing in a dissolute and depraved Church, attempts to ameliorate its condition, and restore it to pristine splendor?” You may or may not know that Calvin was probably the foremost scholar on the patristic writings of his day and he quoted from them liberally in his writings for authority to illustrate that excesses had crept into the Church over the Middle Ages including innovations such as the exclusion of children from the eucharist, the witholding of wine from laity and the adoration of the host. These did not exist in the early church.

*** More on Patristic writings. I have read many (but probably less than you) and I loved what I read. The odd thing is, I did not see them unanimously supportive of the current conception of the RCC. I also did not accept that they bore special authority akin to Scripture. We are warned that false teachers would come (2 Pet 2:1, 1 John 4:1) and although I am not implying that they were false teachers in the ultimate sense nevertheless I maintain that they could err. I love the patristics but what gives you the notion that they are principally different from the orthodox theologians of our day? Proximity of time? They knew an apostle or an apostolic father? Well you probably know well that there are teachings by several patristics which the RCC would openly deny (such as Jerome’s view on the Apocrypha). So once again you are being selective. Furthermore, implying that someone writing 300 years after Christ’s death is closer to understanding Christ than we are is problematic on at least two fronts. First, would you say that someone expounding on the US constitution now (some 220 years after it was written), really understands the mindset of the writers of that constitution? That is demonstrably false and the source of much controversy in Supreme Court rulings. Thinking now is different. Second, you neglect the work of the Holy Spirit to speak to every generation that which each generation needs to hear (and we are all different). There is a timelessness to God’s truth and it is wrong to view something to be a golden age (cf Eccl 7:10). Your position is akin to arguing the golden age of Israel was the generation that conquered Canaan, but what of the glory of David and Solomon? Or what of the glory of Daniel surpassing David? God is leading His Church to greater and greater things as the gospel spreads around the world. Tradition is important but what God is doing now is equally if not more important. The early Church needed to lay the foundational aspects of the faith such as the truth of the incarnation/resurrection, the nature of the Triune God and the Hypostatic Nature of Christ. Consequently, all orthodox Christians affirm these. However, at the time of the Reformation, it was the doctrine of justification that was at stake. Why do you therefore maintain a seemingly arbitrary special authority to the Patristics over modern theologians? When did their special charism become the lesser pontifications of a Scott Hahn? There is certainly great concordance among the Patristics as to the essentials of the faith (which we probably all accept) but with more controversial aspects such as the reverence accorded to Mary or her immaculate conception, there is no such unanimity.

Much of the patristic writings were polemic and dealt with a certain heresy. Augustine for example when dealing with the Manicheans wrote certain things which he had to clarify when dealing with the Arians because they claimed support from his earlier writings so he wrote his Retractiones.

*** When you write: “I hope you do not intend here to use a passage geared toward the discipline of individual Christians as a foundational paradigm for a Christian understanding of ecclesiology”, I am afraid you show a limited, wooden understanding of Scripture. Why did John the Baptist come before Christ? To fulfill an arbitrary prophecy? When the Pharisees accuse Christ of bearing witness of Himself (where did they get the concept that was wrong?) does Jesus respond “I am the Son of God” as your Pope would merely assert his authority at Trent? No. Instead Christ pointed to John and the Scriptures (cf John 5:31-33, 39, 1 John 5:7-9). Of course I know that you believe sophistry has rendered Scripture practically without power here and I cannot appeal to them without facing the accusation that I am merely giving my private interpretation of that. The problem is, this is not merely my interpretation but what I have read and learned from others as well (it is a whole school of thought demonstrably and defensibly present in the days of Christ and the apostles) and at the end of the day, this truth cannot be negated by mere sophistry for no where in Scripture and especially the narratives do I see sophistry ever render Scripture as subordinate and effectively without power the way you necessarily do now (excepting your Magisterium which is why the Bible was previously forbidden by the RC church to be read by laity.)

*** Apostolic succession is a key point of discussion. I readily grant that the Apostles had special authority and that they were infallible in imparting doctrine. It was an exceptional generation as any OT prophet was speaking for a time the will of God but once it was written down, there was no perpetual office of prophet all the time. Moses wrote the Pentateuch but there was no Mosaic office constantly adding to that corpus with the same revelatory authority although a form of Mosaic authority persisted thereafter which was certainly not infallible. I also grant that Peter was given some pre-eminence but will maintain that he in no way served the function of the modern papal conception as clearly illustrated at the Jerusalem council where we see James giving the final judgement (Acts 15:19) and all others ratifying it. There was consensus.

Your example about Matthias is wanting because what is the key point the apostles make about what would qualify a man for Judas’ office? “Therefore it is necessary that of the men who have accompanied us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us– beginning with the baptism of John until the day that He was taken up from us–one of these must become a witness with us of His resurrection.” That narrowed the field dramatically to just 2 men. Paul was the only apostle who technically did not fulfill this requirement but he was explicitly called by Christ and even he admits that his case is an exception (1 Cor 15:7-9). Moreover, the mark of a true apostle was signs and wonders not a perpetual office (2Cor 12:12).

*** I do not in any way think that Jesus came to write a book and your argumentation here shows again that you do not really understand the Sola position. The truth of God’s Word is incarnate. It is alive in the Church. I do not merely hold to a book which is why I clearly wrote that if we only had Scripture, it would be insufficient. You keep equating Solo and Sola because you think we have not refuted the argument of Cross’ article but I think we have. Confessions like the Westminster Confession of Faith or the Three forms of Unity are necessary for Christian life and community. A solo scriptura person would never affirm that, so we are not the same.

Grace and Peace in Christ,

Zoltan
Zoltan April 5th, 2010 5:30 pm :
So David et al, as I wrote before, there is an epistemological divide here. What we are really debating is how God reveals His will. How does He act? This cannot be answered by mere propositional argument but rather by appeal to the Scriptures as Christ and the Apostles did. Who will be the arbiter? Well, I believe the Holy Spirit leads in ways less visible than having a vicar here on earth. The Protestant position takes more faith, not less. I will readily admit that the Protestant way is messier. It is a more organic and incarnational way of looking at truth in community and in historical terms, I think it fares better. Currently, however, we need to repent of radical individualism and SOLO scriptura in the Protestant world.

Now, David you ask how those who left your church could know that they were wrong in doing so. I am perplexed at your question. We are all able to justify ourselves in our minds and even Roman Catholics justify dissent from Rome such as those who practice birth control or the multitude of prominent RC politicians who openly support abortion, or those who claim that Benedict is not a legitimate pope (sedevacantists) or that Vatican II was not valid. My point here is that there is no system out there whereby people breaking faith with what is deemed a legitimate authority can KNOW that they are wrong. You will not be immune to that thinking in the RCC because it is part of our sinful nature. However, if you accept the RC epistemic paradigm by fiat (ie: propositional truth), then it is reasonable and inevitable that you will reach RC conclusions. That is clearly evident in how you write. However, is the paradigm valid? How is it validated? The reformed position is resoundingly affirmed in Scriptures whereas the RC position seems largely foreign to Scripture and extrapolated from narrative texts which are often ambiguous. We are all going to be judged as individuals (not as groups). We will have to give an account for those we selected as our teachers (cf 2 Tim 4:3). RC apologists write repeatedly about why they see the papacy as an absolute necessity. It essentially provides them with security and a certainty they did not feel in Protestantism. That is fine but it does not make it objectively true.

Another way we have to assess how God acts is to look at history – both ancient and recent. Michael Liccione wrote “My argument is that the only way to do that is to accept the idea that Christ founded an authority within the Church which the Holy Spirit would preserve from doctrinal error under certain conditions.” – ie: the Pope. This is demonstrably not so in church history. During the time of the Arian controversy, there was no convening of a single ecumenical council by the Roman See with the final ratification of the bishop of Rome declaring the Nicene Creed to be infallible dogma. In fact, the controversy lasted a long time and at one point the majority of bishops it seemed were Arians and Athanasius of Alexandria stood practically alone for orthodoxy – for which he was exiled some 5 times. “Athanasius contra mundum” was coined because of his brave and almost solitary opposition to the heresy. The issue was finally more definitively resolved at Nicaea but it was not presided over by the Bishop of Rome. In fact, Constantine was the one who gave the final judgement. That Nicene Creed is practically believed by all Christians to this day so you cannot tell me that it does not bear real authority to the Protestant. It has stood the test of time but it is not infallible like Scripture.

Now I think we would all agree that the Holy Spirit sovereignly led the Church through that turbulent time. Heresy did not win the day by God’s grace. However, the mechanism by which truth was finally reached was more organic and messy than a papal edict following a convention of bishops. Therefore, I would submit that although it is necessary for the Church to be guarded from heresy, the Holy Spirit is able and He does do this, without the NECESSITY of an infallible Roman See that everyone can merely look to. I would also say the same of the notion of infallible councils. History shows here as well that councils would contradict each other. There was also no objective way to determine which council was truly ecumenical at the time. Orthodox Christians believe there were only seven such binding councils. However, what if someone in ancient times believed we needed no more than the first three and rejected the ensuing four? Who decided we were finished at seven?

Finally, I would like to elucidate more clearly what I think is at the heart of the epistemic divide here. You (RC apologists) have narrowly defined the scope of the debate. I do not share RC views on how we arrive at divine truth and that is what we are discussing. You are using strict either/or categories of propositional logic. Essentially, God MUST have done it this way and there is no other. However, it is unreasonable to limit the divine will as you do. God could have destroyed Israel and made another people from Moses as He threatened but relented at Moses’ pleading. Here is an example of the pitfall of either/or thinking. Paul wrote that apostolic teaching on grace was slandered (Rom 3:8) and that some would reason “let us sin that grace may abound” (Rom 6:1). Well if we as Christians deny the law as a means for salvation, then it is reasonable to argue that we are antinomians and as such we view sin lightly since we are under grace. Some calling themselves Christians live that way even to this day. However, the solution to the strict confines of the argument (ie: one is either for the law or antinomian) is to appeal to love for God. In other words, there is a third way. Jesus Himself faced the reasoned arguments of the Sadducees as “proof” against the resurrection. His answer? They did not understand the power of God and here I do not think you do if you believe He cannot reliably make His will known to the Church except through one office.

We are all called to obedience to Scripture in every area. That obedience is obedience out of love and it includes submission to a visible church authority as a secondary authority but she is not infallible. Jesus taught that those who are His will hear His voice. There is a relationship there. His sheep flee from false teaching that would ultimate lead to condemnation but there are secondary doctrines (the least of His commands – cf Matt 5:19) which will not lead to death if they are broken but rather less blessing and glory.

“Lawful” dissent is not reduced to a mere formula as you insist. Strictly speaking, David was unlawfully rebelling against God’s anointed king Saul. David appealed to Jonathan who went against his father’s wishes and aided David. Others joined David in “rebellion”. Many times in Scripture there are stories where an appointed authority oversteps his bounds and God sends a lesser subject to “usurp” that authority (eg: Samuel, David, Jacob). The sin is ALWAYS first with the one who is being usurped and serves as a judgement. God ratifies the usurpation by prospering the usurper as long as they are faithful to Him but such a usurpation does not mean he has rejected his people (ie: the Church) only that leader or institution. Romans 15:4 tells us that the OT was written primarily for us in the NC. However, your sophistry and official RCC dogma renders huge portions of Scripture as Scriptura emerita – no application today at all essentially.

Appeals to “the gates of Hell will not prevail” fall flat here because gates are obviously defensive not offensive. Jesus was teaching we will be able to attack any satanic stronghold if we do so by faith and prevail. However, if we sin like Israel, God will bring judgement on us even corporately as we are warned He will in Hebrews 2:2-4. He spoke the same in His epistles to the seven churches in Rev 2 and 3 including churches who had doctrinal problems that gave ear to false prophets but they were still churches and the Spirit still spoke to them. We all need to attend to those epistles for they still apply and Jesus said that He would remove lampstands from His midst if repentance was not forthcoming. That may apply to individual churches or even denominations but the Church will ultimately triumph.

So getting back to my Trinitarian analysis, there is a difference in function within the Godhead. Christ did submit to the Father. When Jesus took upon Himself to be incarnated, He was subject to the Father and in fact called the Father greater than Himself (John 14:28). Hence there is no problem subjecting ourselves one to another and particularly to our teachers. However, we are in essence equals to each other. You might argue that the Pope/Magisterium are also the same as us in essence but that is not entirely true because names matter. You call the Pope “Holy Father” (no apostle took that title). What other human being could bear that title? Within the Godhead, who is Holy? All Three of the blessed Trinity are Holy. In this they are equal but in your view of the pope we are decidedly unequal at this critical point. His office sets him high above making the relationship purely top down which is non-existant in the Trinity. The Son submits willingly to the Father not because the Father is infallible and He is not. In what way does the pope submit to the flock?

What we are called to in Scripture (there I go again wielding that sword again), is to submit to one another in love. We are also commanded to submit to church leaders and I strive to do that. I have submitted to teaching within our church that I disagree with. That teaching in no way makes the church I attend cease to be the church. Therefore, I submit though I am not convinced it is right. This is the Sola Scriptura view in practice and it is vastly different than Solo Scriptura, hence your analysis is false. David you mock at Calvin’s definition of Church. Well, if Calvin was writing with no reference to anything about how to define proper sacraments or the gospel, then your mocking would be correct. But since that is not the case, you mock a strawman. I am not claiming in the slightest to have my own private view of the sacraments. That definition is found in Scripture, church history and public confessions which antedated me and I have bent my understanding to them. Therefore, Calvin’s definition of church is a resounding rebuttal of SOLO scriptura. When he wrote of arrogance, he was speaking of the individual who seeks to define these things for him/herself with no reference to any other authority. They may claim proof from the Bible as heretics always do, but if they do so as an individual, then they are SOLO in every way.

Grace and Peace in Christ,

Zoltan

Sola Deo Gloria
Tim A. Troutman April 5th, 2010 6:31 pm :
Zoltan,

My analogy was picking up on a point TurretinFan was making which is that if there is no principled difference between SOLA and SOLO then there is effectively no authority in ANY secondary/fallible authority. You reject the validity of my analogy because you focus on the identity of “church” asserting that how one defines that is essential to the debate.

I understand where you’re coming from and I assure you I’m not talking past you. If it’s going past you, then you’re dodging it. I’m fully aware of the perceived difference in your approach (as a Presbyterian I guess?) and a free church evangelical solo scripturist. I used to perceive that same difference. I have come to believe that the difference is illusionary for reasons given above in the article, which no one has addressed on this thread, and for the reasons given by M. Liccionizzie (known in some stuffy quarters as Dr. Liccione – I’m just busting your chops here. Hope you take it in jest! ) I think the tu quoque objections given above are false for reasons given in the article and several times over in the combox. Someone above conceded that there was no principled difference, but like you, they think there is a practical difference. I think that is wrong for reasons given in the post linked to above on the same subject. So in order for you to convince me or anyone like David who might be reading that I’m wrong, you need to show how these reasons we’ve given are false.

I think you’ve been spending a lot of time trying to get me (or us) to see the difference you perceive in the two, but we all get that. We’re not arguing that a difference cannot be detected in the attitude or behavior of any two Protestants on this position. We’re arguing that no position is, in principle, distinct from the other. If you think that’s false, please explain why.

No offense taken at the Tim comment. I spend a lot of time with Eastern cultures and that’s probably part of why I come off overly formal. In the American ‘dude’ culture we inherited from the baby boomers, calling someone “sir” or “mam” etc. often come off as aloof and sometimes even rude. That’s a shame. In an Eastern culture, the way I write would be considered offensively informal because of the directness. That kind of directness is reserved for close family members and friends. Not for strangers. At any rate, if you’re ever in Charlotte, I’ll take you out for a beer and I’ll show up in flip-flops and call you Z-Dawg. (I’m kidding about everything except for the beer.. Feel free to take me up on that.)

And as for comparing fruit by country.. That’s not a fruitful dialogue (no pun intended – eh who am I kidding… It certainly was.) I mean after we get past the anecdotal festival stories we’d have to get into comparing abortion rates (and laws), crime rates, suicide rates, etc. to Protestant versus Catholic countries. I really don’t think you want to go down that road. Either way, it wouldn’t prove anything.
Michael Liccione April 5th, 2010 8:52 pm :
Zoltan (#803):

You wrote:

Michael Liccione wrote “My argument is that the only way to do that is to accept the idea that Christ founded an authority within the Church which the Holy Spirit would preserve from doctrinal error under certain conditions.” – ie: the Pope. This is demonstrably not so in church history. During the time of the Arian controversy, there was no convening of a single ecumenical council by the Roman See with the final ratification of the bishop of Rome declaring the Nicene Creed to be infallible dogma. In fact, the controversy lasted a long time and at one point the majority of bishops it seemed were Arians and Athanasius of Alexandria stood practically alone for orthodoxy – for which he was exiled some 5 times. “Athanasius contra mundum” was coined because of his brave and almost solitary opposition to the heresy. The issue was finally more definitively resolved at Nicaea but it was not presided over by the Bishop of Rome. In fact, Constantine was the one who gave the final judgement. That Nicene Creed is practically believed by all Christians to this day so you cannot tell me that it does not bear real authority to the Protestant. It has stood the test of time but it is not infallible like Scripture.

There are so many errors in that paragraph that I hardly know where to start. Perhaps it’s best to start with the least important and work our way up to the main issue.

1. Scripture is not infallible; for infallibility is a quality of persons, not of books. if the Bible accurately conveys the saving truth God intended it to convey–which we both believe–then it is inerrant regarding all that pertains to the saving truth. Retrospectively, in light of the rule of faith handed on by Tradition through and in the Church, we recognize that Its human authors were infallible inasmuch as they were preserved by the Holy Spirit from presenting, as the saving truth revealed by God, statements that are false.

2. I said that a necessary condition for a council’s dogmatic decrees to bind the whole Church de fide is that those decrees be “ratified” by the bishop or ‘pope’ (originally a term of affection) of Rome. That does not mean that said bishop must convoke such a council; nor does it mean that he must ratify its decrees right away. Sometimes that ratification comes a long time later: e.g., Rome’s ratification of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed of 381, which was a more developed version of Nicaea I’s creed (325), did not come until the mid-5th century. Even so, Rome did accept and ratify the original Nicene Creed once Bishop Hosius of Cordoba–one of the few Western bishops present at the Council, and a firm supporter of the Athanasian position–returned to the West and informed the Pope of its content. Constantine’s approval, though quite important for enforcing temporary compliance on recalcitrant bishops, was theologically irrelevant–as his Arian son and heir was quick to point out a dozen years later.

3. Papal support for Nicene orthodoxy is in fact why the 4th-century popes of Rome, rather than the Eastern patriarchs, were almost unwavering supporters of St. Athanasius, giving him refuge from his violent enemies more than once during his three periods of exile. Indeed, things looked pretty dark in 359, when the Councils of Rimini in the West and Sirmium in the East–both of them bigger by far than Nicaea, and imperially approved–came out with an Arian creed; as St. Jerome later remarked: “The world groaned to find itself Arian.” Those councils did not prevail because the bishops of Rome refused to ratify them.

4. I can assure you that the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, in the sense in which it was intended, is by no means “practically believed by all Christians to this day”–nor, of course, were either that creed or Nicaea I’s earlier version so believed even in their own day. Plenty of baptized people either recognize no creed at all or, if they do, interpret it in their own fashion, which in many cases is not what you or I would approve. And, if creeds are “fallible,” why shouldn’t people take that attitude? That the majority of Christians believed the 4th- and 5th-century creeds in the received sense for at least a millennium is no guarantee of their truth, if the authority propounding those creeds is not protected by the Holy Spirit from asserting thereby something that is false.

5. The question whether, and if so under what conditions, the pope is infallible did not even arise until the early Middle Ages. What was not questioned by the bishops who attended the ecumenical councils, and indeed by the bishops before there even were ecumenical councils, is that the universal Church–i.e., what was called by the 4th century the “Catholic” Church–is infallible when professing a doctrine as part of the “faith once delivered to the saints” (Jude 3). That is why the infallibility of what’s called, in Catholic terms, “the ordinary and universal magisterium” is more fundamental than that of councils or even of the pope. Since the body of bishops, united in communion with each other as well as with the bishop of Rome, speak for the Church by virtue of their divinely appointed office, it is primarily through the ordinary exercise of their office that the infallibility of the Church is manifest. The explicit notion of papal infallibility only arose when Church history raised a serious question about just which bishops, and under what conditions, spoke for the univeral or Catholic Church. So, the fixation on papal infallibility that so many Protestants, and not a few Catholics, suffer from only obscures the main question, namely, whether the Church as a whole infallibly professes the faith. The question who thus speaks for the Church and when, though quite important, is secondary to that.

5. But all this focus on history can too easily obscure the pivotal issue here, which you have totally missed. And so I’ll repeat my statement of it for the fourth time, which is by no means as many times as I’ve had to repeat it for other Reformed apologists before the point starts dawning on them:

[W]hether we’re talking solo or sola scriptura, the question remains: how, absent an ecclesial authority that is divinely protected from doctrinal error under certain conditions, are Christians to distinguish reliably enough between human opinion and divine revelation to give the assent of faith to the latter?

And I’ll point out once again that nothing you have said addresses that question.
Zoltan April 5th, 2010 10:39 pm :
Hi Tim,

You wrote, “We’re not arguing that a difference cannot be detected in the attitude or behavior of any two Protestants on this position. We’re arguing that no position is, in principle, distinct from the other. If you think that’s false, please explain why.”

Because I think you are creating a false test to distinguish SOLO vs SOLA like maintaining that one is either for the law or antinomian. As I have repeatedly pointed out, the situation is far more complex than you allow for since we are not merely dealing with ideas but relationship (ie: covenant) between God and His people and His people among themselves. If you concede that there is a difference in attitude and fruit then there must be a real distinction in what is believed, it is simply missed by your test for trees bear fruit after their kind. If you do not think it of any value to look at fruit, what do you make of Christ’s words to look at fruit? He says that we should not look for grapes from thornbushes so we must then be able to recognize a thorn bush.

As for nations, I agree the task is daunting to some degree but not futile. Jesus commanded that we disciple the nations (not just individuals) and it is demonstrable that where the gospel takes hold, a culture is transformed. I only ask that you meditate on how we are to assess that transformation for the fruit of ideas becomes more apparent in a corporate setting over time rather than the theoretical. The rulers of the earth are to “kiss the Son” as Psalm 2 commanded and Christ rules over the nations with a rod of iron as the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of Christ (Rev 11:15). How are such kingdoms to be shepherded unless we can learn effectively from history? If we look at statistics as you propound, that is a poor measure. I would be in full agreement that NA has lost its way and is consequently in decline. A snapshot of today’s statistics show today’s attitudes but the founding principles of the nations and the basis for their laws would be from the past. It is that fruit that can be more readily apparent to us now. In my native Canada, we have legitimized homosexual marriage. The judgement for that will likely not be apparent for another generation but the fruit will come and it will be rotten.

So Tim if you are ever in Langley BC, I shall extend the same beer invitation. However, since I am Canadian, calling me Z-dawg would have to be pronounced Zed-dawg and that just does not have the same ring to it (sounds too much like sled dog).

Blessings in Christ,

Zoltan Horvath
Zoltan April 6th, 2010 3:07 am :
Don Liccione,

1) “Scripture is not infallible; for infallibility is a quality of persons, not of books. if the Bible accurately conveys the saving truth God intended it to convey–which we both believe–then it is inerrant regarding all that pertains to the saving truth. Retrospectively, in light of the rule of faith handed on by Tradition through and in the Church, we recognize that Its human authors were infallible inasmuch as they were preserved by the Holy Spirit from presenting, as the saving truth revealed by God, statements that are false.”

I just checked two online dictionaries (including Websters) and both give examples of using “infallible” referring to things. We may stick to inerrant if you wish but one may use the word infallible when describing the Scriptures. I agree with most of the second part of the paragraph except your statement “in light of the rule of faith handed on by Tradition” which is not true. At the heart of our faith lies a relationship with Christ sealed by the promise of the Holy Spirit who writes the truth on our hearts. We therefore accept that the Scripture is inerrant because the Spirit has revealed that to us though since we see in part and prophesy in part, we may be in error in our understanding at points but not key points of salvation if we are truly His children.

2) “I said that a necessary condition for a council’s dogmatic decrees to bind the whole Church de fide is that those decrees be “ratified” by the bishop or ‘pope’ (originally a term of affection) of Rome. That does not mean that said bishop must convoke such a council; nor does it mean that he must ratify its decrees right away. Sometimes that ratification comes a long time later: e.g., Rome’s ratification of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed of 381, which was a more developed version of Nicaea I’s creed (325), did not come until the mid-5th century. Even so, Rome did accept and ratify the original Nicene Creed once Bishop Hosius of Cordoba–one of the few Western bishops present at the Council, and a firm supporter of the Athanasian position–returned to the West and informed the Pope of its content. Constantine’s approval, though quite important for enforcing temporary compliance on recalcitrant bishops, was theologically irrelevant–as his Arian son and heir was quick to point out a dozen years later.”

I was not alluding to that comment section when I quoted you but thanks for the clarification. However, this misses the point of what I was addressing. The synodal letter of the council begins thus, “To the Church of Alexandria, by the grace of God, holy and great; and to our well-beloved brethren, the orthodox clergy and laity throughout Egypt, and Pentapolis, and Lybia, and every nation under heaven, the holy and great synod, the bishops assembled at Nicea, wish health in the Lord.” The next section states, “Forasmuch as the great and holy Synod, which was assembled at Niece through the grace of Christ and our most religious Sovereign Constantine, who brought us together from our several provinces and cities, has considered matters which concern the faith of the Church, it seemed to us to be necessary that certain things should be communicated from us to you in writing, so that you might have the means of knowing what has been mooted and investigated, and also what has been decreed and confirmed.”

My point if you will look back at my posting was historical. In other words, at that point in history, councils were convened apart from Rome and the results were written “to every nation under heaven” without any mention of the need for Roman ratification for its acceptance. Now I know that is what you believe now but it is not evident that such was necessary or universally believed then. When was the first Nicene creed officially ratified by Rome? Where was the decree or understanding THEN that this made it binding on all the faithful? I know of no evidence to support it but perhaps you can enlighten me. To propound that retrospectively that is what was necessary is reading things back into church history that simply were not there. My point is simply that the apparently obvious need for an infallible Pope to ratify anything was not found at that time and developed later and therefore I suppose we had a church deluded, thinking such was not essential before making such grand proclamations.

However, as the Roman See arrogated more and more power to itself, this sealed the schism with the East who never accepted the infallibility of Rome. Hence my historical point is that there is another and ancient example of Church polity that rivals your claims of the need for papal infallibility. History is not clearly on your side though select things may be.

3) Papal support for Nicene orthodoxy is in fact why the 4th-century popes of Rome, rather than the Eastern patriarchs, were almost unwavering supporters of St. Athanasius, giving him refuge from his violent enemies more than once during his three periods of exile. Indeed, things looked pretty dark in 359, when the Councils of Rimini in the West and Sirmium in the East–both of them bigger by far than Nicaea, and imperially approved–came out with an Arian creed; as St. Jerome later remarked: “The world groaned to find itself Arian.” Those councils did not prevail because the bishops of Rome refused to ratify them.”

The last sentence is merely a bald assertion on your part and begs the question. I could just as easily assert that those councils did not prevail because the Holy Spirit did not allow them to stand. He used means certainly and I do not dispute that Rome was orthodox but this is simply a matter of fact and does not prove anything about her authority and how it was viewed at that time.

4) “I can assure you that the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, in the sense in which it was intended, is by no means “practically believed by all Christians to this day”–nor, of course, were either that creed or Nicaea I’s earlier version so believed even in their own day. Plenty of baptized people either recognize no creed at all or, if they do, interpret it in their own fashion, which in many cases is not what you or I would approve. And, if creeds are “fallible,” why shouldn’t people take that attitude? That the majority of Christians believed the 4th- and 5th-century creeds in the received sense for at least a millennium is no guarantee of their truth, if the authority propounding those creeds is not protected by the Holy Spirit from asserting thereby something that is false.”

My point about stating that the Nicene-Constantinopolitan creed is “practically believed” by all Christians to this day is that most church denominations include it in their official confessions (those that are historical Reformed Churches anyway, I have no idea about “Bible churches”.) Moreover, any one calling themselves “Christian” but denying the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity as summarized in that Creed (eg: JW’s), would not be considered Christian by historically reformed churches or RC’s or EO’s. As far as the “sense in which it was intended” is concerned, you are probably alluding to the “one Holy, catholic, apostolic Church” phrase. Yes we differ on how that is interpreted but we have not revised the creed. I would assert that the “authority” of the creed is based foremost on its clear elucidation of Scripture.

5) “The question whether, and if so under what conditions, the pope is infallible did not even arise until the early Middle Ages. What was not questioned by the bishops who attended the ecumenical councils, and indeed by the bishops before there even were ecumenical councils, is that the universal Church–i.e., what was called by the 4th century the “Catholic” Church–is infallible when professing a doctrine as part of the “faith once delivered to the saints” (Jude 3). That is why the infallibility of what’s called, in Catholic terms, “the ordinary and universal magisterium” is more fundamental than that of councils or even of the pope. Since the body of bishops, united in communion with each other as well as with the bishop of Rome, speak for the Church by virtue of their divinely appointed office, it is primarily through the ordinary exercise of their office that the infallibility of the Church is manifest. The explicit notion of papal infallibility only arose when Church history raised a serious question about just which bishops, and under what conditions, spoke for the univeral or Catholic Church. So, the fixation on papal infallibility that so many Protestants, and not a few Catholics, suffer from only obscures the main question, namely, whether the Church as a whole infallibly professes the faith. The question who thus speaks for the Church and when, though quite important, is secondary to that.”

This question would be more easily settled if there was no fracture in the Church but there is. Now I realize you do not consider me as part of the church in any sense but at least you consider the EO’s a church. If that is true, then there is no possibility of the “ordinary and universal magisterium” to pronounce on anything at this time or for the past 1000 years for that matter. If I lived in the 5th century and all bishops universally affirmed something to be true, then I would not have hesitated to accept that proclamation. It would be accorded very high authority slightly below Scripture in the sense that I would not say that every word of the decree were “God breathed” as Scripture is but what it communicated effectively would be and there is no doubt in my mind that it would be in full accordance with Scripture under such circumstances. It is just like the first Jerusalem Council in that sense. However, this ideal rarely, if ever, existed. Majority positions held sway and sometimes it came to blows to our shame (as the iconoclast controversy did). Therefore the final decree of papal infallibility of 1870 was not in any sense universal because the church was fractured by then.

What the Church as a whole infallibly professes is the faith that is essential unto salvation. Of that I am certain. However, secondary doctrines (“the least of these commandments”) are less certain in a sense since we see in part and we prophesy in part. Unfortunately, Rome has pronounced on things she ought not if she were truly seeking to be catholic. In 1870, papal infallibility and the Immaculate Conception of Mary are two such examples. The first is offensive to EO’s and Protestants and the second offensive to Protestants. Is this proclamation therefore more catholic or Roman?

6. [W]hether we’re talking solo or sola scriptura, the question remains: how, absent an ecclesial authority that is divinely protected from doctrinal error under certain conditions, are Christians to distinguish reliably enough between human opinion and divine revelation to give the assent of faith to the latter?”

Ultimately we both do so by faith. This is essentially a question of epistemology as I have repeatedly stated. It is a philosophical quandary affecting all knowledge really and you have slightly altered it to make it seem a matter of God’s will. Effectively, how do we know what we know? How can we be certain to rely on reason, Scripture, Church or faith except that we simply choose to do so or in the case of true faith, it is a gift from God. Everyone has the basis of final authority in their minds/hearts. The atheist usually accepts reason by fiat, the RC argues for the infallibility of the Magisterium/Pope by fiat and we Protestants argue for Scripture by fiat. As Christians we both believe that the Holy Spirit is the One who ultimately writes this truth on our hearts. If we were debating an atheist, I hope we could stand shoulder to shoulder critiquing the fallacy of pure reason. However, when we debate amongst ourselves on this issue, you are effectively using the same argument but moving it one step closer in proximity with the pope. What you RC’s have done is “solved” the epistemological quandary of faith with a visible living authority. Your faith is that God ultimately uses that means to impart infallible doctrine – the pope/magisterium is as necessary for right doctrine as the existence of God is necessary for any true knowledge. As a Protestant, I see no need for a vicar for I believe God is able to write His truth on our hearts by faith through the power of the Holy Spirit. By faith I believe God ultimately uses Scripture and He manifests that truth in the life of the Church which is essential (Sola) to the Christian to comprehend the fullness of that truth in normal circumstances. “By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you have love …” it really does not boil down to a formula. Love cannot exist apart from truth (2 John). So Mike (may I call you Mike?), I know well what you are saying and I am sure you know what I am saying but in this we do not agree. Tim thinks the distinction between SOLO and SOLA is illusory. I am sorry my arguments were not more persuasive to the contrary but I maintain that the distinction is as real as the fact that I submit to an earthly, fallible authority purely out of obedience to God’s command, not because they need to be infallible. The American colonists charged that the King of England was no longer a legitimate sovereign and fought a war over that. Afterward, they proceeded to set up a government and submitted to that authority to this day and they have prospered in their liberty.

Grace and Peace,

Zoltan
Ray Stamper April 6th, 2010 7:53 am :
Zoltan,

The only reason that I provided the reference works was to show that the Reformed accusation that RCC doctrines run counter to divine revelation, or run rough-shod over sacred scripture requires defense, not assertion.

My use of ”ubiquitous” was with reference to “apostolic succession” in the Patristic record. I did not use as strong a term for the other doctrinal positions we discussed. By ubiquitous I mean that it was discussed (and assumed) as a given – there was simply no other competing ecclesial theory at play. In that sense I stand by my statement. Apostolic succession is a patristic fact and Reformed Protestantism rejects it.

But here is what I want to say:

I have great respect for John Calvin as a systematic theologian. I remember well the feeling of intellectual pleasure I felt reading his “Institutes” – such a sharp, cohesive contrast to the doctrinal schizophrenia I had experienced in non-Reformed circles. But I also remember the distinct feeling of shock I experienced upon delving into the patristic texts. For instance, the impression I developed of St. Augustan by way of Calvin’s many references to him had led me to believe that he was truly a sort of pre-Reformation, Reformed theologian. However, when I actually started reading Augustan’s works, I quickly encountered so many Catholic and proto-Catholic Augustinian passages that my Reformed picture of him was utterly undone.

The more patristics I read, the more I became convinced that it was Calvin who had been cherry-picking the patristic record in order to lend the appearance of antiquity to his theological system. Having rejected the authority of the bishops, as well as the notion of apostolic succession, he developed a conception of “the Church” that fit his theological paradigm. The main point being – as I and others have pointed out – that he (Calvin) thereby set himself up as the authority for both defining WHAT the Church IS as well as which Councils, doctrines, etc count as “authentic/orthodox” and which as heterodox. Thus, John Calvin represents one of the earliest instances of SOLO scriptura; for no matter how much lip service he gave to the import of ecumenical councils (the ones he agreed with), or the authority of the fathers (the passages he agreed with); it was John Calvin himself who remained in control of determining what counts for Church and what counts for orthodoxy. By following him you implicitly do the very same thing. Its all well and good to stand on “the shoulders of giants”; but if those giants have engaged in SOLO Scriptura, you must own the charge personally. I know you desire to distance yourself from the SOLO crowd which you perceive to be the rest of evangelicalism; but, in fact, Reformed Calvinism, by appealing to an authoritative “tradition” of its own making, is nothing other than the smartest sounding incarnation of SOLO scriptura on the Protestant market.

Persons who practice SOLO scriptura, for which you say they should “repent” are acting with absolute logical consistency in ignoring the Reformed lament that “the Church” with “real authority” is not being given its proper place. This is so because both “the Church” and the alleged “real authority” being insisted upon, are the fallible creation of John Calvin and his modern day adherents. If Calvin could reject the Catholic understanding of “the Church” and “real authority” in the 16th century on the grounds that “councils and popes can and do err” and that Scripture ALONE is infallible; you have zero principled grounds for reproach of those who reject the Reformed notions of “Church” and “authority” ON THE EXACT SAME GROUNDS. This is why I maintain that SOLO Scriptura is the natural outgrowth of SOLA Scriptura. Plant the seed of Sola and you get the fruit of Solo – naturally! Thus, the vast multiplication of schism across the globe IS an inherent ramification of Reformed theology, despite its attempt to exonerate itself by way of appeals to tradition: appeals which amount to “special pleading” for its own historical and exegetical outlook. It seems to me your notion that Protestants simply need to repent of SOLO and return to the golden age of SOLA misses the fundamental truth that Solo IS Sola’s child.

Pax et Bonum,

-Ray
David Meyer April 6th, 2010 10:05 am :
Zoltan/Tim,

I homebrew my own beer and if you are ever in the Minneapolis area come on over!

Zoltan you are making some awsome points describing the differences in how the Reformed and the typical evangelical differ. As I said, I am Reformed, I own the complete Calvin’s commentaries, my children memorize the Westminster Shorter Catechism, AND I have submitted and am currently submitting to my session’s (and the WCF) authority on issues I am inclined to disagree with them on. (Paedocom. among them) so believe me I get the difference too.

Please help me out then brother. Here is one of the issues I am dealing with: I have found in my study of Scripture and church history that Paedocommunion is the norm, and to deny it is heresy. The Westminster Divines and Calvin didnt reform enough on this point. Put yourself in my brain here and advise me as a Reformed brother how can I tell which view (my church’s or mine) is opinion and which is Scriptural? I want to submit to Christ on this issue, not opinion. I want to give the assent of faith. As Dr. Liccione asks so succinctly in the bellow quote, how can I “…distinguish reliably enough between human opinion and divine revelation to give the assent of faith to the latter?”

Dr. Liccione’s question:

[W]hether we’re talking solo or sola scriptura, the question remains: how, absent an ecclesial authority that is divinely protected from doctrinal error under certain conditions, are Christians to distinguish reliably enough between human opinion and divine revelation to give the assent of faith to the latter?

Thanks,

David Meyer
Zoltan April 6th, 2010 1:05 pm :
Ray:

That one may find “Catholic and proto-Catholic Augustinian passages” is not of any surprise to me. No one is claiming that the current form of the RCC came crashing in from outer space. It definitely grew out of many doctrines that sprouted up at some point (some earlier, some later). However, since I view Augustine as I view Calvin (both godly men who could and did err) seeing these writings was not ground shaking for me. It made sense that they were there and having more proximity in time to Jesus and the apostles as some sort of argument against error is ludicrous. But in the narratives and Scripture and the messiness of church history, I realized that things were not that clear cut as many would make it. Scripture, not history, is perspicuous.

Now, the theory of the RCC is great in one sense – it makes it very clear what is right and wrong doctrine. The fruit that bore and bears is wanting, however. I think Bryan Cross lamented the poor catechesis of RC’s who do not even know what they believe. Having travelled much, I would say that applies to the vast majority of those calling themselves/counted as RC and that has always been so historically. The elite are educated but for the rest it boils down to “do what the Church says and you will be fine.” Now obviously that does not apply to people on this website – I respect you guys. The charge now also sticks to most modern evangelicals as well and many born into reformed circles. Such was not always the case. The Westminster Shorter Catechism was written for children and the Longer for adults. Now most adults do not know the former.

When I considered becoming RC, I examined things and I quickly realized that this was the central issue – authority. However, I also realized that there is a huge amount of mere faith involved as well – on both sides. Protestants have faith that God preserved the Scriptures and that the Holy Spirit can and does act reliably in the hearts of believers. RC’s affirm that the HS works in believers hearts but ultimately, they have faith that God will always preserve that visible organization of the Roman church from error and that He only does so with that Church. In the first instance, I realized it put a lot of burden on the individual though not in isolation (ie: in communion with the saints), in the latter the burden was shouldered only by the RC Church. It was simple in one sense “Do X and you shall live” which is why Protestants have historically charged that RC’s are essentially legalists. However, since we will all be judged as individuals (including giving an account for those we accepted as our teachers) the RC way did not make sense in the New Covenant. One cannot plea that they were merely following orders although teachers will bear more judgement. The RC way also is reducible to a “whatever is in the Church is correct” phenomenon even though a future pope may change what was once thought of as correct (thus declaring effectively that the previous pronouncement was not “ex catherdra” though people then may have thought it was). It belies the “faith once delivered to the saints” argument.

There is another way of looking at the situation though. It is to consider the goal of maturity in the faith both individually and corporately. The Church is growing in maturity. In earlier years when foundational issues were essential, the LORD blessed us with greater unity. We laid the foundation of the nature of God, Christ, Salvation. However, we progressed from milk to harder and harder food. Were we going to act Trinitarian as I argued before or essentially monotheistic (Islamic) – one way to view everything. The Reformation was a bittersweet time in history. I think it was glorious that God brought great light and the gospel which had been largely lost to the masses was recovered. However, the schism has hurt both sides. Trent provided little hope of reconciliation in its harsh “anathema” pronouncements. Vatican II softened that and at least now RC’s view me as Christian though I attend an ecclesial community not a church. So I have hope. I am also hopeful when I see RC doctrine move in a more biblical direction but change is very slow (which is natural because the most ardent supporters of reform within the church jumped to the Reformed side and those who stayed stayed for “stability”). As you all know there was a radical reformation as well. Because the Reformation did not have the institutional stability of Rome, it is again “natural” that you will have this splitting. That is not a doctrinal matter per se, because not all reformers were radical – it was not monolithic. One may have a radical revolution (like France or Russia) or an essentially conservative one (like the USA) and the fruit of both is vastly different because they are not the same.

So a final word to David. You will be judged according to conscience in this I believe (cf Rom 9:1). If you believe now that denying Paedo-communion is “heresy” then you will have to reverse that going to Rome on the basis of authoritarian submission alone. The writings of Cyprian and Church history does show that communing children was the norm but they were barred from the table when certain theological constructs in understanding the mystery of the eucharist gained prominence. However, I suspect you do not really view denying paedo-communion as heresy if you are considering Rome because that is a contradiction. What you are really asking is to “off load” the burden of working things out and wrestling as we all must with God (cf: Phil 2:12). Is Paedo-communion something we should split the church over and all the problem and pain that that causes? I do not think so, but that is my conscience. Having said that, if there were two reformed churches in an area that I moved to, one that practiced Paedo and the other not, then I would choose the former. I shall pray for you again in this David for there is no easy answer the way RC’s make this out to be. The answer is not a simple either the individual OR the Church but rather both the individual and the church (since God is the One and the Three).

Grace, Peace and Blessings in Christ,

Zoltan

PS – thanks for the invite and I shall extend the same to you as I did to Tim. As for home brew, is that not Solo braciatus (correct my latin if I am wrong)?
David P. April 6th, 2010 1:45 pm :
If you believe now that denying Paedo-communion is “heresy” then you will have to reverse that going to Rome on the basis of authoritarian submission alone.

I think your statement is a misleading stumbling block put before someone considering being reconciled to the Church. The practice in the Latin Rite of delaying communion is not dogmatic, not considered a matter of the faith (de fide). Eastern Catholics, who are in communion with the bishop of Rome, practice paedocommunion and that’s not seen as problematic. Children in the Western Rite typically commune around age 7, which is still much earlier than what I’ve experienced in Reformed churches. I still remember as a Presbyterian seeing children commune for the first time at 15.
David Meyer April 6th, 2010 2:23 pm :
Zoltan said:

Is Paedo-communion something we should split the church over and all the problem and pain that that causes?

Of course not. My point in singling out that issue is that it is just one example of how I am alone in the dark concerning what to do about it. IN THE END it is my choice as to whether my position is orthodox and whether I should leave or not.

I have searched and searched the scriptures, consulted church history, consulted my current church session (who let my 5 year olds partake by the way), consulted the best and brightest Reformed theology, prayed for guidance, and having done all this, (Sola Scriptura put to practice) I still find myself at odds with many great and godly minds who desire to obey Christ. (same is true for paedobaptism by the way)

At the end of the Sola Scriptura authority tunnel I find a mirror and a clown suit. I’m not going to put it on. Christ either gave us a church that has a single knowable doctrine, or this is all just a big joke.

David
Zoltan April 6th, 2010 3:29 pm :
David P – thanks for the clarification on the Eastern Rite. I am aware of the Western practice. My children have been communed since they could physically partake. That is in keeping with the account of Cyprian. I had no idea how old David M’s children were. It is my understanding, however, that there is still some preparation required before first communion in the West. Hence there is something required of the child before he/she is allowed to partake rather than feeding the child the holy supper on the basis of their identity in Christ rooted in covenant baptism. If David M goes to the Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility parish down the road and Father Emil tells him his 5 year olds are not ready yet to partake, then he will have to submit to that. The fact that Reformed Churches bar children to this day (even waiting to 15 yrs!) as you have mentioned is lamentable and inconsistent but I believe “ecclesia semper reformanda” and once again, I am hopeful that change for the better is coming as our Lord is faithful.

To David M, “Christ either gave us a church that has a single knowable doctrine, or this is all just a big joke.” Christ gave us a church that has a single knowable doctrine which leads to salvation. Of that I am certain. Of secondary doctrines, however, that is another matter because we are wrestling with knowing the Mind of God and as Paul taught, “we see in part and we prophesy in part”. Jesus told the disciples He desired to teach them much more but they were not ready and that the Spirit would lead us into all truth. That leading is a process that will continue until Christ returns in a more organic fashion as it did in the early church without papal edicts. We will never stop growing, correcting and learning which (BTW) is why I believe the West has surpassed the East who basically stopped at seven ecumenical councils. Tim thinks we cannot look at fruit but the fact that the former Christian nations of the East have almost all (either now or in the past) been overrun with Muslims or Communists is a sign of corporate judgement that no theoretical arguing can erase. Seeing Sancta Sophia practically brought a tear to my eye. In the early church, there was greater unity and essential foundational issues were established. However, I get the sense you want the NC equivalent of the Urim and the Thummim. It is not that easy but I take issue with your notion that unless it is, we are left with a “joke”. Could God still lead us without this requirement you stipulate? I believe so and I see the fruit of His hand in the Reformed Churches. Jesus told the Pharisees to not just believe His words but look at His works. If you see the work of God in the Reformed circles (the gospel is preached, the poor are fed and lives are being transformed), then I say the question put before us in this article is too narrow and misses the point of incarnational truth.

It is demonstrable that the RC church has altered doctrines/practices over time. When she does, the former doctrines or practices were retrospectively not “ex cathedra” but they would and often did bear bad fruit in their day. By God’s grace Rome has gradually moved in a more biblical direction. We have moved past the hyperbole of Trent to some extent. I would submit that many former Reformed people who have joined Rome now would not have done so at the time of the Reformation, so egregious were the abuses at that time. Luther was told to recant of ALL his writings (even many that were orthodox to this day). John Hus was deceived into going to Constance to his death – all in the name of orthodoxy of course so who cares about proper procedure. They KNEW he was a sinner so 30 pieces of silver was a small price to pay for his head.

Blessings to all,

Zoltan
Michael Liccione April 6th, 2010 3:57 pm :
Zoltan (#807)

Re the Arian controversy and its outcome, you wrote:

My point is simply that the apparently obvious need for an infallible Pope to ratify anything was not found at that time and developed later and therefore I suppose we had a church deluded, thinking such was not essential before making such grand proclamations.

However, as the Roman See arrogated more and more power to itself, this sealed the schism with the East who never accepted the infallibility of Rome. Hence my historical point is that there is another and ancient example of Church polity that rivals your claims of the need for papal infallibility. History is not clearly on your side though select things may be.

As to your first point, the Arians made a similar claim about the Nicene Creed’s keyword homoousios to explain the relation of the Son to the Father–a term on which Athanasius and Hosius, the latter representing the West, insisted. The Council’s opponents said the term was unbiblical and otherwise unprecedented as an expression of the faith of the Church; indeed the Council of Antioch in 268, the biggest gathering of bishops ever held at that time, had rejected it partly for that reason. Throughout the seesawing controversy of the mid-4th century, in which opposing councils frequently met and condemned each other, the only patriarchal see to give consistent support to the Nicene Creed was Rome. For that matter, and despite the efforts of several emperors, Arianism never gained a foothold among the Western Christians who lived within the boundaries of the Empire and thus came under the Bishop of Rome’s authority. And by the time we get to the “orthodox” councils of the fifth century, i.e. Ephesus and Chalcedon, the need for Roman approval was explicitly acknowledged by the other patriarchal sees, as Pope Leo the Great insisted. So, just as the fittingness of the homoousios formula took quite a while to be understood and accepted throughout the Church, so did the full pre-eminence of the See of Rome. Such parallel developments are instances of “development of doctrine.”

Doctrinal development is a historical fact. The question is raised by that fact is this: By what authority are authentic developments to be distinguished from corruptions? If Christians of the 4th & 5th centuries had stuck to sola scriptura, the Arian controversy would never have been clearly resolved–nor, as the 3rd-century controversy between Tertullian and Pope Callistus showed, would the question who speaks for the whole Church been resolved either. The universal Church, governed by the bishops in apostolic succession, thus gradually came to be understood as preserved from falsity under certain conditions. The role of the pope in exercising ecclesial infallibility took several centuries more to become fully explicit.

Nevertheless, the Eastern bishops gradually renounced their consent to Roman primacy of jurisdiction under the influence of Photius, patriarch of Constantinople in the late 9th century. The reasons for that were more cultural and political than theological, but there’s no need to get into that here. The more important point is one I can best express autobiographically.

In college, I seriously investigated Orthodoxy as an alternative to Catholicism. I studied Orthodox books, attended Orthodox liturgies, and had long chats with a couple of Orthodox luminaries of the time. I was deeply impressed with Orthodoxy’s liturgy, spirituality, and courageous maintenance of the Faith in face of centuries of persecution, first by the Muslims and then by the Communists. I was also impressed by the insistence of the Orthodox that the Bible can only be recognized as the word of God, and properly understood as such, with the mind of the Church, the covenant family which Christ had made “the ground and pillar of truth.” But allow me to repeat what I wrote elsewhere on this site about why I chose to remain Catholic rather than become Orthodox.

There is broad agreement among EO bishops and theologians that “ecumenical” councils are infallible when they propose to the whole Church a doctrine to be believed as de fide. But there is absolutely no agreement among them about what suffices to make a given council ecumenical; they agree only that “the seven” from Nicaea I (325) to Nicaea II (787) are, in fact, ecumenical, which Rome also agrees with. Like the Catholic episcopate, the EO agrees that a necessary condition for the “ecumenicity” of a council is that such a gathering somehow represent “the” Church, and that there is a visible communion which counts as “the” Church. But that in itself settles nothing, for there’s no agreement on what suffices for such representation itself. Some councils that were overturned, such as those of Rimini and Sirmium during the height of the Arian controversy, were empirically more representative of the Church at large than the “orthodox” councils.” And there’s no agreement on what else, beyond breadth of empirical representation, is needed for sufficiency.

In response, many EO bishops and theologians say that the sufficient condition is the consensus of the “Pentarchy,” the five “patriarchates,” including that of Rome. For that is taken as a sure token of the consensus of the Church as a whole. But that won’t do either. After the councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon, the patriarchates of Antioch and Alexandria respectively went into schism and were never really reconciled with the “orthodox” sees. Those churches are now known as the “Oriental Orthodox.” To that, the response of the Byzantines, and later of the Catholics, was simply to set up their own patriarchates in those sees. Whether or not that move was justified, though–a question there’s no need to discuss at the moment–it precludes appeal to the consensus of the Pentarchy as a sufficient condition for the ecumenicity of a council.

Accordingly, many other EO bishops and theologians will say that a sufficient condition for the ecumenicity of a council is that it be “received” by the whole Church over time. But that solves nothing either. Leaving aside the questions how much reception there needs to be, and how long it may take, the question is precisely who counts as “the Church” whose reception is sufficient. Thus, does she include the OOs and Rome or not? Most Orthodox will say that, since the OOs and then Rome went into schism, their view doesn’t count, for they left “the” Church. That approach would be plausible if there were a clear, consistent, and antecedent criterion for identifying “the” Church. But what, according to Orthodoxy, is that criterion?

It can’t be that “the Church” consists, for present purposes, of all and only those “apostolic” sees who are in full communion with each other. During the first millennium, those sees frequently fell out of such communion with each other temporarily, but nobody wants to say that that fact alone excluded any of them from “the Church.” For almost as often, they came back into full communion with each other, save for the OOs. But nobody wants to say that the OOs lack apostolic succession and true sacraments. So in some sense it is admitted by both sides that the OOs remain organically connected with “the” Church as part of her, whether on an EO or a Roman conception of “the” Church.

And that brings us to the rock-bottom problem with EO ecclesiology, at least as compared with Catholic ecclesiology. The latter has clear, consistent, consensual, and definitively taught criteria for identifying the relationship to “the Church” of those Christian bodies that are not in full communion with “the Church.” EO ecclesiology has no such criteria. EO bishops and theologians do not even agree among themselves about whether the Roman communion is a communion of “real” churches or not, in a sense analogous to how they recognize the OO churches as real churches. Hence, Catholic ecclesiology enjoys a degree of clarity and consistency that is necessary for appealing to something called “the Church” as infallible under certain conditions. EO ecclesiology does not.

All this is, in fact, why I chose to remain Catholic rather than become Orthodox, during a period in my life when I was deeply disenchanted with the Catholic Church. For reasons Bryan et al have given, I’ve never been able to take Protestantism seriously as an intellectual option; I did take Orthodoxy very seriously indeed; but in the end, I could not avoid believing that the Roman communion has the better claim to being “the” Church than the EO. So I made an assent of faith in the Catholic Church that, although not compelled by reason alone, seemed to be supported by better reasons than the EO communion’s claim.

In view of all that, your appeal to the East’s rejection of the papal claims holds no water for me. All Rome was doing was developing a criterion that gradually turned out to be necessary for clarity about who speaks, in a definitive and binding manner, for the Church as a whole. Of course, the Orthodox refusal to recognize papal “primacy of jurisdiction,” as distinct from “primacy of honor,” is what precludes their recognizing papal infallibility. But it also prevents them from giving any clear, consistent, and helpful account of who then does speak in such a manner for the Church as a whole when the college of bishops is divided on a vital matter, as it was even in the 4th century. That’s why I believe the development of the Catholic doctrine of the primacy is authentic, and thus why I believe that doctrine to be revealed by God rather than a corruption of the deposit of faith. It is the only clear, self-consistent way to settle the question who speaks for “the Church,” when that question is broadly controversial among validly consecrated bishops, and therefore to locate what even you recognize as the “infallibility” of something called “the Church” in matters “essential to salvation.”

Unfortunately, your ecclesiology and epistemology do not allow the question what body counts as “the Church” to be answered even as clearly as the EOs answer it. At least they regard their own communion as “the” Church; but you can’t even say that about your own church. To illustrate why that’s a problem, I start by quoting you:

What you RC’s have done is “solved” the epistemological quandary of faith with a visible living authority. Your faith is that God ultimately uses that means to impart infallible doctrine – the pope/magisterium is as necessary for right doctrine as the existence of God is necessary for any true knowledge. As a Protestant, I see no need for a vicar for I believe God is able to write His truth on our hearts by faith through the power of the Holy Spirit. By faith I believe God ultimately uses Scripture and He manifests that truth in the life of the Church which is essential (Sola) to the Christian to comprehend the fullness of that truth in normal circumstances. “By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you have love …” it really does not boil down to a formula.

Now of course I too, as a Catholic, believe that “God is able to write His truth on our hearts by faith through the power of the Holy Spirit. ” Of course I believe that “God ultimately uses Scripture and He manifests that truth in the life of the Church which is essential (Sola) to the Christian to comprehend the fullness of that truth in normal circumstances.” Of course I believe that the manifestation of “love” among the Lord’s disciples is an indispensable mark of God’s covenant family, the Church; I see that in the lives of the saints and of many ordinary Catholics who will never be formally canonized. The difference between us is that I believe a “living, visible authority” is necessary as an ordinary means God uses toward all the above-cited ends, and you don’t.

Given that you don’t, then for you nothing that might be called “the” Church, as distinct from Scripture and the working of the Holy Spirit in our souls, is necessary for us to receive divine revelation in its fullness and live it. A church is simply a collection of individuals who believe themselves to have received the truth direct from God and who happen to agree with one another about what that truth is. On such a deracinated ecclesiology, no visible communion of churches can be identified with the Body of Christ of which St. Paul speaks–i.e., there is no visible body of baptized believers who can lay claim to being something called “the Church.” So, and a fortiori, there can be no authority in “the Church” to settle, with the authority of Christ himself, potentially church-dividing disagreements about what the divinely revealed truth is and means. The only authority is that which the members of a particular church or denomination choose to recognize as legitimate in light of their own understanding of Scripture.

That, I submit along with the authors of this blog, is no authority at all. That’s why solo and sola ultimately come down to the same thing as a matter of principle, even though the “magisterial” branches of Protestantism prefer to keep some sort of order by ceding a provisional authority to those whom they elect as church leaders.

Best,
Mike
TurretinFan April 6th, 2010 4:23 pm :
David Meyer,

You wrote: “At the end of the Sola Scriptura authority tunnel I find a mirror and a clown suit. I’m not going to put it on. Christ either gave us a church that has a single knowable doctrine, or this is all just a big joke. ”

I’ve found that the end of the Sola Scriptura authority tunnel has a book. That book is very near to me in my heart and mouth that I may obey it (Deuteronomy 30:14). It is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path (Psalm 119:105). It is pure, which is why I love it (Psalm 119:140).

It is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness (2 Timothy 3:16). It doesn’t provide a clown suit, but it does outfit me, rendering me complete, throughly furnished unto all good works (2 Timothy 3:17).

It was written so that we might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing we might have life through his name (John 20:31). Furthermore, it was written so that those who believe may know that they eternal life (1 John 5:13).

That book, of course, is the Bible. Having that book doesn’t mean always being right about everything, or even being absolutely sure of every last doctrine. What it does involve, however, is believing on the Lord Jesus Christ and possessing eternal life through faith in Him.

-TurretinFan
Bryan Cross April 6th, 2010 4:33 pm :
Zoltan and TurretinFan,

Before you comment further behind a mask of ecclesial anonymity, what denomination are each of you a member in, and how long have you been a member in that denomination?

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Benjamin Keil April 6th, 2010 4:37 pm :
Michael Liccione (#814)

Thank you very much for your contribution to the discussion – it is always fascinating for me to hear the autobiographical “story” (if you will) behind one’s Christian journey and the denomination to which they have been lead. :-) If I may, I’d like to ask for clarification on one point. You wrote:

“All this is, in fact, why I chose to remain Catholic rather than become Orthodox, during a period in my life when I was deeply disenchanted with the Catholic Church….I did take Orthodoxy very seriously indeed; but in the end, I could not avoid believing that the Roman communion has the better claim to being “the” Church than the EO. So I made an assent of faith in the Catholic Church that, although not compelled by reason alone, seemed to be supported by better reasons than the EO communion’s claim.”

Later on, then, you criticized Zoltan (or perhaps “offered for edification” would be a better way to phrase it, since we are all brethren here,) :-) the following claim: “The only authority [for Protestant churches] is that which the members of a particular church or denomination choose to recognize as legitimate in light of their own understanding of Scripture. That, I submit along with the authors of this blog, is no authority at all.”

I find myself confused because it seems like an inconsistency is present. Specifically, you were (I take it) faced with competing truth claims from Protestant, RC, and EO churches. You found Protestant claims untenable, and thus compared between RC & EO churches. Based on further examination, you judged that the RC church “seem[s] to be supported by better reasons than the EO communion’s claim.”

All well and good, but isn’t that exactly what this article criticizes Protestants for doing? It very much sounds as if you examined the question, decided which church was right and then submitted to the authority of the church you agreed with (on the basis of its arguments, etc). Or, better put, you used Scripture + your brain (and a bunch of other considerations, no doubt) to decide for yourself which church was right, and then joined it and, in so doing, submitted to its authority.

Of course, I don’t know exactly how you decided between EO & RC churches, but that was the interpretation I received – my apologies if that is an inaccurate reading of your tale. I guess it just seems as if, throughout this discussion, it’s been a mark against Protestants that they decide which church they agree with and join it when (it seems to me,) anyone who joins any church (the RC church included) goes through pretty much the same process. Regardless, though, thanks again for offering your story – theology may be well and good, but I enjoy a good story like yours perhaps most of all. :-)

~Benjamin (Well, theology is better than SOME stories, I suppose…) Keil :-)
TurretinFan April 6th, 2010 4:54 pm :
Bryan,

Sorry, I don’t give that information out.

-TurretinFan
Zoltan April 6th, 2010 7:02 pm :
Mike,

You have analyzed the situation well. I found the same when I looked at EO though I could not have laid it out here as well and as succinctly as you.

Once again this gets back to epistemology. You are obviously very analytical but herein lies the problem. If we were discussing epistemology in a vacuum (without reference to God) we would reach the same conclusion that we are all merely dealing with human opinions – philosophy of knowledge has no answer. We need a “deus ex machina” or leap of faith to solve the problem in a sense as Fredericka argued above. I agree that the RC position “solves” the problem more neatly and clearly than Protestant theology but with the Scriptures and promise of the HS, to the Protestant the problem is also “solved” although there is no visible infallible referee per se. Nevertheless, the Church, I still maintain, bears secondary authority to Scripture and teaches us as she has taught me.

In your argument though, one need not have any support from Holy Writ. It is reasonable but that is only one “witness” in a sense. Is reason the way we arrive at divine truth? Is that how we discern the mind of God? This reminds me of the book “Socrates Meets Jesus” by Peter Kreeft in which “Socrates” goes home one night, reads the entire Bible and comes back “converted” that Jesus is God on the basis of pure reason then proceeds to argue the same. It was laughable as no living being that I know is so vulcan. There are many other RC doctrines that I see as problematic. However, if I accept this one reasoned argument, then any opposition to other formal doctrines or practices must disappear. Hence, the RC church becomes a power unto herself. She effectively becomes God in a more monotheistic than triune way.

TurretinFan laid out well the Holy Scriptures which we all know and I truly love. If asking Mary for intercession cannot be defended Scripturally, then I cannot accept it merely dogmatically. I am well aware of the classic RC defences for the practice but they fail the test in my view and as with everyone else, I am captive to my conscience. When I visited ancient churches, one gets a sense of how the practice arose. The picture with this article shows it well. Enter a church and above you will see a painting of “Jesus” who looks like He is in a perpetually bad mood. I am not sure what He is doing with his right hand but He could be forming a lightening bolt waiting to smite me. At eye level, there is a picture of Mary meek and mild with a microcephalic baby “Jesus” in her lap. She is so inviting and non-threatening and the baby so cute, I think I would rather pray to her. We all know the classic arguments defending the use of icons for teaching purposes of an illiterate congregation and these paintings teach loads. I see this as the equivalent of Israel shuttering at the foot of Mt Sinai telling Moses they cannot approach – “go up for us, God is too holy.” That attitude was supposed to be done away with in the new covenant but it came back in over time.

Architecture also says a lot. When you visit EO churches, there is a wall up front. In the centre, an apse and a veil with some icon behind it. I approached to look and someone (probably a deacon) motioned that I could not even look. Instead he showed me an icon of Mary and some patron saints. The message is that the veil which Christ rent at His death has been mended. When I went to Florence and explored some of the wonderful cathedrals there I will always remember the tour guide telling us (and she was Italian, presumably RC) that prior to the Reformation, RC churches were the same as EO. After the Reformation, people were flocking to the Reformed churches she said and the RC church decided to take the wall down and replace it with a rail because with the wall, God seemed too aloof. Now I have not verified that in a history text book, but my point is that to an illiterate congregation, pictures and architecture will teach a lot.

Bryan I am not sure of the reason for your question. I have no intention of hiding. I am a member of the CREC. I came to the Reformed Faith in a Reformed Presbyterian church, then I attended PCA and now CREC for the past almost 10 years. Each time I switched churches, I did so for geographic reasons (I/we moved). I believe I could still worship in any one of those churches and I still have high regard for many men who taught me. My thinking has been moulded in each of these churches as well.

Grace and Peace in Christ,

Zoltan

PS – David, I just checked. RC’s are forbidden to home brew – you must drink Guinness ;-).
David Meyer April 6th, 2010 8:19 pm :
PS – David, I just checked. RC’s are forbidden to home brew – you must drink Guinness ;-).

That would certainly be enough to keep me away from Rome. There are a bunch of Trappist monks in Belgium that are in trouble for homebrewing too! Funny you mention Guinness because I am drinking a homebrewed Irish Stout (Guinness clone) at this tasty moment!

-David
Zoltan April 6th, 2010 8:33 pm :
Ah those monks, who knows what they are really up to. Luther was an Augustinian after all – probably home brewing from the start.

Now that you mention it, I am currently sipping a BC Shiraz I bought at the vineyard. Before the purchase, I of course peppered the vintner on his methods. Wanted to make sure this was Reformed wine :-).

Blessings,

Zoltan
Michael Liccione April 6th, 2010 9:06 pm :
Benjamin (#817):

I take it you noted my reply (#797) to your #796, and found it helpful. Your current objection, i.e. that my procedure in choosing a church is no different in principle from what Protestants do, and is thus self-inconsistent, is very similar to ones I’ve heard before. My most recent reply can be found here. If that reply does not entirely address your point, please point out where it doesn’t, and I’ll expand it for you.

Best,
Mike
Michael Liccione April 6th, 2010 9:51 pm :
Zoltan (#818):

We need a “deus ex machina” or leap of faith to solve the problem in a sense as Fredericka argued above.

If you’ll notice, I replied to Fredricka. She did not understand the Catholic position, which I proceeded to clarify. The result is not a deus ex machina, nor is the assent of faith as the Catholic Church understands it such a “leap” as to be unsupported by reasons. But the reasons for making the assent of faith, though fitting and supportive, cannot be necessitating. For if they were, then the assent of faith would be intellectually compelled, and would thus be an assent not of faith, but of reason.

I agree that the RC position “solves” the problem more neatly and clearly than Protestant theology but with the Scriptures and promise of the HS, to the Protestant the problem is also “solved” although there is no visible infallible referee per se. Nevertheless, the Church, I still maintain, bears secondary authority to Scripture and teaches us as she has taught me.

The Catholic Church does not hold that the Magisterium is superior or even equal to the Word of God as transmitted by Scripture and Tradition. The Catholic Church claims that the Magisterium is necessary for the authentic interpretation of Scripture and Tradition by the faithful (see Dei Verbum §10. That claim would be false if the Magisterium were not divinely protected from error under certain conditions. And my main argument has been that rejecting ecclesial infallibility as the Catholic Church understands it would leave no reliable way for the faithful to distinguish between divine revelation itself and mere theological opinions.

In your argument though, one need not have any support from Holy Writ. It is reasonable but that is only one “witness” in a sense. Is reason the way we arrive at divine truth? Is that how we discern the mind of God? This reminds me of the book “Socrates Meets Jesus” by Peter Kreeft in which “Socrates” goes home one night, reads the entire Bible and comes back “converted” that Jesus is God on the basis of pure reason then proceeds to argue the same. It was laughable as no living being that I know is so vulcan. There are many other RC doctrines that I see as problematic. However, if I accept this one reasoned argument, then any opposition to other formal doctrines or practices must disappear. Hence, the RC church becomes a power unto herself. She effectively becomes God in a more monotheistic than triune way.

In effect, you have accused the Catholic Church of self-idolatry, and therefore Catholics such as myself of idolatry. That is a very serious charge–so serious, in fact, that I doubt you would make it if you fully understood Catholic teaching and its basis.

The claims of the Magisterium do have support in Scripture. Many Catholic theologians have shown how. But I have chosen not to appeal to Scripture in this context because, in my opinion, doing so would entirely beg the question. Don’t forget: we disagree about how to interpret Scripture, and indeed about how to resolve disagreements about how to interpret Scripture. Accordingly, any appeal to Scripture on either your part or mine–at least as a way of trying to settle the main question at hand–would get us nowhere. So, instead of complaining that I don’t use Scripture, you should thank me for not wasting my time and yours.

The criticism that the Catholic Church “effectively becomes God” is off the mark, but it does at least reflect the seriousness of her claims. The Catholic Church claims that her bishops have authority from Christ to teach, govern, and sanctify all the faithful; so far, that doesn’t look terribly different from the kind of authority you acknowledge in your own church. What really gets your back up, and in many quarters evokes real hatred of the Church, is her claim to infallibility under certain conditions. But what of it? If the bishops of the Church really do have authority from Christ, who is God, to teach and bind the Church definitively in his name, then that authority has to be of a fundamentally different order from that of human opinion. Yet, without divinely granted infallibility under certain conditions, their only teaching authority would be that of human opinion. So even though you think it idolatrous of the Magisterium to claim the authority it does, I think it would be altogether idle for the Magisterium not to do so. It is, to be sure, an authority given by grace, not merited by nature; often, it works more in spite of than because of those who exercise it. And so, no: neither I nor any other Catholic I know engage in ecclesiolatry. I reject that charge utterly.

Best,
Mike
Zoltan April 7th, 2010 1:38 am :
Hi Mike,

“The result is not a deus ex machina, nor is the assent of faith as the Catholic Church understands it such a “leap” as to be unsupported by reasons.”

I used the term “in a sense”. I never meant to imply that a “leap” is without reasons. We both know this since we are both Christians. We have very good reasons for believing that Christ is the Son of God. However, you have repeatedly written things to the effect that we NEED that charism of infallibility granted to the Magisterium under certain conditions to interpret truth or we are merely left with human opinions. How is this not necessitating what you believe about the RC church in an analytical sense?

“The Catholic Church does not hold that the Magisterium is superior or even equal to the Word of God as transmitted by Scripture and Tradition. The Catholic Church claims that the Magisterium is necessary for the authentic interpretation of Scripture and Tradition by the faithful ”

I am well aware of this. I am not sure where I gave the impression otherwise. When I referred to “solv(ing)” the problem I meant it as the mechanism by which we discern valid interpretation from mere opinion. However, stating that the RC Magisterium is not superior or even equal seems misleading. This is obviously true in one sense. However, if one claims special authority to interpret something that surpasses all others, then you become that law and there is no way to discern whether that person/institution is right or wrong. As I wrote previously, there can be no Berean attitude whereby the noble-minded thing to do is to search the Scripture to see if what is taught is true. I know that Rome does not claim to be above the Scripture but effectively this doctrine makes her at the very least on par for she can wield Scripture to judge others but she can be judged by no one. Again, at #742 you stated that you were RC “because I believe that, once divine revelation was definitively given and completed in Jesus Christ, the teaching authorities of the Church needed the charism of infallibility in order to carry out that purpose.” You have also repeatedly shown through reasoned argument alone how the Protestant and EO views on interpretation cannot settle the question of who can give a definitive doctrinal statement which is binding. So therefore I am forced to conclude that you have accepted the RC position because in your analysis what is needed can be provided by no one else QED.

Now I realize that there are Scriptural passages that RC’s call upon for support and I completely understand why you avoid looking to them in this context. However, we have David M. strongly considering a move to the RCC on the basis of this reasoned article and as far as I can tell some difficult circumstances he is facing. There need be no appeal to Scripture to make the point you are making – that is my observation. Furthermore, since you hold so strongly that looking at the Scriptures yields nothing definitive unless we have an outside interpretative authority, we have therefore robbed the Scripture of the power it claims to have in plain language (ie: not deduced from a narrative passage which may be looked at from different angles). TurretinFan laid those out quite nicely but the fruit of this exchange shows that they are unnecessary for you to establish the need for the charism of infallible interpretation under certain conditions.

Now I must clarify something I wrote. I missed the word “like” before God. So what I wanted to point out is that the RCC becomes “like God” in the sense that she is accountable to no one and no thing before man in her doctrines that she has deemed infallible. This is “God like” in the sense of absolute reigning authority (however limited). I think sinful man cannot handle that and even Peter had the 11 other apostles to keep him in check. We are commanded to test the spirits. You are effectively holding that infallible testing is granted to the Magisterium and there is no standard by which one may test that result to see if it was truly infallible. You deem that is necessary and you accept that it was therefore granted to the Magisterium by faith. I never intended to accuse you of ecclesiolatry. I only charge that you limit the power of God in claiming that He can only effectively lead His Church by an infallible Magisterium and not by the organic working of the HS in the body of believers as we wrestle with Scriptures together (ie: we are no left with personal opinions at the end of the day even though you charge I will only assent to truths that suit my opinions which is demonstrably false).

Grace and Peace,

Zoltan
Bryan Cross April 7th, 2010 8:17 am :
Zoltan,

The objections you are raising (tu quoque and sola ecclesia) are both addressed in section V of our article. Your comments suggest that you haven’t read that section.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Sean Patrick April 7th, 2010 9:26 am :
“Zoltan”,

Now I realize that there are Scriptural passages that RC’s call upon for support and I completely understand why you avoid looking to them in this context.

We are past the point of being moved by such question begging. In other forums this may be acceptable but it is not acceptable here.

Further, as Bryan points out, your comments demonstrate that you have not read the article.

This thread has over 800 comments. Responding to each one is a task. It takes time and effort. We cannot continue to devote so much time to arguments that are made in the article itself and arguments that are addressed in the ensuing 800 comments.

If you have a new objection to raise, one that is not addressed in the article or one that is not addressed in the comments, than feel free to raise them. But if you want to raise the same questions over and over again your comment may not be approved.
Zoltan April 7th, 2010 11:56 am :
Gentlemen,

It is not my desire to be tedious. I assure you that I have read the article but I have not read every single comment so forgive me for any repetition.

We simply do not share the same epistemology. No where in your article do you critque a more incarnational model of truth which I am propounding. I know you reject that we can look to imitate Christ or the Apostles by pointing to Scripture in this context or that we can look at the fruit of doctrines but I do not. I have tried to give examples where narrow questions were asked of Christ and He seemed “trapped” but He was able to show that the understanding behind the question itself was flawed and He did so appealing to Scripture.

Moreover, if the consequence of your position is that we cannot look to Scripture for validation (in this context), then I charge that you have narrowly defined the scope of the debate. Again, because I do not share your epistemology, I deny the charge that this is question begging. You have simply nullified Scripture with argument (in this context) as an authority and I understand why.

Finally, as for tu quoque, here also I realize your argument but I do not find it entirely convincing because I do not accept your first premise – namely that there is no principled difference between the Solo/Sola positions. Like you, I think I am in submission to Christ’s Church and I deny the charge that I may deem that church to not be a church as an individual, in my opinion, with no appeal to other authorities. I think that is demonstrable not with reasoned argument alone but also calling on other “witnesses”. Where we differ, is that you believe Christ founded only one visible organization called church with one visible earthly leader (despite the imagery of Rev 2 and 3) therefore to you, a Christian cannot leave that visible body of believers under any circumstance.

So I assure that it is not my desire to frustrate you. I thank all for taking the time to respond and for the civility of the debate. This has been fruitful for me and I hope in some small measure it has been fruitful for others as well.

Grace and Peace in Christ,

Zoltan
Bryan Cross April 7th, 2010 12:30 pm :
Zoltan, (re: #826)

You wrote:

We simply do not share the same epistemology. No where in your article do you critque a more incarnational model of truth which I am propounding.

Truth is the adequation of mind to reality. Do you deny that? If not, then which premise of our argument is false?

I know you reject that we can look to imitate Christ or the Apostles by pointing to Scripture in this context or that we can look at the fruit of doctrines . . ..

No we don’t.

I have tried to give examples where narrow questions were asked of Christ and He seemed “trapped” but He was able to show that the understanding behind the question itself was flawed and He did so appealing to Scripture.

Everything we have said is fully compatible with those examples.

Moreover, if the consequence of your position is that we cannot look to Scripture for validation (in this context), then I charge that you have narrowly defined the scope of the debate.

Nobody said that you cannot look to Scripture for “validation.” But you should keep in mind that heretics all over the world look to Scripture for validation, and have been doing so for almost two-thousand years.

You have simply nullified Scripture with argument (in this context) as an authority

How so?

Finally, as for tu quoque, here also I realize your argument but I do not find it entirely convincing because I do not accept your first premise – namely that there is no principled difference between the Solo/Sola positions.

Our response to the tu quoque does not presuppose that there is no principled difference between solo and sola.

Like you, I think I am in submission to Christ’s Church

Do you think the CREC (with something like 100 congregations, mostly in the US), is the holy catholic Church Christ founded? Or do you believe that the holy catholic Church Christ founded is invisible, having visible persons as members?

and I deny the charge that I may deem that church to not be a church as an individual, in my opinion, with no appeal to other authorities.

I’m sorry; I simply can’t make sense of what you are saying there.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Michael Liccione April 7th, 2010 12:40 pm :
Zoltan (#823):

First, what Bryan said.

Second, you wrote:

We have very good reasons for believing that Christ is the Son of God. However, you have repeatedly written things to the effect that we NEED that charism of infallibility granted to the Magisterium under certain conditions to interpret truth or we are merely left with human opinions. How is this not necessitating what you believe about the RC church in an analytical sense?

What you’re overlooking there is the distinction between opinion and faith. Of course the New Testament clearly indicates that the early Church believed Jesus to be the Son of God. But the question what, precisely, that title means must remain a matter of interpretive opinion, unless there be some ecclesial authority, divinely protected from error, to definitively settle the inevitable and serious disputes about what it means. So if one denies there is such an authority, one is left merely with a clash of opinions–which is just what was seen in the Church throughout the Arian controversy, until such an authority resolved it.

That said, the reason why my argument for an infallible ecclesial authority is not, itself, “necessitating” is that it’s always open to you, and indeed to Protestants generally, to bite the bullet and hold that religious doctrine is ultimately just a matter of opinion. As I’ve said before, “the singular merit of liberal Protestantism” is that it admits as much–thus making clear what’s really at stake in the choice between Catholicism and Protestantism.

Third, you wrote:

I only charge that you limit the power of God in claiming that He can only effectively lead His Church by an infallible Magisterium and not by the organic working of the HS in the body of believers as we wrestle with Scriptures together (ie: we are no left with personal opinions at the end of the day even though you charge I will only assent to truths that suit my opinions which is demonstrably false).

Given that you’ve more than once criticized Catholics on this thread for posing false dichotomies, I’m surprised that you’re now posing one yourself. No educated Catholic would deny that an important way for the “body of believers” to discern divine truth is by the power of the Holy Spirit “as we wrestle with Scriptures together.” That, in fact, is why most of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church produced more commentary on the Scriptures than any other genre; why the Church urges Catholics, the vast majority of whom are now literate, to read the Scriptures prayerfully; and why many Catholic parishes now hold Bible studies for adults, one of which I conducted myself over a 3-year period for a large Houston parish.

The Magisterium does not exist as a way to discern the truth instead of “wrestling with the Scriptures,” but as a way of ensuring, among other things, that the results of such wrestling are not mere opinions, but the true meaning of God’s word. Anybody can, and does, claim to be guided by the Spirit as they draw conclusions from the Scriptures; but many such claims contradict each other and cry out for a referee. Only the Magisterium has the authority to interpret the Scriptures “authentically,” i.e. in a manner that transcends what certain individuals or groups with no apostolic authority claim to be the fruit of the Spirit working in them.

Best,
Mike
Zoltan April 7th, 2010 9:24 pm :
Bryan:

“Truth is the adequation of mind to reality. Do you deny that? If not, then which premise of our argument is false?”

No I do not. However, reality is of course contingent on a proper understanding of God and His will. Paul was mocked at Mars Hill when he spoke of the resurrection because to the reasonable, Greek mind, such a notion was ludicrous. Their problem was (like the reasonable Sadducees) that they did not understand the power of God hence their deductions about reality were false. In this context, we are therefore dependent on looking to God’s revealed truth not just reasoned argument to arrive at a proper understanding of that truth. We agree upon this I am sure but in this context, His will in defining the Church is being deduced without any reference to His Word.

Herein lies the rub and the divide. This article makes no appeal to Scripture (and again, I understand why), but it merely evaluates the Solo vs Sola distinctions (false as you claim) without any consideration of what God has done or ordained for the Church. I maintain that God could have ordained His Church to function as the Protestant model does and though it is messier, largely because of human sin, nevertheless, the HS is still leading her. More liberal denominations may die off (like the Church at Laodicea) as is evident for effectively, Christ removes their lamp stand from before Him unless they repent. The more biblical denominations grow and continue the work of the gospel (as is also evident in my view). You effectively maintain that God could not have ordained the Church to function this way and you base that primarily on reasoned argument because if there is no apostolic succession, then we are necessarily left only with human opinions. However, the notion that the RC church cannot err doctrinally by definition (however limited the circumstances) makes her a law unto herself. Not only is that unprecedented scripturally for any visible organization, it makes large portions of Scripture without any application to her.

“Nobody said that you cannot look to Scripture for “validation.” But you should keep in mind that heretics all over the world look to Scripture for validation, and have been doing so for almost two-thousand years.”

Correct. However, I believe the Holy Spirit has established through the historical Church (since I agree He uses means) teachings which define the essentials of orthodoxy (namely the doctrines of Salvation, Trinity, nature of Christ etc). I bow before those not because they suit anything about my preferences or opinions. They are infallible insofar as they agree with Scripture and they do just that. I “know” this because I am “of His sheep” by faith and I “know” His voice but that does not make me infallible at every point. As Scripture points out (and I think you will agree) there are lesser doctrines which if not held to will lead to less blessing but not death. Since the Church was unified when these were established, I believe the decrees of those councils bear more authority than subsequent councils. They were more foundational by the power of the Holy Spirit. I believe this by faith as you accept apostolic succession by faith. Heretics, on the other hand, like Joseph Smith to give a more modern example, are really declaring single handedly that God is a different God altogether. We (RC’s and Protestants) differ more on how He acts but we agree on His identity and we have large agreement in other areas also.

I wrote: “You have simply nullified Scripture with argument (in this context) as an authority” and you wrote: “How so?”

Practically this is so in this context as Michael pointed out because you confess that we interpret Scripture differently, so one cannot appeal to it. Again, you stress the personal interpretation aspect whereas I believe the Holy Spirit may still function through the Scriptures in this capacity. I know your position well though. Proper interpretation can only reliably occur within the context of the proper church ergo it is not to be appealed to here. However, Jesus did exactly that when dealing with the Pharisees/Sadducees even though they were in error.

“Our response to the tu quoque does not presuppose that there is no principled difference between solo and sola.”

Yes it does in a way you do not realize. You think that the way you discover the church “Christ founded” is by apostolic succession in a physical sense ie: the laying on of hands by Roman bishops alone guaranteed proper doctrine in the Roman See would be preserved. I believe that the proper doctrine of the apostles is preserved in Scripture and written on the hearts of believers by the HS in every generation and that is best discerned corporately. That is the Church I believe Christ founded so I submit to that Church which bears real and secondary authority to Scripture. I believe it is not bound together in a physical organization though it is historic and visible. I do not believe “head office” was merely moved from Jerusalem to Rome but that the way God identified His people was transformed in the NC ie: not by allegiance to a physical organization. Corruption and sin can mar anything including Rome and Protestants. At the present time in the Protestant world, there is much confusion now because of sin. I believe the Holy Spirit is working to reunite us gradually – the Solo experiment is taking its toll. However, if I were in a smaller town where there was only one Reformed Protestant Church, I would attend that church and submit to its leadership. I would not set about to start a new church. However, since I live in a larger centre, it is possible for me to choose among many and naturally I will choose one where I am more comfortable (we are liturgical but hold to the Three Forms of Unity like other reformed churches in the area) somewhat analogous to an RC choosing one parish over another on the basis of liturgical style or worship (since I have seen charismatic RC services, contrasted with the Society of Pius X). Now, if the equation of Solo to Sola is not essential to the tu quoque refutation, please show me how it is not in what I have outlined above?

“Do you think the CREC (with something like 100 congregations, mostly in the US), is the holy catholic Church Christ founded? Or do you believe that the holy catholic Church Christ founded is invisible, having visible persons as members?”

I think it is a visible branch of that “holy, catholic, apostolic Church”. Just as Christ used the imagery of the lamp stand in Rev 2 and 3, one should be immediately reminded of that lamp stand meticulously described in Exodus and how it had a single base with seven branches. Those branches were stylized after tree branches. Christ is described as the main Branch in Scripture and we are all grafted into Him. Certain branches/lamp stands may be cut off the Scripture warns. The RCC effectively makes the base of that lamp stand Rome (connected to Christ) so that we have a visible vicar of Christ on this earth. I charge that God is not limited to that and that your ecclesiology is too restricted. There is one base, Christ, we do not need a base set upon a base.

Sorry about the confusion on my last statement. To clarify, I think there is still a fundamental difference between the Solo who sees a church not conforming to his view of Scripture and then sets out to start a new church or separate from said church and one (Sola) who under certain circumstances, may appeal for reform within that Church appealing to other authorities rather than making the judgement simply himself. As before, the analogy in secular culture is the American war for independence, in which colonists appealed to other authorities (magna carta and lesser magistrates) to rebuke the king (who was their lawful king but was acting himself unlawfully). God has always reserved for Himself the right to send such lesser subjects/prophets to rebuke greater subjects in Scripture. The abundance of such Bible stories is noteworthy and still applicable.

To Mike:

“Given that you’ve more than once criticized Catholics on this thread for posing false dichotomies, I’m surprised that you’re now posing one yourself. No educated Catholic would deny that an important way for the “body of believers” to discern divine truth is by the power of the Holy Spirit “as we wrestle with Scriptures together.” That, in fact, is why most of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church produced more commentary on the Scriptures than any other genre; why the Church urges Catholics, the vast majority of whom are now literate, to read the Scriptures prayerfully; and why many Catholic parishes now hold Bible studies for adults, one of which I conducted myself over a 3-year period for a large Houston parish.”

If you would please look back at my statement I was not making a false dichotomy. I used the phrase “effectively lead”. I in no way meant to imply that RC’s do not read their Bibles or that they are discouraged from doing so now (though that was not always the case and I know of other parts of the world where that is still not the case). So how am I posing a false dichotomy? Are you not arguing that in order to have effective leadership of the church (rather than protestant confusion) we must have an infallible charism granted to the Magisterium under certain conditions?

“The Magisterium does not exist as a way to discern the truth instead of “wrestling with the Scriptures,” but as a way of ensuring, among other things, that the results of such wrestling are not mere opinions, but the true meaning of God’s word. Anybody can, and does, claim to be guided by the Spirit as they draw conclusions from the Scriptures; but many such claims contradict each other and cry out for a referee. Only the Magisterium has the authority to interpret the Scriptures “authentically,” i.e. in a manner that transcends what certain individuals or groups with no apostolic authority claim to be the fruit of the Spirit working in them.”

I realize this distinction. I have re-read my comments and unless I am missing something, I never used the term “instead of” anywhere, hence the dichotomy you accuse me of setting up was never made.

Now, correct me if I am wrong but does not the RCC teach that the “Word of God” includes Tradition? And is not Tradition defined as “the Authoritative Voice of The Catholic Church which determines what is to be accepted and rejected as Tradition.” (The Handbook of the Catholic Faith, page 151) AND “The task of giving an authentic interpretation of the Word of God, whether in its written form or in the form of Tradition, has been entrusted to the living, teaching office of the [Catholic] Church alone. This means that the task of interpretion has been entrusted to the bishops in communion with the successor of Peter, the bishop of Rome.” Catholic Catechism # 85)

Moreover, RC’s often point out how the Church herself defined the canon (a discussion I really do not want to get into now). So, if the Church defines canon and valid tradition (and we know that certain doctrines develop over time so even precedence strictly speaking is not necessary), then how does this not become a law unto itself (except of course by faith in apostolic succession as a guarantee that the Holy Spirit would always ensure said authentic interpretation).

Gentlemen, I shall give you the last word. I have received a command from on high (my wife) and I think it was ex cathedra (she had a special hat on anyway), that I must cease from blogging at this time. I feel compelled to submit to her in this. She bears real, secondary authority over me and I can find no lawful reason (except pig-headedness) to over-rule her even though I know she is fallible (don’t tell her I said that).

Blessings to all in Christ,

Zoltan

PS – I will remember those beer invitations and please remember mine.
Bryan Cross April 8th, 2010 2:12 am :
Zoltan,

You wrote:

However, reality is of course contingent on a proper understanding of God and His will.

Actually, reality is what it is, whether you properly understand God and His will or not. Reality doesn’t change, just because a person doesn’t understand God. A person’s understanding of reality can be affected by his or her beliefs about God. But reality itself isn’t contingent on our getting our theological ducks in a row.

In this context, we are therefore dependent on looking to God’s revealed truth not just reasoned argument to arrive at a proper understanding of that truth.

But when the very question is how to know God’s revealed truth, then the answer cannot be “to look to God’s revealed truth,” because such an answer presupposes that we already know an answer to the very question we are asking, and for that reason, such an answer is, by definition, question-begging.

in this context, His will in defining the Church is being deduced without any reference to His Word.

I don’t think our article makes any claim about God’s will in defining the Church. Our article is an argument that there is no difference between solo and sola.

This article makes no appeal to Scripture (and again, I understand why), but it merely evaluates the Solo vs Sola distinctions (false as you claim) without any consideration of what God has done or ordained for the Church.

Our purpose in the article wasn’t to map out an ecclesiology based on Scripture. We did that in some respect in our article titled “Christ Founded a Visible Church.” If you think that some premise in our Solo argument is false, or that the conclusion does not follow from the premises, please show that.

I suspect that you have a fideistic conception of the relation of faith and reason. That’s why you (apparently) think that the question of whether sola reduces to solo cannot be decided without including Bible verses. But Scripture does not teach that the question of whether sola reduces to solo can only be decided by including Bible verses. So, the notion that the question of whether sola reduces to solo cannot be decided without including Bible verses is your own philosophical assumption, that you are trying to impose on other people.

If you want to understand what’s wrong with fideism, read my post titled “Wilson vs. Hitchens: A Catholic Perspective“, and especially all the comments in that thread.

I maintain that God could have ordained His Church to function as the Protestant model does

No one here denies that. The extent of the power of God is not under debate here. We all believe in divine omnipotence.

You effectively maintain that God could not have ordained the Church to function this way

Let me suggest that before you criticize Catholic doctrine, take some time to learn it. You’ll have a bit more credibility. Catholics don’t claim or believe that “God could not have ordained the Church to function [the Protestant] way.” Catholics believe in divine omnipotence.

However, the notion that the RC church cannot err doctrinally by definition (however limited the circumstances) makes her a law unto herself. Not only is that unprecedented scripturally for any visible organization, it makes large portions of Scripture without any application to her.

God becoming man was also unprecedented. But you don’t reject the incarnation. So, you’re being ad hoc in rejecting something in redemptive history on the basis of its being unprecedented. You don’t mention which portions of Scripture are “without any application” to the Church. Please specify; otherwise you’re just hand-waving. From a Catholic point of view, all Scripture applies to the Church.

However, I believe the Holy Spirit has established through the historical Church (since I agree He uses means) teachings which define the essentials of orthodoxy (namely the doctrines of Salvation, Trinity, nature of Christ etc).

What are all the essentials? How many are there?

I bow before those not because they suit anything about my preferences or opinions. They are infallible insofar as they agree with Scripture.

That’s what all the heretics say too, about their beliefs (which differ from yours).

I “know” this because I am “of His sheep” by faith and I “know” His voice

That’s what all the heretics say too. You seem to think that bosom-burning is infallible. But a million burnings in the bosoms of a million Mormons prove otherwise.

Since the Church was unified when these were established, I believe the decrees of those councils bear more authority than subsequent councils.

First, why do you think the Church was unified then, but not now? How do you know that it is not the case that the Church is still unified and that there are many sects in schism from her?

Second, none of the first seven councils (which you seem to think have some authority) would have agreed with you that the authority of a council’s teaching is based on the individual’s judgment of the degree of conformity to that teaching to Scripture.

I believe this by faith as you accept apostolic succession by faith.

No, faith is something received from the Church. We believe all that the Church believes, teaches and proclaims to be revealed by God. That’s what we mean by faith. But neither Scripture nor the Church ever taught that the first seven councils had more authority than subsequent councils. So, this is something you are getting from a bosom-burning or from your own mind, and hence it is not faith or believed by faith. It is mere opinion.

Heretics, on the other hand, like Joseph Smith to give a more modern example, are really declaring single handedly that God is a different God altogether. We (RC’s and Protestants) differ more on how He acts but we agree on His identity and we have large agreement in other areas also.

I agree that we (Protestants and Catholics) mostly agree about the identity of God. But you are gravely mistaken if you think that heresy is limited to worshiping a different God altogether. Pelagianism, for example, is a heresy. But Pelagius didn’t worship a different God. A heresy is any denial or rejection of what the Church teaches must be believed. Those, such as yourself, who deny the visible Church, are left defining ‘heresy’ as any denial of your own interpretation of Scripture.

Practically this is so in this context as Michael pointed out because you confess that we interpret Scripture differently, so one cannot appeal to it.

We do interpret Scripture differently. Therefore, merely pointing to our favorite prooftexts, and pounding the table harder, isn’t going to resolve the dispute. It hasn’t worked for 500 years, and it won’t work if we keep doing it for 500 more years. Pointing this out is not “nullifying Scripture.” It is recognizing a fact, namely, that table-pounding is no solution to interpretive disagreements. How many more centuries of table-pounding proof-texting would it take to persuade you that it is futile for resolving the dispute, and that anyone who says otherwise is in denial?

Again, you stress the personal interpretation aspect whereas I believe the Holy Spirit may still function through the Scriptures in this capacity.

Right. Your interpretation is from the Holy Spirit. And everyone who disagrees with your interpretation ipso facto is shown not to have (or be following) the Holy Spirit. We’ve all been through this before. You forget that those who hold interpretations different from yours, also think they have the Spirit. It is entirely self-serving to assume that only those who agree with you have (or are following) the Spirit.

But, the fact is, the faithful have always known and believed that the Spirit works through the Church. That’s why Montanism was a heresy. It tried to bypass the Church, and posit an immediate pipeline between each individual and the throne of God, much as Benny Hinn does today, and as, apparently, you are doing, since you don’t have the visible Church, but only your own interpretation, your bosom-burning, and your appeal to the authority of your elders (whom you chose to be your ‘authority’ on the basis of their agreement with your interpretation of Scripture).

I know your position well though. Proper interpretation can only reliably occur within the context of the proper church ergo it is not to be appealed to here. However, Jesus did exactly that when dealing with the Pharisees/Sadducees even though they were in error.

By being outside the Church (i.e. not in full communion with the Church Christ founded), you are misinterpreting this passage of Scripture, as though it is teaching that Scripture is not to be understood in and with the Church. Jesus is God. You are not God. You can’t do everything Jesus did, and you shouldn’t try to do so. To infer from Jesus appealing to Scripture in dealing with the Pharisees that Christ didn’t establish an interpretive authority in His Church to which all Christians should be subject, is a misinterpretation of Scripture.

You think that the way you discover the church “Christ founded” is by apostolic succession in a physical sense ie: the laying on of hands by Roman bishops alone guaranteed proper doctrine in the Roman See would be preserved. I believe that the proper doctrine of the apostles is preserved in Scripture and written on the hearts of believers by the HS in every generation and that is best discerned corporately.

The position you are describing is a form of the gnostic heresy; it separates the Spirit from the material, and thus desacramentalizes the gospel. Who has the proper doctrine? Those who agree with your interpretation of Scripture. That’s precisely what every heresy in the history of the Church has thought. And yet, of all the heresies who all thought they had the truth, you alone and those who agree with you, are (in your mind) the only group who got it right. What a gloriously fortuitous exception, that all others who thought they had the truth were wrong, and yet you (and those who agree with you) got it right. How strange. Such a notion is entirely foreign to the Church fathers, as anything other than an abominable heresy. To follow Christ, you must follow those whom He sent. And to follow them, you must follow those whom they sent. Following the voice of Christ is not by following bosom-burning, but by following His appointed shepherds.

Carefully read through the epistles of St. Ignatius, out loud. You must think he was a heretic, for exhorting the people in all the churches to follow Christ by following and obeying their bishop. But which is more likely: that he, ordained by St. Peter, was a heretic, or that you are gravely mistaken?

That is the Church I believe Christ founded so I submit to that Church which bears real and secondary authority to Scripture.

Which really amounts to: You ‘submit’ to that group of persons which sufficiently agrees with your interpretation of Scripture. That’s why you are presently in a denomination that is only 12 years old, and has roughly 100 congregations, mostly in the US.

I believe it is not bound together in a physical organization though it is historic and visible.

If it were invisible, and yet had visible members, how would it be any different? (Answer: it wouldn’t. Hence, what you actually believe in is only an invisible Church.)

I do not believe “head office” was merely moved from Jerusalem to Rome but that the way God identified His people was transformed in the NC ie: not by allegiance to a physical organization.

Just like allegiance to a physical body would be abhorrent to docetists. They would never worship Christ’s physical body. Matter is evil and icky and corrupt. Ecclesial docetists treat Christ’s Church in the same way. They deny its matter and yet claim to have its spirit. But just as you cannot have the Son without eating and drinking His flesh and blood, so you cannot have the Church without being incorporated into her matter, i.e. without submitting to her hierarchy.

Corruption and sin can mar anything including Rome and Protestants.

Now who is the one limiting the power of God?

However, if I were in a smaller town where there was only one Reformed Protestant Church, I would attend that church and submit to its leadership.

Because it comes closest to your own interpretation of Scripture. Most every heretic in the history of the Church thought the same way.

I would not set about to start a new church.

Only because it is inconvenient. If the basis for their ‘authority’ is their agreement with your interpretation of Scripture, then there is no reason you couldn’t start a new denomination (e.g. Zoltan Church of America) that taught quite precisely your own interpretation of Scripture.

However, since I live in a larger centre, it is possible for me to choose among many and naturally I will choose one where I am more comfortable

Naturally. Fallen man naturally seeks what is comfortable, what itches his ears and conforms to his own interpretation. Submitting to those whose authority comes from Christ would not be natural at all, but supernatural.

I think [the CREC] is a visible branch of that “holy, catholic, apostolic Church”.

The problem with this claim is that the ‘branch’ is visible precisely because it is one institution. But you deny that the “holy, catholic apostolic Church” is one institution. And therefore, you make the “holy, catholic apostolic Church” invisible, having members that are visible. So your ecclesiology amounts to a visible branch of an invisible Church. And that’s incoherent.

If you were in schism from the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church, what would be different?

Just as Christ used the imagery of the lamp stand in Rev 2 and 3, one should be immediately reminded of that lamp stand meticulously described in Exodus and how it had a single base with seven branches. Those branches were stylized after tree branches. Christ is described as the main Branch in Scripture and we are all grafted into Him. Certain branches/lamp stands may be cut off the Scripture warns. The RCC effectively makes the base of that lamp stand Rome (connected to Christ) so that we have a visible vicar of Christ on this earth.

What is the difference between a branch and a schism?

To clarify, I think there is still a fundamental difference between the Solo who sees a church not conforming to his view of Scripture and then sets out to start a new church or separate from said church and one (Sola) who under certain circumstances, may appeal for reform within that Church appealing to other authorities rather than making the judgement simply himself.

Solo scriptura and sola scriptura are not persons, but positions. Of course there can be differences between a person who holds solo, and a person who holds sola. Our thesis wasn’t that there can be no difference between such persons. The thesis of our article is that there is no principled difference between solo scriptura and sola scriptura.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Michael Liccione April 8th, 2010 10:15 pm :
Zoltan (#830):

In my previous comment, I wrote:

“The Magisterium does not exist as a way to discern the truth instead of“wrestling with the Scriptures,” but as a way of ensuring, among other things, that the results of such wrestling are not mere opinions, but the true meaning of God’s word. Anybody can, and does, claim to be guided by the Spirit as they draw conclusions from the Scriptures; but many such claims contradict each other and cry out for a referee. Only the Magisterium has the authority to interpret the Scriptures “authentically,” i.e. in a manner that transcends what certain individuals or groups with no apostolic authority claim to be the fruit of the Spirit working in them.”

To that, you replied:

I realize this distinction. I have re-read my comments and unless I am missing something, I never used the term “instead of” anywhere, hence the dichotomy you accuse me of setting up was never made.

Really? Here’s the paragraph of yours I had been responding to (I have added the bold emphasis):

I only charge that you limit the power of God in claiming that He can only effectively lead His Church by an infallible Magisterium and not by the organic working of the HS in the body of believers as we wrestle with Scriptures together (ie: we are no left with personal opinions at the end of the day even though you charge I will only assent to truths that suit my opinions which is demonstrably false).

Given that you wrote that, I think I was quite fair of me to use the term ‘instead of’ to characterize your view. Your rejection of that characterization is either a merely verbal quibble or evidence that you have simply shifted your ground.

You also wrote:

Now, correct me if I am wrong but does not the RCC teach that the “Word of God” includes Tradition? And is not Tradition defined as “the Authoritative Voice of The Catholic Church which determines what is to be accepted and rejected as Tradition.” (The Handbook of the Catholic Faith, page 151) AND “The task of giving an authentic interpretation of the Word of God, whether in its written form or in the form of Tradition, has been entrusted to the living, teaching office of the [Catholic] Church alone. This means that the task of interpretion has been entrusted to the bishops in communion with the successor of Peter, the bishop of Rome.” Catholic Catechism # 85)

That mixes up two truths with a falsehood. The Catholic Church does indeed teach that the Word of God includes “sacred Tradition,” and that the task of “authentically interpreting the Word of God has been given to the Magisterium alone. But it is not true that “Tradition” is “defined” as “the Authoritative Voice of The Catholic Church which determines what is to be accepted and rejected as Tradition.” Indeed, it would make no sense to define as “Tradition” that “Voice” which “determines what is to be accepted and rejected as Tradition.” Tradition is reliably identified and interpreted by that voice, which is that of the Magisterium, but it is not defined as that voice. The Magisterium makes sense only in the context of the Tradition it has received.

Finally, you wrote:

…if the Church defines canon and valid tradition (and we know that certain doctrines develop over time so even precedence strictly speaking is not necessary), then how does this not become a law unto itself (except of course by faith in apostolic succession as a guarantee that the Holy Spirit would always ensure said authentic interpretation).

That ‘except’ clause is precisely what we hold. So in what negative sense is the Catholic Church “a law unto itself”?

Perhaps I can answer that question for you. I define the Protestant principle as the following: it is up to believers taken severally to assess the orthodoxy of whatever claims to be “the Church,” not vice-versa. Thus, to the Protestant mind, asserting the opposite of that principle is going to look like making the Church a law unto herself. But of course she is not. Her authority comes from God, not man. That’s why no man, and no Christian, may legitimately contradict her definitive teaching on matters de fide. That is the Catholic principle.

The choice, of course, is yours. You can either recognize the Catholic Church as “the” Church, the Body of Christ, who speaks with his authority as her Head; or you can decide for yourself, on the basis of your own interpretation of Scripture, what counts as the Church–thus reserving to yourself the right to determine who’s right or wrong on matters de fide. There is no third alternative.

Best,
Mike
Jason Stewart April 9th, 2010 10:32 am :
Could Bryan or Mike comment on Robert Letham’s discussion and critique of sola scriptura in his study of Eastern Orthodoxy titled Through Western Eyes? Is his position subject to the same criticisms made repeatedly in the original blog article and comments?

The text follows:

“It needs to be restated forcefully that the idea of ‘the right of private interpretation’ is not a Reformed principle. This alien notion supposes that any individual Christian has the right, privilege, and duty to interpret the Bible as he or she sees fit…The Bible was not given by God to private persons but to the church of Jesus Christ, his Son. …The error of equating the classic Protestant and Reformed doctrine of Scripture with the later idea of the right of private interpretation is committed repeatedly by the Orthodox in discussing Protestantism. Evidently they are best acquainted with fundamentalist and evangelical sects with their highly individualistic and non-ecclesial slant….They need to come to terms with the fact that the Reformed faith is an ecclesial faith, as the plethora of confessions published in the century and a half after the Reformation attest. There is simply no excuse for ignoring the strong stress the Reformers had on the Fathers.”

A little later he writes, “Allied to this is the false notion of the phrase sola scriptura held in many Reformed circles. This is often taken to mean that the Bible is to be the only source for theology. It is almost universally claimed that it is one of the central pillars of the Reformation. However, there is not evidence of such a slogan in the entire sixteenth century. It is probable that it did not put in an appearance until the eighteenth century at the earliest. Contrary to so much hot air, it is not a Reformation slogan. When it was coined it was held to affirm the Bible is the highest court of appeal in all matters of religious controversy, which is what the Reformers and their successors actually held. The slogan itself, still less the reality to which it was intended to point, never meant that the the Bible was the only source for theology.”
Michael Liccione April 9th, 2010 12:27 pm :
Jason:

I am not qualified to judge whether Letham is right or wrong as a matter of history. But supposing arguendo that he’s right, the central theological difficulty remains.

Consider the key statement: “[W]hen [sola scriptura] was coined it was held to affirm the Bible is the highest court of appeal in all matters of religious controversy, which is what the Reformers and their successors actually held.” That immediately raises a question: when it’s said that “the Bible is the highest court of appeal,” isn’t it really being said that some person’s or group’s interpretation of the Bible is the highest court of appeal? After all, Bible-thumping and bosom-burning settle nothing. A book, just by itself, only contains written forms of words; scholarship can often give us rationally defensible accounts of what the original human authors meant by those words, but it won’t ever suffice to tell us how God wants us to understand those words. So, when there is “religious controversy” among Christians, the dispute is usually not about what the Bible actually says, but about what its words imply for the theological points in contention. And that means that when people appeal to the Bible as a means of settling such controversies, what they’re really doing is invoking some interpretive authority. The question then becomes: What is that authority to be?

This is where “magisterial” and “episcopal” forms of Protestantism–i.e. those which claim to recognize some-or-other real ecclesial authority in doctrinal matters–have a prima facie advantage over free-church forms of Protestantism. But the difference is only prima facie; in the final analysis, it disappears. It is true, of course, that the best-known, most intellectually impressive Reformers–such as Luther, Zwingli, Melancthon, and Calvin–took almost as dim a view of “private interpretation” as the Catholic Church. But even in 1530, thirteen years after Luther had nailed his theses to the cathedral door, Casper Schwenckfeld noted that “the Papists damn the Lutherans; the Lutherans damn the Zwinglians; the Zwinglians damn the Anabaptists and the Anabaptists damn all others.” That should have told Protestants what many had come to see by the end of the 17th century,” namely, that “it was not possible on the basis of Scripture alone to build up a detailed orthodoxy commanding general assent. (A.N.S. Lane, “Scripture, Tradition and Church: An Historical Survey”, Vox Evangelica, Volume IX – 1975, pp. 44-45).” And that in turn should tell us that presenting the Bible as “the highest court of appeal” really comes down to choosing some authority for interpreting the Bible. In the case of free-church Protestantism, where the operative doctrinal principle is allegedly solo scriptura, it doesn’t take much to see that the authority in question is, ultimately, oneself. In magisterial Protestantism, seeing as much takes one more step. Thus, instead of interpreting the Bible on my own authority, I choose a church authority to do it for me. But of course, I choose that authority on the basis of my own interpretation of Scripture. And that means there is no difference, in principle, between solo and sola, even though magisterial Protestantism includes an extra layer lending an appearance of apostolic authority which , in reality, it lacks.

When educated, contemporary Protestants become Catholics, as often as not it is because they have come to see that. The question is not whether the Bible is the Word of God, or is inerrant in some sense, or even whether we can learn from the Bible by wrestling with it as individuals. Catholics and Protestants can agree on all that. The unavoidable question is by what authority we are to interpret it so that we end up affirming the specifics of divine revelation rather than just our own or others’ human opinions. My argument all along has been that only an ecclesial authority that is infallible under certain conditions enables us to do that.

Best,
Mike
Bryan Cross April 9th, 2010 4:20 pm :
Jason,

Mike’s answer is what I would say also. Letham’s position has the same problem that Mathison’s position has, described in this article. On the one hand, Letham says that the Bible was given to “the church of Jesus Christ,” not to individuals to interpret as they see fit. On the other hand, Letham follows the first Protestants who defined ‘church’ by interpreting the Bible as they saw fit, exercising “private judgment” in defying their bishops and thus separating from the Catholic Church to form their own ‘churches.’ In this way Letham’s own position is built on the very individual interpretation he claims to reject, and so is contradictory. Following a number of persons who by their own interpretation of Scripture have formed a group they call ‘church’ (or a ‘branch’ of the church) is no less interpreting the Bible as one sees fit than is starting a ‘church’ on the basis of interpreting the Bible as one sees fit. Likewise, choosing on the basis of one’s own interpretation of Scripture a confession written by a number of persons on the basis of their own interpretation of Scripture, is no less following one’s own interpretation of Scripture than not choosing any confession at all.

Nor is the fact that the early Protestant leaders quoted from the Fathers relevant here, because the fundamental issue is not how informed one’s own judgment is when interpreting Scripture, but who holds ultimate interpretive authority. Quoting the Fathers is fully compatible with being one’s own ultimate interpretive authority. But some Protestants confuse the issue by claiming that the essential problem is “private judgment” and then defining “private judgment” as interpretation that is uninformed by the views of other Christians, by the Church tradition, and by the Fathers. But “private judgment” (as so defined) is not the essential problem. The essential problem is making oneself one’s own ultimate interpretive authority. And that can be done just as much in a group (by associating with those who mostly share one’s own interpretation of Scripture) as it can be done acting alone.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Keith Mathison April 30th, 2010 7:24 am :
All,

My apologies for not getting my response to this article written within the time frame I had originally hoped. The unplanned extensive home repairs took longer than expected (may you never have a pipe break inside your walls). Then, in late January right after the repairs were complete, I was asked to fill in for a book contributor who was unable to complete his assigned chapter on Calvin’s doctrine of the sacraments. Since that lengthy chapter was the only thing holding up publication, they asked me if I could get it done by May 1. To do so, I had to spend every spare moment of the last three months working on it. It is now completed, so…I have now finally begun working on my response to this article. I do not know how long it will take to complete. You will be among the first to know.

Blessings,

Keith Mathison
Christopher Lake May 14th, 2010 4:33 pm :
Bryan,

I hope that you will see this comment/question, coming as it does after 835 comments! :-) I am currently meeting with a Reformed elder to discuss this very article. He has mentioned to me that there is not a quotation from Mathison’s book, in this article, in which he actually defines what he means by “Church.” From your knowledge, is there such a quote in the book? The elder is planning to buy the book, so we can read through it. At this point though, I have actually stopped attending the church and and finding it more and more difficult to *not* return to the Catholic Church.

In that vein, if you, or anyone else here, has continued to pray for me, I think that your prayers might have just been answered. I have found what seems to be an amazing orthodox Catholic parish fairly near to my house (thus, quite possibly, resolving the transportation issues, related to my disability). The priest’s homilies are posted online, and what I have heard so far is *great*. Very challenging– the best contemporary Catholic homilies that I have heard, other than Father Robert Barron! Of course, not that the homily is the center of Catholic worship– as we know, it’s the Eucharist. Still, great homilies are always good to find! Here’s the link: https://www.annunciationparishabq.org/frompastor.html

Please pray– I plan to make an appointment with the priest next week, and I am nervous… only because I have been away from the Church for so long– almost fifteen years.
Bryan Cross May 14th, 2010 4:47 pm :
Hello Christopher,

Good to hear from you. Thanks for your note, and your update. I have recommended Keith’s book to a number of friends, and each of them has said the same thing that you said about not finding in the book what he means by “Church.” One of my friends was really frustrated by this, because if we are supposed to submit to the Church and be guided by the Church in order to avoid solo scriptura, then we need to know how to find and identify the Church to which we are supposed to submit. And that question is left unanswered in the book.

I will pray for you, that God would guide you into His truth and peace.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Christopher Lake May 14th, 2010 5:14 pm :
Bryan,

Thank you for your reply, and even more, for your prayers. I will communicate your answer about Mathison’s book to the elder. He will probably still want to go through the book, but at least, he will have a better idea of what is not going to be found there.
Keith Mathison May 18th, 2010 9:57 am :
Bryan (re: #838),

You wrote:

Good to hear from you. Thanks for your note, and your update. I have recommended Keith’s book to a number of friends, and each of them has said the same thing that you said about not finding in the book what he means by “Church.” One of my friends was really frustrated by this, because if we are supposed to submit to the Church and be guided by the Church in order to avoid solo scriptura, then we need to know how to find and identify the Church to which we are supposed to submit. And that question is left unanswered in the book.

That’s not completely fair since I do address this issue on pages 319-36 of the book. As you yourself have said before, we have paradigmatically different ways of looking at this issue. But the fact that I don’t define or explain the church the way you do doesn’t mean I don’t define or explain it at all. The problem (IMO) is that starting from your RC presuppositions, my explanation makes no sense. I don’t start with those presuppositions, however. I don’t believe Christ’s promises to the church necessitate what you think they necessitate. Your understanding of what those promises allow and don’t allow precludes you from granting my understanding of the present state of the church as a real possibility. For you, it would mean that Christ broke his promises. I don’t think so. I think it simply means that Christians sinned. But the sins of God’s people have never stopped Him from fulfilling His promises, and they won’t do it this time either despite the mess that has been made of the visible church.

Keith
Bryan Cross May 18th, 2010 11:21 am :
Hello Keith (re: #840),

The people who said this to me are Reformed. Let me explain the source of their frustration, even from pages 319-336 of your book. The heart of your argument is on pages 319-321, because pages 322-336 don’t actually answer the question “Where is the Church?”. On pages 319-320 you seek to avoid the subjectivity of picking a ‘branch’ on the basis of one’s own interpretation Scripture, and to avoid the arbitrariness of picking one ‘branch’ as the true Church on the basis of [that ‘branch’s’] claim to be the one true Church. (Your whole argument on these two pages presupposes that the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church that Christ founded is divided into ‘branches, and that these ‘branches’ are indistinguishable from schisms from the Church. In other words, in your opinion, the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church that Christ founded is not essentially visibly one. It may or may not be visibly one; it is, in essence, invisible, and only accidentally visibly unified or divided. You state that quite clearly on pages 324-326.)

Then on pages 321-322 you argue that we can identify which of the fragments are fragments of “the true visible Church” “by their acceptance of the common testimony of the Holy Spirit in the rule of faith, especially as expressed in written form in the ecumenical creeds of Nicea and Chalcedon.” (p. 321) But this criterion just pushes back the question. How do you know that the ecumenical creeds of Nicea and Chalcedon are the “common testimony of the Holy Spirit”? The Arians rejected Nicea. The Nestorians rejected Ephesus. The monophysites rejected Chalcedon. When you say “common witness” you are already presupposing that the testimony of the Arians, Nestorians and Monophysites doesn’t count. Either you are doing so because their beliefs don’t match your own interpretation of Scripture (which leaves you with the subjectivism you seek to avoid on page 320), or you are being arbitrary (picking the testimony of the councils over those of the Arians, Nestorians, and Monophysites), or you are implicitly relying on sacramental magisterial authority possessed by the bishops at those ecumenical councils to give those councils authority. So either you don’t provide a way of getting out of the subjectivity vs. arbitrariness dilemma, or you are implicitly depending on Catholic authority (i.e. sacramental magisterial authority) to make your initial judgment about who belongs to the “common witness.”

You then say, “[T]he Holy Spirit has born a miraculously unanimous witness to a common fundamental creed throughout the same Christendom.” (p. 321) That statement, again, arbitrarily presupposes that the Arians, Nestorians and Monophysites are not part of Christendom. So, once again, either you haven’t avoided the subjectivity vs. arbitrariness dilemma, or you are implicitly depending on Catholic authority.

Next you say, “This means that ultimately the Holy Spirit is the criterion of truth.” (p. 321) The problem with that statement, however, is that it only pushes back the problem: Who has the Holy Spirit, and how do we know who has the Holy Spirit? (I have written about this here, when Rick Phillips made a similar kind of claim.)

You then say, “But His [i.e. the Holy Spirit’s] testimony is made manifest through the corporate witness He bears in the hearts and minds of Christ’s people.” (p. 321) Again, this is meaningful or helpful as a criterion for determining what is and is not the Church only if you already know who is and is not a member of “Christ’s people.” And so you have just argued in a circle: How do we know where is the Church? By following the Holy Spirit’s testimony. And how do we know what is the Holy Spirit’s testimony? By noting the “corporate witness in the hearts and minds of Christ’s people” [i.e the Church]. So your answer to the “How do we know where is the Church?” question presupposes that we already know the answer. Hence, the circle.

When you get a chance, I’d still like to hear your answer to this question.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Zoltan May 18th, 2010 12:50 pm :
Greetings Bryan,

I have received a temporary indulgence from my wife to resume some blogging. I will respond to your points gradually by section and hopefully get to Mike in the future but my time is still limited.

1) Actually, reality is what it is, whether you properly understand God and His will or not. Reality doesn’t change, just because a person doesn’t understand God. A person’s understanding of reality can be affected by his or her beliefs about God. But reality itself isn’t contingent on our getting our theological ducks in a row.

*** You are correct. What I meant by my statement was that our PERCEPTION of reality is always contingent on what we actually know of God. No one except God truly knows all reality. Hence. “we see in part and prophesy in part”. Therefore a person’s understanding of reality and particularly ultimate reality IS affected by his/her beliefs/knowledge about God. I have argued that what we are really discussing is God’s will for His Church. Given that, reason alone is inadequate and using reason alone to prove an apparent epistemic quandary as a foundation before we can look at divine revelation is equally flawed.

2) But when the very question is how to know God’s revealed truth, then the answer cannot be “to look to God’s revealed truth,” because … such an answer is, by definition, question-begging.

*** This would be question begging in your narrow definition of the question but is that how the question should be posed? Has not God revealed Himself in a way that is knowable in His Word? You acknowledged below that God is omnipotent. You have also acknowledged that God COULD have ordained the Church to function in a Protestant way. If that is the case, then it is possible for the Holy Spirit acting in the heart of the believer by faith to reveal Himself reliably to him/her through Scripture AND to lead His Church corporately into all truth in the Sola ecclesiology. So there is a problem with the way you frame the question it seems because Sola ecclesiology does maintain that we can find God’s revealed will by actually looking at God’s revealed Word (as bizarre as that sounds to you). Your position effectively confines God and dictates how the Church can KNOW Him and His will reliably in a way that objectifies Him rather than realizing that He is the ultimate Triune Being. RC’s maintain that we NEED a visible referee who has doctrinal infallibility to understand doctrine correctly ie: the Holy Spirit cannot move less visibly (even though He is invisible).

Now, since this is about Personhood and covenantal relationship, our knowledge of Him will always be contingent on revelation He has made about Himself. Jesus IS the truth ie: Incarnate, Living, Person. However, what you effectively maintain, is that we are in an epistemic quandary from the start because you approach this purely in abstract/natural law categories as though there is no Triune Person who IS the Truth we seek to know. This quandary of contingency is true of all ultimate knowledge for us as finite beings and one may even argue about knowledge in general so it is not peculiar to this issue. Therefore your argument in a sense proves too much. As finite beings, our knowledge is contingent. This is why we need the Holy Spirit working through the Scriptures in the life of the believer and the Church and why Jesus promised the Spirit to us so as to not “leave us orphans”. How He acts in revealing His will is really what is at stake here not epistemological quandaries viewed merely from a human perspective. With God, all things are possible.

Grace and Peace,

Zoltan
Bryan Cross May 18th, 2010 1:56 pm :
Zoltan, (re: #842)

Regarding your first paragraph, just because one’s understanding of reality is affected by one’s knowledge of God, it does not follow that the question of determining how to go about finding what is God’s supernaturally revealed truth cannot be done by reason alone. If one has to know God’s supernaturally revealed truth in order to find God’s supernaturally revealed truth, then God has placed us in an epistemological quandary along the lines of Meno’s Paradox. Those who already know God’s supernaturally revealed truth don’t need to look for it, but those who don’t yet know it have no way of determining how to find it. If reason is inadequate to determine how to compare or evaluate competing proposals about how to determine what is God’s supernaturally revealed truth and how to know God’s supernaturally revealed truth, then there is no point reasoning with me. But the fact that you are attempting to reason with me about this shows that you think reason is adequate in some respect. Otherwise, the only thing you could do to attempt to persuade me of your position is quote Bible verses. (Another name for that idea is ‘fundamentalism,’ and the essential error of fundamentalism is fideism, as I have argued here — see the comments as well). So, because you are reasoning with me about this, you do believe in the adequacy of reason to adjudicate between competing claims of divine revelation, and how to know that divine revelation. If you deny it, you would be [performatively] contradicting yourself.

In your second paragraph you note that I have “acknowledged that God COULD have ordained the Church to function in a Protestant way” but then you go on to say “Your position effectively confines God ….” If Christ has promised to work through certain means that He has established (i.e. sacraments, Apostles and their successors), then believing this is not “confining” God any more than believing that the Word became man “confines” God to a human body. So your claim that Catholic doctrine confines God begs the question, by presupposing that Christ has not ordained the sacraments and the Church as the means through which He ordinarily operates to feed His sheep, and give to them the grace and truth He Himself has revealed, a participation in His very Life.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Brad May 18th, 2010 3:38 pm :
Bryan –

I have not read this article, but I noticed your response to Keith in #841. You ask him how he knows who the church is. But whatever his answer is, my question remains, “How do catholics know the RCC to be the true Church?” And how is their answer any more credible than mine? For it is an INDIVIDUAL decision. Is it because it’s based on church history? Well that’s assuming that the Christians in history were faithful and correct, which seems like quite a leap of trust, especially considering the warnings to the 7 churches of Asia Minor in Revelation. Or is one’s decision for the RCC based on what Scripture says? But that would seem to prove Sola Scriptura.

Yet, we Protestants seem to have to trust in the guidance of the Spirit to point to his historic works, such as the Canon of Scripture. But then we are told how subjective this is. Well, I understand this and struggle with it. But if the Spirit works in the hearts of men to bring them to Christ (cf. 2 Cor 4, Jn 6), then it seems the Spirit is pleased to work in such a way that leads to the accusation of being subjective, to people possibly saying, “You believe in Christ just because your convinced in your heart? Well that sure is subjective. The Buddhist/Muslim/etc could say the same thing.” But even Peter recognizes that faith in Christ is an inward work that, although we haven’t seen Jesus, we believe, and that with great joy.(1 Pet 1:3-9) But the onlooker could say to Peter’s readers, “How subjective! You haven’t even seen Jesus, yet you believe. Well, I believe in ____, and you have no better reason than me!” To which we trust that if God so chooses he can invade that person’s heart with the Spirit, convince him of Jesus, and then leave that former atheist/moralist/Buddhist/etc with a newfound faith that is open to the attack of subjectivism that he previously heaped upon Christians.

So why do I bring this up? Because it seems that Catholics might be (are??) satisfied with the work of the Spirit in bringing a person to faith in Christ without physical evidence (such as Peter’s readers), but are dissatisfied with such a claim when it comes to Sola Scriptura and the leading of the Spirit in deciphering the meaning of the Biblical text.

Any thoughts?

Brad
Bryan Cross May 18th, 2010 6:43 pm :
Brad, (re: #844)

Back in the 1980s Emo Philips told the following joke:

Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, “Don’t do it!” He said, “Nobody loves me.” I said, “God loves you. Do you believe in God?”

He said, “Yes.” I said, “Are you a Christian or a Jew?” He said, “A Christian.” I said, “Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?” He said, “Protestant.” I said, “Me, too! What franchise?” He said, “Baptist.” I said, “Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?” He said, “Northern Baptist.” I said, “Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?”

He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist.” I said, “Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?” He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region.” I said, “Me, too!”

Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?” He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912.” I said, “Die, heretic!” And I pushed him over.

According to the World Christian Encyclopedia, there are somewhere over 30,000 Christian denominations in the world. The exact number is not important for my argument; the point is, there are very very many competing, incompatible Christian denominations and sects in the world. But, the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Truth. The Holy Spirit being the Spirit of truth entails, among other things, that the Spirit cannot contradict Himself. He cannot lead one person to believe x, and another person to believe ~x, because the Spirit is not a spirit of deception. So when all Protestants are claiming to be led by the Holy Spirit, and yet they are disagreeing with each other in so many doctrines that they must separate from (and remain separated from) each other in thousands of different denominations and sects, this shows that they cannot all be following the Spirit, because if they were all truly following the one Spirit, they would all be united in one body holding to one and the same faith.

This shows that the Montanistic way of thinking about how the Spirit speaks and moves can’t possibly be correct — Montanism completely disconnects the operation of the Spirit from the means Christ appointed by which the Spirit operates to feed and guide and preserve Christ’s Church. When the prophets are contradicting each other, we know that at least one (if not both) sides are not true prophets, because the Spirit does not contradict Himself. The fragmentation of Protestantism (which is characterized by its dependence on the Spirit to speak through Scripture apart from a magisterium) demonstrates the falsity of the claim that the Spirit guides people sufficiently through Scripture, such that they do not need a divinely appointed teaching authority. If the Spirit guided everyone who diligently studied the Bible, they would all agree, and would be members of the same body. But the fact of numerous Protestants sects separated into many contradictory positions entails that either all such sects (except one) are composed entirely of lazy, unintelligent, or illiterate persons, or that Christ has not in fact promised to guide the Church in this manner, but has established a magisterium by which and through which all His sheep are to hear His voice and remain in one flock, with one shepherd.

Of course the Spirit works in men’s hearts. But Christ has established ordinary means through which the Spirit works. He can (and does) also work in extraordinary ways. But the fact that the Spirit also works outside the ordinary established means is no reason to deny the ordinary divinely established means through which the Holy Spirit works. No Protestant figures out the [Protestant] canon of Scripture by way of bosom-burning. Regarding the canon of Scripture, Protestants all rely [implicitly] on the Catholic Church, because the books listed in the table of contents in the Protestant Bible that is first thrust into their hands (or which they find in a bookstore, or is read to them by their parents) were already determined to be canonical by the Catholic Church long before the separation of Protestants from the Catholic Church in the sixteenth century. If you don’t trust history, then you have nothing but bosom-burning to guide you with regard to the canon of Scripture. And a simple blind test would be sufficient to show that bosom-burning is not a reliable method of determining the canon.

Genuine faith is not irrational. Faith and reason are not at odds with each other. Faith builds on (though is not reducible to) reason. And that’s partly why fideism is wrong. We don’t believe in something just because we have feelings in our heart. If faith were just bosom-burning, then there would be no way of determining who is right: you or the Mormon or the Hindu. But the assent of faith is guided by motives of credibility that are grasped by reason. That is how we can decide between Mohammed and Christ, for example, because we can examine what they said and did, and determine from these whether or not there is good reason to believe them. It is also how we can decide between, say, St. Ignatius of Antioch, and Joseph Smith.

As for the question ‘How do Catholics know the Catholic Church to be the true Church?,’ the general answer is to start with the Church in the first century. One finds the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church in the first century from the time of the Apostles, and then traces it forward, decade by decade, to the present day. As one traces it forward through the centuries, one encounters schisms from the Church (e.g. Novatians, Donatists) — in each case, one notes the criterion by which the party in schism is the one in schism from the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church Christ founded, and not the other way around.

As for your question, “And how is their [i.e. Catholics’] answer any more credible than mine [i.e. my denomination]? ” in order to answer that question, I would need to know your denomination.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Zoltan May 18th, 2010 7:37 pm :
Bryan,

Do you think there are any limits to human reason in discovering divine truth? If so, then what are they and how do we know what those limits are? If not so, then please explain to me how reason alone deduced the doctrines of the Trinity and the Hypostatic nature of Christ for example?

I obviously believe there is validity in the use of reason because as you wrote, I would not bother discussing anything with you in that case. Stating that reason alone is inadequate in comprehending ultimate truth, does not mean that it is useless.

As for your second paragraph, we both agree that Christ uses means. That is not the question before us. The question is, how did He ordain those means to operate and how do we know that to be the case. This is the salient point. If you think that God could have ordained the means to operate in a Protestant fashion given His omnipotence but merely chose not to, then you are either saying that God could have chosen to act in an unreasonable way (which you think the Protestant position is) or that in fact, the Protestant way is not unreasonable in His mind but you merely perceive it to be so given your human limitations. So which is it?

Grace and Peace,

Zoltan
Bryan Cross May 18th, 2010 8:21 pm :
Zoltan, (re: #846)

Do you think there are any limits to human reason in discovering divine truth? If so, then what are they and how do we know what those limits are?

For the Catholic answer to this question, I recommend Fides et Ratio. The divine truths unknowable by unaided human reason are those that cannot be inferred about God from creation, without supernatural revelation. Those do include the truths about the Trinity (as such) and the Hypostatic union.

But we have to distinguish between (a) the supernatural truths of divine revelation, which unaided reason cannot reach on its own without them being supernaturally revealed to us, and (b) the truths about how to determine what is or is not supernatural revelation. These latter truths can be determined by reason. This is where the “motives of credibility” have a role. This is how we distinguish charlatans from true prophets and messengers of God.

You wrote:

The question is, how did He ordain those means to operate and how do we know that to be the case. This is the salient point. If you think that God could have ordained the means to operate in a Protestant fashion given His omnipotence but merely chose not to, then you are either saying that God could have chosen to act in an unreasonable way (which you think the Protestant position is) or that in fact, the Protestant way is not unreasonable in His mind but you merely perceive it to be so given your human limitations. So which is it?

I don’t think I said anything about the Protestant position being “unreasonable” per se. However, it would not be fitting, for two reasons. First, grace builds on nature; grace does not destroy or banish nature, because Marcionism is false. And every human society naturally needs visible leaders to preserve its unity as a society. Hence, it is fitting that the supernatural society which is the Church have a divinely established magisterial and governing authority.

Second, God always delights in using means. He does this, because He is not greedy, but gracious, and loves to lavish upon us creatures the gift of participating in His work. Human parents, for example, get to be procreators when they have children. The martyrs, for example, get to participate in the sufferings of Christ, as St. Paul talks about filling up that which is lacking in Christ’s sufferings (Col 1:24). And it is the same in the Church as a whole, which is an extension of the incarnate Christ, by His gracious gift of allowing us to participate in His human family animated by His divine Life. Christ could have determined that, from the day of Pentecost until His return in glory, His Holy Spirit would directly and immediately speak to every human heart, without a Church, without a Bible, and without sacraments. But, that’s not the way He did it. He chose to give His Apostles a share in His redeeming work, by appointing them to speak for Him, in His Name, binding and loosing with His authority. And He taught them to hand on this authority to successors, and to teach them to do the same, until He returns. That’s why Jesus’ command at the end of the gospel of St. Matthew does not indicate that He plans to return before the Apostles die. They can only make disciples of “all the nations,” “teaching them to observe all that I commanded you” if the “they” refers not only to the Apostles themselves, but also to their successors until Christ returns.

So, I’m not saying that the Protestant thesis is “unreasonable” — I’m saying that it is neither fitting nor true. Christ established men to speak for Him, to be His mouth, His hands and His feet, because He delights to share with us a participation in His glorious mission of redeeming the whole world. Further evidence of the Protestant thesis not being true is the perpetual fragmentation of those who try to live by it, as I explained in comment #845. If Christ had established it that the Spirit spoke directly from Scripture, without the need for a magisterium, then all reasonably intelligent persons who diligently study Scripture, would agree. But history demonstrates just the opposite. Hence, the thesis is demonstrably false.

I won’t be able to participate further for a while, for the reason of time constraints. May you have a blessed Pentecost.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Brad Moore May 19th, 2010 12:07 am :
Bryan –
You wrote:
“According to the World Christian Encyclopedia, there are somewhere over 30,000 Christian denominations in the world. The exact number is not important for my argument; the point is, there are very very many competing, incompatible Christian denominations and sects in the world.”

Let me borrow some words from Doug Wilson here concerning the “30,000”:

“While I agree that the divisions in Christendom are greatly to be lamented, I would also say that the situation is not as bad as it is frequently portrayed by Roman Catholic apologists (e.g. “25,000 Protestant denominations”). The actual figure is much lower-and most likely comes from David Barrett’s World Christian Encyclopedia. As of 1982, he identified seven major ecclesiastical blocs, and some 22,190 denominations fall under these seven blocs. The first bloc is Roman Catholic, which contains 223 denominations. The Orthodox give us 580. Non-White Indigenous gives us 10,956. Anglicans account for 240. Marginal Protestants (Mormons, JWs, etc.) add up to 1,490 denominations. (Non-Roman) Catholics give us 504 denominations. Coming in at #2 would be the Protestants with 8,196.

But wait, we’re not done. This Protestant figure counts (necessarily) independent Baptist jurisdictions, so that if a city has seven different independent Baptist churches, this counts as seven different denominations. The same skewed effect happens with the 194 Latin-rite denominations. Countering this optical illusion, Barrett goes on to break the seven major ecclesiastical blocs into what he calls “major ecclesiastical traditions,” where I think we come up with an accurate number. So that I don’t bore you, let me just focus on the division of three of the major blocs. The Orthodox are divided up into nineteen traditions, the Roman Catholics have sixteen, and the Protestants have twenty-one. If we throw the Anglicans in, they account for another six.” (https://www.dougwils.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1029%3APrivate-Judgment&catid=70%3Aroman-or-catholic&Itemid=1)

You also state:
“But, the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Truth. The Holy Spirit being the Spirit of truth entails, among other things, that the Spirit cannot contradict Himself. He cannot lead one person to believe x, and another person to believe ~x, because the Spirit is not a spirit of deception.”

Should you not apply the same standard to the Catholic Church? Does not one Catholic, concerning God’s revelation, believe in “partim-partim” and the other in “material sufficiency”? Are there not many parts of Scripture where the RCC hasn’t made dogmatic interpretations, therefore leaving it up to individuals to interpret for themselves, thus resulting in (I would assume) many opposing views of the same Scripture texts?

You also state that, “No Protestant figures out the [Protestant] canon of Scripture by way of bosom-burning. Regarding the canon of Scripture, Protestants all rely [implicitly] on the Catholic Church, because the books listed in the table of contents in the Protestant Bible that is first thrust into their hands (or which they find in a bookstore, or is read to them by their parents) were already determined to be canonical by the Catholic Church long before the separation of Protestants from the Catholic Church in the sixteenth century. If you don’t trust history, then you have nothing but bosom-burning to guide you with regard to the canon of Scripture. And a simple blind test would be sufficient to show that bosom-burning is not a reliable method of determining the canon.”

Protestants don’t rely on the RCC. We rely on the Spirit exercising his purpose-accomplishing work in giving God’s words (cf, “My word will not return to me void, but it will accomplish the purpose I have for it.”) through the Church.

And as a professor at Wheaton said to me in an email, the doctrine of the inward testimony of the Spirit (“bosom burning” as you put it) was never meant to justify the canonical list of books but rather to explain how people come to the conviction that the Canon is more than a merely humanly authored text. So your “blind test” experiment does not apply to what Protestants claim by the inward testimony of the Spirit.

You also stated that, “We don’t believe in something just because we have feelings in our heart. If faith were just bosom-burning, then there would be no way of determining who is right: you or the Mormon or the Hindu. But the assent of faith is guided by motives of credibility that are grasped by reason. That is how we can decide between Mohammed and Christ, for example, because we can examine what they said and did, and determine from these whether or not there is good reason to believe them.”

Do you really believe that is why someone believes in Jesus and not in Hinduism? If that’s the case, every believer must compare Jesus with every other religion out there; so then they can compare and choose whether Jesus’ story is the more credible one. That seems near impossible, especially for the tribe in the jungle who might have no texts of other religions, besides Christianity, in their tongue. Thus, 2 Corinthians 4 (“shined the light of the gospel into our hearts”) and 1 Peter 1 are so crucial to understanding why we believe in Christ. It is God’s work. And it wreaks of subjectivism; but God must be okay with that.
Neal Judisch May 19th, 2010 12:51 am :
Dear Keith,

Thanks again for stopping by to comment. Wouldn’t you know it, I’ve been dealing with plumbing disasters too! Joys of home-ownership, I guess.

I noticed that in your most recent response to Bryan you objected to his remarks on the grounds that he has different presuppositions concerning salient features of “the Church,” so that the worries he’s expressed don’t properly engage with a Reformed orientation, and can’t in general have much traction with those who don’t already share his theological or ecclesial presuppositions.

This is understandable. My hope, however, is that this maneuver is not overused in subsequent discussion.

I think your book and your other writings (on this and additional topics) are admirably clear and well argued. (I couldn’t say how many times I’ve recommended your books on dispensationalism and postmillennialism to others back in my Reformed days; they still sit on my shelf, dog-eared and amply marked-up. Great books!) We’ve centered upon your presentation of sola scriptura partly because it displays these laudable features, and partly because of the stature that The Shape of Sola Scriptura has attained within Reformed communities. And while I recognize that this book is not a polemical work, but is written largely for in-house consumption, it nevertheless contains some important and influential arguments (i) against what you see as the twin errors of solo scriptura on the one hand, and Scripture-Tradition-Magisterium on the other, and (ii) for the unique via media between these twin errors that (according to you) the Reformed tradition provides.

These arguments, so far as I can see, are perfectly general, in the following sense: they don’t require prior adoption of a particular set of “presuppositions” in order to make them work, if they work at all. Naturally, certain assumptions will seem more or less plausible to a person depending upon the “presuppositional” scheme within which he operates. And psychological attraction or resistance can be expected at any level. But the task of evaluating the structure of arguments, and performing honest critique from within, are things that still remain to some degree possible irrespective of one’s presuppositional standpoint.

So: everyone here is (I think) willing to admit that “presuppositions” shape our evaluation of the evidence, and that in some cases our presuppositions will simply trump anything that may look like counter-evidence. It doesn’t follow, however, that we cannot see it when like cases aren’t treated alike, or when certain moves are made ad hoc, regardless of the presuppositions we’ve (sub-intentionally?) adopted.

So for instance, if you want to argue that solo-individualists and Catholics are both guilty of making something distinct from Scripture authoritative “over” the Scriptures themselves, and that this inevitably leads to (constitutes? is motivated by?) godless rebellion, illicit presumptions of autonomy, relativism about truth, and so forth, then it would be good to explain to Reformed Christians how they are able to escape a like fate, since they too must look to some interpretive standard distinct from the Bible so as rightly to understand what it says. But given your argumentation, if the “regula fidei” and the “true bishops” of the “real Church” occupy this crucial interpretive role – as opposed to the individual or the (false?) bishops of the Catholic Church – then it isn’t clear why the “true bishops” and the “regula fidei” aren’t also rebellious, autonomous, illicit authorities who stand in judgment “over” the Bible, for precisely identical reasons. All it takes for the Baptist to be autonomous and rebellious etc., is that he lets himself be the ultimate interpreter, even though he sees himself as subservient to Scripture; all it takes for the Catholic is that he lets the Catholic Church ultimately interpret, even though the Catholic Church sees itself as subservient to Scripture. The Reformed guy lets the WCF/3 Forms of Unity (let’s say) and his favorite elders and theologians occupy this authoritative interpretive role, and he reads the Bible in accordance with what they say. Okay. But you want to say that the Reformed person has some uniquely good reason to affirm that his chosen interpreters are non-autonomous and non-rebellious and appropriately subservient to Scripture, in contrast to the individualist Baptist and that great big collective Individualist called the Magisterium (“of the moment”). What is this uniquely good reason, exactly? It cannot be that there’s a difference in functional role. Nor can it have anything to do with “infallibility,” since the line of argument against Catholicism is identical to the line of argument against solo-individualists, who don’t consider themselves “infallible” or autonomous, de facto or de jure. So how, exactly, do “Reformed bishops” not end up autonomously and rebelliously subverting the Bible, in just the same way that Baptist individualists and the Catholic Church are supposed to do so? What’s the argument for the crucial difference, given that there is and must be an interpretive intermediary – every one of which claims to be subservient to the Bible – in each case, and given that “final interpretive authority” leads directly to ‘autonomy’ and ‘rebellion’ if you’re a Baptist or a Catholic?

This is connected organically with the point of dispute between you and Bryan. You allege that Bryan’s just thinking like a Catholic when he insists that the Church should be identified in the way he suggests. Okay, maybe so. But is there some reason he ought to be thinking like a Reformed guy instead? If you’re right that appeals to Scripture are inevitably appeals to some particular interpretation of it, and if the two of you are seeking some objective touchstone by which interpretive disagreements might be authoritatively resolved, how does it advance your case to point out that Bryan’s touchstone isn’t identical to the one you’ve selected? The most dialectically powerful argument in your book relies upon the idea that there are independent or second-order reasons to think your favored touchstone is the right one, since the most influential rivals to it (solo-individualism and Catholicism) both lead to the same philosophically and theologically and Biblically absurd consequences. I agree that solo scriptura is a bad idea, and that it’s issued in really bad consequences. But I can’t find an argument in your book that shows how (i) they both lead to/exemplify the same errors, or (ii) if they do both lead to/exemplify the same errors, the “Reformed position” does not lead to those same errors.

Thanks again for the opportunity to interact. It speaks very well of you that you’d condescend to show up here – I know that you’re busy enough with other things.

Neal

(PS: I talked to you on the phone maybe 12 years ago. I was ordering some books from Ligonier, and you were the one who took my call. I was shocked! I was reading your stuff way back then, and I hadn’t met many celebrities at that time. It’s weird and cool that we’re “speaking” again.)
Bryan Cross May 19th, 2010 1:50 am :
Brad, (re: #848)

I didn’t intend to quibble over the present number of Protestant denominations. If you think I wanted to do that, then you missed my point. My point, which is indisputable so far as I can tell, was simply that there are a great many Protestant denominations and sects, holding contrary or incompatible doctrinal beliefs such that they cannot be joined in one body with one faith. Yet there is only one Catholic Church, consisting of persons in full communion with the successor of St. Peter, and numbering over 1.1 billion persons And this Catholic Church has definitively declared one faith, as seen in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

But the disagreement among Protestants, to the point of fragmentation into many separate denominations (44 Reformed denomination just in the US), incapable of reconciling during five hundred years of the Protestant experiment, undermines the hypothesis that there is no need for a divinely established magisterium. This evidence shows that just being ‘led by the Spirit as one studies the Bible,’ apart from a divinely established magisterium, is insufficient to bring about or maintain Church unity and doctrinal unity. Being “led by the Spirit as one studies the Bible” is precisely how all these Protestant denominations and sects arose over the past five hundred years, and the fragmentation shows no signs of reversing, as though Bible scholars might find an exegetical Rosetta stone that brings all the Protestant denominations back into unity. The problem is a structural problem. This same structural deficiency is why we don’t elect a book to be President of the USA. If we tried to treat a book as our President, there would soon be many different ‘countries’ each claiming the same ‘President,’ but having incompatible laws and forbidding commerce with each other, etc. In this respect Protestantism is like Babel all over again, but tragically within Christianity, whereas the Church Christ founded is to be the anti-Babel in which all the nations of the world are to be supernaturally re-united.

You wrote:

Should you not apply the same standard to the Catholic Church? Does not one Catholic, concerning God’s revelation, believe in “partim-partim” and the other in “material sufficiency”? Are there not many parts of Scripture where the RCC hasn’t made dogmatic interpretations, therefore leaving it up to individuals to interpret for themselves, thus resulting in (I would assume) many opposing views of the same Scripture texts?

You’re thinking in Protestant terms about how the Spirit moves. For Catholics, the Spirit operates through the magisterium in opening the Scriptures. There is no claim that the Spirit is leading every individual Catholic in his or her own private interpretations of Scripture. Therefore, if individual Catholics hold different opinions about interpretations of Scripture that have not been determined by the magisterium, this isn’t a problem. It doesn’t imply that the Spirit is contradicting Himself.

You said:

Protestants don’t rely on the RCC. We rely on the Spirit exercising his purpose-accomplishing work in giving God’s words (cf, “My word will not return to me void, but it will accomplish the purpose I have for it.”) through the Church.

I think we’re agreed that Luther didn’t just come up with his canon out of the blue. He relied on the canon that was already in place in the Catholic Church, removing some OT books from it. In that respect, the Protestant determination of the canon heavily depends on the Catholic Church, and that should be uncontroversial.

You wrote:

And as a professor at Wheaton said to me in an email, the doctrine of the inward testimony of the Spirit (“bosom burning” as you put it) was never meant to justify the canonical list of books but rather to explain how people come to the conviction that the Canon is more than a merely humanly authored text. So your “blind test” experiment does not apply to what Protestants claim by the inward testimony of the Spirit.

I understand. My point was about the role of the Church and Apostolic Tradition in determining which books belong to the canon of Scripture. The blind test shows that bosom-burning would be inadequate for picking out the canon. And so without a bosom-burning way of determining the canon, Protestantism implicitly relies on the Catholic Church, for its determination of the canon of Scripture.

You wrote:

Do you really believe that is why someone believes in Jesus and not in Hinduism? If that’s the case, every believer must compare Jesus with every other religion out there; so then they can compare and choose whether Jesus’ story is the more credible one. That seems near impossible, especially for the tribe in the jungle who might have no texts of other religions, besides Christianity, in their tongue. Thus, 2 Corinthians 4 (“shined the light of the gospel into our hearts”) and 1 Peter 1 are so crucial to understanding why we believe in Christ. It is God’s work. And it wreaks of subjectivism; but God must be okay with that.

It is true that to determine that A is more credible than B, one must evaluate the respective credibilities of A and B. But, to determine that A is credible, one need not evaluate the credibilities of B, C, D, etc. Hence, it does not follow that in order to believe in Jesus and not Hinduism, one must compare Christianity and Hinduism. So, you seem to be missing my point. My point was that for those who are faced with the choice between religions or religious claims, there is a way to adjudicate between them on the basis of motives of credibility. One ought not rely on an arbitrary choice or bosom-burning. But that doesn’t imply anything about persons who are raised to believe in Christ, and have never compared the claims of Christianity to any other religion. Their faith can be (and is) reasonable, given what they know. But because of the motives of credibility, they don’t have to turn to bosom-burning when faced with challenges from Mormonism, Hinduism, Islam, etc.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Zoltan May 19th, 2010 2:45 am :
Bryan,

So we have established that there are truths which are dependent on supernatural revelation. This then begs the question of how you know which truths are dependent on the supernatural, and which are not? (Thanks for the reference BTW. It is over 60 pages long and prodigious stuff. I hope I will have time to read it some day but given my time constraints it is not practical for this discussion. Reminds me of Veritatis Splendor.)

Your strict dichotomy here raises many more questions about category B. In # 505 and in the more recent # 845, you use such terms as “order” and “truth” in describing the Holy Spirit. Now of course I agree with you but my question is how do you know those attributes about God? I do not think you can base that on mere reason because then you are using reason to prove that God is a God of reason. If you point to purported “evidence” like nature, I would have to point out that such attributes of creation are not self-evident or discernible with reason as a starting point either. There are perhaps as many examples of apparent chaos in nature as there are examples of order which is why so many pagan religions were dualistic or fatalistic and they so often viewed their deities as fickle. The first clock in the world was apparently invented in ancient China but it died with its inventor because in their culture, keeping time was meaningless since history was not seen as linear or “going” anywhere. Hence in the Scriptures, those without divine revelation are described as groping in the dark or not knowing their right hand from their left (cf: Job 12: 24 – 25, Jonah 4:11). Pagans’ are therefore left with Meno’s paradox I am afraid unless God brings revelation. As such, I think you assume much about the body of truth which can be grasped by mere “natural” reason.

Now in your fourth paragraph there is much agreement. However, the question of the perpetuation of the apostolic office is a key area of disagreement. I know you think I cannot comprehend Scripture adequately but a prima facie look at Acts 1:21-26 seems to indicate that the criteria of apostleship would not apply to any subsequent magisterium. Paul could be viewed as somewhat of an exception but exceptions do not prove the rule and even Paul confessed that his apostleship was unique (1 Cor 15:7-9) but yet ratified by Christ’s appearing to him. My point here, is that once again, the reason you give for a perpetual apostolic office are still necessitating upon God in the sense that this office brings “order”. However, it seems you have placed a premium on order as the highest virtue of the work of the Spirit. Repeatedly you criticize the Protestant position by pointing to the rotten fruit of division. I agree that it is rotten and it occurs largely because of sin. But what of the sins in the RCC? Has she ever erred?

Your last paragraph then raises some further questions. How is it possible for something to be reasonable and not true at the same time? Would this not undermine your premise that reason is able to discern truth? Are you not bringing many presuppositions to your analysis such as what “order” looks like and assuming your definition of it is adequate?

You wrote: “if Christ had established it that the Spirit spoke directly from Scripture, without the need for a magisterium, then all reasonably intelligent persons who diligently study Scripture, would agree.” This raises fundamental questions with respect to the roles of sin and free will in our lives. If God did this, it would demonstrate much more including immediate sanctification of all believers. There would seem to be no need for faith, as we would all have perfect comprehension of God and no sinful impulse of being schismatic.

Grace and Peace. A blessed Pentecost to you as well.

Zoltan
Keith Mathison May 19th, 2010 8:43 am :
Neal (re #849)

I truly am very sorry to hear you are dealing with plumbing problems.

You wrote:

Thanks again for the opportunity to interact. It speaks very well of you that you’d condescend to show up here – I know that you’re busy enough with other things.

I really hope you guys don’t think that I think you or this discussion is beneath me. I don’t consider myself to be condescending to comment here. Frankly, I enjoy the discussion. I just wish we could be having an uninterrupted face to face discussion at an Irish pub with noisy rugby fans in the background rather than in comment boxes scattered over multiple websites. I’m not able to keep up with them very well when they have dozens of participants adding hundreds of comments. I lose track of what’s been said and asked.
Neal Judisch May 19th, 2010 9:11 am :
Keith,

Man, I hear you; I’m all for the Irish (or just about any other) pub. And I wish I had more time for this as well. I am and have been too busy with my other work to really engage on this site in the way that I used to, for reasons not unlike your own. Maybe one day we’ll get the chance to actually talk, pub style. Meantime, all the best.

Neal
Tom Riello May 19th, 2010 9:25 am :
“I just wish we could be having an uninterrupted face to face discussion at an Irish pub with noisy rugby fans in the background rather than in comment boxes scattered over multiple websites.”

Amen. And Tim Troutman can pick up the tab!!!
wilkins May 19th, 2010 9:28 am :
…would like, humbly, to second that.
Bryan Cross May 19th, 2010 9:34 am :
Zoltan, (re: #851)

… but my question is how do you know those attributes about God?

In addition to Fides et Ratio, I recommend reading St. Augustine’s Confessions, Boethius’s Consolations of Philosophy, St. Anselm’s Proslogion, questions 1-26 of the first part of St. Thomas’s Summa Theologica and the section of Vatican I on the relation of faith and reason.

a prima facie look at Acts 1:21-26 seems to indicate that the criteria of apostleship would not apply to any subsequent magisterium.

With regard to the apostolic office, we have to make an important distinction. To be an Apostle, one had to have seen the Lord. This gave the Apostles the unique authority that comes from being an eyewitness of the incarnate Christ. But, being an eyewitness was not sufficient to be an Apostle. One also had to be sent by Christ. This conferred a different kind of authority from the authority of an eyewitness. The two kinds of authority do not compete; they are fully compatible, and were both present in the first Apostles. This second kind of authority we call “Holy Orders.” (See Tim Troutman’s most recent article.) Eyewitness authority could only endure for seventy years or so after the resurrection of Christ, and in that sense the apostolic office came to an end, and with it the possibility of further revelation. But, Holy Orders is not limited to eyewitnesses, because the authorization of commission and stewardship could be handed down by the Apostles, and it endures to this day by a continuous succession from the Apostles. These successors of the Apostles are not Apostles in the eyewitness sense, but possess the apostolic authority the Apostles themselves received from Christ through Holy Orders, i.e. the divine authorization to teach and govern the Church in Christ’s name, as His representatives, binding and loosing with His authority.

Repeatedly you criticize the Protestant position by pointing to the rotten fruit of division. I agree that it is rotten and it occurs largely because of sin. But what of the sins in the RCC? Has she ever erred?

Sins by members of the Church Christ founded never justify schism from the Church Christ founded. See St. Augustine’s On Baptism: To the Donatists.

Your last paragraph then raises some further questions. How is it possible for something to be reasonable and not true at the same time?

For example, God was free not to create. It would not have been unreasonable (or contrary to His reason) not to create. And yet it is not true that He did not create.

You wrote: “if Christ had established it that the Spirit spoke directly from Scripture, without the need for a magisterium, then all reasonably intelligent persons who diligently study Scripture, would agree.” This raises fundamental questions with respect to the roles of sin and free will in our lives. If God did this, it would demonstrate much more including immediate sanctification of all believers. There would seem to be no need for faith, as we would all have perfect comprehension of God and no sinful impulse of being schismatic.

This just extends the lemma for the Protestant: All those persons who don’t share his interpretation of Scripture must be either illiterate, stupid or blinded by their own sin. Only those who are literate, intelligent, and sanctified, share his interpretation of Scripture. I recommend going to an ecumenical Bible study (or an ETS meeting), and reading the Church Fathers. In both cases you will meet persons who are neither illiterate, stupid, or more deeply blinded by their own sin than you are, and yet who hold an interpretation of Scripture different from yours.

As I mentioned last night, I don’t have time to continue the discussion at the present. But thanks for your comments and questions.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Brad May 19th, 2010 9:37 am :
Bryan –

You write: “There is no claim that the Spirit is leading every individual Catholic in his or her own private interpretations of Scripture. Therefore, if individual Catholics hold different opinions about interpretations of Scripture that have not been determined by the magisterium, this isn’t a problem. It doesn’t imply that the Spirit is contradicting Himself.”

Wow. Then individual Scripture reading for the Catholic seems pretty pointless, right? For the Magisterium have not dogmatically interpreted MOST of the Bible, correct?

And as subjective as it seems, “bosom burning” seems pretty biblical to me – at least in regards to coming to faith in Christ. Of course by “bosom burning” I mean the light shed by God in one’s heart in regards to the gospel of Jesus, not just the feelings of whomever about whatever religion.

I’ll have to do more thinking about your credibility claims.

Thanks,

Brad
Bryan Cross May 19th, 2010 10:11 am :
Brad (re: #857)

Just because there is no guarantee that our private individual Scripture study is being led directly and immediately by the Holy Spirit does not mean that such study is pointless. Rather, by our individual study of Scripture we are more capable of participating in the Spirit’s leading of the whole Church in her ever deepening understanding of the deposit of faith. The Spirit guides the whole Church, and each member insofar as each member is in union with the whole Church. This is not an individualistic way of conceiving of the Spirit’s guidance. Nor is it a Montanistic [i.e. entirely unmediated] way of conceiving of the Spirit’s guidance. But that does not mean that for individuals there is no guidance of the Spirit; rather, it means that the individual is guided by the Spirit insofar as he [i.e. the individual] is in union with the Church.

Of course the light shed by God in our heart is supernatural. I agree with you on that point. But faith in Christ is not irrational (i.e. contrary to reason). We don’t have to violate any laws of logic to become a Christian, or to put faith in Christ. The gift of faith allows us to see something beyond what we, by our own natural power of reason, could see. But that gift of faith is not contrary to reason. By reason and the motives of credibility we can show why Muhammad was not a true prophet, and why Hinduism is not the true religion, etc. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be able to explain to members of other religions how their positions are false and ours are true; we would just have to pray that they received the gift of faith. Grace builds on nature. And religion is first at the level of nature (see, Summa Theologica II-II Q.81, which I wrote about briefly here), and then, by supernatural revelation, it is at the level of grace. But the differences between Christians on the one hand, and other religions on the other hand, are first and fundamentally at the level of nature, i.e. what can be known by reason, because those differences underlie why the other religions do not accept what is supernaturally revealed in Christianity. This is why and how the philosopher (as philosopher) can show the false religions to be false religions, and show that the motives of credibility point to Christ being divinely approved, and to the Catholic Church being the Church that He founded.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Randy May 19th, 2010 10:24 am :
Brad,

Catholics don’t limit their interaction with tradition to just dogma. We are to learn to think with the mind of the church. So even if the church has not infallibly declared a passage of scripture means X we should be quite uncomfortable accepting an interpretation that lacks support in tradition. We are permitted to hold such a view but if we do that frequently we should see it as a sign that our minds have not been renewed by the spirit. Catholic tradition is a source of truth. The infallible dogmas are the minimum we are permitted to accept from that source. But there is no reason to keep to the minimum. Once we trust that source of truth we should drink as much as we can from it.

The same goes with scripture. Remember we don’t put tradition and scripture in conflict. They shed light on each other and both deepen our understanding of God. So reading scripture is not pointless. Sola Tradition is not the proper response to Sola Scriptura. We need to love the scriptures every bit as much as any protestant.
Brad May 19th, 2010 1:43 pm :
Randy –

I think I understand at least some of what you are saying. Yet, how can you speak of the “mind of the Church” when there is no one mind of the Catholic Church. That is, your tradition is full of differences in interpretations of Scripture. So to say as you do that “Catholic tradition is a source of truth” begs the question, What tradition? If dogmatic tradition, then okay – one might be able to put up a defense that that tradition is believed by the Church as a whole (yet, my individual reading of Scripture concern still stands). But if by tradition you mean the Catholic Church’s history of Scriptural interpretations, then your saying that “Catholic tradition is a source of truth” proves false. For truth cannot contradict itself, which, I would assume, differing non-dogmatic interpretations have.
Brad May 19th, 2010 1:47 pm :
Note: I am assuming this statement of mine is true: “That is, your tradition is full of differences in interpretations of Scripture.” If it is not, please let me know.
Tim A. Troutman May 19th, 2010 1:52 pm :
Brad,

Person A: “The US allows abortion.”

Person B: “How can you speak of the US as a single entity when there are so many competing opinions?”

Person A: “The mind of the US has declared it to be so.”

Person B: “That just begs the question. What is the ‘mind of the US?’ We can’t point to a single ‘mind of the US’ because there are so many competing opinions.”

Brad – What is the mistake that Person B is making?
Brad May 19th, 2010 2:18 pm :
Tim –

Person B seems to be mistaking the officially declared “mind of the US” which exists despite any dissent from the individuals which constitute it.

This officially declared “mind of the US” is what I would equate with the dogmatic teachings of the RCC. Despite any possible dissent of its individual members concerning, say, the perpetual virginity of Mary, the RCC as a whole dogmatically holds to this. I understand that. (Although, let me add what a facade of unity this is. For although the “mind of the US” allows abortions, I do not support them in this. And am therefore in this case not unified with them. Their may be a overarching facade of unity, and very much a working sense of unity as we are part of the same country, but nonetheless there exist divisions within the overarching whole. Welcome to Protestantism (and, dare I say, Catholicism?).)

Thus, you seem to be thinking that I am talking about an individual Catholic holding to a different interpretation of a Biblical text that has already been interpreted officially by the Magisterium or the Pope. I am not. I am talking about the texts of Scripture that have not been dogmatically interpreted by either (I am assuming such texts exist).

Thus, your illustrative dialogue should read AS PRIOR TO ROE VS WADE:

Person A: “The US allows abortion.”

Person B: “How can you speak of the US as a single entity when there are so many competing opinions?”

Person A: “The mind of the US has declared it to be so.”

Person B: “That just begs the question. What is the ‘mind of the US?’ We can’t point to a single ‘mind of the US’ because there are so many competing opinions.”
Michael Liccione May 19th, 2010 2:49 pm :
Neal, Bryan, and Keith:

Since I have not read Keith Mathison’s book, I have refrained from commenting on the book itself, as distinct from the post criticizing it. And until I’ve read the book, I will continue that policy. Nevertheless, I am intrigued by Neal’s challenge to Keith and believe I can usefully comment on it in a way that does not depend on a reading of Keith’s book.

Addressing Keith, Neal writes:

But you want to say that the Reformed person has some uniquely good reason to affirm that his chosen interpreters are non-autonomous and non-rebellious and appropriately subservient to Scripture, in contrast to the individualist Baptist and that great big collective Individualist called the Magisterium (“of the moment”). What is this uniquely good reason, exactly? It cannot be that there’s a difference in functional role. Nor can it have anything to do with “infallibility,” since the line of argument against Catholicism is identical to the line of argument against solo-individualists, who don’t consider themselves “infallible” or autonomous, de facto or de jure. So how, exactly, do “Reformed bishops” not end up autonomously and rebelliously subverting the Bible, in just the same way that Baptist individualists and the Catholic Church are supposed to do so? What’s the argument for the crucial difference, given that there is and must be an interpretive intermediary – every one of which claims to be subservient to the Bible – in each case, and given that “final interpretive authority” leads directly to ‘autonomy’ and ‘rebellion’ if you’re a Baptist or a Catholic?

Now I think the “Reformed guy” does have an answer to that challenge. I’d be interested to see whether Keith agrees. How good the answer would be is of course another matter.

As I see it, the Reformed guy could defend, say, the “WCF/3 Forms of Unity” as the uniquely correct hermeneutic of Scripture by saying either that it is the only rationally plausible hermeneutic or that it is demonstrably more rationally plausible than the alternatives. By ‘rationally plausible’ here, I mean ‘comprehensive and internally consistent’ as an interpretation of what Protestants recognize as the canon of Scripture. Now I don’t think the Reformed, in general, want to say that such a hermeneutic is the only rationally plausible one. If that’s what they held, at least in general, then they would be committed to holding that literate people who disagree are either fools or knaves—which I don’t think most of them, including Keith, are prepared to hold, for the good reason that there is no good, independent reason to believe it. What would itself be far more rationally plausible to hold is that, as a hermeneutic of Scripture, the WCF/3 FU is more rationally plausible than its competitors.

If that’s their defense, the debate then becomes one about how the criteria of comprehensiveness and internal consistency are properly applied. For the non-Reformed—be they Catholic, Protestant, or Orthodox—will of course disagree that the WCF/3 FU comes out best when said criteria are properly applied. And they have their own, well-rehearsed arguments for that. E.g., I chose to be Catholic because I came to see the distinctively Catholic way of interpreting all the relevant data from “the sources” as the most comprehensive and internally consistent. Now I shall not delve into the details of such a debate here. For one thing, this is just a comment on a comment on a post. But more important, the details are themselves of secondary importance. The question of primary importance is what sort of assent to divinely revealed truth could be facilitated by the outcome of such a debate.

Being Protestant, the Reformed guy is not going to claim that the outcome of such a debate yields any judgments that are protected by the Holy Spirit from error, either for individuals or for something called “the Church” as a whole. Hence, the question which hermeneutic of Scripture is the most rationally plausible must, on his showing, remain a matter of opinion, in the sense that it’s answerable only by giving opinions. Precisely here is where what I see as the best argument for the Catholic approach comes to the fore, and works equally well against any form of Protestantism.

If the question which overall hermeneutic of Scripture is the most rationally plausible, and thus best for doctrinal purposes, must always be answered by opinions only, then there is no way in principle to distinguish theological opinions from de fide doctrines that command the assent of faith from believers and thus bind their consciences. And if there is no such way, then we cannot in principle distinguish between the propositionally expressible content of divine revelation on the one hand and mere opinions about the meaning of the sources, Scripture or otherwise, on the other hand. The Christian religion thus reduces entirely to a matter of opinion. Theology departments would do best to come clean and become religious-studies departments. De facto, that is what has been happening to mainline-Protestant institutions across the board.

Of course the more “conservative” Protestants—be they Reformed, Lutheran, or free-church—resist that trend. But they resist it not because they believe their churches’ interpretations are infallible, but because they severally find those interpretations more plausible than the alternatives. Now as a Catholic, I believe that some of their interpretations are indeed more plausible than those of liberal Protestants. But that is not really to the point. The real point is this: without being able to identify his doctrine as the teaching of a visible church, physically and narratively continuous with that of the Apostles, which as such is “the” Church, outside of which there is no salvation, and which speaks with the divine authority of Christ himself when speaking with her full authority, nobody can offer their hermeneutic of Scripture as anything more than an opinion. Such an opinion may hold some academic authority, and be rationally plausible in itself, but it cannot command anybody’s assent of faith. Accordingly, it cannot pretend to be the teaching of “the Church” Christ founded. It has only human authority, not divine. And so the mere fact that some people find it more rationally plausible than the alternatives is neither here nor there. The question is not what some people find more rationally plausible, but which view of the Scripture-Tradition-Magisterium relation facilitates the assent of faith as distinct from that of opinion.

As I see it, then, the Reformed guy’s “defense” against Neal’s challenge only pushes the question back. If the WCF/3 FU, or something performing the same function, has only human authority, then it can offer no “uniquely good reason” for holding that the Reformed hierarchy, as distinct from the Catholic, is “subordinating” itself to Scripture. Such a hermeneutic of Scripture might look like it subordinates itself to Scripture precisely because it acknowledges Scripture as infallible without claiming infallible authority itself. But in that case, it leaves to human opinion the question what Scripture ultimately means. Paradoxically, when “Scripture” is one’s sole ultimate authority—as distinct from being authoritative only in conjunction with Tradition and the Magisterium—the interpretation of Scripture has no real authority at all. Thus to leave the matter to human opinion is not to subordinate ourselves as believers to Scripture. The Reformed guy’s defense fails on its own terms.

Best,
Mike
Canadian May 19th, 2010 2:53 pm :
Brad,
I find it interesting that when Protestants (I am one) see Catholic unity they cry out at them because they aren’t in complete uniformity, yet if Catholicism were so heavy handed as to demand complete uniformity, Protestants would cry out at the subversive opression of a dictatorship.
Brad May 19th, 2010 3:59 pm :
Canadian –

I understand. But at the same time we must take into consideration the RCC’s claims to be guided by the Spirit into truth. If this is the case, then why do they not (as far as I know) dogmatically interpret all of Scripture? If they did, then yes, we might cry, “Dictators!” But at least they would have backed up their claim to be guided by the Spirit. As it seems to be at present, they should only claim to have been guided into certain truths (ie – the ones declared dogma). The rest is left to individual judgement.
Ray Stamper May 19th, 2010 4:25 pm :
Brad,

I am concerned that you conceive of the Spirit’s guidance of Christians individually, and the Church as a whole, as fundamentally propositional. From a Catholic point of view, this is a deficient way to understand how our knowledge of God develops over time. At the risk of appearing narcissistic, would you mind reading and commenting on this post I submitted on the “Infallibility and Epistemology” thread, and a related follow up by Andrew Preslar found here? Both posts might further the current conversation by shedding light on the epistemic divide between yourself and other C2C contributors.

Pax et Bonum,

Ray
Brad May 19th, 2010 4:27 pm :
Ray,

Thanks. I might read these. I should probably work. And my head needs a break from this right now I think. :)

Brad
Michael Liccione May 19th, 2010 4:39 pm :
Brad:

In addition to Ray’s references, see comments #3 and 5 in this thread..

Best,
Mike
Joe May 19th, 2010 5:00 pm :
Brad,

“That is, your tradition is full of differences in interpretations of Scripture…”

There are parameters within which Catholics can interpret Scripture, when they move beyond those boundaries in their personal interpretations, they run the risk of departing from authentic Apostolic teaching (doctrine/dogma).

In other words, when a Catholic interprets the Scripture to mean “we are saved by Faith alone”, they have crossed a boundary… they have begun to contradict 2000 years of Apostolic teachings. There are many different interpretations of Scripture within Catholicism… the authentically Catholic ones do not contradict themselves.
Canadian May 19th, 2010 5:01 pm :
Brad,
You could accuse the apostolic church of the same thing, then. They didn’t come out with a systematic theology or a “biblical commentary of the Magisterium” on the heels of the resurrection. Heresy presents itself over time. Acts 15 called for a council on the issue at hand, not on every issue. The church’s discovery of truth, I think would come from the living connection with her Head and this plays out over time. The church has the inherent authority and ability to teach, but the apostles aren’t going to make a pronouncement on stem cell research for obvious reasons. The doctrine of Sola scriptura is causing you to anxiously demand a complete and clear explanation of every verse because you want to look only to the text for authority. The church does not seem to have the same anxiety as we might in this regard because she seems confident that the Spirit will define specifics when and if needed to protect her from a destructive path.
Randy May 19th, 2010 5:47 pm :
Brad,

The church is the body of Christ. The mind of the church is simply the mind of Christ. I cannot know your mind but I can form some opinions about your thinking based on what you have said or done. Is that perfect? No. But I can get a general idea of whether we are of like mind or not. The sames goes with the mind of Christ. I look at the body of Christ and examine what it says and does. The mind of Christ is quite complex and there is the possibility of error in my interpretation. Still I can get a pretty good idea of what Jesus thinks on any given issue.

For example, the praying of the rosary is an optional practice for Catholics. It is about as far from being dogma as it gets. Yet it has been part of the church for several centuries. Many saints and popes said the rosary frequently and had high praise for it. So when you form your opinion about the rosary you need to understand that the mind of the church seems to be quite positive about it. Can you become Catholic and decide never to say a rosary? Sure. But why? Why embrace Catholic tradition and leave that out? There maybe reasons and on one lesser issue like this it is not a big deal. But if on issue after issue you notice a gap between your thinking and the mind of the church then it indicates a problem. Your thinking needs to change.
Tap May 19th, 2010 7:31 pm :
Canadian, (871)
Interesting response there, never thought of it that way, but it really is a good argument, coming from a protestant no less. thanks!
Zoltan May 20th, 2010 4:20 am :
Bryan, (re: #856)

I have already read some of these writings but thanks again for the further references. Not sure when I will have time to look at all of them. However, I would appreciate for the sake of this discussion, that you outline the process you hold to whereby you grasp attributes about God such as “order” without divine revelation whereas so many other non-Christian cultures do not necessarily arrive at these attributes. It seems they would either lack reason and therefore it is not as universal as you seem to hold, or your deductions about such attributes like “order” are not solely based upon reason.

I definitely see the apostolic office differently than you do because I am Protestant. I see analogies to Moses who had a unique office as one who gave the law authoritatively. He was infallible in that sense as the Apostles were infallible when they wrote Gospels or epistles. However, Moses’ office did not die with him. Real authority was passed down, but such authority was not infallible in the same way he was even when it came to interpretation as Christ pointed out. Thus, I see the same in Church leadership. There is real authority given to Christ’s ministers now which is not infallible in the same way the apostles were. Moreover, since Moses longed for the day that all would prophesy, this was fulfilled in the NC and hence we are more on an equal footing now than in the OC.

With respect to your third paragraph, there was certainly sin but there was also error. I would agree that sin alone does not justify schism but grave and stubborn error may. That was why the Reformation happened. It was not because of mere personal sin.

So it seems significant questions remain with an epistemology so heavily dependent on reason. Thus far, we have established that there are truths which reason alone cannot grasp without divine revelation. What we have not established for the sake of the discussion is how we determine the difference between the two apart from reading large tomes. I would like to hear your succinct answer to that if you have one when you have the time. You have also said that God could have ordained the church to function in a Protestant fashion and that such an ecclesiology is not unreasonable and yet you maintain that it is not true. Therefore I must ask, if the Sola position is not unreasonable AND yet it is untrue, then how can you use reason to evaluate it? If it is possible for something to be reasonable and yet for it to be false, then clearly reason is an insufficient means to determine veracity in this situation and perhaps others you/we do not realize.

As for your second to last paragraph, I would like to make it clear that for me and a whole host of Protestants I know, we do not see those who “don’t share (our) interpretation of Scripture (to) be either illiterate, stupid or blinded by their own sin.” There is much room for grace for we all need it. So I think you have misread my statement entirely. I would urge you to come to a CREC ministerial conference sometime. In the CREC, churches may hold to different historical Protestant creeds in addition to ecumenical creeds like the Apostles, Nicene, Chalcedon which are mandatory. You would be surprised I think to see how much we can love one another and commune together without such pig-headedness.

You have also missed the question I posed. If God could have done what you postulated to make the Protestant position functional in the way you think it should, what implications would that have on free will and sin?

Finally, I would make an observation about the many recommendations you have made to me for reading material. Why do you think my reading these tomes with Protestant eyes will yield an accurate interpretation of them? Will I not be left with the same problem I have with Scripture only more so? After all, the Scriptures were authored by God, the One who created me, and these are written by mere mortals who were themselves created. He has also poured out His Spirit on us so that we may understand His Word (though I am not claiming infallibility and He may use other means). Your previous urging to me in #831 to read Ignatius is a case in point. In that you seem to interpret the “follow the bishop” exhortation in an absolute way. However, we know that there have been heretical bishops (eg: Arians) and Jesus warned against false teachers. Therefore, Ignatius also wrote: “be ye followers of Paul, and of the rest of the apostles, even as they were of Christ.” (Interestingly he does not mention Peter foremost!). That exhortation would be superfluous to you I suppose. One need only follow the bishop. Why bring the apostles and Christ into it as though one may know how the apostles and Christ acted apart from the bishop? In this I see Ignatius qualifying the previous statement for such an exhortation presupposes that the people reading it had some means of knowing how to “follow Paul”.

Grace and Peace,

Zoltan
Bryan Cross May 20th, 2010 10:45 am :
Zoltan, (re: #874)

To see how we can know those “attributes about God” even without supernatural revelation, I recommend reading the books I referred to above. There is no short-cutting that process, and I don’t have the time presently to summarize the arguments. (Those are books that I have taught from on this subject.)

As for whether the Church is no more infallible than the office of Moses, the New Covenant is greater than the Old, and thus the gifts given under the New are greater than the gifts given under the Old. Both Catholic and Orthodox believe that the Church is infallible. And the belief can be found in the Fathers as well. Let’s defer the infallibility discussion to a future article we will post on that subject.

The claim that there was doctrinal “error”, and that this justified the Protestant schism, presupposes that “heresy” and “orthodoxy” are determined by private interpretation, rather than that private interpretation must conform to the divinely established teaching authority of the Church. Instead of seeing the Council of Trent as the authoritative norm to which private interpretation must conform, the Protestants judged the Council to be in error, on the basis of their own private interpretation of Scripture. And that’s why Protestantism, by its very nature, can have no higher authority than the rule of private interpretation, because that is the foundation upon which it is built.

I must ask, if the Sola position is not unreasonable AND yet it is untrue, then how can you use reason to evaluate it?

In the same way I can evaluate the claim that God chose not to create anything. Reason is not limited to a priori reason.

If it is possible for something to be reasonable and yet for it to be false, then clearly reason is an insufficient means to determine veracity in this situation …

That conclusion does not follow.

As for your second to last paragraph, I would like to make it clear that for me and a whole host of Protestants I know, we do not see those who “don’t share (our) interpretation of Scripture (to) be either illiterate, stupid or blinded by their own sin.”

Of course. That’s the inconsistency I’m pointing out. In #851, after I had said “if Christ had established it that the Spirit spoke directly from Scripture, without the need for a magisterium, then all reasonably intelligent persons who diligently study Scripture, would agree,” you responded by explaining that the reason we all don’t agree on the interpretation of Scripture is because of “the roles of sin and free will in our lives.” You pointed to the “sinful impulse” and deficiency in “sanctification” as this additional factor. But, then when I pointed out that given this logic all those who disagree with your interpretation of Scripture must be either more illiterate, unintelligent, or sinful than yourself, you replied by stating that you don’t see those who disagree with your interpretation as either more illiterate, unintelligent, or sinful than yourself. So, on the one hand, you claim that Scripture is clear and perspicuous to all who are literate, reasonably intelligent, and sanctified. But, when you are so unique in your interpretation of Scripture among all the Christians in the world, that you have to be in a newly formed denomination of only a hundred congregations or less, then instead of acknowledging that all other Christians must be deficient in literacy, intelligence, or sanctity in comparison to yourself, you state that you think of them as being deficient in none. So you live with this contradiction by compartmentalizing, that is, by separating in your mind your doctrine of perspicuity from the fact that you are in interpretive disagreement and confessional separation from 99.999% of Christians in the world. On the one hand your doctrine entails that you are more literate, intelligent and/or sanctified than 99.999% of Christians in the world, but the arrogance of such a notion is so repulsive [even to yourself] that you have to deny to yourself that all other Christians are less literate, less intelligent, or less sanctified than yourself.

Finally, I would make an observation about the many recommendations you have made to me for reading material. Why do you think my reading these tomes with Protestant eyes will yield an accurate interpretation of them?

It may not. But if you are truly looking for an answer to the question you asked me (and it wasn’t just a rhetorical question), you can find it there. Not all writing is equally perspicuous, nor is all writing about the same subject.

Your previous urging to me in #831 to read Ignatius is a case in point. In that you seem to interpret the “follow the bishop” exhortation in an absolute way.

If that’s how you took it, then you misunderstood me.

However, we know that there have been heretical bishops (eg: Arians) and Jesus warned against false teachers. Therefore, Ignatius also wrote: “be ye followers of Paul, and of the rest of the apostles, even as they were of Christ.” (Interestingly he does not mention Peter foremost!). That exhortation would be superfluous to you I suppose. One need only follow the bishop.

Unfortunately, that’s a strawman of the Catholic position. The false dilemma is either absolute obedience to the bishop or the rule of private judgment. The faithful have never existed in an historical vacuum or contextual abstraction. They have always existed within a Tradition already established. That Tradition is clarified and developed by the Church’s highest authority, but it cannot be negated or contradicted or corrupted by the Church in her highest magisterial authority. It is by this Tradition (not by one’s own private interpretation of Scripture) that one can determine whether a particular bishop is heterodox or orthodox. But this does not place the individual above the Church’s highest authority, nor does it it reduce to the rule of private judgment.

I suggest we take a break, not only to because my other responsibilities require my time, but also to give you some time to study the works I mentioned above.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Christopher Lake June 4th, 2010 1:57 am :
Bryan,

I am now reading Mathison’s book and wondering how you would respond to his claim (on pages 317-18) that the Church did not actually settle (his words are “authoritatively define”) the Biblical canon at the councils of Hippo or Carthage. On page 318, he also claims that “the Book of Laodiceans, for example, is found in early medieval editions of the Vulgate and in different translations into the fifteenth century.”

As I take the necessary steps to be reconciled to the Church, I must admit that it is confusing to read 1. Catholic authors claiming that the canon was settled in early church councils, and that it was not changed until the Protestant Reformation, and then, 2. Protestants claiming that there was instability in the canon up to the fifteenth century. How does one answer such latter claims?

I was also going to ask (as Zoltan just did) about the issue of the fallible Jewish leaders and the protection of the OT canon, because Mathison mentions the question on pages 316-17, but given your other responsibilities, I will look forward to it being addressed in the future at C2C.
Bryan Cross June 4th, 2010 10:17 pm :
Christopher, (re: #876)

The Church did authoritatively define the canon when Pope St. Damasus I with the Council at Rome in A.D. 382 decreed “of the divine Scriptures, what the universal Catholic Church accepts and what she ought to shun.” This same canon (which is the same canon defined at the Council of Trent) was affirmed by the Council of Hippo (393), the third Council of Carthage (397), and the sixth Council of Carthage (419). These were each subsequently approved by the bishop of Rome, showing that they were in agreement with the Apostolic See whose decisions served as the authoritative touchstone for the universal Church. (This is precisely why these councils sent their conclusions across the sea to the bishop of Rome, for confirmation of their Catholic orthodoxy.) St. Jerome had disagreed about the deuterocanonical books, but he submitted himself to the authority of the Church.

As for the Book of Laodiceans being included in some early medieval editions of the Vulgate, the canon of Scripture is not necessarily the same as what is included in bound books that contain canonical books. We don’t think like that today, because printing and binding is so easy. But there are many examples of non-canonical apocryphal books [physically] bound with canonical books. The important thing to keep in mind is that what makes a book canonical is not being bound with other canonical books by a printer. Printers don’t determine the canon; the Church does, by her magisterium and her liturgy. There were (and are) many worthy and edifying books that are non-canonical. But only the canonical books may be read in the liturgy as “The Word of the Lord,” to which the people all respond, “Thanks be to God.” When the Council of Florence listed the canon in 1442 (the very same canon Pope Damasus decreed in 382), it was stating what the Church had believed and practiced for over a thousand years, and what was (or could be) read in the liturgy of the universal Church as “The Word of the Lord.”

The rise of humanism in the fourteenth century (e.g. Petrarch) led some people to doubt what the Church had believed and practiced for a thousand years. Humanism was not only “reason within the bounds of faith.” Humanism carried with it (implicitly) a distrust of the preceding period, and sought to return ad fontes (to the sources) to establish the truth of things for itself. In this way it carried with it a form of ecclesial deism, which led not only to Protestantism in the sixteenth century, but to the rationalism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. So when Protestants point to particular humanists (or humanist-influenced figures) calling into question certain books of the canon (some who appealed back to St. Jerome), they are appealing to figures who were influenced (some more, some less) by the rationalism implicit in the humanism prevalent at the time. For orthodox Catholics, God would never allow His Church, throughout the whole universal Church, for a thousand years to say falsely of any books in her liturgy, “The Word of the Lord.” Such a rationalistic notion (i.e. that Christ would allow such a thing) is entirely and fundamentally opposed to the whole of the Catholic faith.

The bishops at the Council of Trent did not have a debate over which books belong to the canon. They simply went by what the ecumenical Council of Florence had already said a hundred years before. And that’s precisely because they weren’t rationalists. They didn’t think they had to figure out the canon for themselves from the patristic sources, as though the Church hadn’t existed (or had been universally in error in a matter of faith) for the previous thousand years. They simply had to hand on what they had received. That’s what it means to be faithful shepherds of Christ’s Church, and that’s just what they did. They handed down what they had received from the Council of Florence. And Florence had simply handed down what it had received from the Church before her, all the way back to Pope Damasus in AD 382.

Concerning, “the fallible Jewish leaders and the protection of the OT canon,” I’ll try to address that at some point in the [relatively] near future, though Neal and Michael have already addressed it in the comments above (starting at #731).

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Christopher Lake June 4th, 2010 11:32 pm :
Thank you for such a thorough response, Bryan. You addressed everything that I could think to ask and did so very well.

To be completely honest with you and others here, as I take these steps to return to the Church (waiting to hear back from the priest now), one thing that I have to rid myself of is the notion that I must be able to answer every single question of my Reformed friends, to their own satisfaction, in an attempt to “justify” my return to the Church. I know that this move will not “make sense” to many of my friends, and while I can attempt to answer their questions, I can’t ultimately convince them that the Catholic Church is the true Church (or, at the very least, that she does not teach a false Gospel, based on spurious claims to divine authority). Many of my Reformed friends may not be satisfied with *any* answer that I give to their questions, and I have to learn to live with that. Thanks again for your help.
Jason July 1st, 2010 12:16 pm :
What are Roman Catholics to do when tradition contradicts scripture and history such as priestly celibacy? If the Roman Catholic Church has the final authority to interpret scripture then where do they go to support their authority? Do they go to scripture or somewhere else? If it is the scriptures then what is the higher authority? The Church or the Scriptures? If the Bible is so difficult to interpret then how do you know you can know what any text says? How can you know what you believe the church teaches is what the church actually teaches, as the teachings of the Church must be interpreted?
Bryan Cross July 1st, 2010 1:00 pm :
Jason, (re: #879)

Your comment consists of seven questions, which I will answer individually below.

(1) What are Roman Catholics to do when tradition contradicts scripture and history such as priestly celibacy?

Tradition does not contradict Scripture or “history.” Priestly celibacy is a discipline, not a doctrine. But even so, it does not “contradict” Scripture or history. Jesus was celibate. So was St. Paul. And St. Paul also says “I wish all men were as I myself am [i.e. celibate]. However, each man has his own gift from God, one in this manner, and another in that.” And the last half of 1 Cor. 7 is all about celibacy [for the Kingdom] being better than marriage. St. Paul writes:

“One who is unmarried is concerned about the things of the Lord, how he may please the Lord; but one who is married is concerned about the things of the world, how he may please his wife, and his interests are divided. And the woman who is unmarried, and the virgin, is concerned about the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and spirit, but one who is married is concerned about the things of the world, how she may please her husband. … So then, he who gives his virgin daughter in marriage does well, and he who does not give her in marriage does better.” (1 Cor. 7:32-34,38)

Likewise, Jesus says:

“For there are eunuchs who were born that way from their mother’s womb; and there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs by men; and there are eunuchs who made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven. He who is able to accept this, let him accept it.” (Matt 19:12)

In the third category, Jesus is not speaking about self-castration, because self-mutilation is a sin. He is speaking of those who have been given the gift of being able to choose celibacy for the Kingdom. That is why He says “Not all men can accept this statement, but only those to whom it has been given.” And in the book of Revelation, the 144,000 who follow the Lamb wherever He goes, are celibate — they “have not defiled themselves with women, for they have kept themselves chaste.” The Church Fathers affirmed the greatness of celibacy-for-the-Kingdom, against the heretics. (See, for example, St. Jerome’s work Against Helvidius.)

St. Paul’s prescriptions regarding bishops and presbyters is not that they must be married, but that if they are married, they can only have been married once, manage their family well, etc. He is obviously not making marriage mandatory for priests, since he says (in 1 Cor 7) that he wishes all men to be as he is [i.e. unmarried]. Moreover, from the very beginning, married priests practiced celibacy:

This was part of the teaching of the Apostles. For example, St. Epiphanius (b. 315) speaks of the ecclesiastical rule of the priesthood (kanona tes ierosynes) as something established by the Apostles, and writes:

“Holy Church respects the dignity of the priesthood to such a point that she does not admit to the diaconate, the priesthood, or the episcopate, no nor even to the subdiaconate, anyone still living in marriage and begetting children. She accepts only him who if married gives up [relations with] his wife or has lost her by death, especially in those places where the ecclesiastical cannons are strictly attended to.”

On the celibacy question, I recommend reading The Apostolic Origins of Priestly Celibacy by Christian Cochini. Update: See also Bishop Barron’s comments on this, embedded in the video below:

(2) If the Roman Catholic Church has the final authority to interpret scripture then where do they go to support their authority?

They don’t have to go anywhere to support their authority. The Apostles received authority from Christ, and the successors of the Apostles received their authority from Christ through the divinely authorized Apostles, and the second generation of bishops received their divine authority from Christ through the divinely authorized first generation of bishops, and so on down to the present day. The present day bishops of the Catholic Church are the successors of the Apostles, and possess this apostolic authority to bind and loose, forgive and retain men’s sins, and teach and interpret with all authority.

(3) Do they go to scripture or somewhere else?

This question presupposes that they have to go somewhere to get their authority. See the answer to question (2).

(4) If it is the scriptures then what is the higher authority?

Again, this question presupposes that they have to go somewhere to get their authority. See the answer to question (2).

(5) The Church or the Scriptures?

See my comments in this thread.

(6) If the Bible is so difficult to interpret then how do you know you can know what any text says?

We read Scripture with the Church and under her authority, and in this way we can know that we are not just following our own interpretation, but reading and understanding Scripture with the mind of Christ, as found in His Body, the Church. Christ teaches us, through His Church, which is our mother and teacher.

(7) How can you know what you believe the church teaches is what the church actually teaches, as the teachings of the Church must be interpreted?

See my comments in the link I provided in answer to your question (5).

The comments for this thread, should focus on (or be sufficiently related to) this article “Solo Scriptura, Sola Scriptura, and the Question of Interpretive Authority.”

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Tim A. Troutman July 1st, 2010 1:08 pm :
Jason,

Welcome to Called to Communion if you haven’t commented here before. See the last two paragraphs in section VI.b in this article on Holy Orders. Celibacy does not contradict the NT and is strongly supported by Church history. If you’re interested in learning about it, here are some other sources to check out (per footnote 234 in said article): Michael Giesler, “Celibacy in the First Two Centuries,” in Homiletic & Pastoral Review, p. 42 (Jan. 2009), citing Stefan Heid, Celibacy in the Early Church (2000). See also Christian Cochini, Apostolic Origins of Priestly Celibacy (1990).

As to your question, if the Church actually contradicts Scripture, then something has to give. But nearly every heretic who ever lived believed that the Church contradicted Scripture. That’s why the heretic (e.g. Arius) persisted in their heresy rather than submit to the authority of the Church. The question is as helpful as asking “But what if Jesus contradicted Scripture? Then should we believe He is the Messiah?” Well, Christians don’t believe that Jesus ever contradicted Scripture, nor do Catholics believe that the Church contradicts it. It is hard to convince a Protestant that the Church hasn’t (even when presented a compelling defense which I believe the above reference is) but it is also difficult to convince an atheist that the Bible doesn’t contradict itself. Just something to keep in mind.
tim prusssic July 1st, 2010 9:19 pm :
Gents,

Do Roman Catholic thinkers distinguish between a contradiction and an inconsistency? For example, contradictions are rare things: it takes some precision to posit X and not-X at the same time in the same relationship. Inconsistency, however, is very common. If Peter was married, would you that inconsistent with the requirement of celibacy? If bishops/elders are to be one-woman men, wouldn’t that be inconsistent with the requirement of celibacy?

I’ll try to get back to read the more recent comments over on Holy Orders later tonight. Thanks, guys!
Bryan Cross July 1st, 2010 10:43 pm :
Tim P (re: #882)

See my comment #880, where I addressed this very question.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Jason July 7th, 2010 11:01 am :
@Bryan- in response to 880. I never said that Celibacy was wrong, it is only wrong to force it on people, including “priests”. That SOME priests in SOME times and places practiced celibacy is irrelevant to the argument. FromAugsburg Confession Article XXIII: Of the Marriage of Priests. “It is also evident that in the ancient Church priests were married men. 11] For Paul says, 1 Tim. 3:2, that a bishop should be chosen who is the husband of one wife. 12] And in Germany, four hundred years ago for the first time, the priests were violently compelled to lead a single life, who indeed offered such resistance that the Archbishop of Mayence, when about to publish the Pope’s decree concerning this matter, was almost killed in the tumult raised by the enraged priests. 13] And so harsh was the dealing in the matter that not only were marriages forbidden for the future, but also existing marriages were torn asunder, contrary to all laws, divine and human, contrary even to the Canons themselves, made not only by the Popes, but by most celebrated Synods. [Moreover, many God-fearing and intelligent people in high station are known frequently to have expressed misgivings that such enforced celibacy and depriving men of marriage (which God Himself has instituted and left free to men) has never produced any good results, but has brought on many great and evil vices and much iniquity.] ”

and further “And it is to be expected that the churches shall at some time lack pastors if marriage is any longer forbidden.” Don’t you guys have a shortage of priests? I know there is a shortage of Catholic Chaplains in the military.

and further- “But now men, and that, priests, are cruelly put to death, contrary to the intent of the Canons, for no other cause than 22] marriage. Paul, in 1 Tim. 4:3, calls that a doctrine of devils which forbids marriage. 23] This may now be readily understood when the law against marriage is maintained by such penalties.”

-“But as no law of man can annul the commandment of God, so neither can it be done by any vow. 25] Accordingly, Cyprian also advises that women who do not keep the chastity they have promised should marry. His words are these (Book I, Epistle XI): But if they be unwilling or unable to persevere, it is better for them to marry than to fall into the fire by their lusts; they should certainly give no offense to their brethren and sisters. ”

1Cor 9:5 (NAB)”Do we not have the right to take along a Christian WIFE (emphasis mine), as do the rest of the apostles, and the brothers of the Lord, and Cephas?”

#2 through #5 You know as well as I that the church of Rome points to Matthew 16:18 for their claim to authority and without it they would not have a leg to stand on. Alas they still don’t as the greek grammar makes it clear that Jesus is refering to himself as the rock and not Peter. The response against this is that they were speaking Aramaic but that does not matter as the text is written in Greek. https://www.carm.org/is-peter-the-rock

1 Corinthians 3:11 (NAB)
“for no one can lay a foundation other than the one that is there, namely, Jesus Christ.”

#6 Isn’t the church supposed to preach the word? Is it not by the Word that our minds are renewed? Should we not reject teachers who teach contrary to that word? (think Galatians)

If the church never contradicts itself then how is it that after Vatican II the pope calls protestants “separated Brethren” but before that back to Trent we were “Anathema”?
Bryan Cross July 18th, 2010 7:44 pm :
Jason (re: #884),

The celibacy question would take us far off the topic of this post. (See comment #98 for my explanation of why an open combox is not an invitation to bring up all of one’s objections to the Catholic Church.) If you are really interested in understanding the Catholic position on clerical celibacy I recommend Christian Cochini’s The Apostolic Origins of Priestly Celibacy and Stefan Heid’s Celibacy in the Early Church.

The Catholic Church does not base its authority on Matt 16:18. Jesus had already given the keys of the Kingdom to Peter years before the gospel of Matthew was written.

Of course no one can lay a foundation other than the one that is there. The Catholic doctrine is not that Peter replaces Christ. Christ is the cornerstone, but the Apostles are the foundation stones built upon Christ (see Eph 2:20 and Rev. 21:14).

Lastly, the notion of ‘separated brethren’ is not new, as Taylor recently showed. And regarding the anathemas of Trent in relation to Protestants today, Michael Liccione addressed that here, and Frank Beckwith addressed it here.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Is Sola Scriptura Logically Consistent? | Near Emmaus August 10th, 2010 6:56 pm :
[…] See also: A Catholic critique of Sola Scriptura. […]
MJV September 17th, 2010 12:07 pm :
I’ve been following many of the articles and comments on this website for some time now and really apprexciate the contributions and thought provoking articles. I am a Reformed Protestant that am asking some of the tough questions that you are presenting here, especially in terms of authority.

Let me ask this as it is still a stumbling block for myself. It may have already been addressed in the combox somwhere as I have not read all of the comments, but most. My question is: Who am I to decide if the RCC is authoritative or the right authority? If I cannot trust my own interpretation of the Scriptures can I trust my interpreataion in regards to authority of the RCC? Would my reasoning be inconsistent and self-defeating, assuming these are my only two options (RCC or Reformed)?
Ray Stamper September 17th, 2010 4:15 pm :
MJV,

You are coming up against the common problem encountered when the authority argument is pressed to its last frontier. Namely, given that the fallible individual must ultimately be the one to make the authority choice, it would seem that whatever authority is embraced will necessarily be tainted with the corruption of the choice-maker’s fallibility. The solution to this dilemma is to recognize the role and necessity of supernatural faith at this juncture. Imagine that you are transported back to first century Palestine, and are standing before Jesus of Nazareth who has been performing miracles and teaching as if he speaks with the authority of God. He confronts you with a question “who do you say that I am?” What are the dynamics here? You have before you three factors:

1.) An apparently flesh and blood man claiming to speak with the authority of God
2.) Some amazing verifiable historical activities which are said to support this claim
3.) Yourself – a fallible human being who is being asked to answer the question

1.) Notice that without ,1 there is no pressing decision that you need to make, because there would be no one claiming to speak with divine authority. If Jesus were to claim only to speak with common, human, fallible authority; you would have no reason to pay more attention to his interpretation of the Law and the Prophets than your own since he sports no claim to formal temple academic training. Even if he had such training, without his explicit (and shocking) claim to divine authority, he would only present another educated opinion, and surely there will be equally educated opinions which disagree with his exposition. The long and short of it is that, without 1, there is simply no DIVINE (as opposed to fallible) access to the content of revelation worth paying much attention to. There is only fallible theological opinion. If you are going – even in theory – to have non-fallible access to a divine revelation; at the very minimum, you at least need something or someone making a claim to speak with divine (that is non-fallible) authority. Hence, the surprise of the people (and the anger of his religious opponents) who recognize that; “he teaches as one with authority”, and NOT as the Scribes and Pharisees.

2.) If you have 1, but not 2, then you have nothing but a raw, unsubstantiated authority claim. Anyone can make such a claim, Jim Jones to David Koresh. Sure, one could go ahead and embrace such an authority claim (and unfortunately many have throughout history); but it is unreasonable to do so. On the other hand, notice – and this is crucial – that the miracles that Jesus of Nazareth performs, even if you encounter him risen from the dead; do not PROVE that he speaks with divine authority. That a lame man walks, or a blind man sees, or a man known to be dead rises from the grave, are surely extraordinary events; but they do not necessitate the conclusion that the one who effects such events speaks for God. What such events do is lend credence to the antecedent or consequent authority claim of Jesus of Nazareth. So, you have an authority claim from Jesus of Nazareth (“I speak for God) and a set of events which Jesus (or his followers) put forward as evidence that his claim is true. YOU are invited to connect the two in an act of faith – a reasonable act of faith – because it is clearly reasonable (but not necessary) to believe that the events do, in fact, verify the authority claim being made. Still, you must BELIEVE or make an “assent of faith” – you do not get the luxury of a proof. Besides, if you think real hard about it; what would it really take to constitute an absolute “proof” of a supernatural authority claim?.

3.) Now in light of the above, consider 3. You are NOT being asked in this scenario to go figure out theology or the de fide content of revelation. You are being asked to accept the authority claim of Jesus of Nazareth who claims to speak the divine truth. You are being given the two things necessary to put you in a position to make this life altering decision; namely the divine authority claim itself, and a set of evidence given in support of that claim. Still, you are not being given incontrovertible evidence, only probable evidence. If it were otherwise your salvation would not be based on any faith or trust at all. If his claim were supported by undeniable proofs, you would be forced – intellectually – to accept those claims. What does Jesus ask of you? He asks for your faith. He does not ask for an irrational, fideistic faith; since he provides evidences (motives of credibility) for his claim. Still, all the evidence in front of you might admit of an alternate interpretation. Many of Jesus contemporaries, who have experienced everything as you have, WILL reject the evidence as supportive of the claim. Nothing forces your intellect to make the connection between the events and the claim. Still, he asks if you will be a believer or an unbeliever. If you make an act of faith (in reality you will do so with the assistance of divine grace); then you embrace WHATSOEVER Jesus tells you. He will hand on to you the de fide content of divine revelation – you will not need to construct it whole-cloth. If you refuse to believe, you turn your back on the only possible, non-fallible, access to the content of divine revelation on the market since most do not make an divine authority claim (the temple academics) and those that do (such as an occasional Jewish zealot), offer no motives of credibility which might lend any credence to their claim. You must either go away empty handed so far as any hope of “getting at” divine revelation is concerned, or else embrace Jesus because he “has the words of eternal life”.

Fast forward to 2010

1.) The Catholic Church claims t be the extension of the flesh and blood body of Christ across space and time; continuing to speak with divine authority. No Protestant denomination or non-denomination (that I know of) even attempts to make this claim. Hence, from the start you are explicitly limited, within Protestantism, to fallible interpretations of the Old and New Testaments (compare to Law and the Prophets). The very best you might hope for is a highly educated, probabilistic interpretation of the same (akin temple academics of Jesus day). But alas, even these theologians will hold different educated opinions, will they not? Thus in principle, you can never hope to have a divinely authoritative teaching – given the Protestant theological framework. The Catholic Church should her claims be true (just like Jesus of Nazareth should his claims be true) could, in principle, provide a non-fallible access to the de fide content of divine revelation. Hence the surprise of the people (and the anger of her religious opponents) who recognize that she teaches as “one with authority” and not like the modern biblical scholars and theologians.

2.) But are the Catholic Church’s claims true? Again there are evidences, but they are not demonstrative. There is a large body of evidence which the Church puts forward in support of her unique claims. For instance, there is the fact of continuous, documented, ecclesial succession via ordination across the centuries. Does this fact prove that there was a divine charism of Christ’s teaching authority transferred at each ordination? No, but without this historical fact; the Catholic claim would be entirely unsupportable. With this historical fact, the claim is plausible. The Catholic Church, with the pope at her head, has survived external assault and internal corruption for 2000 years. Her dogmatic teachings are internally consistent – at least they CAN be construed in a consistent way; as, in fact, the Church construes them. She has been full of saints and sinners, revolution and reform, miracles and malice. 2000 years after being launched upon the waters of history by her founder; she remains, in 2010, spread out across the globe claiming to offer a perfect sacrifice from East to West. Most strikingly and confrontationally; like Jesus of Nazareth, she remains a stumbling block because she continues to stand among the human race boldly claiming to speak with the authority of God. I am reminded of the bishop (I think he was a bishop) held captive by Napoleon. When Napoleon informed him that he intended to destroy the Catholic Church; the bishop replied something along the lines: “what makes you think you will succeed where so many bishops have failed”? So – does the history, the expansion, the longevity, the consistency, the production of saints, the herculean acts of charity, the staying power in the face of external and internal conflict PROVE that the Catholic Church was founded by Christ as his body in space in time and endowed with His divine authority? No it does not. It is it unreasonable to accept her authority claim given these facts? No it is not. So where does that leave one? In the same position one would have been in the first century when faced with the extraordinary claims and acts of Jesus of Nazareth.

3.) You are faced with a question: “who do you say the Church is”? If you answer “the heir and body of Christ – speaking with the mind of Christ”; you have made an act of faith (by the assistance of grace). She will hand on to you the de fide content of revelation – you will not need to construct it whole-cloth. If you refuse to believe, you turn your back on the only possible non-fallible access to the content of divine revelation on the market because most do not make a divine authority claim (Protestantism); and those that do (such as David Koresh) offer no motives of credibility which might lend any credence to their claim. You must go away empty handed so far as any hope of “getting at” divine revelation is concerned; or else embrace the Church, since she “has the words of eternal life”.

So, my bottom line is this. If you have carefully followed the authority argument all the way through the “tu quoque” objection; and pushed up against the problem of your own individual fallibility with reference to the choice one must make with regard to authority; then you have come to the cliff’s edge of human reason. You have two choices. You must, either turn back and accept the pragmatic fact of doctrinal relativism with the consequence that knowledge of human destiny is hopelessly shrouded in theological opinion; or else you must step out onto the bridge that is the Catholic Faith. I do not say make a “leap of faith”, but rather a step; for there are very good reasons to believe that the bridge will support you. Still, if you wish to transcend the world of theological subjectivity and reach the homeland of orthodoxy; you must take the step and cast yourself upon the Catholic Church as countless others have done before you. It seems to me that this situation has not changed since the days that Christ walked the earth.

The only theoretical way out of this problem, on Protestant principles, is to embrace Calvin’s initial theory that the Holy Spirit immediately, and existentially, confirms BOTH the divine authorship of the Protestant canon AND the divine interpretation of the same – for each and every believer individually. But if you have come to see the obvious theological anarchy which visibly undermines this early Calvin assertion; then you will inevitably come to accept Keith Mathison’s dictum that: “All appeals to Scripture are appeals to interpretations of Scripture.” From there, the authority argument works its way, inexorably, to the frontier between reason and faith in the way I have just described.

Along these lines, you may find this short essay on “Faith and Private Judgment” by Cardinal John Henry Newman very helpful:

https://www.newmanreader.org/works/discourses/discourse10.html

Pax et Bonum,

Ray
Ray Stamper September 17th, 2010 4:30 pm :
MJV,

BTW, I have made a more technical argument along these lines in another thread at C2C. If you are interested, you can read it here:

https://www.calledtocommunion.com/2010/08/i-love-the-orthodox-too-much-to-be-orthodox-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-atomic-bomb-of-holy-orders/#comment-10996

Ray
Lojahw September 17th, 2010 9:21 pm :
Ray said:

in principle, you can never hope to have a divinely authoritative teaching – given the Protestant theological framework.

Jesus and His disciples certainly considered the written Word of God to be “divinely authoritative teaching” – don’t you? Jesus and the apostles appealed to the very words given in Scripture, not some novel meaning that only “authorized teachers” could extract from the text. The inference from Ridderbos is not true: those teachings in Scripture that are necessary for salvation are clear, and their interpretation has survived the millennia in the creeds.

Your own church is not exempt from your charge of doctrine relativism. Cardinal Newman, whom you cite, is one of the foremost apostles of doctrinal relativism. Instead of defending the teaching of the apostles, Cardinal Newman argued for the “development of doctrine” wherein the apostles were not able to communicate everything that is necessary for the faith, so that some of their teachings became obsolete. For example, the apostles taught that there is one mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ, but your church has “developed the doctrine” that Mary is the co-mediatrix, and that“every grace granted to man” passes from God to Christ to the Virgin, and “from the Virgin it descends to us.” Furthermore, the Scriptures and the early church fathers condemned bowing down to the work of human hands, but the church leaders you follow later rationalized that this practice instead honors Christ – and they even punished people for not venerating statues. That, my friend, is doctrinal relativism.

Jesus and His apostles taught that the Scriptures have doctrinal authority for all time for the simple reason that they are “God-breathed.” It can be argued that the church’s words are more likely to be misinterpreted than God’s words, because no created thing is greater than its creator. To paraphrase Ridderbos: “All appeals to the Church’s teaching are appeals to interpretations of the Church’s teaching.” Furthermore, the notion that ordinary people are unable to reliably understand what God has preserved in His eternal Word as necessary for salvation is insulting to Him. “All the truth” that is necessary for salvation is found in His Word given to the apostles by the Holy Spirit, as Jesus promised (John 16:13-14). It is unfortunate that churches disagree with each other on various doctrines (the vast majority of them not necessary for salvation), but the Word of Truth is the final authority for doctrine.

Blessings,
Lojahw (Lover of Jesus and His Word)
Canadian September 18th, 2010 9:45 am :
Ray,
Your comments along with similar comments by Mike Liccione are very helpful and get to the heart of what seeking Protestants like myself have needed. However, the comments are scattered among different threads (as you have linked) and I would really find it helpful if what you have articulated could be compiled as a single blog post or article. Is this possible? Maybe I should look back at to see if a previous post covers it. Thanks for your contribution.
Benjamin Keil September 18th, 2010 11:18 am :
Lojahw,

Jesus and His disciples certainly considered the written Word of God to be “divinely authoritative teaching” – don’t you?…The inference from Ridderbos is not true: those teachings in Scripture that are necessary for salvation are clear, and their interpretation has survived the millennia in the creeds.

Thanks for the comment! I wonder if it involves some terminological confusion, though. The way I see it, we are discussing at least two different issues at the same time:

Salvation(1): What is necessary to believe for salvation qua the moment when one passes from being Not-Christian into Christian. What is “necessary for salvation” in this sense, I’ve been surprised to learn, Catholics think is plainly taught in Scripture. I was recently reading Francis DeSales’ book “The Catholic Controversy”, and he basically makes that point (I’ve already returned it to the library, elsewise I’d have a page number and an actual quotation for you). However, paraphrasing DeSales, he says that really all one needs for salvation in this sense is to confess Christ with one’s mouth and to believe in one’s heart that He was raised from the dead (Rom. 10:9, but I’m sure you know that verse already). :-) That, he says, is plainly taught in Scripture such that all men are without excuse, etc. So, in short, Catholics would totally agree with you: the stuff necessary to believe for Salvation(1) is clearly taught in the Bible.

However, just going from Not-Christian to Christian isn’t enough. We’re also supposed to go from Christian to “Better Christian”, if you catch my drift. So this gives us…

Salvation(2): What is necessary to believe for salvation qua passing from being a Christian into being a better Christian. This kind of salvation is, of course, a lifelong process. And as far as I can tell, it’s here where the Bible alone isn’t going to cut it. (N.b: I say this as a Protestant desperately looking for a way that such not be the case, so any thoughts you have would be appreciated.) Let’s take the easy example of the sacraments. We do need to have a proper view of the sacraments – they are important and I don’t think it’s fine to just say “Eh, believe whatever you want about ’em…it’s all good, man.” (Especially for baptism and communion…) Now, of course, we don’t need to have a proper view of the sacraments for Salvation(1): When I became a Christian, I didn’t know a sacrament from a hot dog; I knew I was a sinner in need of God’s forgiveness as sent through Christ. But having accomplished Salvation(1), I’m also supposed to grow in grace and knowledge. So as far as I can see, before I die as part of Salvation(2), I ought to strive for having a correct view of the sacraments. What is baptism, and what does it accomplish? When I take communion, what’s going on there?

You can see where this is going, no doubt. Off the top of my head, I can think of three different views of baptism, and another four for communion. Take communion: is Christ really present there (physically present as the RC/EO say, or only spiritually present there as Calvin says?) Is it a great mystery wherein Christ is present in, with, and under the elements as Luther says? Or is it a purely symbolic ceremony only of remembrance as Zwingli says? Bear in mind that I don’t have to figure this out for Salvation(1), but Christ did say “Do this in remembrance of me”, and as part of Salvation(2) surely I need to find out what the “this” is that I am doing in remembrance of Him, no?

Here’s the problem, then: Everyone appeals to Scripture to support their view of communion. Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, etc. They all tell me that their views are the ones from Scripture, that the other dudes aren’t reading the Bible right, and everyone else but them needs to repent for not reading the Bible correctly. No offense, but if the last 500 years of Protestantism have taught us anything, it’s that there is not and never will be agreement on many matters of great importance to Salvation(2) And the reason that there neither is nor will be agreement on such questions seems to be just the issue identified by Ray: that there is no divinely authoritative teaching for Protestantism because I’m fallible, you’re fallible, we’re all fallible. I can be pretty sure that I’m right, and I might even be 99.999% sure that I’m right, but I can never be 100% sure that I’m right about [insert issue which isn’t necessary for Salvation(1), but is important to Salvation(2)]. So I’m 99.999% sure that we’ve got the canon right, that Christ took on a physical body, that the doctrine of the trinity is Biblical, blah blah blah. I’m not 100% sure, though, and when a Mormon tells me that I’ve got the canon wrong, or the trinity wrong, etc, I’ve got nothing much to say except “Well, I really think I’m right…so…yeah.” Been there, done that, and the conversation was pretty boring.

Anyways, I should pay you the courtesy of getting back to what you wrote. :-p Lojahw, you wrote “…[T]he notion that ordinary people are unable to reliably understand what God has preserved in His eternal Word as necessary for salvation is insulting to Him”. As far as Salvation(1) goes, you are totally right…and Catholics agree with you. We can figure Salvation(1) stuff out, no problem. Trouble is, for Salvation(2), there’s a lot of stuff where Scripture just is (apparently) ambiguous – witness the massive disagreements between Protestants about important stuff like the sacraments. Once we’ve seen all this, as Ray wrote and I’m inclined to agree, we can either accept doctrinal relativism and the accompanying entailment that it is impossible to get beyond academic opinion to Truth, or we become Catholic.

Good to see you back around the site again, by the way. Looking forward to any thoughts you have in response, brother. :-) (Guess it could be “sister”…that’s the trouble with the internet) :-p

Sincerely,
~Benjamin
Bryan Cross September 18th, 2010 11:54 am :
MJV (re: #887)

Thanks for your comment, and welcome to Called To Communion. You wrote:

Let me ask this as it is still a stumbling block for myself. It may have already been addressed in the combox somwhere as I have not read all of the comments, but most. My question is: Who am I to decide if the RCC is authoritative or the right authority? If I cannot trust my own interpretation of the Scriptures can I trust my interpreataion in regards to authority of the RCC? Would my reasoning be inconsistent and self-defeating, assuming these are my only two options (RCC or Reformed)?

When Blaise Pascal presents his “Wager,” he puts this objection in the mouth of the hypothetical agnostic:

No, but I will blame them for having made, not this choice, but a choice. For although the player who chooses heads is no more at fault than the other one, they are both in the wrong. The right thing is not to wager at all.

To which Pascal responds:

Yes; but you must wager. It is not optional. You are committed.

We must make some choice about God; it is not optional. If we try to ignore the question, we are already choosing. Likewise, with regard to the authority of Christ, and identifying His Church, it is the same: “it is not optional.” To attempt to avoid the question is already to take a position. To attempt to justify not making any decision about Christ and His Church by appealing to one’s frailty, is to be like the servant who buried his talent, and thus to justly incur the punishment for culpable negligence under the pretense of intellectual humility.

You, presumably, grant that. Your question is, paraphrased, a kind of dilemma: If I ought [and thus can] judge concerning the authority of Christ and the identity of His Church, then it seems that I ought [and thus can] judge concerning the right interpretation of Scripture. But if I cannot judge concerning the right interpretation of Scripture, then I cannot judge concerning the authority of Christ and the identity of His Church.

This dilemma is a false dilemma, much like the dilemma between rationalism and fideism. Rationalism is the notion that human reason is the sole source and final test of all truth. The error of rationalism is its implicit denial of the distinction between nature and grace. It implicitly denies that there is anything supernatural, i.e. anything exceeding the power of unaided human reason to verify or falsify. (It is in that respect a form of atheism, by making man the measure of all things, and thus the highest being.) Rationalism denies the possibility that more could be known with the aid of supernatural illumination. It acknowledges the natural light of reason, but denies the supernatural light from above, that elevates human reason to know beyond what human reason could know by its own light and power.

Fideism, on the other hand, denies or distrusts the power of unaided human reason to reach certitude, particular about matters of religion. In fideism’s strongest form, faith has nothing to do with reason. Fideism treats every starting point as a kind of arbitrary leap in the dark. Faith is not subject to reason, and therefore not subject to critical evaluation; it is an entirely private, personal non-rational matter. Fideism thereby makes faith irrational. Fideism does not commit the error of rationalism, i.e. denying supernatural light. The error of fideism is its denial of any connection or relation between the natural light and the supernatural light, between reason and faith, between philosophy and sacred theology, between nature and grace.

So the dilemma between rationalism and fideism is that we must choose between figuring out for ourselves everything about religion (and thus relying always and entirely on our own reason as our highest epistemic authority), or figuring out for ourselves nothing about religion (and thus relying always and entirely on an arbitrary choice of a [supposedly] divine revelation). That dilemma is a false dilemma. We do not have to choose between faith being reduced to reason, and faith being entirely separate from reason. The third (and middle) position is that reason shows us the way to faith, but that then by faith we can see what we could not see or know by unaided reason. Faith is not irrational, but faith does elevate the intellect beyond its natural limits, and thus supernaturally perfects the intellect. (‘Perfects’ in the sense of makes more perfect, not in the sense of correcting an imperfection.) The First Vatican Council explains this middle position, i.e. the correct understanding of the relation of faith and reason, when it writes:

“Nevertheless, in order that the submission of our faith should be in accordance with reason, it was God’s will that there should be linked to the internal assistance of the Holy Spirit external indications of His revelation, that is to say divine acts, and first and foremost miracles and prophecies, which clearly demonstrating as they do the omnipotence and infinite knowledge of God, are the most certain signs of revelation and are suited to the understanding of all. Hence Moses and the prophets, and especially Christ our Lord himself, worked many absolutely clear miracles and delivered prophecies; while of the Apostles we read: And they went forth and preached every, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by the signs that attended it. Again it is written: We have the prophetic word made more sure; you will do well to pay attention to this as to a lamp shining in a dark place.” (Vatican I, Sess 3, 3.4-5, quoting 2 Pet 1:19)

This shows why the dilemma between rationalism on the one hand, and fideism on the other hand, is a false dilemma. So likewise, the dilemma you offered (in my paraphrased form) is a false dilemma. We do not have to choose between remaining the ultimate interpretive authority of Scripture on the one hand, and being unable to determine the authority of Christ and the identity of His Church on the other hand. By reason (aided by actual grace) and the motives of credibility (i.e. miracles, fulfillment of prophecies), we can determine with certainty that Jesus was sent from God, and locate in history the Catholic Church He founded, and trace it through the past two-thousand years to the present day. But, that does not entail that we must, upon discovering this divinely-established and divinely authorized institution, therefore remain our own ultimate authority with respect to the interpretation of Scripture. On the contrary, upon discovering that Christ has established a Magisterium within the Church He founded, and endowed this Magisterium with the divine authority to provide the Church with the authentic meaning of Sacred Scripture, it is entirely reasonable then to subordinate one’s own interpretation of Scripture to that of the divinely authorized Magisterium one has discovered, insofar as one grasps that it was divinely established precisely for this purpose, among others. And the Magisterium of the Catholic Church teaches that it belongs to the Magisterium to provide the true meaning and interpretation of Scripture:

In matters of faith and morals, that meaning of Holy Scripture must be held to be the true one, which Holy mother Church held and holds, since it is her right to judge of the true meaning and interpretation of Holy Scripture. (First Vatican Council, Sess. 3, 2.8)

The task of giving an authentic interpretation of the Word of God, whether in its written form or in the form of Tradition, has been entrusted to the living teaching office of the Church alone. Its authority in this matter is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ. (Dei Verbum, 10.)

Just because we use reason to examine the motives of credibility, and locate and determine the authority of Christ and the identity of the Church He founded, it does not follow that upon finding this divine authority, our reason ought to remain the ultimate judge concerning the truth of what Christ and His Church teach. At that moment, a shift takes place, a kind of intellectual bowing or kneeling, “My Lord and My God.” Human reason rightly subordinates itself to the divine Logos and the Magisterial authority He established, which speaks in His Name, and with His authority. Similarly, just because we submit to a higher authority at this point in our journey into the Church, it does follow that our previous reasoning regarding the authority of Christ and the identity of the Church was unreliable or untrustworthy.

The motives of credibility are accessible to reason, and reason can and must examine them and make judgment concerning them. They are at the point of intersection between reason and faith, because they show to reason the existence of the in-breaking of the supernatural, precisely by signifying the supernatural in a way accessible to reason as that-which-nature-cannot-cause, and thus as indicating the presence of that which exceeds nature (i.e. the supernatural). Yet, once confronted with the supernatural, and the grace that belongs to the supernatural, it should be expected that in such matters, unaided reason would be blind without a supernaturally established guide. Unaided reason is not blind per se, because unaided reason is reliable with respect to that within the range of the natural light of reason (i.e. the natural world we see all around us). But with regard to what belongs to the supernatural realm, unaided reason is blind, unless aided with the supernatural light from above, which is grace and the supernaturally established Magisterium of the Church. Precisely because Scripture is supernatural, it requires divine aid to understand it properly. If without divine aid we could fully understand it rightly, it would not be supernatural, but only natural. The supernatural aid by which we rightly understand Scripture is not a subjective burning of the bosom, an unmediated subjective operation of the Holy Spirit disconnected from the Church He established. As we see in the account of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch, it is through the Church, and especially in the teaching charism Christ invested in the Magisterium precisely for this very purpose, that Christ has provided the supernatural guide for rightly understanding the deposit of faith. The Holy Spirit guides us in the supernatural realm, through the Magisterium Christ established to teach and feed the sheep of His flock.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
David Meyer September 18th, 2010 12:27 pm :
I hope Keith Mathison gives his response before this combox hits one thousand comments. If you read this Keith, can you give an update?
Zoltan September 18th, 2010 12:31 pm :
Benjamin, I think you have touched on a vital point when it comes to the sacraments. I shall offer a Protestant perspective on this. The sacraments are at the heart profound mysteries for they speak to the very union of God to man through Christ. In baptism we are united to Christ and in the Eucharist we partake of Christ but we are also united to each other as Christians, partaking of “One loaf.” So this raises many questions, which by extension, speak to the very nature of God Himself. Just as Jesus is both God and Man so the Bread is both Christ and bread.

Problems arise I believe when we become too precise with these matters (as transubstantiation does in my view) for it essentially means that we have figured out God’s nature. It also means that we have figured out what the Church is to be and look like and since we are Christ’s Body on earth, to figure out the Church, is to claim we have figured out Christ. With the guidance of the Holy Spirit, I believe we will discern much in this through the centuries. However, it seems unreasonable to me that a previous generation’s limited view of the sacraments will hold sway over the rest of Church history as though they have already plunged the depths of such mystery and we need only blindly affirm what they believed.

For example, Cyprian wrote without controversy about communing young children for that was the universal practice of the early Church. As certain notions about the Eucharist became prominent, children of believers were excluded until confirmation. When ideas about transubstantiation took root, people would pocket the Eucharist and take it home for veneration so the clergy changed practice and placed it directly in the mouth of the believer. Then monstrances were constructed to “house” the host for veneration (literally putting “God” in a box). Eventually, laypeople were excluded from partaking of the wine altogether. The Reformation brought much change for the better and some for the worse. The RCC eventually changed practice again in response to the Reformation to give wine to laity. The radical reformation unfortunately largely lost sight of Christ in the Eucharist altogether. Now, the issue of communing the children of believers is coming to the fore again in many Churches as we let the children “come unto” Christ once again.

I suspect we will be wrestling with these matters until the second Advent and rightfully so for we see in part and prophesy in part. Love for Christ and one another is the key and I believe the Holy Spirit is at work still leading us into all truth, building on what has gone before, but also correcting and bringing reformation where needed to the Church in her understanding. Denominations that have a more mature understanding of the sacraments will gain much benefit from that. Those that do not, will be anemic at that point.

I shall close with the words of one Cardinal Ratzinger with respect to the mystery of the Eucharist from his book Being Christian which has been a source of much controversy among come traditional minded RC’s who believe that his views on the Eucharist are heretical:

“Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament or the silent visit to a church cannot be, in its full sense, a simple conversation with God conceived as locally circumscribed. Expressions such as ‘God lives here’ and the idea of holding a conversation with a God who is localized are an expression of the Christological mystery and the mystery of God, that inevitably shocks the thinking man who knows that God is omnipresent. When one tries to justify “going to church” by the notion that one has to visit God and he dwells only in that place, one’s justification is meaningless and is rightly rejected by modern man. Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament is connected with our Lord who, by his historic life and passion, has become our ‘bread’; that is to say, who, by his incarnation and death, has become the one whose arms are open to receive us. Such adoration is directed, then, to the historic mystery of Jesus Christ, to the history of God with man, a history which approaches us in the Blessed Sacrament. And it is related to the mystery of the Church: being related to the history of God with man, it is related also to the whole ‘body of Christ, to the community of the faithful, through whom and in whom God comes to us”(Pg 80)

PS – I would like to respond eventually to Ray’s thoughtful posting but must get back to work for now.
Bryan Cross September 18th, 2010 12:33 pm :
Lojahw (re: #890)

You wrote:

Your own church is not exempt from your charge of doctrine relativism. Cardinal Newman, whom you cite, is one of the foremost apostles of doctrinal relativism. Instead of defending the teaching of the apostles, Cardinal Newman argued for the “development of doctrine” wherein the apostles were not able to communicate everything that is necessary for the faith, so that some of their teachings became obsolete.

Especially since Cardinal Newman will be beatified tomorrow, it is important that he not be misrepresented. And what you have stated here is not an accurate description of Newman’s conception of “development of doctrine.” The “development of doctrine” does not mean that the Apostles were not “able” to communicate everything. It has nothing to do with the ability of the Apostles. It is about the continual operation of the Holy Spirit in the living Body which is the Church, such that the Church continues to grow in her understanding of the divine deposit entrusted once and for all to the saints. The Holy Spirit continues to guide the Church into all truth, by more deeply illuminating the inexhaustible riches of the treasure of this deposit, which is the Word made flesh. Only in a deistic ecclesiology, in which the Holy Spirit early on ceased to guide the Church into all truth, and the Body of Christ is not animated by the Holy Spirit, would there be no development of doctrine.

Also, the “development of doctrine” does not mean that the teachings of the Apostles “became obsolete.” Development is never a negation of anything in the deposit of faith, but rather a further illumination of what has been received and unerringly preserved. This is why in explaining Newman’s claim, Fr. Barron recently said:

Newman consistently argued that doctrine develops and unfolds over time, much like a living organism or a flowing river. As theological ideas are, across the centuries, weighed, assessed, turned over and around by lively minds, their various aspects come to light and their implications and consequences appear more clearly. Dogmas are not dumbly passed on like footballs from one generation to another; rather, they live.

We don’t have to choose between making some apostolic doctrines “obsolete,” and “dumbly” passing on dogmas “like footballs.” Newman’s conception of “development of doctrine” is middle position between those two notions.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
David Pell September 18th, 2010 12:49 pm :
Furthermore, the notion that ordinary people are unable to reliably understand what God has preserved in His eternal Word as necessary for salvation is insulting to Him.

Benjamin has already commented on the fact that your statement here is loaded with assumptions about what salvation actually is and what it means for something to be “necessary for salvation.” I just want to point out that I’m not aware of a biblical teaching on “perspicuity.” This teaching on perspicuity is more of a “what we assume must be the case” based on what you’ve previously assumed about the nature of scripture and authority, and subsequently what you attempt to hoist onto others so that we will believe what you want us to believe scripture teaches. It also ends up being a conveniently simple and non-threatening way to say, “whoever disagrees with me is not really a Christian.” How could it be otherwise? The plain facts are that the vast majority of Christians in the world do not agree with what the Reformed Confessions teach to be the working out or the fine print of the “essentials” that are so clear for everyone to see in the Bible. So are these people who disagree with you ordinary? Are those of us here who are pursuing advanced degrees in theology, philosophy and church history odinary? This notion of perspicuity cannot account for the fact that the Reformed interpretations of many important doctrines have been at odds from the very beginning, and that throughout history the multiplicity among the equally ordinary learned and unlearned Christians has continued to increase.

What we do have in the bible and history are plain reasons to believe that God would not at all be “insulted” if “ordinary” people had to rely on the shepherds to whom He entrusted the care of His own Church. The Ethiopian eunuch in Acts is one good example of an “ordinary” person who admits that he can’t understand what he reads without someone explaining it to him. Peter is a great example of someone who is not at all “ordinary” and yet says that some of Paul’s writings are difficult to understand. Historically speaking, I think it’s no coincidence that the Reformation really began to take off right after the invention of the printing press. The notion that we’re all “Bereans” is very anachronistic.
Ray Stamper September 18th, 2010 1:34 pm :
Dear Lojahw,

Jesus and His disciples certainly considered the written Word of God to be “divinely authoritative teaching” – don’t you?

Lets plow into this idea for a moment.

Of course I (and every Catholic) believe that the written Word of God is divinely authored (although calling it “teaching” introduces a loaded notion, as if text teaches per se. A text can do no such thing by itself – it requires human interaction in order to become an active source of learning or teaching). However, I BELIEVE the written Word of God was divinely authored for the very good reason that the Catholic Church informs me that the collection of 73 writings which lay here in my lap were written by men under the inspiration of God. As I came from my mother’s womb, I was not aware that there should or must be anything like God-inspired books. Why should there be? I learned this notion from others – but who? Why would I accept the idea (rather strange when you really think about it) that a set of books of different genres, written by different authors over thousands of years – when bound together in a codex should just happen to entail a set of God inspired writings. What does “God-inspired” even mean? That notion too I learned from someone else – but who? Why would one take the word of a person or group of persons who explicitly deny that they speak for God, as support of the idea that such a codex was in some sense written by God? One cannot observe something called “inspiration”. God knows I don’t trust my feelings to somehow sense or “feel” the inspiration or inerrancy of scripture. No, I am afraid that fallible old me in 2010 must be content to receive this codex of writings as ontologically different from all other writings on the basis of someone who claims to speak for God – namely the Catholic Church.

But why did Jesus and the apostles consider the OT (Law and the Prophets) to be divinely authorized teaching? Did they come out of their mother’s womb embracing this intrinsic notion? Perhaps you could argue that Jesus did. In view of His divinity prior to the incarnation, in tandem with the other Persons of the Trinity, He was involved in the OT’s inspiration. But on the human level, Jesus RECEIVED this information (concerning the special status of the Jewish holy writings) from his forbearers and on the basis of the religious authorities of his time. The apostles were entirely dependent for their acceptance of the OT writings as God-breathed upon the authority of their religious leaders and forbearers: UNLESS you want to say that they did not affirm the authority of the OT scriptures until AFTER they recognized the divinity of Christ, and after hearing Him confirm this notion. Yet even then, you are returned to the point of my post, which was to show that the first century Christians, like the apostles, were asked to accept Jesus of Nazareth’s divinity based on 1.) his claim to divinity and 2.) the works He performed in support of that claim.

You “get” the idea that the Protestant canon just IS the Word of God, and not merely the word of man, FROM someone else – since you did not ALWAYS know it from the time of your birth. Now that “someone” is either fallible or infallible. If fallible, then you can never be sure that the writings actually are what you have been told they are; since the person giving you this information MIGHT be wrong (which is what fallibility entails). The only way to reasonably and confidently proclaim that a specific codex of collected writings is God-inspired, is IF that “someone” giving you this information can reasonably be expected to speak for God, or else just is God Himself. Within Protestantism, no person or persons, ecclesiastical or otherwise, claim to speak for God – all explicitly confess fallibility. Hence, the ONLY theoretical solution to the problem of authoritatively affirming the inspiration and inerrancy of scripture that has ever been proposed on a Protestant paradigm (to my knowledge) is the assertion that GOD HIMSELF (specifically the Holy Spirit) immediately and existentially communicates and confirms within the heart and mind of each individual believer that the Protestant canon is inspired. The moment that notion is relinquished within a Protestant context for some other basis of canonicity or recognition of inspiration, the game is up, for the simple reason that all other players confess fallibility – and no one (at least among conservative Protestants) wants to admit that the Protestant canon (or at least parts of it) might NOT be inspired. Or said another way; no conservative Protestant wants to say that the Protestant canon entails merely a high probability of inspiration. Otherwise, preachers, pastors and teachers will have to stand at the lectern on Sunday morning, flip to their biblical anchor text and say: “thus says the Lord – I think”. Something tells me that would not go over very well.

Jesus and the apostles appealed to the very words given in Scripture, not some novel meaning that only “authorized teachers” could extract from the text.

I find this statement odd. The entire dynamic tension of the gospel accounts could be summed up as a conflict between Jesus of Nazareth and the Jewish religious authorities ABOUT the proper interpretation of the Law and the Prophets. Introducing “novel meanings” is exactly what the religious authorities of Jesus’ day accused him of; and it is not hard to see why. Consider the following (paraphrased comments of Jesus): “you know neither the scriptures nor . . .”; “if you knew the scriptures you would know me – for they speak of me”; “you have heard it said – BUT I SAY to you”; “I tell you today that this prophecy is fulfilled in your midst”; “before Abraham was, I am”; “have you been so long the teacher of Israel and yet you do not know these things?”. Then we could talk about the removal, by the apostles, of the requirement of circumcision; the admission of gentiles into the faith, etc. We see all this as natural and “obvious” because we live 2000 years removed from the heat of the events. But imagine yourself as a first century Jew who has studiously poured over the writings of the Law and the Prophets. Who is this carpenter from Nazareth, without any formal theological training; introducing, strange novel meanings against the “clear” teachings of the Law and the Prophets. What an arrogant, authoritarian bluster. As if, the meaning of the text could be twisted to encompass such odd notions. Does he actually think that the truth laid down by Moses and the prophets in out holy books somehow “develops” or admits “alternate” meanings? Does he really expect us to believe the HE has the proper, perfect, infallible interpretation of the text? Really? We are to accept the teaching of this carpenter over against all the exegetical skill and training of the scribes? So he does some miracles. It seems entirely more likely that his power derives from an evil source, rather than from God, ESPECIALLY given the novel and even blasphemous nature of his scriptural twists and malignancies. Who could blame such first century Jews for their very reasonable Protest-antism?

Cardinal Newman, whom you cite, is one of the foremost apostles of doctrinal relativism. Instead of defending the teaching of the apostles, Cardinal Newman argued for the “development of doctrine” wherein the apostles were not able to communicate everything that is necessary for the faith, so that some of their teachings became obsolete.

Have you actually read Cardinal Newman? I have read a great deal of the good Cardinal over the last 20 years. Never have I encountered any writing of his that could remotely be interpreted (charitably) along the lines you here suggest.

But consider your statement “Instead of defending the teaching of the apostles . .”. The teachings of the apostles according to whom? You? You are presupposing the very thing that the “authority” problem is all about.

For example, the apostles taught that there is one mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ . . .

But this seems a rather stiff interpretation of the teaching of the apostles. Yes we can find the words “one mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ”. But what does this entail? The apostles also teach that “I fill up in my body what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ” or “we are co-workers with God”. What IS the entire book of acts, or all the NT letters, except the one mediation of Jesus Christ being conveyed THROUGH the teaching, preaching, traveling, etc. etc. of his apostles, and other Christians as well. You seem to leave no place in your exegesis for the apparent fact that the one mediation is – well – mediated, and that by God’s design. The Incarnation comes THROUGH Mary. Christ receives his flesh and human nature which He takes to the cross FROM Mary. God sends an angel to announce that she will conceive and awaits her answer (as does all of humanity) – which she gives by saying “I am the handmaid of the Lord, let it be done to me according to His will”. The angel hails her “full of grace” – what does this mean? Elizabeth cries out in honor of Mary: “how is it that I deserve that the mother of my Lord should visit me?”. Mary herself proclaims that “all generations shall call me blessed”. At the cross, Jesus says to John: “behold your mother”, and to Mary “behold your son”. It would seem that from scripture alone (not to mention the early patristic witness), that Mary is a bit more than a side note. If ever there were a co-worker with God in the economy of salvation it is the Mother of God. In so far as Mary is the door through which the Incarnation entered into human history it is not inaccurate to say that Christ, and even in a sense, salvation descends to us through Mary. Are you certain the Church’s “development” is an obvious distortion and mutilation of the apostolic teaching?

I see that others have already responded to some of your other comments, so I will step out for now. May God richly bless you and yours!

Pax et Bonum,

Ray
Jason Anderson September 18th, 2010 1:35 pm :
Zoltan,

The doctrine of transubstantiation reveals nothing new about the nature/essence/substance of God then any previously held belief prior to the formation of that particular doctrine. Believing the bread and wine’s substance is transformed into Christ’s body, blood, soul, and divinity, claims no more precision regarding the doctrine of the Eucharist then believing that the bread is both bread and Christ. Both are making a judgement about what really occurs, and the mystery of the “mechanics” of it, still remain under both views.

Any claims made about the inconsistencies with transubstantiation (some of which you raised), just as many were made about how illogical it is to believe that a person is both fully man and fully divine. It hardly makes sense that the eternal God, came into time, subjected himself to the laws of the natural world. As well as the belief that somehow we can still claim that we believe in One God and yet talk about these three persons who are the one God. Peter Kreeft once said that if you swallow the camel of the incarnation, why strain on the gnat of transubstantiation.

History shows us that when these doctrines were taking out of the context of Church authority, many differing opinions arose and many people followed. So, although, I am not yet Catholic, I do believe that any issues I have with these doctrines from my personal Biblical point of view, or my examining them from a logical perspective over and against a previous held theological belief, is secondary as to the question of who has the final say.
Lojahw September 18th, 2010 1:46 pm :
Hello, Bryan. I hope you are well.

My paraphrase of Cardinal Newman is from his Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine 2.5.4.3:

“Thus, the holy Apostles would without words know all the truths concerning the high doctrines of theology, which controversialists after them have piously and charitably reduced to formulæ, and developed through argument.”

This is one of Newman’s arguments justifying doctrines not taught by the apostles. In other words, the apostles did not teach Mary as co-redemptrix and the mediator of all graces to mankind because they didn’t have words for these truths – but the Church has developed these doctrines over the centuries with the aid of the Holy Spirit. The implication, however, is that the apostles’ teaching was both imperfect (not “all the truth”) and obsolete: that Christ is not the sole mediator between God and man. Ergo, you claim to teach more perfect truth than that taught by the apostles.

Newman further writes in 2.5.6.4:

“When Roman Catholics are accused of substituting another Gospel for the primitive Creed, they answer that they hold, and can show that they hold, the doctrines of the Incarnation and Atonement, as firmly as any Protestant can state them. To this it is replied that they do certainly profess them, but that they obscure and virtually annul them by their additions; that the cultus of St. Mary and the Saints is no development of the truth, but a corruption and a religious mischief to those doctrines of which it is the corruption, because it draws away the mind and heart from Christ. But they answer that, so far from this, it subserves, illustrates, protects the doctrine of our Lord’s loving kindness and mediation.”

Newman’s response is like saying “falsehood subserves truth by illustrating it” and “darkness makes the light more clear.” However, there is an undeniable contradiction between teaching that Christ is the sole mediator and sole redeemer versus teaching Mary is the co-redemptrix and the mediator of all graces to mankind. To defend the latter is to claim the former is obsolete – an incomplete doctrine.

You say that the development of doctrine has nothing to do with the apostles, but as applied to doctrines such as the above it has everything to do with Jesus’ promise that the Holy Spirit would lead His apostles into “all the truth,” and by implication, it presumes imperfection in the truth passed on by the apostles. For your church to insist that its members believe that Mary is the co-mediatrix and co-redemptrix is to claim that the apostles’ teaching was incomplete and imperfect.

Blessings,
Lojahw
Ray Stamper September 18th, 2010 1:49 pm :
Candian,

Glad it helped. I have been working on just such a project, but have gotten sidetracked due to a death in the family and the start of grad studies. I still hope to get something to the C2C editors for review in the “somewhat” near future. It will be up to them to decide if it is appropriate for posting. Bryan’s response to MJV a few posts above is another very good overview of the situation stated in a different manner. Peace and Good!

Ray
MJV September 18th, 2010 2:53 pm :
Ray & Bryan,

Thanks for your very thorough answers to my question. They were very insightful and helpful; the best articulated answers I’ve received on this issue. I really appreciate the work you guys have done on this site, especially your charitable responses. I’m glad there is a safe place for debate and thought. I’m still chewing on much of these issues. I was raised Catholic, went into Reformed Protestantism because my experience in the Catholic faith was very lacking intellectually and spiritually. You have clarified many misconceptions that I have had, as I at times have even been very “anti-Catholic” for the aforementioned reasons. Thank you for providing a different side to Catholicism that was very unfamiliar to me early in life.

I’d like to ask one question to the analogy that Ray used in terms of answering Jesus’ question: “Who do you say that I am?” The situation obviously meet the 3 factors you mentioned, analogous to the Catholic Church’s claims. So, if I have rejected the Catholic Church’s claims, have I not had “supernatural faith” when embracing “the Christ” presented in Protestantism; analogous to only receiving a fallible church such as the Pharisees or David Koresh, et. al, as you mentioned? In other words, have I placed my faith in intellectual/spiritual man or in Christ who is the Church (RCC)? Where does the analogy break down? or have I completely missed the boat on that in terms of my faith choice?

Thanks.
Bryan Cross September 18th, 2010 4:45 pm :
Lojahw, (re: #900)

You wrote:

The implication, however, is that the apostles’ teaching was both imperfect (not “all the truth”) and obsolete: that Christ is not the sole mediator between God and man. Ergo, you claim to teach more perfect truth than that taught by the apostles.

This is mistaken, but a more careful treatment of the matter can rectify it. A thing can be perfect in different senses. In one sense, a thing can be perfect in the sense of having no defect. In another sense, a thing can be perfect in the sense of being incapable of improvement. Prior to their sin, Adam and Eve were perfect in the former sense, but not perfect in the latter sense, since they could grow in righteousness and love for God. Similarly, a baby can be physiologically perfect in the former sense while not being physiologically perfect in the latter sense, because the baby is capable of growing into a mature adult, and thus further perfecting its expression of the human essence. Likewise, the deposit of faith entrusted to the Apostles was perfect in the former sense, but not perfect in the latter sense. That is, there was no defect or deficiency in it, and yet it could be further perfected not by adding to it or correcting some defect, but by more deeply understanding and explicitly manifesting what was already present in it, in very much the way a human being, as he grows from infancy to adulthood, more fully manifests the human essence that he had fully from the moment of his conception.

Moreover, nothing Newman says implies that anything the Apostles taught is “obsolete.” Such a claim is simply a non sequitur, and manifests a confusion about the very essence of what Newman means by the “development of doctrine.” The nature of Mary’s mediation in no way falsifies the truth of 1 Tim 2:5 (“For there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.”) If it did, it would not be a development of doctrine, but a corruption of the Apostolic deposit. The sense in which Christ is the “one mediator” is fully compatible with there being other mediators mediating in senses other than the sense in which Christ mediates. Hence, for example, my interceding for you is not made impossible by Christ’s unique mediation on your behalf. Moreover, we already know that Mary’s fiat (“Let it be to me according to your word” – Luke 1:38) is fully compatible with 1 Tim 2:5, and thus with Christ’s unique mediation. And yet, by her fiat, Mary mediated between God and man, by making way for the union of the divine and human natures in the Person of the Logos. So the 1 Tim 2:5 passage cannot be interpreted as excluding without qualification all other sorts of mediation between God and man, and thus any other mediators. Rather, it should be interpreted as affirming the uniqueness of Christ’s mediation, as the unique sacrifice that satisfies the justice of God regarding the sin of the world. By contrast, Mary’s mediation is a mediation of the coming of Christ to men, and thus of the grace merited for us by Christ’s Passion and Death.

You wrote:

Newman further writes in 2.5.6.4:

“When Roman Catholics are accused of substituting another Gospel for the primitive Creed, they answer that they hold, and can show that they hold, the doctrines of the Incarnation and Atonement, as firmly as any Protestant can state them. To this it is replied that they do certainly profess them, but that they obscure and virtually annul them by their additions; that the cultus of St. Mary and the Saints is no development of the truth, but a corruption and a religious mischief to those doctrines of which it is the corruption, because it draws away the mind and heart from Christ. But they answer that, so far from this, it subserves, illustrates, protects the doctrine of our Lord’s loving kindness and mediation.”

Newman’s response is like saying “falsehood subserves truth by illustrating it” and “darkness makes the light more clear.”

Claiming that Newman’s response is “like” saying that “falsehood subserves truth by illustrating it” begs the question, i.e. presumes precisely what is in question between us, by assuming that the cultus of Mary and the Saints is false. If, in actuality, the cultus of Mary and the Saints is of God, and does in fact serve to illustrate and protect the doctrine of our Lord’s loving kindness and mediation, then Newman’s saying that it does this is not like saying that “falsehood subserves truth by illustrating it.” So your claim amounts to a question-begging assertion.

However, there is an undeniable contradiction between teaching that Christ is the sole mediator and sole redeemer versus teaching Mary is the co-redemptrix and the mediator of all graces to mankind. To defend the latter is to claim the former is obsolete – an incomplete doctrine.

There is a contradiction between the doctrine of Mary’s mediation and the doctrine of Christ’s unique mediation, only if one fails to recognize that the term ‘mediation’ is being used in different senses in the two claims, as I explained just above. In other words, there is a contradiction between the two claims if you set up a straw man of the Catholic position. If you want to understand these doctrines better, I recommend picking up an introduction to Catholic doctrine. See our Suggested Reading page.

You wrote:

You say that the development of doctrine has nothing to do with the apostles, but as applied to doctrines such as the above it has everything to do with Jesus’ promise that the Holy Spirit would lead His apostles into “all the truth,” and by implication, it presumes imperfection in the truth passed on by the apostles. For your church to insist that its members believe that Mary is the co-mediatrix and co-redemptrix is to claim that the apostles’ teaching was incomplete and imperfect.

Actually, I never claimed that development of doctrine “has nothing to do with the apostles.” I said, “It has nothing to do with the ability of the Apostles.” Notice that word ‘ability.’ If you leave out words when you paraphrase what I say, you end up distorting what I actually said. So, more caution is in order here. In addition, as I explained above, the notion that development of doctrine implies “imperfection” in the truth passed on by the Apostles fails to distinguish the two senses in which something can be perfected. Something can be perfected from a state of imperfection, and something can be perfected from a state of perfection.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Ray Stamper September 18th, 2010 5:36 pm :
MJV

I will be adding you to my daily prayers. In some ways you are my experiential opposite. I spent many of my first thirty years of life as a Protestant (at first non-denominational and then Reformed) before making a short detour towards Eastern orthodoxy and finally home to Rome. My entire extended family (both sides) remain Protestant (I am working on that :>). They were, at first, quite antagonistic when my wife and I and our children became Catholic. In fact both sides of my family still attend the same non-denominational evangelical church. Funny thing is, over the last 11 years since I have been Catholic, their church has experienced so much splitting and division, there is hardly anyone still attending – besides my extended family and a few other. Hence, they have slowly become much more receptive to my (I hope gentle) overtures toward the Catholic Church. At any rate, the question you ask has great meaning for me both in terms of looking back on my own Protestant experience, as well as in relating to, and communicating with, my family. If I may, I am going to re-post two parts of an argument I wrote on a different thread in order to answer your question.

8.)Given 6 an 7, any proposed communicable content said to represent a “divine revelation” must be proposed by an “authority” capable of answering to the question of human destiny with a certainty greater than that attainable through fallible natural reason (read “human opinion). That authority, for Christians, is God. Hence the crucial importance of the term “divine” in “divine revelation”. The ultimate acceptance or rejection of the communicable content will be based upon the individual’s assent (or lack of assent) to the “authority claim” of God, the revelatory communicator; NOT upon the demonstrability, or even the reasonability, of the communicable content itself. Once the divine “authority claim” is embraced, then WHATEVER that Authority (God) says with regard to the revelatory content must be accepted as true – that is the very nature of “faith” or the “assent of faith”.

9.)But how does God speak or “reveal” to us? God could override human nature (which He designed) by infusing direct knowledge of revealed truths within the human intellect along with an attendant sense of certainty that these newly arrived propositions were in fact “true”. Yet, God does not generally “override” human nature. Accordingly, in order to “reveal” a “divine” communication, God condescends to our faculties of intellect and will by communicating with us in a way consonant with human nature. Thus, he uses some instrumentality within the created order to draw our attention to the locus and explication of the content of divine revelation.

When I was a Protestant, for a long time, I embraced the truth of 8 (that faith must be directed at God, Who reveals Himself to us) in a very implicit fashion. I would say that all of my Protestant family members continue to embrace that truth implicitly. I and they simply received the notion of Sola Scriptura uncritically. The bible was a letter from God – simple as that. In my case, for many years, and for my family to this day; the “authority problem” simply never arose. We moved within circles where such a challenge would usually never arise; and if it did on occasion, we would quickly dismiss the challenge as coming from someone who rejects the Word of God. Still, we truly did direct our faith at God, which is as it should be. However, we gave no critical thought to the real-world, tangible, instrument (namely the text of scripture) which we implicitly and uncritically took to be the very His very voice. We neither considered how we came to believe that our particular collection of 66 books was inspired; nor, especially, why our particular (and actually peculiar) interpretation of the theological content of those books was correct. Both the divine authorship of scripture and our understanding of the author’s meaning were innocently held as if they had both fallen down from heaven. The canon problem and the interpretation problem were not on our theological radar screen. Thus, I am convinced that both I back then, and they to this day, very likely had, and have, real and living faith in God. I think this is true for many (maybe most) Protestants of good will. The RCC, of course, recognizes the very real fruits of grace and truth within the communions of our partially separated brothers and sisters.

However, once one begins to ask fundamental theological questions about things like canonicity, or the basis for differentiating orthodoxy from heterodoxy; that which was once embraced implicitly and in innocence becomes explicit; and blissful ignorance no longer remains an option. Once one has come awake to the fact that we believe not simply in God, but in God as mediated through some means in the created order (my argument point 9); one has begun a trajectory that must end in an explicit, fully formed, fully IN-formed, assent of faith, as I have described.

Still, no one can be held accountable for what he does not know, even if we must also insist that we are accountable for knowing what we should. I am quite sure that God honors the implicit faith that I had as a Protestant in the sacred scriptures (and still have – though on a far firmer, clearer and explicit foundation) as real faith directed at Him. In His mercy he prodded and pushed me along, through much suffering, to see and embrace the fullness of the ancient faith contained ever present within the Catholic Church; and I cannot image – except for God’s grace – how I retained Christian faith for so long without the manifold blessing found therein. I see the faith of my family in the same light. In all likelihood, your faith has always been the genuine article as well. To be very Thomistic about the whole thing, one might say that many Protestants have the “formal” virtue of faith, though in their innocence they are inadvertently directing that faith at an incorrect “material” object of faith. Nevertheless, God will not hold the “material” mistake against those who make it in innocence. It is helpful perhaps to consider that the most ancient creeds of Christendom, such as the Apostle’s and Nicene, have four essential sections:

I believe – in God the Father . . .
I believe in Jesus Christ . . .
I believe in the Holy Spirit . . .
I believe in the holy Catholic Church . . .

The Church IS the mystical body of Christ into which the Holy Spirit has been poured out. Like her founder, she is both human (all too human) and divine (thanks be to God!). The fact that she is animated and sustained by God’s Spirit entails that she is worthy to be BELIEVED in. She is a worthy object of our FAITH.

Of course, all I have been saying about the “assent of faith” applies to Catholics as well. There are more than a few Catholics who have never dealt with the issue of “authority” in their Christian life either. To the degree that Catholics retain their Catholicism only in so far as the teachings of the Church happen to agree with their own views, or for some other cultural or societal reason, they have never exercised the virtue of faith – they have remained their own barometer. The point is that the virtue of faith is not automatic just because one is in the Catholic Church – what is crucial is the REASON WHY one is Catholic.

Finally, let me also add that I am very sorry to hear that your former experience in the Catholic Church was so lacking. I entered the Church with eyes wide open. Are there problems – you bet! Have there always been problems – you bet! I think one of the biggest problems is that the body of Christ is divided. The Catholic Church, the true home of all Christians, has a lot of vacant living space. We are missing enormous reservoirs of zeal and talent and evangelistic force that should naturally be found within the family of God. Why? Because many years ago, some of our Catholic forefathers behaved very badly, and quite naturally offended and alienated many of their sons and daughters in the faith. Those sons and daughters left home and built new houses to live in (some of them quite attractive), far away from their unholy relatives. Still, there is no place like one’s true home – no matter how bad or embarrassing some of the relatives may be. The winds of modernity are blowing very hard against some of those homes and outpost these day, in which the children of those first offended sons and daughters still live – just as it is blowing against the house built on the rock. It would be wonderful, if we Catholics could repent and humble ourselves at the most fundamental level before our estranged family members. And it would be more wonderful still, if those family members would consider coming home – with all their talents and holiness – so that we can share a meal – THE meal – and then go to work together with all the graces and gifts of God working as one!

Pax et Bonum,

Ray
Zoltan September 18th, 2010 10:20 pm :
Jason (re #899),

You wrote:

“The doctrine of transubstantiation reveals nothing new about the nature/essence/substance of God then any previously held belief prior to the formation of that particular doctrine.”

This is incorrect. I believe this can be established most clearly by looking at practice for it is doctrine that leads to practice. Church history shows that the veneration of the Eucharist became common practice once the doctrine of transubstantiation was formalized. Since a literal transformation was believed to have occurred during the mass, veneration of the host logically followed. Transubstantiation was formalized as dogma in the 12th century. The ritual of the elevation began in early 13th century Paris and quickly spread across Europe. I believe it is inaccurate and overly simplistic to assert that the specific doctrine of transubstantiation revealed “nothing new” otherwise, there would be formalized official church doctrines akin to it found in early church history.

“Believing the bread and wine’s substance is transformed into Christ’s body, blood, soul, and divinity, claims no more precision regarding the doctrine of the Eucharist then believing that the bread is both bread and Christ.”

If this statement were true, then there would be no reason to insist on the exact doctrine of transubstantiation to maintain orthodoxy but historically and in RC dogma that is not the case. According to Trent: “If anyone saith that, in the sacred and holy Sacrament of the Eucharist, the substance of the bread and wine remains conjointly with the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ….;let him be anathema.”

Indeed, I would say that such wording is very precise and allows for no wiggle room. In fact, the pronouncement of the priest “hoc est corpus meum” is thought to bring about the transformation so once again there is precision not seen in the Protestant Church.

“Why strain at the gnat of transubstantiation?”

Because doctrine has consequence. With such views of the Eucharist, erroneous practice arose such as the barring of small children from the table, the withholding of wine from laity and the veneration of the elements themselves – all such practices were absent in the early church and with the Reformation, the RCC eventually made some corrections. Furthermore, to insist that transubstantiation alone is the way one must understand the mystery of the Real Presence is to truly limit God. Does Christ not manifest Himself in the breaking of bread in Protestant Churches? I can say that the fruit of the Spirit is certainly there.

“any issues I have with these doctrines from my personal Biblical point of view, or my examining them from a logical perspective over and against a previous held theological belief, is secondary as to the question of who has the final say”

This gets to the heart of another matter. First of all, I do not stand on a “personal Biblical point of view” here but rather formalized reformed doctrines which draw on teachings that have been present since the days of the early church (as outlined well by Mathison in his book “Given for You”). I believe the Church has real and secondary authority but not infallible authority akin to Scripture. If pronouncements are made in formal doctrine to bind the conscience (like the formal doctrines of the Trinity or the Hypostatic Nature of Christ should bind the conscience of any Christian), they should be of an essential and clearly Scriptural nature. If that is not the case, then such pronouncements only serve to create division and stumbling blocks. For example, in Vatican I, the infallibility of the Pope became a formalized doctrine which was clearly unacceptable to the Eastern Orthodox and Protestants. By making such a pronouncement, the RCC was acting in a very uncatholic way. Furthermore, the pronouncement anathematized those who reject this formal doctrine. This is divisive and I cannot see how a true pronouncement by the Holy Spirit could anathematize huge numbers of Christians (even those from the so called apostolic tradition), and yet we remain Christians and indeed that the EO’s could remain a true Church.

Grace and Peace,

Zoltan
mateo September 18th, 2010 10:38 pm :
Lojahw: Jesus and His disciples certainly considered the written Word of God to be “divinely authoritative teaching” – don’t you? Jesus and the apostles appealed to the very words given in Scripture, not some novel meaning that only “authorized teachers” could extract from the text.

The question about who has the authority to teach and interpret scriptures is certainly germane to the topic of this thread. It is, after all, titled “Solo Scriptura, Sola Scriptura, and the Question of Interpretive Authority”.

You bring up several points about the disciples of Jesus – what scriptures were accessible to those disciples; where was the locus of the authority recognized by the disciples of Jesus; did there exist authorized teachers that could bind the disciples’ consciences when scripture was interpreted, etc. These are all points worth examining as they relate to the topic of this thread.

First, to what inerrant scriptures did the disciples of Jesus have access? They most certainly did not have access to the written New Testament while Jesus walked the earth – they only had access to the sacred scriptures of the Jews. Next, authority. The sacred scriptures of the Jews were not the ONLY inerrant authority to which the disciples had access. The disciples had access to the authority of Jesus while Jesus preached on the earth. After Jesus ascended into heaven, the disciples had access to the authority of the church that Christ founded – the divinely instituted church that could teach in name of Jesus. It was the church founded by Christ himself that gave the disciples the authoritative teachings found in the New Testament. On the question of authority, there was never anything taught by Christ that said in effect, “Here is a Protestant bible, and upon this Protestant bible I will build my church, and this Protestant bible will be for you the ONLY inerrant authority that you will have access to.”

Unfortunately, for many Protestants there is an unquestioning acceptance of Luther’s sola scriptura doctrine, a doctrine which is itself a novel teaching that was utterly unknown to the disciples of Jesus. I want to make two points about that, first, Luther’s novel sola scriptura teaching is nowhere taught explicitly in either the New Testament, or the Old Testament. And second, even worse than first point, is that Luther’s novel teaching about sola scriptura actually contradicts what is written in the Protestant bible.

I will first give a definition of Luther’s novel teaching of sola scriptura and then examine what this novel doctrine is really claiming.

sola scriptura: Luther’s novel doctrine that the ONLY inerrant source of authoritative teaching for the Christian about matters of faith and morals is the Protestant bible.

Luther is making at least three explicit claims in his novel doctrine of sola scriptura – and many more implicit claims. Three explicit claims are:

1). The Bible is inerrant.

2). The Bible that is inerrant is the Protestant Bible.

3). The Protestant Bible is the ONLY inerrant source of authoritative teaching to which a Christian has access.

The first claim is not controversial for Catholics, Eastern Orthodox or the Oriental Orthodox. The bible is indeed an inerrant source of authoritative teaching for the Christian.

The second claim is a claim about what constitutes the canon of Christian scriptures, and I will skip a discussion of that claim because that is not the topic of this thread.

The third claim is about the topic of this thread, and the third claim is controversial for Catholics, Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox because of Luther’s ONLY assertion within the claim.

Let me be clear, I am saying that Luther’s novelty of sola scriptura is NOT primarily a doctrine about scriptures being either authoritative or inerrant; neither of those claims would have been controversial for the practicing Catholic that knew his faith in the time of Luther. Luther’s sola scriptura doctrine is, instead, a claim about the authority of the Catholic Church – or more accurately, sola scriptura is a claim that the Catholic Church lacks authority to bind the conscience of the Christian to the doctrines she teaches about faith and morals. Which is precisely why Luther made up his novel doctrine of sola scriptura in the first place. Luther was a member of the Catholic Church, and Luther needed to justify his rebellion against the authority of the church to which he was a member. Luther needed a doctrine to justify his break with existing ecclesial authority so that he could found his own church, and then, once he had created his new church, elevate himself as the only man authorized to interpret scriptures within his new church. Calvin did the same thing as Luther – he rebelled against existing ecclesial authority, created a brand new church, and then declared that only Calvin and the men Calvin appointed had the authority bind the consciences of the Christians living in Geneva to the novel teachings of Calvin’s new church.

The third explicit claim of Luther’s novel sola scriptura doctrine, the ONLY claim, should give any rational Protestant cause for doubt. That is because there are no scriptures within a Protestant bible that teach that the Protestant bible is the ONLY source of inerrant authority for the Christian in matters of faith and morals. Since the doctrine of sola scriptura is itself nowhere taught in a Protestant bible, then how can a Protestant possibly justify believing that Luther’s novel doctrine is inerrant? He can’t.

Luther’s doctrine of sola scriptura is nowhere taught in a Protestant bible, and that is bad news for the Protestant that makes sola scriptura doctrine a foundation of his faith. The logic of sola scriptura forces the Protestant to a position where, at best, the Protstant bible might be the only inerrant authority that he has access to, but he can never know if that is either true or not true by appealing to his Protestant bible alone. What is worse news for the Protestant is that Luther’s novel teaching of sola scriptura contradicts what is written in his Protestant bible. Since Luther’s novel teaching of sola scriptura primarily involves a controversy about the authority of the church, and not a controversy about the inerrancy or authority of the church’s scriptures, we should look at what the Protestant bible teaches about the authority of the church that was founded by Jesus Christ.

Of the four Gospels, only Matthew’s Gospel makes use of the word “church”:

And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” Matthew 16:18-19 RSV

“If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Matthew 18:15-18 RSV

From Matthew 16:18-19 we can see that both Christ founded a church, and that Christ promised that the powers of death will never prevail against it. The visible church that Christ founded cannot disappear from the face of the earth, because the powers of death cannot kill Christ’s church. But enough about that – I don’t want to get into an exegesis about the meaning of the “rock”, the “keys” and the Petrine office – I am simply pointing out that the Protestant bible teaches that Jesus founded a visible church, and that Jesus promised that the powers of death will not prevail against the church that Jesus founded.

The point I want to make is about the authority of Christ’s church, and that point I will make from Matthew 18:15-18. Here we see that Jesus is teaching that Christians must submit to the authority of the visible church that Jesus founded. Jesus teaches that if a brother rebels against the authority of Christ’s church, that the rebel is to be excommunicated – (i.e. ”if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.”) Calvin and Luther had cause to be concerned for refusing to listen to the existing ecclesial authority of their time. Schism is a sin that is condemned in the Protestant bible.

Let us look more closely at the inerrant teaching of Jesus found in Matthew 18:15-18. There must be some way for Joe Christian to apply this teaching about the steps that are to be taken when judging another brother’s behavior to be sinful. Before I – Joe Christian – can take the first step of judging whether another brother is doing something that is sinful, I first need to know something about what constitutes the inerrant doctrines of the church that we both belong to. My personal fallible knowledge of the doctrines of Christ’s church leads me to believe that another brother is sinning, even if I am not claiming to possess a charism of the Holy Spirit that infallibly guides my understanding of the doctrines of Christ’s church. And as long as I am not claiming to be exercising a charism of infallibility in my knowledge of church doctrine, there exists the possibility that I might be wrong in my judgement about another brother’s behavior. Which gets to the heart of Jesus’ teaching about excommunication from His church.

Since I don’t claim that I have the charism of infallibility, it follows that I might be wrong in my understanding of church doctrine. Maybe my judgement about what another brother is doing is a mistaken judgement. Perhaps the two or three witnesses that agree with me are also wrong in their judgement. Suppose that the brother that we think is in the wrong takes his case to the church for judgement on the matter. In Matthew 18:15-18, Jesus is teaching that both the brother and I must submit to the authority of the church, since the church has the final authority to make judgements about matters of faith and morals. When the church makes her judgement about a doctrine of faith or morals, all members of the church will have their consciences bound by the church’s ruling – ”Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” There is no way to twist Matthew 18:18 to make it say that Jesus taught that final authority on earth about doctrinal matters of faith and morals is the individual Christian and his private interpretation of his Protestant Bible.

Now a Protestant might object to the above, and like Luther and Calvin, he might claim that he only is obligated by God to obey the church founded by Jesus when that church teaches correctly. But that objection is itself just another novel Protestant doctrine. The Protestant is protesting along with Luther against the authority of the church founded by Christ – the Protestant is making a claim that has no foundation in scripture, namely, that the individual Christian has the authority sit in judgement of the church founded by Christ. The Protestant’s novel doctrine of the primacy of the individual conscience in matters of faith and morals makes mincemeat out of the inerrant teaching of Jesus found in Matthew 18:15-18.

The novelty of the Protestant’s primacy of conscience doctrine is a mistaken claim that I only have to obey Christ’s church if my conscience agrees with what she teaches. And if I don’t agree with what the church teaches, then I am free to disobey what she teaches. I am free to leave the church and go out and found a new church. If don’t have the energy to found a new church, then I have the freedom to go church shopping among the thousands upon thousands of Protestant denominations until I find someplace that agrees with my own personal interpretations of scripture. This is an untenable interpretation of Matthew 18:15-18.

The Protestant is right, however, when he believes that God does not expect him to obey any authority that teaches incorrectly about matters of faith and morals. What the Protestant is lacking is an understanding of the inerrant scriptures that are contained within his Protestant bible. The teaching of Jesus found in Matthew 18:15-18 only makes sense if the authoritative teachings of the church are inerrant in matters of faith and morals. Thus, Luther’s doctrine of sola scriptura is wrong – the bible is indeed an inerrant authority for Christians in matters of faith and morals, but the bible is not the ONLY inerrant authority for the Christian. The Protestant bible shows that Jesus taught that Christ’s church, the true church, has the authority to infallibly interpret the truths taught by scriptures. The consciences of the Christian are bound by the church’s authoritative doctrines in matters of faith and morals – church doctrines that can never contradict the inerrant scriptures. The inerrant doctrines promulgated by the church cannot contradict the inerrant scriptures, since the scriptures are not reformable by any authority.

As for the authority of the churches founded by Luther, Calvin, or any other man – these churches have no authority whatsoever to either interpret scriptures for Christians, or to bind any Christian’s conscience to the novel doctrines of men that create their own churches.
Bryan Cross September 18th, 2010 11:46 pm :
Zoltan (re: #905)

You wrote:

This is incorrect. I believe this can be established most clearly by looking at practice for it is doctrine that leads to practice. Church history shows that the veneration of the Eucharist became common practice once the doctrine of transubstantiation was formalized. Since a literal transformation was believed to have occurred during the mass, veneration of the host logically followed. Transubstantiation was formalized as dogma in the 12th century. The ritual of the elevation began in early 13th century Paris and quickly spread across Europe.

The problem with that claim is that St. Augustine writes:

“…I turn to Christ, because it is He whom I seek here; and I discover how the earth is adored without impiety, how without impiety the footstool of His feet is adored. For He received earth from earth; because flesh is from the earth, and He took flesh from the flesh of Mary. He walked here in the same flesh, and gave us the same flesh to be eaten unto salvation. But no one eats that flesh unless he first adores it; and thus it is discovered how such a footstool of the Lord’s feet is adored; and not only do we not sin by adoring, we do sin by not adoring.” (Ennarations on the Psalms 98:9)

You wrote:

I believe it is inaccurate and overly simplistic to assert that the specific doctrine of transubstantiation revealed “nothing new” otherwise, there would be formalized official church doctrines akin to it found in early church history.

The whole history of the Church shows repeatedly that a doctrine is not formally declared until it is sufficiently challenged by heresy. Therefore, the claim that if a doctrine were present in the early Church it would have been formally declared by the early Church, is unjustified, because it unjustifiably assumes either that even without the challenge from heresy the Church ordinarily would formally declare everything she believed, or that in the early Church there must have been a heresy sufficiently opposing the transformation of the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ, such that the early Church would have formally defined the doctrine. Both those assumptions are unjustified.

Because doctrine has consequence. With such views of the Eucharist, erroneous practice arose such as the barring of small children from the table,

How, exactly, do you know this is an “erroneous practice”? Where in Scripture does it say that children ought to receive the Eucharist? If you claim that it belongs to tradition, then do you accept the rest of the tradition, or do you pick from the tradition arbitrarily?

the withholding of wine from laity and the veneration of the elements themselves – all such practices were absent in the early church

If it were just wine, then the laity could just bring their own or wait until they get home and have some. But the Church has the authority to make this sort of change regarding the reception of the sacrament, for circumstantial reasons, as I explained here. As for veneration of the Eucharistic Body and Blood, see the quotation from St. Augustine above.

Furthermore, to insist that transubstantiation alone is the way one must understand the mystery of the Real Presence is to truly limit God.

If transubstantiation is, in fact, what takes place in a valid Eucharist, then for the Church to teach that this is the way we ought to understand what takes place in the Eucharist is not to “limit God” but to conform the mind of the faithful to the truth. Otherwise, every dogma “limits God.”

Does Christ not manifest Himself in the breaking of bread in Protestant Churches? I can say that the fruit of the Spirit is certainly there.

Undoubtedly even the mere symbolizing of what Christ did is a powerful reminder of Christ’s love, and so receiving bread and wine, designated as symbols of His sacrifice on the cross, stir up love and gratitude in the heart, and the Spirit may indeed work through this. But because Protestant pastors do not have valid orders through apostolic succession, there is no Eucharist among the Protestant communities, and therefore there is no assurance that any grace is being received when the mere bread and wine are received.

First of all, I do not stand on a “personal Biblical point of view” here but rather formalized reformed doctrines which draw on teachings that have been present since the days of the early church (as outlined well by Mathison in his book “Given for You”). I believe the Church has real and secondary authority but not infallible authority akin to Scripture.

The problem, as this article explains, is that the Protestant conception of ‘Church’ reduces to those who sufficiently agree with one’s own interpretation of Scripture. So, when you say that “the Church” has real authority, that means, ultimately, that you submit to those men who generally share your interpretation of Scripture. And ‘submitting’ to those who agree with you, is no submission at all.

If pronouncements are made in formal doctrine to bind the conscience (like the formal doctrines of the Trinity or the Hypostatic Nature of Christ should bind the conscience of any Christian), they should be of an essential and clearly Scriptural nature.

By what authority do you tell the Church the standards to which her formal pronouncements must conform?

If that is not the case, then such pronouncements only serve to create division and stumbling blocks.

The Arians would have completely agreed that the Council of Nicea in 325 served only to create division, and place stumbling blocks before Arians wanting to retain or pursue full communion in the Catholic Church. So if no pronouncements that “create division and stumbling blocks” are allowed (by the authority you have taken upon yourself to declare to the universal Church what she can and cannot do), then there could be no councils at all that respond to some doctrinal dispute, and declare one side to be heretical, since that might possibly result in division, if the heretical side decides not to accept the conciliar decision.

For example, in Vatican I, the infallibility of the Pope became a formalized doctrine which was clearly unacceptable to the Eastern Orthodox and Protestants. By making such a pronouncement, the RCC was acting in a very uncatholic way.

Pleas define “uncatholic.”

Furthermore, the pronouncement anathematized those who reject this formal doctrine. This is divisive and I cannot see how a true pronouncement by the Holy Spirit could anathematize huge numbers of Christians (even those from the so called apostolic tradition), and yet we remain Christians and indeed that the EO’s could remain a true Church.

I think you are misunderstanding the meaning of the term ‘anathema’ as it is used by the Church councils. See Jimmy Akin’s little article on that here. Someone can be in [material] heresy and still be a Christian. Likewise, even a particular Church (that’s a technical term) can, by the preservation of Holy Orders and the other sacraments, remain a true “particular Church,” even while not accepting a dogma of the universal Church. It will be in at least [material] heresy and schism, but so long as it retains the sacraments, it remains a true particular Church. The authority of the Catholic Church to define and pronounce dogmas does not depend on whether some (or many) Christians reject the Church’s pronouncements, or whether such persons can remain Christians (and, by invincible ignorance, remain in a state of grace), while not accepting the Church’s pronouncements.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Ryan September 19th, 2010 12:35 am :
re. whether the doctrine of transubstantiation “essentially means that we have figured out God’s nature”

In post #895, Zoltan asserted that the doctrine of transubstantiation somehow requires that RC are affirming that “they have figured out God’s nature.” Zoltan doesn’t explain what he means by the phrase in italics. And he doesn’t explain why he thinks {affirming transubstantiation = affirming that one knows God’s nature}.

In post # 899 Jason Anderson responded to Zoltan by denying his claim:

The doctrine of transubstantiation reveals nothing new about the nature/essence/substance of God then any previously held belief prior to the formation of that particular doctrine.

Zoltan replies to Jason in post # 905 re-affirming his initial post (though still with explaining what is meant by claiming ‘that we have figured out God’s nature.’

Before continuing to debate this point, I think it would be helpful if Zoltan explained what he means by his statement first. For example, St. Thomas clearly held to transubstantiation (see ST III, Q. 75) while also clearly denying that we could know God’s “nature” (see ST I, Q. 2, a.1) Where “nature” is understood in the sense of an essential definition specifying a thing’s genus and difference. So if Zoltan means by ‘God’s nature’ the most natural meaning, his claim is obviously false. (Or at least he needs to explain how St. Thomas held two incompatible propositions.) But if, in using ‘God’s nature’, Zoltan means something different than an essential definition, then he should explain what sense he’s using.

[p.s. I hesitated to post this because, at first, I couldn’t see how Zoltan’s post was related to the point of the article. But, reading Zoltan’s post as charitably as I can, perhaps his dilemma is related to authority in this way:

1. One cannot know God’s nature in this life.
2. The RCC teaches definitively transubstantiation.
3. Affirming transubstantiation entails affirming that one can know God’s essence/nature.
4. A truly authoritative church wouldn’t definitively teach something, p, that entailed something false.
5. The RCC has taught something definitively that entails something that is false. (by 1, 2, and 3)
6. Therefore, the RCC isn’t a true authority.

If this is what Zoltan had in mind, we need to see some argument for (3), for starters.]
Zoltan September 19th, 2010 2:24 am :
Bryan (#907)

You wrote:

The problem with that claim is that St. Augustine writes:

“…I turn to Christ, because it is He whom I seek here; and I discover how the earth is adored without impiety, how without impiety the footstool of His feet is adored. For He received earth from earth; because flesh is from the earth, and He took flesh from the flesh of Mary. He walked here in the same flesh, and gave us the same flesh to be eaten unto salvation. But no one eats that flesh unless he first adores it; and thus it is discovered how such a footstool of the Lord’s feet is adored; and not only do we not sin by adoring, we do sin by not adoring.” (Ennarations on the Psalms 98:9)

The historical point I was making cannot be refuted by a single quote from Augustine. I am not suggesting that no one prior to the formalization of the doctrine of Transubstantiation believed something akin to it, only that it was not universally held by any means or even the majority position in the early church. The lack of widespread veneration of the Host prior to the 13th century buttresses my point so your quote by Augustine essentially proves nothing but his personal view.

You wrote:

“The whole history of the Church shows repeatedly that a doctrine is not formally declared until it is sufficiently challenged by heresy. Therefore, the claim that if a doctrine were present in the early Church it would have been formally declared by the early Church, is unjustified, because it unjustifiably assumes either that even without the challenge from heresy the Church ordinarily would formally declare everything she believed, or that in the early Church there must have been a heresy sufficiently opposing the transformation of the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ, such that the early Church would have formally defined the doctrine. Both those assumptions are unjustified.”

There is some validity to what you write here but in this context and in history there are other possibilities to consider which you seem to discount. It is also possible that a doctrine was largely non-existent or fully developed prior to a particular pronouncement. So the view that Mary is co-mediator and co-redemptrix is absent in the early centuries and to merely assume it was there because there was no “heresy” to challenge it is historical eisegesis.

You wrote:

“How, exactly, do you know this is an “erroneous practice”? Where in Scripture does it say that children ought to receive the Eucharist? If you claim that it belongs to tradition, then do you accept the rest of the tradition, or do you pick from the tradition arbitrarily?”

It can be deduced from Scripture. Jesus commanded the disciples to let the children come unto Him. He also said that out of the mouths of babes and suckling infants there is perfect praise. It is for you to show me how Jesus could say these things and then deny these children to partake of Him. Cyprian supports that this practice was done. Moreover, it makes no sense that a formal pronouncement on this would not be evident in the early church if the practice were not allowed, as the converse would most certainly have been assumed. In the Jewish tradition, the children partook of the Passover and other feasts before the LORD like anyone else. That practice would have continued unless the Apostles and ECF’s ruled otherwise but such a ruling is absent. Therefore, my point stands that in history, the exclusion of children from the Table was an innovation that crept in with certain other doctrines.

You wrote:

“If it were just wine, then the laity could just bring their own or wait until they get home and have some. But the Church has the authority to make this sort of change regarding the reception of the sacrament, for circumstantial reasons, as I explained here. As for veneration of the Eucharistic Body and Blood, see the quotation from St. Augustine above.”

If transubstantiation is, in fact, what takes place in a valid Eucharist, then for the Church to teach that this is the way we ought to understand what takes place in the Eucharist is not “limit God” but to conform the mind of the faithful to the truth. Otherwise, every dogma “limits God.””

If indeed. However, if there is inconceivable mystery in the Eucharist (as there is in God’s nature), then it would be wrong to try and define what happens too precisely. I believe that Ratzinger’s quote would call into question certain traditional ideas about Transubstantiation which has led many RC’s to brand him a heretic online. How do you view his position? As for the veneration of the Eucharist, your quote by Augustine proves little.

You wrote:

“Undoubtedly even the mere symbolizing of what Christ did is a powerful reminder of Christ’s love, and so receiving bread and wine, designated as symbols of His sacrifice on the cross, stir up love and gratitude in the heart, and the Spirit may indeed work through this. But because Protestant pastors do not have valid orders through apostolic succession, there is no Eucharist among the Protestant communities, and therefore there is no assurance that any grace is being received when the mere bread and wine are received.”

So says your tradition. This is merely assertion predicated on what you have accepted as the true Church.

You wrote:

“The problem, as this article explains, is that the Protestant conception of ‘Church’ reduces to those who sufficiently agree with one’s own interpretation of Scripture. So, when you say that “the Church” has real authority, that means, ultimately, that you submit to those men who generally share your interpretation of Scripture. And ‘submitting’ to those who you agree with you, is no submission at all.”

I can say first hand that this is false for I have submitted to teaching I did not agree with and indeed still do.

You wrote:

“By what authority do you tell the Church the standards to which her formal pronouncements must conform?”

Augustine (354-430): Whoever dissents from the sacred Scriptures, even if they are found in all places in which the church is designated, are not the church. De Unitate Ecclesiae, Caput IV, §7, PL 43:395-396. Are quotes by Augustine allowed from a Protestant? The point is simply that in my view the ECF’s looked to the Scriptures as did Christ and the Apostles. We are commanded to imitate Christ and to test the Spirits and knowledge of the Word was commended in order to do this. The “authority” here is not my own.

You wrote:

“The Arians would have completely agreed that the division resulting from the Council of Nicea in 325 served only to create division, and place stumbling blocks before Arians wanting to retain or pursue full communion in the Catholic Church. So if no pronouncements that “create division and stumbling blocks” are allowed (by the authority you have taken upon yourself to declare to the universal Church what she can and cannot do), then there could be no councils at all that respond to some doctrinal dispute, and declare one side to be heretical, since that might possibly result in division, if the heretical side decides not to accept the conciliar decision.”

You have made a generalization here Bryan while ignoring the “If” at the beginning of the phrase. I would submit that the Arian heresy was contrary to Scripture and pernicious and therefore it was essential to address it. However, the filioque controversy is another matter. Although we probably agree theologically on that point, the unilateral adding of that into the creed served as a stumbling block to the EO’s.

You wrote:

“Please define “uncatholic.””

Something that would most certainly not be affirmed by Christians outside the RCC and to proceed with formalizing it served as a wedge against unity. How can the EO’s accept it? Simply put, uncatholic would mean something that is not broadly held and affirmed in Christian Churches.

You wrote:

“I think you are misunderstanding the meaning of the term ‘anathema’ as it is used by the Church councils. See Jimmy Akin’s little article on that … Someone can be in [material] heresy and still be a Christian. Likewise, even a particular Church (that’s a technical term) can, by the preservation of Holy Orders and the other sacraments, remain a true “particular Church,” even while not accepting a dogma of the universal Church. It will be in at least [material] heresy and schism, but so long as it retains the sacraments, it remains a true particular Church. The authority of the Catholic Church to define and pronounce dogmas does not depend on whether some (or many) Christians reject the Church’s pronouncements, or whether such persons can remain Christians (and, by invisible ignorance, remain in a state of grace), while not accepting the Church’s pronouncements.”

This seems nonsensical to me. In the article you cite, anathema may be equated with excommunication or “cut off from Christian society”. How was it possible to be excommunicated and yet remain a Christian or a true Church? How can one pretend that the EO magisterium is merely in ignorance about the pronouncements of Rome?

Grace and Peace,

Zoltan

PS – Ryan I hope to come to your comments when I have time.
Jason Anderson September 19th, 2010 9:07 am :
Zoltan

I think Ryan’s post above explains what I mean when I say that transubstantiation does not allow us to know God’s nature. I also think Bryan’s post explains how this belief about the Eucharist was not a novel innovation.

I am confused about how you are using the term “precise.” I took from your first post that you were meaning the term precise, not as in correctness, but as in “narrowing the definition” or as you say the definition leaves no “wiggle room”. But in your second post you seem to use the word precise in both these ways to respond to my post. If transubstantiation is true, then it is the most precise view, if we mean precise as in correct. And not believing it would mean believing something false. However, what I was meaning by precise was, in terms relating to what substances are present, or what occurs, during the Lord’s Supper, both your view that the bread is both bread and Christ, and the doctrine of transubstantiation are narrowed definitions that leave no wiggle room. But neither one removes the mystery of what occurs. If you say the substance of bread remains and I say it does not, why would my belief somehow be charged as being too precise, over and against yours?

Ultimately it comes down to the question of authority, which all arguments between Protestants, Catholics, EO, ect. ultimately come down too. I will say this, since the Protestant position has maintained that there is nothing intrinsically authoritative in the Churches leadership or in any confessions/councils, then, as this article shows, the logical outcome has actualized. The contemporary Protestant churches is exactly the logical outcome of the reformation’s view of church authority. This is why I used the phrase “personal Biblical point of view”, because even if I think Nicea, the WCF, Calvin’s Institutes, St. Augustine, ect. are correct, I did not come to this based upon these subjects having authority given by the Holy Spirit to bind my conscience. Nay, I came to them based upon my personal interpretation of the Scriptures, with my interpretation being the final say for me. The non-denominational Church with their lack of emphasis on the sacraments, and the historical Reformed Protestant, are both united in this principle, and both come to their conclusions based upon it.
Lojahw September 19th, 2010 11:08 am :
Dear Benjamin, Thank you for your thoughtful comments on salvation(1) and (2). As far as growing in grace and knowledge, both require the work of the Holy Spirit. Growing in grace also relies greatly on living in Christian community: we cannot obey “all that Christ has commanded” apart from the Body of Christ. For example, we cannot “love one another as I have loved you” apart from relationships with brothers and sisters in Christ. Knowledge also is greatly helped by teachers who really know God’s Word well and are indwelled by the Holy Spirit. So, as far as being conformed to the image of Christ I agree with you that “the Bible alone isn’t going to cut it.”

That said, re: the sacraments, Jesus commissioned His apostles to teach disciples “to obey all that I have commanded you.” So beyond knowledge – mental and experiential – of God, we are told first to obey Christ. That is, Christ taught that all of His disciples should be baptized and should “do this [participate in the Eucharist] in remembrance of Me.” So, of first importance is to practice what Jesus commanded. Now Scripture also teaches certain things about these sacraments: e.g., that in baptism we are “buried with Christ and raised with Him.” It is interesting that no Christian takes this literally, but Roman Catholics insist that Jesus’ words “This is My body” be taken literally. The Apostle Paul also teaches that we are not to take the bread and the cup in an unworthy manner. Yet, Paul says “eat the bread” and “drink the cup” – he does not say “eat the body” and “drink the blood.” I believe that what God has chosen to reveal through His apostles and prophets is sufficient for all Christians. I appreciate the EO’s acceptance of certain things as mysteries of the faith (the “real presence” being one of them). They do not think it necessary to dissect and intellectualize what God has been silent about or has spoken about ambiguously. In short, to grow as a Christian should entail believing and understanding and obeying what God has clearly revealed in the Scriptures (which as Paul says are “profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work”). To be adequate and equipped for every good work refers to salvation(2).

As the Articles of Faith found in the Anglican book of common prayer say: ““Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation.”

I believe that the above statement applies to both salvation(1) and salvation(2). Yes, we all need human teachers, but their charter is to teach us what God revealed infallibly through His prophets and apostles, and especially, through His own Son.

Blessings,
Lojahw
p.s., You’re right – I’m a guy.
stephenwilkins September 19th, 2010 3:07 pm :
Zoltan, 909:

Bryan asked, “Where in Scripture does it say that children ought to receive the Eucharist?”

You responded, “It can be deduced from Scripture.”

Your response illustrates and does not refute Bryan’s point, which is a little frustrating because it looks like you’re ignoring Bryan’s point. You know Scripture doesn’t say that children out to receive the Eucharist, but rather than admit that you pull out a few citations and claim that they can be understood to support your assertion. But you can see why such a response dodges precisely the issue at play, right?

Thus Bryan says, “The problem, as this article explains, is that the Protestant conception of ‘Church’ reduces to those who sufficiently agree with one’s own interpretation of Scripture.”

You responded, “I can say first hand that this is false for I have submitted to teaching I did not agree with and indeed still do.”

But Bryan did not say “…reduces to those who agree 100% with one’s own interpretation,” so the fact that you are willing to accept a certain amount of disagreement with your church’s teaching is fully compatible with what Bryan said. Your submission to authority is based on the extent to which that authority agrees substantially with your interpretation of Scripture… which means that the real authority here is… you.

Let us return to The Protestant Contradiction as it is explained in Bryan’s article:

If all appeals to Scripture are appeals to interpretations of Scripture, then it follows necessarily that either someone’s interpretation of Scripture is the final and authoritative norm of doctrine and practice, or Scripture itself cannot be the final and authoritative norm of doctrine and practice. The latter option is not open to Mathison as a Protestant, because to deny that Scripture is the final and authoritative norm of doctrine and practice is to deny sola scriptura, the very foundation of Protestantism. But neither is the former option open to Mathison, because without apostolic succession, Protestantism has no sacramental basis for anyone’s interpretation being the final and authoritative norm of doctrine and practice. Mathison’s position thus creates a dilemma for himself that cannot be resolved without ceasing to be Protestant.

You asked Bryan, “Are quotes by Augustine allowed from a Protestant?” And Bryan will probably have responded before I have time to post this, but if you don’t mind I’d like to respond as well and say yes, of course.

But the quotation you’ve chosen, again, illustrates and does not refute Bryan’s point; if Mathison is right and all appeals to Scripture are appeals to interpretations of Scripture, then you’re going to have to help us understand your solution to The Protestant Contradiction as quoted above. As Catholic, I know (of course) that Augustine does not oppose Scripture to Tradition in the Protestant fashion; he thus does not claim, as Protestantism does, that Scripture is an independent (or The Independent) source, so he is not snared in The Protestant Contradiction.

What this essay [ie, Solo Scriptura, Sola Scriptura, and the Question of Interpretive Authority] says of Mathison’s position is true of your position too, namely that it

reduces to this: the Church has final interpretive authority, except when the Church’s interpretation disagrees with the individual’s interpretation. But that exception belies the charade, because “when I submit (so long as I agree), the one to whom I submit is me.” For this reason, in sola scriptura it is the individual who ultimately has and always retains final interpretive authority. Sola scriptura is a more sophisticated version of solo scriptura, but this added sophistication makes the position more deceptive, by allowing the individual to believe that he is not one of those me-and-my-Bible individualists.

I hope I haven’t seemed too combative by jumping in; I just wanted to try and clarify that your responses to Bryan aren’t really addressing the crucial problems he’s identifying. If I’m only further confusing things, please just ignore (but pray for) me.

Sincerely,
wilkins
Bryan Cross September 19th, 2010 4:39 pm :
Zoltan, (re: #909)

You claimed in #905 that “veneration of the Eucharist became common practice once the doctrine of transubstantiation was formalized.” But as I pointed out in #907, St. Augustine’s statement that “no one eats that flesh unless he first adores it” is incompatible with your claim. Either your claim is false, or St. Augustine’s claim is false, since his claim implies that it is the universal practice of the Church to adore the Eucharistic Body of Christ, before eating. (St. Cyril of Jerusalem, around that same time, says that Catholics bow before receiving the Precious Blood.) I have much greater reason to trust St. Augustine’s testimony regarding fourth-century sacramental practice, than I have to trust your testimony about fourth-century sacramental practice, because you are sixteen-hundred years removed, but St. Augustine is an eye-witness of fourth century sacramental practice. In addition, we don’t “venerate” the Eucharistic Body and Blood; we adore, as St. Augustine says. We venerate saints, but adoration (latria) is given only to God. It would be a sin not to adore the Eucharistic Body and Blood, according to St. Augustine, because it is a sin to refuse to adore Christ, and at the moment of consecration the bread and wine become His very Body and Blood.

You wrote:

So the view that Mary is co-mediator and co-redemptrix is absent in the early centuries and to merely assume it was there because there was no “heresy” to challenge it is historical eisegesis.

If the Catholic Church were merely assuming that “[this doctrine] was there because there was not heresy to challenge it,” it would indeed be historical eisegesis. But that is not how genuine authentic development of doctrine is determined, as the Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman explains, in his book titled An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine. If early silence were the sufficient condition for judging authentic development, then any theological idea that had never been previously stated could potentially be a genuine development. But that would conflate development and accretion.

You claimed that “barring small children from the table” is an “erroneous practice.” When I asked you how you know this, you claimed that “It can be deduced from Scripture.” But the verses you cite do not entail that small children cannot be rightly excluded from receiving the Eucharist. Each of the verses you invoked is fully compatible with the permissibility of waiting until children are capable of understanding what they are receiving.

If indeed. However, if there is inconceivable mystery in the Eucharist (as there is in God’s nature), then it would be wrong to try and define what happens too precisely.

Indeed. But no one, you included, has shown that in teaching the doctrine of transubstantiation, the Church has defined “too precisely” what happens at the consecration of the bread and wine. Your standard for what is “too precise” and what is insufficiently precise, is apparently your own interpretation of Scripture, as though the Magisterium of the Church must submit to you, and to your interpretation of Scripture, when defining a doctrine. If you think that previous statement is unfair, and that your standard for determining what is “too precise” and what is insufficiently precise is something other than your own interpretation of Scripture, then please show what that other standard is, for the proper degree of precision in defining dogmas.

You wrote:

I believe that Ratzinger’s quote would call into question certain traditional ideas about Transubstantiation …

Nothing in the quotation from then Cardinal Ratzinger is incompatible with the doctrine of transubstantiation, or calls it into question. Pope Benedict fully adheres to this dogma of the Catholic faith.

Regarding whether there is a valid Eucharist among Protestant communities, you assert that there is. But this pushes back the question: Is a valid ordination necessary for a valid Eucharist, or can a layperson consecrate the bread and wine? If only a validly ordained person can consecrate the bread and wine, then this pushes back the question to what is required for a valid ordination. For a valid ordination is it necessary that the ordaining person have valid ordination, or can lay persons ordain? That creates the following dilemma. If only validly ordained persons can validly ordain, then an unbroken succession of ordinations extending back to the Apostles is necessary for valid ordination, but Protestant pastors do not have that, because Protestants purposely abandoned that practice in the sixteenth century, on account of their belief in the priesthood of all believers, and a denial of any ontological character imprinted on the soul in ordination to the ministerial priesthood. But [here’s the other horn of the dilemma], if laypersons can ordain, then in principle your wife could ordain you today, and you could celebrate the Lord’s Supper in your own kitchen tonight, and so could every other Protestant layman.

I wrote:

“The problem, as this article explains, is that the Protestant conception of ‘Church’ reduces to those who sufficiently agree with one’s own interpretation of Scripture. So, when you say that “the Church” has real authority, that means, ultimately, that you submit to those men who generally share your interpretation of Scripture. And ‘submitting’ to those who you agree with you, is no submission at all.”

You replied:

I can say first hand that this is false for I have submitted to teaching I did not agree with and indeed still do.

The question is not whether you have submitted to your present elders. That is because the possession of authority is not shown by one person submiting to another. For example, many Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons submit to their elders and bishops, but we (you and I) agree that those elders and bishops have no authority. So the fact that people submit to them does not show that they have actual authority. Likewise, the fact that you sometimes submit to your elders does not show that they have actual authority. The question then, is not whether you have submitted to teaching you did not agree with, but on what basis or ground you subordinated yourself to your present elders in the first place: Did you do it because you generally agreed with their form of doctrine, or did you do it because they have apostolic authority in an unbroken succession from the Apostles? If you chose them because you generally agreed with their form of doctrine (even if you disagreed with them on some questions), then the basis or ground of their ‘authority’ is their agreement with your interpretation of Scripture.

In #905 you wrote:

If pronouncements are made in formal doctrine to bind the conscience (like the formal doctrines of the Trinity or the Hypostatic Nature of Christ should bind the conscience of any Christian), they should be of an essential and clearly Scriptural nature.

Then in #907 I asked in reply:

By what authority do you tell the Church the standards to which her formal pronouncements must conform?”

To which in #909 you replied:

Augustine (354-430): Whoever dissents from the sacred Scriptures, even if they are found in all places in which the church is designated, are not the church. De Unitate Ecclesiae, Caput IV, §7, PL 43:395-396.

Of course we cannot “dissent from Sacred Scripture.” But the fact that we cannot “dissent from Sacred Scripture” does not show what you had earlier claimed, namely, that the only conscience-binding pronouncements the Church may make are those that are “of an essential and clearly Scriptural nature.” That we must affirm Scripture does not entail that only Scripture (and/or only what can be logically deduced from it) can bind the conscience. On the one hand, you appeal to St. Augustine as though his opinion regarding Scripture is authoritative. But on the other hand, you dismiss his teaching that every man sins who does not first adore the Eucharistic Body of Christ before eating. This seems quite arbitrary to me, as though St. Augustine is not actually an authority for you, but only a useful source of quotations when they happen to agree with you.

The point is simply that in my view the ECF’s looked to the Scriptures as did Christ and the Apostles.

Of course the ECFs “looked to the Scriptures.” That’s not the point in question. The point in question is whether they recognized the authority of living persons in the Church (i.e. the Magisterium) and the Sacred Tradition, and approached Scripture in and through that authority structure.

You wrote:

I would submit that the Arian heresy was contrary to Scripture and pernicious and therefore it was essential to address it. However, the filioque controversy is another matter. Although we probably agree theologically on that point, the unilateral adding of that into the creed served as a stumbling block to the EO’s.

You, apparently, believe that an ecumenical council is authoritative only if and insofar as its conclusions conform to your interpretation of Scripture. Since Arianism does not conform to your interpretation of Scripture, you judge the Council of Nicea in 325 to be therefore authoritative. But since you don’t find the Filioque in Scripture, therefore when the Twelfth Ecumenical Council (Fourth Lateran, 1215) declares that the Holy Spirit is “equally from both [the Father and the Son]”, and when the Fourteenth Ecumenical Council (Second Council of Lyon, 1274) declares “In faithful and devout profession we declare that the Holy Spirit proceeds eternally from the Father and the Son” you apparently dismiss these as neither authoritative nor dogma, because they are “divisive.” But if a conciliar decision is only ‘authoritative ‘if it agrees with your interpretation of Scripture,’ then it is has no authority at all, and the holding of such councils is a waste of time, since any who hold contrary interpretations of Scripture can ipso facto reject the council’s decision. It would be more honest (to yourself), it seems to me, not to feign submission to conciliar authority, but to acknowledge that you are your own ultimate interpretive authority, as we have argued in this very article.

You accused the Catholic Church of being “uncatholic,” so I asked you to define this term “uncatholic.” You replied:

Something that would most certainly not be affirmed by Christians outside the RCC and to proceed with formalizing it served as a wedge against unity. How can the EO’s accept it? Simply put, uncatholic would mean something that is not broadly held and affirmed in Christian Churches.

That just pushes the question back: What exactly do you mean by “Christian” and “Christian Churches?” Which doctrines and councils must one accept to be a “Christian?” And from what ecclesial authority are you getting these definitions of “Christian” and “Christian Churches”?

We (Catholics) believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. This universal Church is visibly one; it is the Catholic Church, governed by the successor of St. Peter. You seem to think that there is some entity called “the catholic Church,” which is composed of all “Christians,” and that the Catholic Church should not make any decisions that are not accepted by all “Christians.” But obviously this loads everything into the term ‘Christian’ and pushes back the question to “From what ecclesial authority are you getting this definition?” And on what basis does this alleged “ecclesial authority” have the authority to tell the Catholic Church which doctrines she can and cannot promulgate? On what basis does this ecclesial authority to which you are appealing to get your definitions of “Christian” and “Christian Churches” have more authority than the successor of the one to whom Christ gave the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven?

You wrote:

In the article you cite, anathema may be equated with excommunication or “cut off from Christian society”. How was it possible to be excommunicated and yet remain a Christian or a true Church?

Because excommunication is not the same thing as apostasy. An apostate renounces the faith. An excommunicated person is usually in formal heresy, but he remains a Christian (even if he is in mortal sin) because he has not renounced his baptism, and is thus not a pagan or adherent of another religion.

How can one pretend that the EO magisterium is merely in ignorance about the pronouncements of Rome?

No one here is claiming (or pretending) that the EO bishops are in ignorance of the pronouncements of Rome. Only God knows the hearts of men.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Lawwife September 19th, 2010 8:16 pm :
This isn’t actually a philosophical question but more a convert question. Did it take you a long time after coming to believe that the Catholic Church is THE Church to stop asking, “But what does the Bible say about X?”? Not that you should ever truly stop asking that question, but was it a long journey to get your visceral reaction to Tradition to back off?

I’m still dealing with that a bit, though I realize I’m still pretty early in the process. At this time last year, I’d have laughed in your face if you told me I’d even consider converting to Catholicism. And yet this morning I joyfully attended a two-hour RCIA class and then Mass. In class sometimes I think, “But what does Scripture say about…?” and then realize that it’s been settled in Tradition and have to tell my Baptist-turned-Presbyterian-turned-Catholic-to-be heart & mind to chill out and learn. :) I just wondered how long the process was for other converts from similar traditions as they shed the sola Scriptura mindset. Thanks.
herbert September 19th, 2010 8:53 pm :
Lawwife, Here are my two cents: By the time I was sitting in an RCIA setting (2007/2008) I had already become so concerned by widespread misuse/abuse of the Scriptures (think: Left Behind series) and had come to recognize the need for Sacred Tradition so acutely that I couldn’t access it quickly enough!!! herbert
Christopher Lake September 19th, 2010 11:11 pm :
Lawwife (re:#914),

Slightly more than three months ago, after years as a convinced, soteriologically Reformed Baptist, I returned to the Catholic Church. The entire process of study and prayer which led me back to the Church lasted approximately ten months (which might not seem like very long, but I was out of work and had a good bit of free time on my hands to study and pray!). Honestly, I still struggled somewhat with certain aspects of Sacred Tradition, even after I returned to the Church.

However, I can say now that the more I study Scripture and Church history, I see just how intertwined Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture really are in Christian history– and it was always so for Christians, from the early centuries right up to the Reformation. Scripture was not meant to be understood, and cannot *be* rightly understood, in total, and in many specific matters, outside of Tradition.

By the same token, not every important Church teaching can be found *explicitly* in Scripture. 2 Thessalonians 2:15 points to the importance of the written tradition *and* the oral tradition in the apostolic teaching of the Church. Therefore, when I now study different Catholic doctrines and dogmas, such as the Immaculate Conception, I don’t become so anxious when I don’t find any clear Scriptural statement which says, outright, “Mary was preserved from original sin by a special, unique, supernatural grace of God.”

Now, I can already hear some of my Protestant friends saying, in effect, “A-HA! That proves our point! The Catholic Church teaches unBiblical doctrines, doctrines that are found nowhere in the Bible!” However, the fact that, for example, the dogma of the Immaculate Conception is not *explicitly* taught in Scripture does not at all prove that it is *unBiblical*. The IC was formulated through years of the Church Fathers and other leaders reflecting on the implications of Mary being chosen by the Father, and caused by the Spirit, to carry the perfect, sinless Incarnate Son in her womb. The thinking and language about the Trinity in the Nicene Creed were also formulated over time via theological reflection by Church thinkers/leaders. It would be a huge leap of plausibility for any Protestant to claim that the specific language about the Trinity, found in the Creed, is perfectly clear from Scripture. It simply is not (although the doctrine of the Trinity is definitely more clear from Scripture than the Immaculate Conception, and there is no problem with saying as much).

Simply put, Catholics (and Protestants who are looking into Catholicism) should *not* be unsettled that certain Church dogmas, doctrines, and teachings are not explicitly found in Scripture. Sola Scriptura was never meant to be “the pillar and foundation of the truth.” The Church is that foundation, and the Church has always held that Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition support each other, in such a way that, to paraphrase Pope Benedict XVI, one cannot stand without the other. We should cherish Sacred Tradition, as it helps to illuminate Sacred Scripture, and vice versa, in the life and understanding of the Church.
David Meyer September 20th, 2010 9:22 am :
Lawwife:

My conversion process for my heart took only a day. Once I saw the naked “sola scriptura” emperor parading down the street I was through with the reformation. For the mind to do the due diligence study took a few more months. I do still find myself asking the “what does scripture say” question. All the time! And the nice thing about asking that question now is that MY QUESTION GETS AN ANSWER! Then I can actually learn from the scripture, and plumb the depths of it’s truth instead of so many doctrines staying on a surface level.

In #895 Zoltan makes this statement:

Problems arise I believe when we become too precise with these matters (as transubstantiation does in my view) … [] With the guidance of the Holy Spirit, I believe we will discern much in this through the centuries. However, it seems unreasonable to me that a previous generation’s limited view of the sacraments will hold sway over the rest of Church history as though they have already plunged the depths of such mystery and we need only blindly affirm what they believed.

This thinking is what I am glad to leave behind. (no offence brother Zoltan!) Notice how Zoltan refers to transubstantiation as being too precice a doctrine in his view. I thought that as well as a Protestant. But I couldnt repress the nagging thought “what if i’m wrong that it is too precice? Perhaps this issue of the the Lord’s Supper is one of the most important issues?” The importance level of an issue is its own issue and in Catholicism, those importance levels are well defined.

Contrary to the Church having “already plunged the depths of such mystery and we need only blindly affirm what they believed” it is the opposite. Someone that knows better than me here can explain doctrinal developement, but one thing I know is that it is not about blindly affirming OR some how fully explaining mysteries. The Church self consciously has not plumbed the depths of Christ present Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity in the Eucharist. From what I have experienced in the Church so far, it is a profound mystery to Catholics! And contrary to blindly affirming, there is an ability to furhter plumb the depths of this inexhaustible mystery of faith when you have a starting point like the Real Presense to begin with. Scripture can then “come alive” and really speak with authority. But for the Catholic, it does not speak with a forked tongue, through Tradition it speaks univocally and with a richness and depth unfound in Protestantism.

Protestants claim *mystery* concerning the Eucharist to the point of accepting opposing views as orthodox that are incompatible with each other. This is not somehow admirable or protecting the mystery of God. I know for me it was a cop out. I believed Calvin’s view but I knew it was more of a personal conviction of what scripture taught. Therefore I instinctively knew that someone who was a Zwinglian was probably in my same boat. They did the best they could to interpret the scripture but ended up with a different view. So in order to maintain MY prefered view, I claim the doctrine must be a *mystery* since two spirit filled believers came up with different interpretations. But disagreement of this kind is not the result of mystery. In my personal experience, the claim of mystery is an attempt to make the discord and schism seem not as bad as it is. Ironically my cry of “mystery” was a sort of blaming God for not being clear enough in scripture, where I knew instinctively He was/should be clear on such an important doctrine.

What I love about Catholicism is the increased respect for the scriptures. I no longer say “where is that in scripture?” as a sort of litmus test or doubt, I say it because I want to plumb the depths of mysteries that are now true mysteries of faith, not mysteries of disagreement. And the scriptures have not disapointed this catechumen in any of his meager attempts so far!

Peace,

David Meyer
Lawwife September 20th, 2010 10:29 am :
David, that’s really, really encouraging to read. I went through it with a smile on my face b/c I can “hear” your joy. It’s becoming my own joy to learn all this beautiful, comprehensive yet not exhaustive theology. Thank you!

And thank you, Christopher and Herbert. :) I enjoy reading how others got where they are from (essentially) where I am.
mateo September 20th, 2010 12:48 pm :
David Meyer: Once I saw the naked “sola scriptura” emperor parading down the street I was through with the reformation.

If I may ask, what caused you to see that sola scriptura was a naked emperor parading down the street?
David Meyer September 20th, 2010 1:19 pm :
The nakedness was shown to me by Bryan’s article right here, and by my subsiquent re-reading of Keith’s book, personally coresponding with Keith, and consulting dozens of other Reformed sources (books and articles) on what sola scriptura is.

The parading is shown in the combox. I have carefully read each and every comment (approaching a thousand) and not a single one has refuted the argument of this article. Very few have even tried.

This article is particularly devastating because it demolishes the Reformed understanding of sola scriptura, not just the self consciously individualist (me and my Bible) white bread evangelical one. So to take the analogy further, the white bread evangelicals are naked cowering in the corner. The Reformed are to my eyes parading around as if they are clothed, but have been shown here to be nude. If you have a towel to throw around the emperors waist, or can show that he is in fact chothed, please by all means, show it. (Direct your towel throwing comments to the CtC guys since this is their gig though.)

BTW Please excuse any excess in my use of language, I have been informed by people close to me that I am a bit of a “cage stage” convert still, and I can’t deny it, so cut me some slack.

Peace,

David Meyer
MJV September 20th, 2010 2:59 pm :
Ray,

I will be adding you to my daily prayers

I really appreciate that! While my time in Protestantism has been good, I’m starting to see the consequences of Sola Scriptura and the lack of authority. For awhile I was a theological barbarian out to defeat all the “lesser theological circles.” But, in time I have seen the arrogance of that and how it is an unintended consequence of Protestantism. I battle greatly with those in the charismatic/Word of Faith movement who however don’t hold to just their Bible Only, but also their Bible and personal revelations. So, any authority outside of their Bible and personal experience gets trumped. This has lead me back to asking questions about authority, or is all this a bunch of theological/spiritual chaos.
Ray Stamper September 20th, 2010 3:30 pm :
MJV

I spent 2 and a half years between Fall 1987 and 1990 at Oral Roberts University – the epicenter (at the time) of the charismatic/ Word of Faith movement (I don’t know how old you are, but at the time, Oral Roberts was letting the media know that God had told him that he was going to die if he did not get so many millions of dollars to complete some building he was working on). I was seeking a degree in Old Testament biblical scholarship. Between the charismania / private revelation based approach to Christianity on the one hand; and a completely unguided exposure to the philosophical skepticism embedded within the higher-critical, historical-critical methodologies of modern biblical scholarship, I found myself in a mind-numbing, perplexing world of religious schizophrenia. I left that place to begin my marriage in early 1990 in a state of almost total philosophical agnosticism. In two years I went from reading Smith Wigglesworth and Kenneth Hagan to Immanuel Kant and BF Skinner – if that tells you anything! It was a long road back to philosophical sanity, Christianity and finally the Catholic Church. I say all that to say – I feel your pain!

Pax et Bonum,

Ray
mateo September 20th, 2010 3:42 pm :
Jason: Ultimately it comes down to the question of authority, which all arguments between Protestants, Catholics, EO, ect. ultimately come down too. I will say this, since the Protestant position has maintained that there is nothing intrinsically authoritative in the Churches leadership or in any confessions/councils, then, as this article shows, the logical outcome has actualized. The contemporary Protestant churches is exactly the logical outcome of the reformation’s view of church authority.

Exactly! Protestantism, as it exists on the earth today, is thousands upon thousands of bickering and contentious churches preaching conflicting and irreconcilable doctrine. The doctrinal chaos that exists within Protestantism is caused by what you have pointed out – the Protestant belief that “there is nothing intrinsically authoritative” in the leadership of the thousands upon thousands of Protestant churches.

Which was they point I was trying to make in my post # 906 about the inerrant teaching of Jesus as found in Matthew 18:17- “…if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.”

How can any sola scriptura believing Protestant ever accept this teaching of Jesus? How can the sola scriptura believing Protestant ever find “the church” whose leadership has the divinely established authority to bind the consciences of her members to the doctrines that she promulgates?

The sola scriptura believing Protestant can’t find “the church” within Protestantism, because there are no Protestant churches where sola scriptura doctrine is accepted that also claim that their leadership can exercise, under any circumstances imaginable, the charism of the Holy Spirit of teaching infallibly. The leadership in a sola scriptura confessing Protestant church can only quote inerrant scriptures to his congregation and then declare: “In my fallible opinion, this scripture means this, but because of sola scriptura doctrine, I cannot say that I am certain that my interpretation of scriptures is correct. And no other leader in a sola scriptura confessing Protestant church can claim that their interpretation of scriptures is certain either. We sola scriptura believing Protestants have no way of knowing with certainty what is or is not orthodox doctrine.”

The truth be told, sola scriptura is merely a doctrine made up by Luther to deny that the Catholic Church is the “the church” that had the authority to bind the conscience of Martin Luther to her definitively taught doctrines of faith and morals. It is irrational for Martin Luther to claim that by rebelling against the ecclesial authority of the church that he belonged to that he is obeying the inerrant teaching of Jesus in found in Matthew 18:17. How can the church founded by Luther be “the church” of Matthew 18:17? It can’t be “the church”, because “the church” of Matthew 18:17 is the church founded by Jesus, not Martin Luther, John Calvin, King Henry VIII, John Knox, John and Charles Wesley, John Smyth, Joseph Smith, or Chuck Smith.

I think that both Protestants and Catholics can take it for granted that God would never expect his children to follow the teachings of “the church” if “the church” taught wrongly in doctrines of faith and morals. Especially doctrines of morals. God can’t possibly be telling his children through his inerrant scriptures that his children must obey “the church” even if “the church” is telling his children that is OK to do something that is sinful – not unless God giving his children a doctrine of moral relativism in his inerrant scriptures.

Matthew 18:17 only makes sense if “the church” that Christ founded has the authority to bind the consciences of her members. And Matthew 18:17 only makes sense that if “the church” exercises her authority to teach doctrines of faith and morals, that those doctrines will be inerrant.

Luther’s novelty of sola scriptura – the teaching that the Protestant bible is the ONLY inerrant source of authority for the Christian – is never taught by the scriptures found within a Protestant bible. Worse, Luther’s novelty of sola scriptura actually contradicts what is taught in the Protestant bible, because sola scriptura contradicts the teaching of Jesus that “the church” of Matthew 18:17 is a source of inerrant authority for the Christian.

Jason is correct: “Ultimately it comes down to the question of authority.”
Lojahw September 20th, 2010 8:00 pm :
Dear Bryan,

Thank you for your comments. Re: the Apostles’ teaching being perfect or imperfect (not “all the truth”). You say that there was no defect or deficiency in the deposit of faith entrusted to the Apostles. If so, i.e., if there is no deficiency in the the teaching of the Apostles, then it contains “all the truth” for which God holds Christians responsible. If God now holds Christians responsible for truth that the Holy Spirit did not pass on through the Apostles, then the Apostles gave future generations of Christians an inadequate deposit of faith. If, as you claim, God now holds Christians responsible for truths not revealed to the Apostles, then you are guilty of doctrinal relativism: “all the truth” for which Christians were responsible in the Apostles’ time is not the same as “all the truth” for which Christians are responsible today. This is the implication of the “development of doctrine” and the teaching of the current CCC.

Re: mediator, you wrongly equate it with intercession, which Scripture clearly teaches is accessible to many. Moreover the words used in Scripture are not identical, and as Gal. 3:20 teaches: “Now a mediator is not for one party only.” The purpose of mediation between God and man is two way: to effect a reconciliation between two parties in conflict. You seem to turn the passage in Luke upside down. It was the angel Gabriel who declared the fiat: “Behold you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call Him Jesus.” Mary’s passive assent to Gabriel’s prophetic announcement cannot be characterized as a fiat: “May it be done to me according to your word.” Whose word represents the fiat? Gabriel, speaking on behalf of God. There was no mediation on the part of Mary: God through Gabriel declared what He was going to do for mankind through Mary.

You also wrote:

If, in actuality, the cultus of Mary and the Saints is of God, and does in fact serve to illustrate and protect the doctrine of our Lord’s loving kindness and mediation, then Newman’s saying that it does this is not like saying that “falsehood subserves truth by illustrating it.” So your claim amounts to a question-begging assertion.

If your position is true, I agree with you that my earlier statement was question-begging. However, your explanation for your position is lacking.

Thank you for your correction re: “It has nothing to do with the ability of the Apostles.” Your correction does not affect my argument. You, however, claim that I fail “to distinguish the two senses in which something can be perfected. Something can be perfected from a state of imperfection, and something can be perfected from a state of perfection.” Come again? Perfection means complete, fully actualized (see what Aquinas says about perfection if you doubt me). The statement: “the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints” implies perfection – “once for all delivered” – not “once for all began to be delivered in order to be perfected in the future.”

Could you respond to the following from my earlier post?

It can be argued that the church’s words are more likely to be misinterpreted than God’s words because no created thing is greater than its creator. To paraphrase Ridderbos: “All appeals to the Church’s teaching are appeals to interpretations of the Church’s teaching.”
The implicit assumption behind the combox is that God originally chose prophets and apostles to teach what He holds Christians responsible who either 1) did not express clearly what God intended all Christians to know (implying that God didn’t get it right the first time and had to chose later teachers to fill in the gaps); and/or 2) did not (for whatever reason) pass down all the truths for which God later decided to hold Christians responsible (doctrinal relativism). Do you believe that God holds you responsible for believing that Mary is the co-redemptrix and that “all graces” come through her to mankind?

Blessings,
Lojahw
Lojahw September 21st, 2010 12:17 am :
Dear Ray,

I agree that a text requires human interaction in order to become an active source of learning. Every person who reads or hears a text interacts with it in his or her mind. This is why Jesus and the Apostles quoted Scripture so often: in order that their hearers would interact with its words.

Re: BUT I SAY… You misunderstand what Jesus is teaching in the Sermon on the Mount (the only place you’ll find, “You’ve heard, but I say”). He has just told these Jewish followers that their righteousness must exceed that of the Pharisees. Why? Because God looks at the heart (1 Sam. 16:7). A person who thinks about committing murder or adultery is just as guilty as the one who does the act in God’s eyes. Slander is also evil because it denigrates humans who are made in the image of God (Gen. 9:6). Being reconciled to your brother? Leviticus teaches: Love your neighbor as yourself. Don’t hate your enemies? Because the Law doesn’t ever say to hate your enemies, and because “everyone who hates his brother is a murderer” (1 John 3:15), etc. What is the purpose of the Law? to be a “tutor to lead us to Christ, that we may be justified by faith” (Gal. 3:24). What Christ taught in the Sermon on the Mount illustrates this truth: a person cannot be righteous enough on his own to attain God’s standard – “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

Your assertion that dependence on religious leaders is necessary for accepting the Scriptures is begging the question. If the first Christians believed in Jesus because His claim to divinity was backed up by His miraculous works, why cannot the same dynamic be the basis for believing the authority of the prophets and apostles who also displayed miraculous works? The authority they claim in their writings is backed up by the miracles they performed (e.g., Moses, Elijah, Elisha, Peter, Paul, etc.). [You can see my comments on the boundaries of the canon on Tom Brown’s thread. Self attestation covers the vast majority of the books of Scripture, but not all of them.]

The only way to reasonably and confidently proclaim that a specific codex … is God-inspired, is IF that “someone” giving you this information can reasonably be expected to speak for God.

I agree: the apostles, prophets, and other writers of Scripture gave us the information we need to reasonably conclude that they spoke for God. When Jesus said: “Thy word is truth” – everything they wrote is true (unlike Judith and Sirach which explicitly contradict true Scripture). When the Apostle wrote that all Scripture is “God-breathed,” the books we recognize as Scripture display the character and power of God (e.g., not lying about their identity as did the authors in Wisdom, Baruch, the Epistle of Jeremiah and as the angel did in Tobit – nor praising suicide as 2 Maccabees does, but exhorting us to holiness and showing us the way to the Savior and His Spirit which empowers us to be holy). When Isaiah and Peter wrote that “The word of the Lord endures forever,” the books we recognize as Scripture have endured continuously since they were written (unlike Enoch and other books mentioned in the Bible). Just as the word of angels is unalterable (cf. Heb. 2:2; Jas. 1:17; Isa. 55:11), all the more so is God’s word, unlike the versions of Daniel and Esther that you accept as “God-breathed.”

Re: Newman, please see my other post with the quotes and citations. Re: Mary as mediator, please see my responses to Bryan.

Blessings,
Lojahw
Canadian September 21st, 2010 9:04 am :
Lojahw,
You said:
“If, as you claim, God now holds Christians responsible for truths not revealed to the Apostles, then you are guilty of doctrinal relativism”

Did God reveal to the apostles that Christ has two wills, two natures, and two modes of operation? Did God reveal to the apostles that Christ is homoousious with the Father according to his divinity and consubstantial with us according to his humanity? Did God reveal to the ap0stles the final canon of scripture? Did God reveal to the apostles what to do about stem cell research or contraception? Yet if I read the CCC and Dei Verbum correct, they are contained within the deposit of faith (divine revelation) given to the church through the apostles but are not expounded by the apostles as if they were required to be expounded in their time. The reason you require it is because you need everything to be written to conform to Sola Scriptura. The church has the ability and authority to teach the truth which God the Spirit leads her into as need arises.
Ray Stamper September 21st, 2010 1:34 pm :
Dear Lojahw

Re: BUT I SAY… You misunderstand what Jesus is teaching in the Sermon on the Mount (the only place you’ll find, “You’ve heard, but I say”). He has just told these Jewish followers that their righteousness must exceed that of the Pharisees. Why? Because God looks at the heart (1 Sam. 16:7).

I understand WHAT he is teaching. However, you are not interacting with my point which concerned his manner of teaching. It only seems natural and obvious to us that Jesus’ teaching lines up with the Law and the Prophets because we are immersed in the Christian tradition which sees it as “looking at the heart”. But can you not imagine what it would be like, as a conservative Jew wishing to stay within the clear, up-front meaning of the written OT only (- i.e no doctrinal development allowed) and hearing Jesus say “you have heard it said” (remember he quotes not Pharisaic tradition here but parts of the OT itself); and then in the next breath: “BUT I Say”. You also did not interact with the rest of my quotations from Jesus – all of which point to the obvious fact that the fundamental conflict with Christ and the religious leaders was that they DID take him to be introducing novel twists and mangling of the Law and the Prophets. Consider his teaching on divorce. The OT – as written – allows for a certificate of divorce to be given. Jesus explains (with His unique exegesis) that the allowance was just because MOSES – not God – allowed it. Who is He to make that kind of distinction – I mean the text says what it says -right. Again, sounds natural to us on this side of the Christian tradition. But this would have been seen as doctrinal development extraordinaire by devout Jews. Consider Jesus teaching that in heaven men are like the angels not given in marriage. Seems clear to us as Christians, but no such idea is found in the OT. I mean there was still debate in Jesus day as to whether the OT supported the very idea of resurrection; much less any novel theological speculation about the marital or ontological state of souls in heaven.

Consider all the Gospel quotations of OT prophetic utterances which are said to be fulfilled by specific events in Christ’s life (I shall call my son out of Egypt / a virgin shall conceive / they shall call him a Nazarene, etc., etc.) Again, from the standpoint of the first century sola scripturist; can anyone honestly deny that this kind of hermeneutic approach on the part of Jesus and the Apostles would not have been seen as novel doctrinal development in the extreme?

Consider all the Jewish sacred tradition which is simply imported into the NT without explanation, defense, or theological outcry by either the writers themselves or their audience.. Consider Jude’s reference to the bodily assumption of Moses. It is no where in the OT – AT ALL – purely part of the chosen people’s handed-on tradition (humm reminds me of the Assumption of Mary – except that at least has some basis in the book of Revelation). Yet Jude affirms this assumption (as well as a fight between Michael and the devil) in passing without any hesitation. He expects that everyone knows this fact and has no theological problem with it. It is just part of sacred tradition and Jude banks on it. I can hear a first century PCA member shouting “superstition, traditions of men, beware!” Same applies for the quotation from the book of Enoch –which is again taken as valid prophecy though it is not to be found in the OT. Same goes for the identification of Janes and Jambres as the two magicians in Pharos’ court who performed miracles – again no OT reference, but found in rabbinic tradition. Same goes for the “rock that followed the Israelites in the wilderness” – not OT reference at all; BUT, found everywhere within the rabbinic tradition. Same goes for the “the seat (cathedra) of Moses” which entails that he who sits upon it is capable of truthful prophetic utterance. Where is that in the OT. Where do we find an authoritative seat for the high priest understood as a seat of succession descending from Moses? Nowhere. Were the Apostles really sola scriptura proponents, or is it not rather scripture AND tradition?

If the first Christians believed in Jesus because His claim to divinity was backed up by His miraculous works, why cannot the same dynamic be the basis for believing the authority of the prophets and apostles who also displayed miraculous works? The authority they claim in their writings is backed up by the miracles they performed (e.g., Moses, Elijah, Elisha, Peter, Paul, etc.).

I am afraid you have entirely missed the point –which is an epistemic and existential one. First, the apostles do not make any authority claim in their writings to the affect that what they are writing is God-inspired. The closest one comes is the “all scripture is inspired” text which clearly refers only to the OT. But even that affirmation was handed to the apostles from their religious authorities because the OT books themselves make no explicit claim to being “God-breathed”. I am not sure what you mean by self-attestation. We believe that the scriptures are God-breathed” and inerrant. I have never encountered that claim within the individual books. But EVEN if a book were “self attesting” WHY would you believe whatever it affirms about itself? If I wrote a book and included in the text that the book itself was written under the guidance of divine inspiration, why would you believe the book’s testimony? No, you are getting the notion that the book’s “self-attestation” is itself valid from some outside source which again – is either fallible or infallible.

But more significantly, how do you know it is “their” (the apostles) writings? Do you get that information from an infallible source or not. Most of the books of the bible have no signature page. Authorship is provided by tradition. In fact not all the NT books are written by apostles, but some are written by men affirmed by the apostles. But wait, how do we know those men were associates of, or affirmed by the apostles? Again – tradition (presumably fallible tradition in your book). The claim that they performed miracles assumes that the books are authentic and reliable to begin with. Again, where do you get that information? Is it probable or certain information? Does it derive from a fallible or infallible source? You are ignoring the massive historical time gap between the apostolic events and your own historical existence which necessitates that whatever you affirm about a given set of books is communicated to you existentially, temporally and experientially from someone co-existing with you in your current historical moment. THAT “someone” is either fallible or infallible as I have said. If fallible, then you have at best a probability that the books therein are inspired. If infallible, then who or Who?

When Jesus said: “Thy word is truth” – everything they wrote is true (unlike Judith and Sirach which explicitly contradict true Scripture).

Well, this statement assumes that you already know what “true” scripture is, as well as its “true” interpretation, so as to have a basis for determining whether Judith and Sirach “explicitly contradict true Scripture”. This is very much begging the question. More than that, it begs the question as to whether your knowledge of ‘true” scripture (versus “false” scripture) is a knowledge which you posses by means of a fallible or infallible source – as I keep pressing.

When Isaiah and Peter wrote that “The word of the Lord endures forever,” the books we recognize as Scripture have endured continuously since they were written (unlike Enoch and other books mentioned in the Bible).

Well hundreds of writings survive from the time they were written until the present day, including the canonical books we accept and you reject. Are you suggesting that manuscript survival is an apologetic badge of canonicity? I admit, I have never run across that argument before.

Just as the word of angels is unalterable (cf. Heb. 2:2; Jas. 1:17; Isa. 55:11), all the more so is God’s word, unlike the versions of Daniel and Esther that you accept as “God-breathed.”

Well again, what can I say? ASSUMING you already KNOW what God’s word IS; maybe you could form a basis for denying the inspiration of Daniel/Esther etc. This seems evasive. The epistemic question is really not complex. How do you KNOW that the 66 books in your leather-bound bible are “God-breathed”. You have not lived for 2000+ years. Nor were you born with this knowledge as an innate mental category. Hence, it follows that someone communicated this notion to you. THAT someone is either fallible or infallible. If fallible (say you have discovered this on your own by a fallible investigation of history and the documents themselves, or else you have received this information from another fallible person(s) or source(s)); then it follows that the assertion that the 66 books are inspired is only probable. That is, the assertion MIGHT be inaccurate – in whole or in part – for that is what fallible (capable of error) means.

If infallible, you must name a contemporary source who at least makes claim to infallibility; either God or some other source. If you say an infallible source other than God; then you are on your way to Rome or Eastern Orthodoxy; for the simple reason that no one else dare make the claim. If you say God directly informs you that the books are inspired, then you practice SOLO Scriptura in the clearest manner; and the observable doctrinal and historical divisiveness of Protestantism stands as a lived contradiction to your claim. If you go ahead and admit that your belief in the inspiration of the 66 books is only probable, then you have my prayers as you communicate this assertion among your co-religionists.

This is an existentially based argument that heads off many of the detours that are often taken by way of various “theories of canonicity” employed by my Protestant brothers and sisters. It cuts to the chase, because it draws the problem of fallibility and infallibility up, out of history, to where it belongs – in the present. Such questions always belong in the present and not in the labyrinth of historical interchange, because fallibility and infallibility speak to a problem of epistemology; and epistemology is always a problem concerned with the knowing subject; and the knowing subject if nearly always an agent in the present.

Pax et Bonum,

Ray
Keith W. Thompson September 21st, 2010 1:49 pm :
Canadian (I’m responding to 926),

It was unnecessary for the Apostles to have the knowledge of all of these things, “ín their systematized form,” but they did teach and believe them. I do think that the Apostles understood homoousios, that the Trinity was true, that some books were canon and not others… etc., however, these doctrines were challenged later by heterodox teachers, and therefore a need arose to specify in a systematic fashion what doctrine was heterodox and what was orthodox. Point in case, is the deity of Christ. It was always held that Christ was fully God and fully man, but the church had no need to formulate a systematic delineation of that doctrine until Arius began to challenge that ubiquitous teaching. The rise of heresies created a need for further “official” clarification of doctrines which, up to that point, had always been believed.

The (undisputed) councils, as I understand them, were supposed to delineate the orthodox interpretation of Scripture, but not to add doctrines which were not taught or implied in Scripture.

Please correct me if I am wrong! :)

In Him,
Keith W. Thompson
Canadian September 21st, 2010 2:56 pm :
Keith,
The claim was made by Lojahw that it is doctrinal relativism if God holds Christians responsible for truths not revealed to the apostles. My point is that there are things that are normative and binding for the people of God that are not in scripture. It can be a cop out for us to say something is “implied” in scripture after the dogmatic work has already been done, but in reality we rely on the church to get these things right for us and to declare with certainty that something is heresy or a book is canonical.
If you read the Councils, they make remarkable claims of divine authority for themselves. They appeal to the scriptures, the holy fathers, and the previous councils….not scripture alone. It seems that the Catholic claim is that all divine revelation deposited from the beginning, but these things are explicated with certainty at various times, with authority, because of her divine union with the God who dwells in her and it is not necessary to have everything actually recognized from the beginning.
mateo September 21st, 2010 3:54 pm :
Lojahw, can we agree that the Table of Contents that is found in your Protestant bible is not, itself, “God breathed” scriptures? Do we agree that the Table of Contents in your Protestant bible is nothing more than a convenience that the publisher included to make your bible more readable? I think that we can do that, and I believe that we both agree that the editor that added the Table of Contents to your bible is not an inerrant source of authority. But what if the publisher of your Protestant bible made a mistake, and he left out some books that were “God breathed” scriptures? Could you give me the book, chapter and verse in your Protestant Bible that gives me the complete list of the books that are known to be “God breathed”? Of course not, because the scriptures found in your Protestant Bible do not contain such a list.

I don’t want to get into a discussion about how the Table of Contents of your Protestant bible came to be, because that is not the topic of this thread. This thread is about the question of interpretive authority, and the question of interpretive authority is what I am trying to focus on.

You make the claim that Wisdom, Baruch, Tobit, Ester are not “God breathed” scriptures, and the way you advance your argument is not by depending upon Luther’s doctrine that the scriptures are the ONLY inerrant source of authority to which you have access. Instead, you advance your argument merely upon an interpretation of the scriptures that happen to be published in your Protestant bible

Why should I accept ANY argument from a sola scriptura believing Protestant that is based on something other than scriptures ALONE? That is, why should I accept an argument that is merely some man’s interpretation of scriptures? Is anyone in the sola scriptura confessing Protestant world claiming that interpretations of the Protestant bible are protected from being in error by the charism of the Holy Spirit of infallibility? I know the answer to that question, and the answer is NO. In the universe of sola scriptura believers, no mere man’s interpretation of scriptures can ever be claimed to be inerrant.

It seem to me that you have a very big problem, and that is the fact that Luther’s doctrine of sola scriptura is taught nowhere in your Protestant bible. I know that you can quote me verses that claim that scriptures are “God breathed” (and as a Catholic I don’t have any problem with that, because I believe that scriptures are “God breathed”). But you can’t quote me ANY scriptures that make the claim that the Protestant bible is the ONLY source of inerrant authority to which I have access.

The question that I would like you to answer is why should I even believe Luther’s doctrine of sola scriptura in the first place? As a Protestant, what possible reason can you give me for accepting Luther’s sola scriptura doctrine when that doctrine that is taught nowhere in your Protestant bible? If you can’t answer those two questions, then why should I accept any argument from you that depends on me accepting that some man’s interpretation of scriptures is inerrant?

As a Catholic, I don’t have any problem with the principle that an interpretation of scriptures can be, in fact, inerrant. The question is how do I know when that interpretation is inerrant.

“All appeals to Scripture are appeals to interpretations of Scripture. The only real question is: whose interpretation? People with differing interpretations of Scripture cannot set a Bible on a table and ask it to resolve their differences. In order for the Scripture to function as an authority, it must be read and interpreted by someone.”
Benjamin Keil September 21st, 2010 5:24 pm :
@Ray (#927)

If you say God directly informs you that the books are inspired, then you practice SOLO Scriptura in the clearest manner; and the observable doctrinal and historical divisiveness of Protestantism stands as a lived contradiction to your claim.

So far as I can tell, that God directly informs us of the canon is indeed the view my church holds. I suppose, in our defense, then, we clearly practice solo scriptura, if nothing else. Could you speak a bit further, though? How does the observed doctrinal and historical divisiveness of Protestantism reflect poorly on the claim (which I take to be…)

“How do you KNOW that the 66 books in your leather-bound Bible are ‘God-breathed'”

I can fully see how such doctrinal and historical divisiveness shine poorly (if not destroys) a Protestant understanding of the perspicuity of Scripture (in a solo scriptura context). That said, I’m not seeing how the historical divisiveness of Protestantism reflects badly on our ability to know whether the 66 books are God-breathed…Clarification, please?

Sincerely,
~Benjamin
Lojahw September 21st, 2010 6:13 pm :
Dear David,

You questioned the perspicuity of Scripture. Although Scripture itself never claims that all of it is clear (because it isn’t), observation of the Scriptures confirms that many of its teachings, particularly about God, are indeed clear or perspicuous. For example, which of the following do you think is not clearly taught by Scripture?

We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, … through whom all things were made. By the power of the Holy Spirit He became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man. … For our sake He was crucified under Pontius Pilate; He suffered death and was buried. On the third day He rose again in accordance with the Scriptures. He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and His kingdom will have no end.

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, … He has spoken through the Prophets.

On the other hand, as Peter wrote, there are also many things taught in Scripture which are distorted (whether clear or not) by the untaught and the unstable. Such distortions do not negate the fact that the Scriptures are perspicuous about the above truths. Perspicuity is not all or nothing. Sola scriptura asserts that those things which God holds all Christians responsible to believe are clearly taught in Scripture, and that whatever disagrees with the clear teaching of Scripture on is not to be believed. Granted there is a lot of in-house debate about some minor doctrinal topics, but such debates in no way obliterate the clear teachinf of Scripture on the above truths.

Shepherds? Yes, we all need good earthly shepherds! The Christian life is not confined to me and my Bible, as I noted in my earlier reply to Benjamin. A good shepherd listens to voice of the Great Shepherd of the sheep, knows His Word well (listens to His voice), and faithfully follows and obeys Him, the head of the Church, the firstborn of the dead.

However, I don’t trust shepherds who ascribe the honor of “God-breathed” to books wherein authors and angels lie about their identity (Wisdom, Baruch, and the Epistle of Jeremiah, and Tobit), and those which teach error (Judith, regarding Nebuchadnezzar “king of the Assyrians,” or Sirach, which denigrates women who do good), or those which praise suicide (2 Maccabees), or those substantially adulterated by later “editors” (the LXX versions of Daniel and Esther).

I also don’t trust shepherds who say that “all the truth” taught by the Apostles is not “all the truth” one must believe today: that the “faith which was once for all delivered to the saints” in the first century was only “partially delivered to the saints.” Such “developments of doctrine” as recently defined Marian dogmas (.e.g, in the last 150 years) and the cultic practices that began to flourish after the fourth century around the Saints are examples of doctrinal relativism. “Whom have I in heaven besides you?” wrote the Psalmist. This statement of faith is still true today. I respect sola scriptura because there is not a more trustworthy source of Christian truth than the 66 canonical books.

Blessings,
Lojahw
Teri S September 21st, 2010 7:59 pm :
Hi LawWife!

I would love to tell you my experience but I won’t clutter up the board posts here. Wow, the same guys are still here! It’s nice to see the ones who have opened their heart to the Holy Spirit and learned such beautiful truth as our One Catholic faith!

If you want to find me on FB and other wonderful Catholics there is a link to me on my website.
May the peace of Christ be with you!
Teri
Ray Stamper September 21st, 2010 8:01 pm :
Benjamin,

Actually, very good point. My discussion with Lojahw is a veritable mix of the problem of interpretation and perspicuity AND the ground for canonicity. I inadvertently mixed the two problems in my little existential proof. As constructed, I see that you are right – it does not pertain to canon recognition, but rather perspicuity. Thanks for the catch.

The argument should rather go to show that adopting the stance that God directly implants an internal existential recognition of the 66 books found in a leather-bound bible as “God-Inspired” – that is, as ontologically different from all other books – is a fideistic approach that entails a “leap of faith” rather than a reasonable “assent of faith”. This I think is exactly what Van Til advocates with regard to formal philosophical Presuppositionalism (and which Marc Ayers speaks about admirably in his C2C podcast). Also, I think Plantinga leans this way in WCB, not with regard to fundamental epistemology (as does van Til), but rather with regard to what might be called doctrinal epistemology – knowledge of those truths which flow from revelation and are beyond the purview of natural reason. I actually think this was Calvin’s early view; essentially that the Holy Spirit directly verified the inspired status of the 66 books directly and internally.

This view entails, as I see it, unverifiable experientialism, which any one could claim regarding any purported holy book. The worst part from my point of view is that approaching the 66 book codex as an object of an experiential “leap of faith” forces one to put their faith in a text, with no dynamic means (such as a living divinely authorized agent might have) by which to interpret itself. Thus, the person taking this view; lacking any recognition of an infallible interpreter, runs straight into the problem of perspicuity. Hence, the direct-illumination-of-inspiration theory immediately leads to the perspicuity problem – which I think was all jumbled together in my head as I threw that post together (between academic papers coming due end of week :>).

So, the horns of my little existential argument are these three:

1.) The books are known to be inspired fallibly. Hence the inspired status of the Protestant canon entails some level (more or less) of probability – but not certainty. This, I think will be distasteful to most conservative Protestants

2.) The books are known to be inspired infallibly via a divinely authorized contemporary authority. This seems to entail Rome or EO – certainly distasteful to many conservative Protestants

3.) The books are known to be inspired infallibly through the direct existential, experiential intervention of God (the horn under discussion). This entails a fideistic leap, which may not be distasteful to some Protestants, but perhaps to nearly everyone else.

Thanks for keeping me honest.

Pax et Bonum,
Bryan Cross September 21st, 2010 8:22 pm :
Lojahw (re: #924),

You wrote:

If God now holds Christians responsible for truth that the Holy Spirit did not pass on through the Apostles, then the Apostles gave future generations of Christians an inadequate deposit of faith.

Your claim plays on an ambiguity in the word ‘inadequate,’ because it fails to specify the with-respect-to-whatness of the inadequacy. When God revealed to Adam and Eve that her Seed would crush the head of the serpent, the fact that there would be further revelation of this Seed does not mean that the protoevangelium was inadequate for its time. Otherwise, by giving them only ‘inadequate’ revelation, God was essentially damning Adam and Eve to hell. Your assumption is, apparently, that for any time t, if any future revelation is given after t, or if after time t the Church acquires any deeper normative understanding of the revelation known at time t, then necessarily the state of revelation at time t is inadequate simpliciter. But that’s not a safe assumption. Otherwise, when Jesus said to the Apostles, “I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all the truth.” (John 16:12-13) the fact that Jesus did not at that moment give the Apostles every divine truth they would come to know as normative, entails that Jesus was guilty of giving them inadequate revelation at that very moment. By making this assumption (upon which your objection depends) you are failing to consider that what is adequate or inadequate depends in part upon the particular circumstance and stage in redemptive history. To be inadequate in the sense of being capable of further unfolding is not the same thing as being inadequate at the time a revelation is given. And your objection conflates those two senses of ‘inadequate;’ that’s why I said that it plays on an ambiguity.

If, as you claim, God now holds Christians responsible for truths not revealed to the Apostles, then you are guilty of doctrinal relativism: “all the truth” for which Christians were responsible in the Apostles’ time is not the same as “all the truth” for which Christians are responsible today. This is the implication of the “development of doctrine” and the teaching of the current CCC.

Using the term ‘guilty’ presupposes that there is something wrong with there being a deepening over time in the Church’s understanding of the deposit of faith, and therefore something wrong with there being additional normative definitions specifying that one deposit of faith. But that there is something wrong with this implication of the development of doctrine has not yet been demonstrated. Therefore, to use a term like ‘guilty’ is to beg the question, i.e. to presuppose precisely what you have not demonstrated. And since you wouldn’t accuse Christ of “doctrinal relativism” for bringing a fuller revelation than was given to the Jews under the Old Covenant, it is inconsistent to accuse the Catholic Church of relativism, for teaching that over time the Spirit guides the Church into a deeper understanding of the truth Christ entrusted to the Apostles.

Re: mediator, you wrongly equate it with intercession, which Scripture clearly teaches is accessible to many.

If you merely assert that I’m wrong, without giving any reasons to show that I’m wrong, then I have no reason to believe you, let alone defend my position.

Moreover the words used in Scripture are not identical, and as Gal. 3:20 teaches: “Now a mediator is not for one party only.” The purpose of mediation between God and man is two way: to effect a reconciliation between two parties in conflict.

Everything you say here is compatible with everything I said.

You seem to turn the passage in Luke upside down. It was the angel Gabriel who declared the fiat: “Behold you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call Him Jesus.” Mary’s passive assent to Gabriel’s prophetic announcement cannot be characterized as a fiat: “May it be done to me according to your word.” Whose word represents the fiat? Gabriel, speaking on behalf of God.

Again, you merely assert that it was Gabriel’s word that was the fiat, and not Mary’s. You give no reasons in support of your claim. God did not force Himself on Mary. He sent Gabriel to announce that she had been chosen for this role, and if she had said no, God would not have invaded her womb against her will, because no virtuous man would do such a thing, and God surpasses all men in virtue. Mary’s fiat is not a command, but a consent; that’s simply what the term means in this context. It comes from the Vulgate translation of this verse [fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum].

There was no mediation on the part of Mary:

Again, assertions are easy, but they don’t prove anything, and they don’t get us any closer to agreement concerning the truth. When Mary gave her consent, she opened the door for God to become man, and thus for man to be united to God, through Christ. By opening the door for the union of God with man, and man with God, she mediated between God and man. As St. Thomas says, “At the Annunciation the concurrence (i.e. acceptance) of the maiden was awaited as a representative of all human nature.” (Summa Theologica III 30,1)

You, however, claim that I fail “to distinguish the two senses in which something can be perfected. Something can be perfected from a state of imperfection, and something can be perfected from a state of perfection.” Come again? Perfection means complete, fully actualized (see what Aquinas says about perfection if you doubt me). The statement: “the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints” implies perfection – “once for all delivered” – not “once for all began to be delivered in order to be perfected in the future.”

You are simply stipulating that perfection can only be from imperfection. But St. Thomas explains that there is another form of perfection, namely, the further perfection of that which has no defect. For example, are the saints in heaven right now perfectly happy? The answer, according to St. Thomas, is yes. Why? Because they see God, who is infinite Goodness, and in whom is all our happiness. But, will their present happiness be perfected when they receive their resurrected bodies? Yes, says St. Thomas. Does that mean that their present happiness is imperfect? No. They are presently perfectly happy, and yet by the reunion with their bodies in the resurrection, their present perfect happiness will be perfected not by fixing a present defect in their happiness but by an augmentation of their present perfect happiness. Don’t let your inability to imagine these things make you insistent that perfection is only from imperfection. Jesus was perfect as a baby, but He grew in wisdom (Luke 2:52). Surely you would not say that the baby Jesus was imperfect (i.e. had some deficiency or blemish).

It can be argued that the church’s words are more likely to be misinterpreted than God’s words because no created thing is greater than its creator.

I’d be glad to evaluate that argument, if you wish, but first I would need to see the argument, i.e. the one that “can be argued.”

The implicit assumption behind the combox is that God originally chose prophets and apostles to teach what He holds Christians responsible who either 1) did not express clearly what God intended all Christians to know (implying that God didn’t get it right the first time and had to chose later teachers to fill in the gaps); and/or 2) did not (for whatever reason) pass down all the truths for which God later decided to hold Christians responsible (doctrinal relativism).

The dilemma you offer here is itself based on the assumption that God wants all people of all times to know all the same things with respect to revelation. But such a notion is contrary to the progressive nature of revelation through redemptive history, and presupposes that God did not intend the Church, which is a living organism, to grow in her understanding of the deposit of faith such that more doctrines are normative for us in our present time than were normative for the first Christians. As St. Gregory the Great wrote, “With the progress of the times the knowledge of the spiritual Fathers increased; for, in the Science of God, Moses was more instructed than Abraham, the Prophets more than Moses, the Apostles more than the Prophets.”

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
David Pell September 21st, 2010 10:40 pm :
Lojahw,

I pointed out in my last response that you will decide what in the scripture is perspicuous based on what is convenient to your position. Nothing you said in your response indicates otherwise. On the contrary, it further corroborates my point that, in your list of the items of the creed, you left out the items of the creed that relate to the Catholic Church and to the forgiveness of sins in baptism. You don’t consider those items of the creed perspicuous because you don’t agree with them. Thus I must regard your treatment of Peter’s passage (you left out my other example, i.e. the Ethiopian Eunuch) as arbitrary.
Lojahw September 21st, 2010 10:58 pm :
Dear Mateo,
You never lack for words!

It was the church founded by Christ himself that gave the disciples the authoritative teachings found in the New Testament.

Excuse me? Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit – not the Church – would lead the apostles into all the truth. Jesus said the Holy Spirit – not the Church – would bring them to rembrance what He had said.

Re: Luther and Calvin elevating themselves to be the only teaching authority – please provide citations that prove your assertion which contradicts their own explicit teaching about the authority of Scripture!

What is worse news for the Protestant is that Luther’s novel teaching of sola scriptura contradicts what is written in his Protestant bible.

You then quote Matthew 18:15ff to support your argument, but you apparently didn’t notice that Matthew 18 is not about doctrine, but about moral failure: “if your brother sins.” You then claim that this passage teaches that Christians must submit to the authority of the Church. That is true, but in what sense? The passage does not even mention doctrine. Church discipline for moral issues, sure. You say one must ask the church first whether something is a sin? Why not just look up what Jesus affirmed about the 10 commandments? Why aren’t the words of Jesus and the apostles good enough for you? When some one commits murder or adultery, why go to the church first instead to God’s Word?

Re: Protestants and conscience, are you saying that when our conscience tells us something is wrong we should do it anyway? (BTW – Paul talks about sins against a brother’s conscience which would be fair game under Matt. 18). How do you interpret the following?

Rom. 2:15 “they show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them” (Did God not promise that He would write His Law on our hearts under the New Covenant? Have we not received the New Covenant?)

2 Cor. 4:2 “but we have renounced the things hidden because of shame, not walking in craftiness or adulterating the word of God, but by the manifestation of truth commending ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God.” (whoever adulterates the word of God cannot commend themselves in good conscience in the sight of God. If someone does, he is justly condemned.)

Do you believe that God didn’t find good enough teachers the first time to clearly tell all future generations what He holds Christians responsible for? “It is written” was good enough for Jesus and the apostles; why isn’t it good enough for you?

Blessings,
Lojahw
Lojahw September 21st, 2010 10:59 pm :
Dear Canadian,

Nice rejoinder to my challenge about God revealing everything necessary for Christians. The short answer to your response is found in John 17:3, “This is eternal life, that they might know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.” No one can know God perfectly because He is infinite. Furthermore, not all humans have the same capacity for knowledge and understanding. However, God has revealed enough truth about Himself in His Word to defend orthodoxy and to refute heresy by those who are capable.

A few comments about your examples:

Did God reveal to the apostles that Christ has two wills, two natures, and two modes of operation?

“Not my will but Thine;” yet “I and the Father are One” and “as Thou, Father, are in Me, and I in Thee” (two wills).
Two natures: “the Word was God” yet “He became flesh and dwelled among us” and “”being made in the likeness of men” (two natures)
Two modes of operation: which Creed teaches this? (as far as I know, this is an area of speculative theology which most Christians have never even heard of)

Did God reveal to the apostles that Christ is homoousious with the Father according to his divinity and consubstantial with us according to his humanity?

Same nature with God? Sure: “He who has seen Me has seen the Father” (John 14:9) Jesus did not say, “You’ve seen a likeness of the Father” or a “reflection of the Father.”
Consubstantial with us as to humanity: “since then the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise also partook of the same, that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death . . . Therefore He had to be made like His brethren in all things, that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God” (Heb. 2:14, 17)

Did God reveal to the ap0stles the final canon of scripture?

God revealed to the Apostles “all the truth.” They had the OT, and they wrote or supervised the writing of all the NT. Are you saying that the Apostles were not faithful in passing on the whole deposit of faith? Josephus says of first century Jews that they were all taught the OT canon from birth – and he identifies the 39 books that Jews have always claimed to be the “divine” books from their history (ending in the time of Artaxerxes).

Did God reveal to the apostles what to do about stem cell research or contraception?

Your question should be reworded: did God reveal all the moral principles by which Christians must live. Certainly. Has God explicitly defined what every person should do in every situation? No. Has the Church done so? No. There are times when we must follow Paul’s dictum: “whatever is not from faith is sin.” (Rom. 14:23) If you believe that God has given us the New Covenant, and if, as God promised, the New Covenant entails having God’s law in our hearts (e.g., we will know Him, cf. Jer. 31:33-34), then we have all we need to make good moral choices.

Yet if I read the CCC and Dei Verbum correct, they are contained within the deposit of faith (divine revelation) given to the church through the apostles but are not expounded by the apostles as if they were required to be expounded in their time. The reason you require it is because you need everything to be written to conform to Sola Scriptura. The church has the ability and authority to teach the truth which God the Spirit leads her into as need arises.

I agree that the Church has the ability and the authority to teach the truth insofar as it faithfully follows the Holy Spirit, particularly, that which the Holy Spirit spoke through the apostles and prophets in the Word of Truth. However, as I’ve noted in other posts, the church has not always faithfully followed the Holy Spirit (e.g., ascribing to the Holy Spirit books wherein authors and angels lie about their identity). Discernment is needed, guided both by God’s eternal Word and His eternal Spirit. Jesus said “the word I spoken will judge” at the last day (John 12:48) We must be careful neither to add to nor take away from His eternal Word.

Blessings,
Lojahw
Lojahw September 21st, 2010 11:39 pm :
To David Pell: (I just realized that 2 David’s have posted in the last few days)

you left out the items of the creed that relate to the Catholic Church and to the forgiveness of sins in baptism.

David, you miss my point. The items I listed were not meant to represent everything I believe in the Creed, but to illustrate that there are indeed perspicuous truths taught by Scripture that relate to: “This is eternal life, that they might know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.” (John 17:3)

Do you believe that Scripture clearly teaches what everyone needs to know about God? If not, why not?

Blessings,
Lojahw
mateo September 22nd, 2010 6:04 pm :
“All appeals to Scripture are appeals to interpretations of Scripture. The only real question is: whose interpretation? People with differing interpretations of Scripture cannot set a Bible on a table and ask it to resolve their differences. In order for the Scripture to function as an authority, it must be read and interpreted by someone.”

Dear lojahw, thank you for responding to me. I pray that this dialog may be fruitful.

mateo: It was the church founded by Christ himself that gave the disciples the authoritative teachings found in the New Testament.

lojahq: Excuse me? Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit – not the Church – would lead the apostles into all the truth. Jesus said the Holy Spirit – not the Church – would bring them to rembrance what He had said.

The scriptures teach that church is the pillar and the bulwark of the truth, and that Christ is the head of his church. Through the church, the manifold wisdom of God is made known even to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places:

… the church of the living God, the pillar and bulwark of the truth … 1Tim 3:15

He [Christ] is the head of the body, the church … Col. 1:18

… through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places … Eph 3:10

Did Jesus write the New Testament? No, Jesus didn’t do that – the members of the church founded by Jesus wrote the New Testament. Through the church, the disciples of Christ came to possess the books we call the New Testament.

I agree with you that the members of the church that wrote the New Testament were guided by the Holy Spirit to the remember what Jesus taught:

But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. John 14:26

The Holy Spirit protects and guides the church in her official teachings, but “the church” that is guided by the Holy Spirit is “the church” of Matthew 16:18 – the church founded by Christ.

It is obvious that the Holy Spirit does NOT protect the churches founded by mere men from teaching heresy. That is obvious because the Protestant churches are thousands upon thousands of divided and contentious churches that teach conflicting and irreconcilable doctrine. All these thousands of Protestant churches are claiming that the doctrines that they teach are derived from the correct intepretation of the inerrant and authoritative scriptures. But that is impossible – some of the doctrines taught by Protestant churches must be heretical, otherwise there would be a unity of doctrine taught by the thousands of Protestant churches. But how is Joe Protestant suppose to know what constitutes orthodox doctrine when there is such a raucous cacophony of conflicting voices telling him what constitutes the true doctrines of the church?

lojahw Re: Luther and Calvin elevating themselves to be the only teaching authority – please provide citations that prove your assertion which contradicts their own explicit teaching about the authority of Scripture!

First, let me reiterate that the doctrine that scriptures are authoritative and inerrant is not a doctrine that divides us. The question that we are dealing with on this thread is the question of interprative authority.

The question of interpretive authority is discussed in an interview between Fr. Mitch Pacwa and Dr. David Anders. That interview is found on the CTC website here:

here

and on You Tube here:

EWTN Live – Protestant Theology – Fr. Mitch Pacwa, S.J. with David Anders – 06-23-2010

In this interview there is great discussion about the question of interpretive authority as held by Luther and Calvin (19:00 minutes to 29:00 minutes).

Here are some snippets from this interview:

Dr. Anders: (minute 23:31) “This idea that there needs to be an interpretative authority – which Calvin clearly held- just runs flat counter to the spirit of Evangelicalism today …

Dr. Anders: (minute 23:50) “The reason that Calvin is so insistent on there being an interpretive authority – there is a good reason for it – is that he understood the biblical mandate that Christians seek unity in the faith – St. Paul says I want you to agree on everything. Now that is a dead letter in Evangelicalism today, it is an absolute dead letter …

Dr. Anders: (minute 28:24) “When people disagreed with Calvin, he often utilized the power of excommunication – he would put them outside the fellowship of the church – and he said in a number of places, that once you are put outside the fellowship of the church … then you presume that this person is damned …

Calvin on the Interpretation of Scriptures

“Pastors and teachers [are] in charge … of Scriptural interpretation – to keep doctrine whole and pure among believers”
Institutes of the Christian Religion (4.3.4)

“We admit therefore, that ecclesiastical pastors are to be heard just like Christ himself.”
Calvin’s Letter to Sadoleto (Calvini Opera 5:404)

Calvin founded his own church in Geneva, and Calvin claimed the power to excommunicate anyone that disagreed with Calvin. Calvin, in excommunicating Christians, was usurping powers to himself that belonged to “the church” of Matthew 18:17 – the church founded by Jesus. How can Calvin claim that it is wrong for Christians to rebel against the teachings of Calvin’s new church when Calvin himself rebelled against the teachings of the church that he was a member of? Where do scriptures teach that John Calvin’s new church is “the church” to which Christians must submit? What makes John Calvin so special that I must accept that Calvin’s novel interpretations of scriptures bind my conscience in any way at all? What makes Martin Luther so special that I should bother listening to Luther’s novel interpretations of the scriptures?

mateo: What is worse news for the Protestant is that Luther’s novel teaching of sola scriptura contradicts what is written in his Protestant bible.

lohahw: You then quote Matthew 18:15ff to support your argument, but you apparently didn’t notice that Matthew 18 is not about doctrine, but about moral failure: “if your brother sins.” You then claim that this passage teaches that Christians must submit to the authority of the Church. That is true, but in what sense? The passage does not even mention doctrine.

In your interpretation of Matthew 18:15, you are limiting the sins of a brother to ONLY the sins of the flesh. But more serious than the sins of the flesh are the sins of the spirit. Teaching heresy is a worse sin than the sins of the flesh, because teaching heresy is a sin that can lead other to their damnation – e.g. teaching that once I am “saved” that I can die unrepentant for Satan worshipping because there is no sin that can make me lose my salvation.

If I believe that a brother is teaching what seems to me to be pernicious heresy, then I am obligated by Christ to try and correct that brother. But because I am not claiming that I can exercise of charism of infallibility, there is always the possibility that my understanding of church doctrine is wrong. Ultimately, “the church” decides whether or not the brother is teaching heresy. The church was implementing the teaching of Jesus in Matthew 18:17 when the church condemned the heresy of Arius.

lojahw: You say one must ask the church first whether something is a sin? Why not just look up what Jesus affirmed about the 10 commandments? Why aren’t the words of Jesus and the apostles good enough for you? When some one commits murder or adultery, why go to the church first instead to God’s Word?

Again, you are limiting sinning to merely the sins of the flesh. Certainly, the Ten Commandments are “good enough” for me in these matters, and the church founded by Christ would affirm that Christians must obey the Ten Commandments (as she always has). But what if I think that a brother is sinning against me by teaching my children a heretical doctrine of antinomian “Once Saved, Always Saved”? I see a brother teaching a doctrine that claims that it is a biblical teaching that if one is “saved”, that a one can break the Ten Commandments and commit unrepentant theft, adultery and murder with no fear of being damned by dying unrepentant for those sins. Shouldn’t I bring that brother to the church and let the church judge on whether or not the brother is teaching heresy? Of course I should, and that is what Jesus commands me to do. And once the church makes her ruling, we all have to accept it. I can’t run off an found a new church that teaches something different.

lojahw: Re: Protestants and conscience, are you saying that when our conscience tells us something is wrong we should do it anyway?

No, I am not saying that. I am saying that one’s conscience is NOT the ultimate authority in matters of faith and morals – which is explicitly taught by Jesus in Matthew 18:17.

Everyone is born with a conscience, but no one is born with a conscience that is perfectly formed. All men need to have their consciences formed, and “the church” has been given the authority of Christ to form the consciences of all men. That is what Jesus is teaching in Matthew 18:17. If your conscience disagrees with the moral teachings of “the church”, then that only means one thing – that your conscience is in need of formation. Christ can’t possibly be teaching that a brother needs to listen to the church only if the church agrees with his own personal interpretation of the scriptures. That would make the individual the ultimate authority in matters of faith and morals, and that obviously contradicts Christ’s teaching that we must listen to “the church”.

It is because “the church” cannot teach error in matters of faith and morals, that we can know when our consciences are in need of correction and formation.

If you met a man who said to you that his conscience told him that there was nothing wrong with murdering men and raping women as long as his victims were infidels, would you not think his conscience was in dire need of correction and formation? All men are in need of having their consciences formed, and the church founded by Jesus has the authority to do exactly that. You, I, and John Calvin do not have the authority spew private interpretations of scriptures and then declare that all men are bound by our private interpretations of scriptures

lojahw: How do you interpret the following?

Rom. 2:15 “they show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them” (Did God not promise that He would write His Law on our hearts under the New Covenant? Have we not received the New Covenant?)

I would say that we first need to read Romans. 2:15 in its context.

When Gentiles who have not the law do by nature what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or perhaps excuse them on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus. Romans 2:14-15

Paul is saying that there are Gentiles that do NOT know the Jewish scriptures. (The Gentiles most certainly would have been ignorant of the writings of the New Testament since the NT was in the process of being written down as Paul wrote this letter to the Romans!)

Paul is teaching that the Gentiles’ ignorance of the Jewish scriptures will not give the Gentiles an excuse for sinning on the Day of Judgement. The Gentiles don’t get off scott-free on the Day of Judgement because of their ignorance of Jewish scriptures, because all Gentiles have consciences that tell them that they should not lie, steal, or murder – i.e. “they show that what the law requires is written on their hearts.”

The Gentiles have a true knowledge that they must not lie, steal and murder, and the reason that they have that knowledge is because they are born with a human nature that gives them a knowledge of the natural law. The consciences of the Gentiles will either condemn them, or perhaps excuse them, on the Day of Judgement. The judgement of the Gentiles will depend upon whether or not they obeyed the dictates of their consciences, consciences that were unformed by the knowledge of the Jewish scriptures.

The Jews also have a natural knowledge of right and wrong because they are born with human natures. On top of the knowledge of morality that is common to all men, the Jews have a knowledge of the divine revelation given to them by God. God will judge the Jews based on whether or not they obeyed what their consciences demanded of them. But the Jews will also be held accountable for the fact they were the recipients of divine revelation that allowed their consciences to be more perfectly formed than the consciences of the Gentiles. On the Day of Judgement, the sinful Jew will be worse off that the sinful Gentile because the sinful Jew had a knowledge of divine revelation that allowed for his conscience to be more perfectly formed that the conscience of the Gentile.

Paul is saying that on the Day of Judgement, the basis of every man’s judgement will be whether the man did good or evil while on this earth. It is the doers of the law that will be justified, not just the hearers of the law.

There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek, but glory and honor and peace for every one who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek. For God shows no partiality. All who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law. For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified. Romans 2:9-13

lojahw: 2 Cor. 4:2 “but we have renounced the things hidden because of shame, not walking in craftiness or adulterating the word of God, but by the manifestation of truth commending ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God.” (whoever adulterates the word of God cannot commend themselves in good conscience in the sight of God. If someone does, he is justly condemned.)

I don’t see your point here. Heresy is a sin – the sin of adulterating the word of God. Jesus taught that heretics must renounce the sin of heresy and listen to “the church” of Matthew 18:17. Yes, heretics will be justly condemned by God, if they are found by God to be culpable for that sin. If the heretic is acting out of his ignorance, God will take that ignorance into account on the Day of Judgement. God’s judgement will be perfectly just.

lojahw: Do you believe that God didn’t find good enough teachers the first time to clearly tell all future generations what He holds Christians responsible for?

Again, I am missing the point that you are trying to make. Would you please clarify it?

Christ founded a church and he appointed teachers in his church. Christ taught this about his appointed teachers:

“He who hears you hears me, and he who rejects you rejects me, and he who rejects me rejects him who sent me.” Luke 10:17.

The church founded by Christ has always had good teachers that have taught the generations what “He holds Christians responsible for.”

lojahw: “It is written” was good enough for Jesus and the apostles; why isn’t it good enough for you?

Huh? When have I ever denied that the scriptures are an inerrant source of authority? Please let me reassure you that I believe that all the scriptures found in your Protestant bible are both inerrant and authoritative! If you thought I was disparaging the authority of the scriptures found in your Protestant bible, please accept my apology.

May I ask you a few questions? What Protestant church are you a member of? Where would I find the final interpretive authority within your Protestant church? How does your church implement the inerrant teaching of Christ in Matthew 18:17 – “…if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector”?
Lojahw September 22nd, 2010 9:34 pm :
Dear Ray,

Thank you for your comments. I think these posts have lost track of what you deny and what I affirm: that God has spoken clearly about Himself though the Scriptures. “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.“

Sure there are examples of difficult passages in Scripture, and even novel NT interpretations of the OT. And as Peter wrote, there are plenty of distortions by the untaught and unstable. But the point is that when one considers the whole of the Scriptures together as a represention of “the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints,” do they clearly teach anything concerning faith and morals? If the Scriptures do so, then those things are not in need of a teaching Magisterium to interpret for all other Christians.

I gave a brief list of doctrines for David to either affirm or deny are taught in Scripture. True to form, David gave the characteristic response that Protestants chose only those things that they want to believe and claim that is what Scripture clearly teaches. However, that response evades the question. Does the Bible clearly teach:

One God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth
One Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom all things were made, by the power of the Holy Spirit was incarnate from the Virgin Mary and made man, crucified under Pontius Pilot, dead, buried, and raised from the dead on the third day, etc.
The Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life, who spoke by the prophets, etc.

On doctrinal development between the OT to the NT? Of course, the prophets said there would be new revelation! But after “these last days” in which God spoke through His Son, the Apostles passed on the “faith which was once for all delivered to the saints.” Ongoing revelation? What does “once for all delivered to the saints” mean? Why not join the Montanists or Mormons? You beg the question that ongoing divine revelation has continued to supplement the Apostle’s deposit of faith.

Re: “all the Jewish sacred tradition” – how does Jude’s reporting what was recorded in the lost book of Enoch impact the basis of one’s eternal life? (BTW – an argument over the body of Moses does not affirm his assumption, but Moses’ appearance at Christ’s transfiguration might.) Or Hebrews reporting of events recorded in Maccabees? Or Paul quoting pagan poets in Acts? What impact do these things have on the Creedal doctrines of the faith?

I’d rather not derail this combox over the canon. You are welcome to interact with my more extensive comments (which address your objections) in Tom Brown’s thread on that subject. All I will say here is that your straw-man presentation of my position is far from accurate, and that you haven’t answered my reservations about your teaching authority based on their judgment regarding the Deuteros (e.g., how do you explain the Holy Spirit inspiring praise of suicide, or denigrating women who do good, or telling a story about an angel of God lying about his identity?). If your teaching authority cannot recognize the difference between inspired Scripture and fallible pious literature, how can they be trusted to infallibly interpret God’s Word?

Blessings,
Lojahw
Lojahw September 22nd, 2010 9:39 pm :
Dear Bryan, Thank you again for your comments.

your objection conflates those two senses of ‘inadequate;’ that’s why I said that it plays on an ambiguity.

I never said that God’s revelation prior to Christ was complete; rather, God’s revelation was made complete – adequate for all future generations – with the revelation of Christ passed on to the Church by the apostles.

something wrong with there being a deepening over time in the Church’s understanding of the deposit of faith

I am not arguing against a deeper understanding of God’s revelation of “all the truth” given to the Apostles. Of course, with time to study the whole canon, nuances suggested by relationships between passages and books not available until the end of the first century would offer deeper levels of understanding. The issue is not the deeper understanding of things clearly taught by the Apostles, but the development and elevation of doctrines not even suggested by them, including contradictory teaching such as bowing down to the work of human hands.

Everything you say here is compatible with everything I said.

You skipped over the quote from Galatians: “Now a mediator is not for one party only.” This verse defines one of the differences between intercession and mediation. A mediator represents both parties. Intercession is for one party only; intercession is making a request to God on behalf of a human being – it is for one party only. Moreover, the goal of mediation is always reconciliation of two alienated parties. Intercession is not tied to this goal or such circumstances; e.g., when Paul asks people to pray for him, he assumes no conflict between himself and God, but that making requests on his behalf is good and efficacious. Therefore, an intercessor is not a synonym of mediator.

Mary’s fiat is not a command, but a consent; that’s simply what the term means in this context. It comes from the Vulgate translation of this verse [fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum]. . . . By opening the door for the union of God with man, and man with God, she mediated between God and man.

Thank you for your explanation. Please don’t forget that the Latin text is derived from the original Greek, and that the Greek does not convey the common connotation of fiat as command, decree, edict, etc. Back to Galatians 3:20, a mediator cannot be for one party only. A mediator represents both parties to the other. Mary did not represent God to humanity; therefore, she was not a mediator.Jesus is the only mediator between God and man because He is the only one capable of representing both parties. Aquinas’ quote notwithstanding, God’s will for the incarnation was not held in the balance of Mary’s assent. Again, Scripture teaches that there is only one mediator between God and man. “One mediator” precludes the existence of a “co-mediatrix” between God and man.

You are simply stipulating that perfection can only be from imperfection.

I never said or implied that perfection can only be from imperfection. God is and always has been perfect. His perfection did not arise from imperfection.

based on the assumption that God wants all people of all times to know all the same things with respect to revelation. But such a notion is contrary to the progressive nature of revelation through redemptive history.

You beg the question that the progress of revelation from Old Covenant to New Covenant is part of an ongoing succession of revelations. It is my understanding that the New Testament bears witness that the revelation of Christ through the prophets and the apostles completes the “faith which was once for all delivered to the saints.” “Once for all” implies complete. Or, as Hebrews 1:1-2 tells us: “God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son.” There has been no progressive revelation beyond “all the truth” given to the Apostles (else, why not join the Montanists and Mormons?).

Deeper understanding of what the Apostles taught? Sure (see my comments above). But, e.g., all revelation up to and including the Apostles forbid Christians from bowing down to the work of human hands; indeed, the early church fathers for several centuries continued to condemn anything remotely related to the practice commanded by the Church in the eighth century. And Mary as co-redemptrix? Which Apostle taught anything that suggests that “development of doctrine?”

You asked me to state the argument related to my statement:

It can be argued that the church’s words are more likely to be misinterpreted than God’s words because no created thing is greater than its creator.

In order for me to structure the argument properly, could you tell me if I understand your position correctly?

You seem to be saying:
1) Nothing in Scripture related to faith and morals can be reliably understood by ordinary people.
2) Because nothing that Scripture teaches regarding faith and morals is clear, God has appointed certain people in the Church to interpret what Scripture is trying to communicate about these things for everyone else.

Blessings,
Lojahw
Bryan Cross September 22nd, 2010 11:26 pm :
Lojahw (re: #942)

You wrote:

I never said that God’s revelation prior to Christ was complete; rather, God’s revelation was made complete – adequate for all future generations – with the revelation of Christ passed on to the Church by the apostles.

Whatever the revelation of Christ was adequate for in AD 33, it is adequate for today, all other things being equal. But not all other things are equal, because the Spirit has been guiding the Church into all truth. In the first century, no one needed to confess that Christ is homoousious with the Father. But after the fourth century, to deny the homoousious is to fall into [at least material] heresy. Faith is not just belief in a set of propositions, but in Christ through the Church. And if by way of development the Church formally defines a doctrine, then to accept everything that was normative before the Church definined that doctrine, but reject that defined doctrine, is to lose faith, by denying the authority of the Church through which Christ’s revelation comes to us. (See “St. Thomas on the Relation of Faith to the Church.”)

You wrote:

The issue is not the deeper understanding of things clearly taught by the Apostles, but the development and elevation of doctrines not even suggested by them, including contradictory teaching such as bowing down to the work of human hands.

“Contradictory” means claiming x and ~x. Teaching the fittingness of venerating sacred images is not contradictory, because the Catholic Church is not teaching that no one may venerate sacred images.

It is not bowing per se that is idolatrous (otherwise you’ll have committed idolatry if, when standing by your car, you bend over to pick up your car keys when you drop them in the parking lot). What is idolatrous is giving latria to a created being. Idolatry is first in the heart, and then expressed by a bodily action. But that does not mean that any particular bodily movement or posture necessitates or entails giving latria to a mere creature, because the person may have something else in his heart (besides latria) toward that creature.

You wrote:

You skipped over the quote from Galatians: “Now a mediator is not for one party only.” This verse defines one of the differences between intercession and mediation. A mediator represents both parties. Intercession is for one party only; intercession is making a request to God on behalf of a human being – it is for one party only. Moreover, the goal of mediation is always reconciliation of two alienated parties. Intercession is not tied to this goal or such circumstances; e.g., when Paul asks people to pray for him, he assumes no conflict between himself and God, but that making requests on his behalf is good and efficacious. Therefore, an intercessor is not a synonym of mediator.

Mary, by her fiat, mediated the union of the divine and human natures in the Person of Jesus Christ. She was not “for one party only,” and so by her fiat she is truly a mediator.

Please don’t forget that the Latin text is derived from the original Greek, and that the Greek does not convey the common connotation of fiat as command, decree, edict, etc.

Nor does the Latin. Just because ‘fiat’ in English means command, does not mean that it always has that meaning in Latin. And in this case, it does not mean that Mary is commanding Gabriel.

You wrote:

Back to Galatians 3:20, a mediator cannot be for one party only. A mediator represents both parties to the other. Mary did not represent God to humanity; therefore, she was not a mediator.

Your argument assumes that a mediator must represent both sides, and can’t mediate without “representing both sides”. But that’s not a safe assumption. A mediator need not represent either side; he or she need only bring together two parties.

You wrote:

Aquinas’ quote notwithstanding, God’s will for the incarnation was not held in the balance of Mary’s assent.

Assertions are not arguments. They are mere assertions. Your position implies that God would have impregnated Mary, even if she had said no. That sounds like something a pagan god would do. Would you teach your sons to imitate such a God? “Go ahead and impregnate her, son, even if she says no; that’s what God would have done, even if Mary had said no.” Really? Are you sure??

St. Thomas was not alone. St. Justin Martyr wrote:

For Eve, who was a virgin and undefiled, having conceived the words of the serpent, brought forth disobedience and death. But the Virgin Mary received faith and joy, when the angel Gabriel announced the good tidings to her that the Spirit of the Lord would come upon her, and the power of the Highest would overshadow her: wherefore also the Holy Thing begotten of her is the Son of God; and she replied, “Be it unto me according to thy word.” And by her has He been born.

And St. Irenaeus wrote:

In accordance with this design, Mary the Virgin is found obedient, saying, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to your word.” But Eve was disobedient; for she did not obey when as yet she was a virgin. And even as she, having indeed a husband, Adam but being nevertheless as yet a virgin … having become disobedient, was made the cause of death, both to herself and to the entire human race; so also did Mary, having a man betrothed [to her], and being nevertheless a virgin, by yielding obedience, became the cause of salvation, both to herself and the whole human race. . . . And thus also it was that the knot of Eve’s disobedience was loosed by the obedience of Mary. For what the virgin Eve had bound fast through unbelief, this did the virgin Mary set free through faith.”

You wrote:

Again, Scripture teaches that there is only one mediator between God and man. “One mediator” precludes the existence of a “co-mediatrix” between God and man.

I already explained (in the second paragraph of #903) why that statement is not true.

You wrote:

It is my understanding that the New Testament bears witness that the revelation of Christ through the prophets and the apostles completes the “faith which was once for all delivered to the saints.” “Once for all” implies complete. Or, as Hebrews 1:1-2 tells us: “God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son.” There has been no progressive revelation beyond “all the truth” given to the Apostles (else, why not join the Montanists and Mormons?).

Revelation is complete. See paragraphs 65-67 in the Catechism. But just because it is complete, does not mean that it cannot develop. Complete refers to the giving of revelation; development refers to the increase in understanding of the revelation given.

You wrote:

But, e.g., all revelation up to and including the Apostles forbid Christians from bowing down to the work of human hands; indeed, the early church fathers for several centuries continued to condemn anything remotely related to the practice commanded by the Church in the eighth century.

The early concern we see in some Fathers, about venerating images, was because of the paganism of the time, and the possibility of confusion. But once the empire had been Christianized, and everyone understood that the God who made heaven and earth was not a piece of stone or metal, the cultural circumstances were different, and it became fitting publicly to venerate the images of Christ and saints, because of the relation between the icons and those sacred persons these icons represented.

You wrote:

You seem to be saying:
1) Nothing in Scripture related to faith and morals can be reliably understood by ordinary people.
2) Because nothing that Scripture teaches regarding faith and morals is clear, God has appointed certain people in the Church to interpret what Scripture is trying to communicate about these things for everyone else.

I don’t believe (1) is true, so therefore (2) is moot, since (2) presupposes (1).

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Canadian September 23rd, 2010 12:42 am :
Lojahw,
You said “The issue is not the deeper understanding of things clearly taught by the Apostles, but the development and elevation of doctrines not even suggested by them, including contradictory teaching such as bowing down to the work of human hands.”
You speak approvingly of creeds you agree with, but you should look at the 7th Ecumenical Council for the undivided church’s reasons for image use. If it is in fact idolatrous or “contradictory teaching” to bow to the work of human hands (in the correct sense) then you need to consider removing a few more books from your OT.
In I Kings 8:38 and 42, when the foreigner addresses his prayers toward the Temple in Jerusalem, God would hear the prayer and answer the prayer of the foreigner.

Psalm 28:2 states, “Hear the voice of my supplications when I cry to Thee for help, when I lift up my hands toward Thy Holy sanctuary.”

Psalm 138:2, the psalmist writes, “I will bow down toward Thy Holy Temple and give thanks to Thy name … ” (the word “worship” in many versions is Strong’s #7812 meaning prostrate, bow etc.)

One would bow within the Temple if personally attending (Psalm 5:7)

Daniel 6:10, we see in Daniel, knelt and prayed three times a day and one who directed his prayers toward Jerusalem.
Were the Jews worshipping things made with hands?
Lojahw September 23rd, 2010 11:10 pm :
Dear Bryan, Thank you again for your comments and your patience.

It appears that we will have to agree to disagree on the definition of mediator (although I have to say that your quotes from Justin Martyr and Irenaeus don’t seem relevant). What do you have to say on behalf of Mary as co-redemptrix?

You denied that: “Nothing in Scripture related to faith and morals can be reliably understood by ordinary people.”

Would you then agree that ordinary people, without overt instruction by the Church, are able to reliably learn some truths about God and morals from Scripture?

You said:

Revelation is complete. . . . Complete refers to the giving of revelation; development refers to the increase in understanding of the revelation given.

I appreciate this clarification – I concur. As I said in my earlier post: Of course, with time to study the whole canon, nuances suggested by relationships between passages and books not available until the end of the first century would offer deeper levels of understanding.

For example, in the case of homoousios, the Nicene fathers explicitly quoted statements from diverse NT passages to justify their summary using the Greek word, homoousios, meaning “same nature.” That is, they quoted multiple passages of Scripture that were written in the first century which taught this doctrine from various perspectives:

“The bishops all agreed … that the Son is by nature only-begotten of God [John 1:18], Word [John 1:1], Power, and sole Wisdom of the Father [1 Cor 1:24]; that He is, as John said, ‘the true God,’ [1 John 5:20] and, as Paul has written, ‘the brightness of the glory, and the express image of the person of the Father’ [Heb. 1:3] … … likewise, ‘I and the Father are one’ [John 10:30]. They then, with still greater clearness, briefly declared that the Son is of [the same nature] [homoousios] with the Father; for this, indeed, is the signification of the passages which have been quoted.” (Theodoret, Ecclesiastical History, 1.7)

In other words, the bishops at Nicea did not base their use of homoousios on sources other than the Scriptures, but appealed to several passages from which one must conclude that Jesus is of the “same nature” as God. Athanasius in writing his Discourses Against the Arians also made a big deal out of the fact that “only-begotten” alone is sufficient to prove that Jesus has the same nature with his Father (it’s self-evident that one “begotten” has the same nature as one’s parent). Similar Scriptural underpinnings can be found for all the other orthodox doctrines of the Trinity.

In contrast, your characterization of bowing down in normal daily activities is completely irrelevant to the behavior taught by your church related to images. The significance one attaches to bending down to pick up keys dropped on the ground is totally unlike the significance one attaches to prostrating oneself before images of a saint (as Trent put it). The former has no spiritual connotation, the latter represents paying homage to a saint through the image, as the 7th Ecumenical Council taught:

For the honour which is paid to the image passes on to that which the image represents, and he who reveres the image reveres in it the subject represented.

In total contrast, there is no honor paid to the “subject represented” by the keys one drops on the ground. Since the Apostles themselves refused all homage, where did this concept come from? Note what Origen wrote in response to Celsus the heretic, and what Athanasius wrote on Jesus being the true and living image of God:

Origen in the third century (agreeing with Melito, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria and others before and after him):

. . . it is not possible at the same time to know God and to address prayers to images. . . . Another reason also why we abstain from doing honour to images, is that we may give no support to the notion that the images are gods. It is on this ground that we condemn Celsus, and all others who, while admitting that they are not gods, yet, with the reputation of being wise men, render to them what passes for homage. (Against Celsus, 7.66)
In all those, then, who plant and cultivate within their souls, according to the divine word, temperance, justice, wisdom, piety, and other virtues, these excellences are their statues they raise, in which we are persuaded that it is becoming for us to honour the model and prototype of all statues: “the image of the invisible God,” God the Only-begotten. And every one who imitates Him according to his ability, does by this very endeavour raise a statue according to the image of the Creator, for in the contemplation of God with a pure heart they become imitators of Him. And, in general, we see that all Christians strive to raise altars and statues as we have described them and these not of a lifeless and senseless kind and not to receive greedy spirits intent upon lifeless things, but to be filled with the Spirit of God who dwells in the images of virtue of which we have spoken, and takes His abode in the soul which is conformed to the image of the Creator. Thus the Spirit of Christ dwells in those who bear, so to say, a resemblance in form and feature to Himself. (Against Celsus 8.17-18)

What Origen is saying above is that Christians abstain from “what passes for homage” to images by pagans and heretics who claim they know better than to worship the images, yet their behavior cannot be distinguished from idolatry by observers. Please note that Origen explicitly denied that bowing down to an image is ok as long as the heart is not worshiping the image. In its weakest form, one might liken this to Paul’s exhortations to protect the weaker brother, a principle that still applies today since idolatry remains prevalent around the world.

What’s more interesting is what Athanasius wrote in the fourth century:

Because we speak of a king [God], and of the king’s image [Christ], and not of two kings. The majesty is not cloven in two, nor the glory divided. The sovereignty and authority over us is one, and so the doxology ascribed by us is not plural but one; because the honour paid to the image passes on to the prototype. Now what in the one case the image is by reason of imitation, that in the other case the Son is by nature; and as in works of art the likeness is dependent on the form, so in the case of the divine and uncompounded nature the union consists in the communion of the Godhead. (Holy Spirit 18.45)

The 7th Ecumenical Council took Athanasius’ words totally out of context, but the Council of Trent went further with the following paraphrase: “but because the honour which is shown them is referred to the prototypes which those images represent; in such wise that by the images which we kiss, and before which we uncover the head, and prostrate ourselves, we adore Christ; and we venerate the saints, whose similitude they bear. It is also interesting that the Greek used at the 7th Ecumenical Council used the word, proskuneo for paying homage – the very same word used by Jesus in John 4:24 “God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in Spirit and truth.”

So the 7th Ecumenical Council and the Council Trent, then, taught a corruption of what Athanasius’ wrote in his treatise on the Holy Spirit (for which John of Damascus should take the blame). Furthermore, the concept of “the honor of the image passing on to the prototype” was taken totally out of context by these councils. I have found no connection between this “development of doctrine” and the Apostles’ teaching. To the contrary, we only have the Apostles’ and angels’ personal examples of refusing homage and Scriptural warnings such as the following from a Messianic context:

“I will cut off your carved images And your sacred pillars from among you, So that you will no longer bow down To the work of your hands. (Micah 5:13)

What exactly is the link you see between the Apostles’ teaching and paying homage to images?

Ps. For Canadian: the references to bowing in prayer in the direction of the Temple are irrelevant to the teaching of the RCC. The anthropomorphic concept that God dwelled in the Temple at Jerusalem represented an incomplete understanding of God’s nature as taught many places in Scripture (cf. Acts 7:48, quoting Isaiah, “the Most High does not dwell in houses made by human hands”).

Blessings,
Lojahw
Lojahw September 24th, 2010 5:12 am :
Correction: Basil of Caesarea (fourth century) wrote the passage from On the Holy Spiirt.

The eighth century John of Damascus, in defending his theology of icons, attributes the following to Athanasius:

“If we use the example of the emperor’s image we will find this [the divinity of the Son who resembles the Father] easier to understand. This image bears his form and appearance. Whatever the emperor looks like, that is how his image appears. The likeness of the emperor on the image is precisely similar to the emperor’s own appearance, so that anyone who looks at the image recognizes that it is the emperor’s image; also anyone who see the emperor first and the image later, realizes at once whose image it is.” – sermo de sacris imaginibus, Migne, PG 28, Col 709; quoted by John in his florilegiuni to the 3rd Oration.

In any case, the “development of doctrine” for images was borrowed from the pagan practice of honoring the king by saluting or bowing to his statuary images around the empire. John of Damascus claims that this has apostolic origin, but fails to demonstrate it exists. The best he can do is refer to fourth century fathers who illustrated Christian teaching with cultural references to Christian statues and art that became ubitiquous during the reign of Constantine.

At the heart of the theology of icons is a pagan concept with a logical flaw: that the honor one gives to an inanimate artistic representation of a person functions like the honor one gives to Christ as the living image (icon) of God. The honor paid to Christ indeed passes to the Father, because He is of the same nature (homoousios) with the Father. The honor paid to a statue of a saint is based on pagan custom, not the deposit of faith handed down by the Apostles.

Blessings,
Lojahw
Bryan Cross September 25th, 2010 11:15 am :
Lojahw (re: #945,946)

If you wish to “agree to disagree” regarding the definition of ‘mediator,’ that’s fine, but it means that your earlier accusation against the Catholic Church regarding Mary’s role is based on your own stipulated definition, and therefore your accusation begs the question, by loading into your accusation a concept of mediation that disallows the Catholic understanding of Mary’s role.

Regarding the perspicuity of Scripture, there are things in Scripture that ordinary people, without the instruction of the Church, could learn by their own reading of Scripture. (They could not determine the canon of Scripture on their own, but that’s another question.) And with the aid of the Holy Spirit, people can come to repentance, and faith in Christ through reading Scripture. But Scripture is not so clear that by Scripture alone, without the aid of the Magisterium Christ established in His Church, the Church would be preserved in the true unity Christ gave to His Church and prayed that His followers would manifest to the world. Scripture was never intended to function apart from the instruction and guidance of the shepherds Christ established in His Church, as I argued in “The Tradition and the Lexicon.” And we can see what happens when people attempt to set up Scripture alone as their guide; they fragment into myriads of sects and schisms, because Scripture was never intended to function as the Church’s shepherd, by which the flock is preserved in unity and truth. By its very nature, it cannot perform this function; it cannot take the place of living shepherds, because it is propositional authority, not personal authority. Those attempting to be guided by Scripture alone, apart from the shepherds whom Christ established to keep watch over souls and who will give an account before Him for those souls (Heb 13:17), are flying blind. So are those individuals who choose ‘shepherds’ who teach according to the individual’s own interpretation of Scripture — such persons are simply accumulating ‘teachers’ in accordance with their own beliefs, and thus deceiving themselves, as St. Paul describes in his second letter to Timothy, where he refers to the future time when men will not endure what the Church says, but with itching ears wanting to hear what they want to hear, will accumulate for themselves ‘teachers’ to suit their own likings. (2 Tim 4:4) That time is now, and such ‘teachers’ are the thieves and robbers Jesus speaks of in John 10.

I agree, of course, that the Nicene Fathers appealed to Scripture to justify using the term ὁμοούσιος (homoousious). But the use of the term ὁμοούσιος for Christ does not follow by logical necessity from Scripture, because Scripture in no place uses the term ούσιος (ousious) of God, or uses the term ὁμοούσιος of Christ, or states that ousious belongs to God, is had by God or is rightly said of God. In 2 Peter 1:4, the term used is φύσεως, which does not have the same meaning as ούσιος. To infer from Scripture that Christ is ὁμοούσιος with the Father, one has to bring other premises to the data of Scripture.

The first-century Christians affirmed the deity of Christ, but that does not mean that they affirmed Christ as ὁμοούσιος with the Father. The Trinitarian theology had not yet been worked out, and ὁμοούσιος had not yet been defined as dogma by the Church. So even though in the first century (and throughout all time) it was (and is) true that Christ is ὁμοούσιος with the Father, in the first century it was not yet required of Christians to affirm that Christ is ὁμοούσιος with the Father, because the Church had not yet defined this dogma. Denying ὁμοούσιος was not yet formal heresy, because the dogma that Christ is ὁμοούσιος with the Father had not yet been authoritatively defined.

In order to infer from Scripture that Christ is ὁμοούσιος with God the Father, you have to pick certain texts of Scripture as the standard in light of which the others are to be interpreted. So, for example, Jesus says that the Father is greater than Himself (John 14:28), and that regarding “that day and hour” no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone. (Matt 24:36) He also said, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good except God alone.” (Mark 10:18) He says that He will ascend “to my Father and your Father, to my God and to your God.” (John 20:17) In 1 Cor 1:24 St. Paul says that Christ is the “wisdom of God.’ But of wisdom, the Proverbs say, “The Lord created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of old.” (Prov. 8:22) Even Jesus Himself refers to Himself as “the beginning of God’s creation” (Rev 3:14). That’s one possible way of interpreting ‘begotten’ in John 3:16 and elsewhere, and “first-born” in Col 1:15, as though God brought forth Christ as the first of His works, and then Christ became that through which all other things were made. And that’s one way of interpreting what St. Paul says in 1 Cor 8:6, where he writes, “yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.” And St. Paul says that the head of Christ is God (1 Cor 11:3), and implies that when all things are subject to the Son, then the Son will also be subjected to God. (1 Cor 15:28)

If a person picks those passages as the passages by which the other Christological passages are to be interpreted and understood, one will not arrive at a Nicene Christology. On the other hand, if one picks other passages implying Christ’s divinity as the interpretive key for the passages listed above, then, given the aid of a concept from Greek philosophy (i.e. ούσιος) one can arrive at something close to a Nicene Christology. But Scripture itself does not state which set of texts are to be the hermeneutical key by which to interpret the others. And so the interpretation one derives from Scripture will depend in part upon what one brings to the text. For example, if one treats ‘begotten’ as referring only to Christ’s coming into the world or being born of Mary, then Scripture’s statement that Christ is ‘begotten’ does not tell us anything about His deity. And if one interprets ‘begotten’ as meaning that Christ is the ‘first of God’s creation,’ then ‘begotten’ doesn’t prove that Christ is ὁμοούσιος with the Father. It depends on what is brought into the concept of ‘begotten,’ in the interpretive process. That is why the Arian debate was not resolved by Scripture alone, and could not be resolved by Scripture alone. Rather, the bishops (e.g. St. Athanasius) who championed Nicene orthodoxy drew deeply from the Tradition of the Church in order to make their hermeneutical case from Scripture for the claim that Christ is ὁμοούσιος with the Father. What they brought to Scripture guided them in determining which verses were to serve as the hermeneutical key for interpreting the others.

As for the quotation from Theodoret, he is not saying that Scripture alone answered the Arian question. He shows the bishops, informed by the Tradition, explaining what the Scripture means. And that is an example of the Catholic understanding of the three-fold authority in the Church: Scripture, Tradition and Magisterium. (See CCC 74-95.)

As for iconoclasm, to get into that issue here on this thread, would take us far away from the subject of the article. I’ll say a few things here, but let’s save the iconoclasm discussion for the article devoted to that subject. I agree that the significance one attaches to bending down to pick up keys dropped on the ground is very unlike the significance one attaches to bowing before an image of Christ or a saint. That’s my point, that it is not bending or bowing in itself that is worship, but what is in the heart that gives the physical act its species. And therefore, if a person bows before an image of Our Lady, to honor her as the Mother of God, then what is in his heart gives the act its species. And since giving her honor is in his heart, not giving her the worship proper to God, his act is not an act of idolatry.

As I mentioned in my previous comment (#943) there were some early Church Fathers who opposed giving honor to images, but they did so both because of the Jewish influence on early Christianity, and because of the paganism of the time, and the possibility of confusion, not because there is anything intrinsically wrong with honoring a saint by honoring his image. In the verse you quote from Micah, God is forbidding idolatry, the worship of images of the invisible God. Idolatry, of course, is still a mortal sin. But with the incarnation, God now has a physical form, and thus the prohibition in the Old Testament against worshiping an image of God is qualified under the New Covenant, in which the perfect Image of the Father takes on human flesh, and becomes man. Ultimately, iconoclasm is a performative denial of the incarnation, because it denies the implications of God becoming man. (See below.)

Origin held an anthropology in which the body was created after the soul, thus implying that the human person is the soul, clothed in a body, rather than an animated body. And this Platonic anthropology entails that Christ is hidden behind His body, such that seeing the human face of Christ is in no way to see God. So Origen’s anthropology disposed him not to see the value of images of Christ. He emphasized the invisibility of Christ in His divine nature, clothed or hidden under His human nature. Yet, what Origen does say in the quotation you cite is not opposed to the concept of images and imaging; for Origen, we are called through the virtues of Christ in our lives to be images of Christ. And so for Origen we do image Christ, and when we do so, this gives glory to God, precisely because it is His image in us that is glorious, not merely because there is some causal relation between God and the sanctity of His saints.

In addition, God did not commit the non sequitur fallacy when He said:

“Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for God made man in His own image.” (Gen 9:6)

That’s an argument with a conclusion and one stated premise. But we know that it is not a non sequitur, because God does not commit logical errors. Therefore, it must be an ethymeme. The unstated premise required in order to avoid the non sequitur, is that the honor or dishonor done to an image passes on in some way to the prototype. So this notion that what is done to the image passes on to the prototype, has been an implicit part of sacred revelation since the beginning. You claim that the notion that honor paid to an image passes on to the prototype is a “logical flaw.” But you haven’t shown that it is a logical flaw; you have only asserted that it is a logical flaw. Moreover, if it were a “logical flaw” it would attribute a logical error to God in Gen 9:6, because it would make the argument in that verse either invalid (because the conclusion would not follow from the one stated premise) or unsound (because the unstated premise would be false).

The word προσκυνοῦντας in John 4:24 has a broader meaning than latria; it can be used to refer to dulia, i.e. the giving of honor to a mere creature. So the Seventh Ecumenical Council’s use of that term (i.e. προσκύνησιν) does not entail that they were teaching that latria may be given to any creature. Hence they said that it is permissible to set up images of Christ, the Mother of God, angels and saints, and to show them a reverent homage (τιμητικὴυ προσκύνησιν), but not adoration in the true and proper sense (ἀληθινὴν λατρείαν).

You seem to think that the Seventh Ecumenical Council misinterpreted St. Basil’s words. But you are assuming that when he says “we speak of a king, and of a king’s image” he is limiting the meaning of those terms to God the Father and God the Son. But there is no reason to think that. In fact, the illustration does not work, if it does not apply between a human king and his image. The illustration only works as an explanation of the way worship of Christ is worship of the Father, if the writer expects the reader already to understand that to honor a king’s image is to honor the king whose image it is. So it is not a “corruption” of what St. Basil wrote; nor have you shown it to be a corruption. It is a principle that goes back even to the book of Genesis, as I showed above. The understanding from Genesis that we dishonor God by dishonoring that which is made in His image, precedes and grounds even the pagan understanding that honoring the king’s image is a way of honoring the king, and dishonoring the king’s image is a way of dishonoring the king. Most everyone knows that showing love to a child is a way of showing love to that child’s parents, because the child bears the parents’ image and is especially loved for that very reason.

The fittingness of the use of icons and images is a development that comes out of the very fact of the incarnation itself. God has become man, and so God now has a physical form, and therefore can be imaged in truth. But the form of God is nothing profane, just as His Body and Blood are not mere creatures to be despised or spurned. This is why, as I pointed out in #907 and #913, St. Augustine says that “no one eats that flesh [i.e. Christ’s flesh] unless he first adores it,” and St. Cyril of Jerusalem, around that same time, says that Catholics bow before receiving Christ’s Precious Blood. It is not just His Body and Blood that are divine; His physical form too is divine, because it is the physical form of the incarnate Logos. And so images of Christ are sacred, for this very reason, because they bear something divine on them. They are to be reverenced for this very reason, because they carry on them, in some manner, the form of Christ. But the saints too, by the righteousness of Christ within them, also image Christ, and are due the corresponding reverence. Just as the reverence paid to the image of Christ the Head of the Body passes on to the Head, so too the reverence paid to images of His holy members (i.e. the saints) passes on to them, and thus to Christ, whose members they are. (Acts 9:4, 1 Cor 12)

This does not even scratch the surface of the theology of icons. We intend to explain this subject in more detail in a future article. So that will have to do for now.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
A necessary distinction « Aquinas, Etc. November 24th, 2010 2:12 am :
[…] have any interest in making the full argument myself, because I think it’s plenty clear from this article at Called to Communion (warning: nearly 950 comments at this writing, so it may take a little while […]
Richard Cronin December 28th, 2010 2:26 pm :
*sigh* …where is Keith’s response???? One begins to wonder if he has been convinced of the arguments against him. Sorry Keith if you are reading this and that riles you a bit.. but its been a long time man!!

It feels like this discussion is at a crossroads. Lets take a minute (or a century..) to reflect.

Im wondering if Cross, Liccione or Troutman and Co would say they have learnt anything of new about protestants/protestantism from this discussion thus far? What would it take for any of ye guys to convert to protestantism?

Likewise TTfan Rjwhite and co. What have ye learned about catholicism and what would it take ye guys to convert to catholicism?
wilkins December 28th, 2010 11:28 pm :
Hey Richard,

humbly, i’d say that what’s needed here is not a response. As you can see from the comments in this or any of the other threads, response is plenty; careful refutation is what’s really needed. You’ve no doubt seen the gesture and posture that masquerade, here, as refutation. But that won’t do, and honestly i think everyone seriously participating in the ongoing discussions already knows it.

fwiw, i’m encouraged that KM is taking his time. It bears repeating: the argument of this article is (almost painfully) simple, clearly developed, and as yet notrefuted.

best,
wilkins
Michael Liccione December 29th, 2010 8:41 am :
Mr Cronin (#949):

What would it take for any of ye guys to convert to protestantism?

I can’t speak for the others, but I would answer your question by posing the converse of an argument I’ve long made for Catholicism. My argument has been that, without a living magisterium protected from error under certain conditions, there is no principled way to distinguish the doctrinal content of divine revelation from human opinions about how to interpret the “sources” available to us. The Christian religion would thus reduce to a matter of opinion. I would become a Protestant if I came to believe that the distinction I’ve made could not be made in a principled way, and thus that Christianity is all just a matter of opinion.

Best,
Mike
John Thayer Jensen December 29th, 2010 1:04 pm :
@Richard Cronin:

What would it take for any of ye guys to convert to protestantism?

I remember telling my wife, during the storm that broke over me in late 1993, lasting through mid-1994, concerning the possibility that the Catholic Church might be just what it says – I had been a Calvinist and member of the Reformed Churches of New Zealand – that if I didn’t come out of this a Catholic, I was sure that I would never believe in any sort of authority again. I had seen, you see, that if the Catholic Church isn’t what it claims, then there is no religious authority in the world. I might, I told her, end up some sort of Quaker or something like that – because I could see simply from philosophical grounds that God must exist; but unless there was some God-appointed authority behind it, I could no more believe that the Bible was authoritative than the Qur’an or the Bhagavad Gita.

That said, Richard, I think that any Catholic who has been given the gift of faith would be likely to say – in his heart, anyway, even if not in words – that ceasing to be a Catholic was just not conceivable. I know it is not for me. I honestly just cannot imagine how, after my first 27 years an atheist, my next 27 a Protestant, I could ever be anything but a Catholic. I was received into the Church 15 years ago last Friday. Like Newman, the thought of going back – and it would be a going back – is just not possible.

jj
Ray Stamper December 29th, 2010 1:11 pm :
jj

I had no idea you were an atheist for so long. Fascinating.

Pax et Bonum,

Ray
David Meyer December 29th, 2010 1:38 pm :
Keith is still working on a response. It will be nearly book length by the sound of it. He also said that because of the nature of the article and how it ties in with so many other issues of visible church and the like, that he will be responding to many other related articles here at CtC. So it seems to me that we might be getting a response to this entire site, not just this article.

If you read this Keith, we are looking forward to it and personally I hope you finish before spring. I need some cold weather reading. Also, if you wish to prevent more Tiber swimming (I just landed on the east bank last week btw!) I know for a fact that there are people in mid stream that are still waiting for answers to this article. Not to *rush* you, but this article has been here for 14 months. ;-)

Peace,

David Meyer
John Thayer Jensen December 29th, 2010 1:45 pm :
@Ray:

I had no idea you were an atheist for so long. Fascinating.

Actually, for me to claim the noble name of ‘atheist’ – implying a thinking out of the ultimate issues of life and coming to conclusion – would be unwarranted. I was brought up without any thought of anything beyond my own personal desires. I wrote a little something about it here if you’re interested (and need something to lull you to sleep :-)).

jj
Michael Liccione December 29th, 2010 1:56 pm :
JTJ:

Our trajectories of attitude are similar. When I was considering atheism in high school, it became quite apparent to me that atheism would entail affirming that we are “from nothing, to nothing, for nothing.” I asked myself whether such nihilism made more sense of reality than its opposite would. The question practically answered itself. For me, there was and is no going back on theism.

I feel pretty much the same about Catholicism. When I investigated Protestantism in college, it quickly became apparent to me that the Protestant principle permitted no principled means of distinguishing the doctrinal content of divine revelation from human opinions about how to interpret the sources. (I wouldn’t have put it that way at the time, but that was the gist of it.) Although some Protestant figures offered fine piecemeal insights and personal examples of integrity, I couldn’t take Protestantism as such seriously anymore. For me, the choice was between Catholicism and Orthodoxy. Though this isn’t the place to explain why I chose the former over the latter, I must say that the choice is irrevocable for me. Once one really accepts the claims of the Catholic Church for herself, the notion that one attain an epistemic standpoint from which those claims would be found wanting becomes almost inconceivable.

That is all the more poignant because, as I’ve explained elsewhere, it is particularly troublesome for me. For one thing, I have suffered greatly from my experience as a Catholic. But of course, if Catholicism is true, that suffering itself can and should ultimately redound to my benefit; and in any case, one of the best arguments for the divine origin of the Church is that there is no other way to explain how she has managed to survive, even thrive, all this time. For another, I know by direct experience that I could easily become a clergyman in any church save my own, thus earning my keep doing the sorts of things that most interest me. But I can’t bring myself do that. You obviously understand why.

I currently plan on getting an MDiv from Princeton or Duke. They’re willing to work with me financially and even let me teach. The Catholics will offer me nothing but a tuition bill. The joke continues. Onward and upward, brother.

Best,
Mike
TurretinFan December 29th, 2010 2:04 pm :
Mr. Cronin,

For me to convert, I would have to be persuaded that Rome’s very grand claims are true. I don’t see how they could possibly be true, since Rome’s claims are so plainly contrary both to the historical evidence and (infinitely more importantly) the testimony of Scripture.

Mr. Liccione,

I found your comment interesting. I would encourage you to join a Reformed church because that is where the Gospel is preached – not simply because one can make a principled distinction between revelation and personal opinion. Indeed, I’m not sure why the lack of need for Rome would lead one in any particular direction. If Rome’s claims are true – believe them – if not, then depart out.

-TurretinFan
Sean Patrick December 29th, 2010 2:26 pm :
‘Turretin Fan”

“Since Rome’s claims are so plainly contrary both to the historical evidence and (infinitely more importantly) the testimony of Scripture.”

The experience and findings of many is quite the opposite and contrary to your claim and in fact the gospel is preached in the Catholic Church every day.
JJS December 29th, 2010 2:27 pm :
Finally!

From what I have been hearing, comments here by men like TurretinFan and his friends are often blocked by the moderators, which understandably makes the invitations to dialogue by CTC guys on blogs like Green Baggins seem somewhat disingenuous.

I’m glad this one slipped through, as I have wanted to hear you guys engage with good Protestant apologists like TFan for a while now.

So have at it, lads….
Sean Patrick December 29th, 2010 2:31 pm :
JJS.

I’ve seen similar claims which is puzzeling. I might be wrong but TFan has never had a comment rejected.

We truly are open to dialog from anybody saying anything so long as it is within the posting published guidelines.
Sean Patrick December 29th, 2010 2:37 pm :
What would it take for any of ye guys to convert to protestantism?

First off if I was somehow convinced that the Catholic Church is not the Church that Christ founded to which Protestant church should I turn? If I followed the trend in American Protestantism it would not be a confessional Reformed church but rather a mega church and probobly an ‘independent’ one.
Ray Stamper December 29th, 2010 2:37 pm :
Mr. Cronin,

For me to convert, I would have to be persuaded that Protestantism’s very grand claims are true. I don’t see how they could possibly be true, since Protestantism’s claims are so plainly contrary both to the historical evidence and (infinitely more importantly) the testimony of Scripture.

:>)
herbert December 29th, 2010 2:38 pm :
It bears repeating: the argument of this article is (almost painfully) simple, clearly developed, and as yet not refuted. -wilkins

Keith is still working on a response. It will be nearly book length by the sound of it. -David Meyer

It’s tough for me (as an average joe) to make sense of a deep, book-length response to what is really a simple argument. Am I being unfair? thanks, herbert
Fred December 29th, 2010 2:47 pm :
What was required, fwiw, for me to convert was first to become convinced that Protestantism’s hermeneutical principle is false (as so ably described by Bryan in this article, though it was a several years too late for me!). Once that was clear-and it seems irrevocably clear to me-it was only a matter of time before my search led to the Catholic Church and eventual full communion.
Tim A. Troutman December 29th, 2010 2:47 pm :
JJS – I’ve never blocked a comment from TFan or any other Reformed blogger that I recall nor have I seen that happen. Whoever is spreading those claims that we don’t allow their comments is most likely lying and they’re at least exaggerating.
Sean Patrick December 29th, 2010 2:51 pm :
I think that several months ago John B had a comment that was not posted on another thread (not mine) because it did not meet the posting guidelines and that started the rumor.
JJS December 29th, 2010 2:59 pm :
I was under the impression that TFan, David King, Steve Hays, and some of the Triablogue guys were frustrated because they posted comments that were filtered out by the mods here. I obviously can’t vouch for that, but that’s the impression I’ve gotten from what some of them have said.
Tim A. Troutman December 29th, 2010 3:06 pm :
Well I’ve never blocked any of those three – so that hasn’t happened on any of my threads. Also we’re pretty fair about it – the only reason it would have been blocked is if it contained a personal attack or something like that.

Personally, I’ve blocked more Catholic comments than I have Reformed ones.
wilkins December 29th, 2010 3:18 pm :
JJS, #959

my browser finds over 200 instances of TurretinFan on this page alone… still… you say that you’re glad this one comment (#957) managed to slip through the censor’s net? I don’t follow. Are you joking?

You say,

I have wanted to hear you guys engage with good Protestant apologists like TFan for a while now.

You can see plenty of that by simply scrolling up.

TurretinFan, #957

you said to ML,

I would encourage you to join a Reformed church because that is where the Gospel is preached – not simply because one can make a principled distinction between revelation and personal opinion.

Are you saying that one can make a principled distinction between revelation and personal opinion?
Sean Patrick December 29th, 2010 3:22 pm :
Stay on topic. Consider this a first warning ; (

For the record I searched and do not believe that David King or Hays have ever even tried to post here. Engwer did a long time ago but I don’t think he was ever blocked in fact he has the last comment on a thread that he was participating on.
David Meyer December 29th, 2010 4:17 pm :
I have the honor of having had a comment blocked by Tim. Mouth running ahead of brain syndrome on my part. ;-) I wish Tim could be there to moderate my comments in daily life as well, but I digress…

As far as the “what would it take to convert to Protestantism” question, for me it would be a reversion, and at this point it would be both pillars of the reformation being shown as necessary from scripture in a way that a “solo” individualist could not do. By that I mean I need more than someone (as TFan did above) just stating that “the Reformed gospel is true.” So really, just disprove the quite simple thesis of this article and you are 50% toward me reverting. A few months ago that would have been all that was needed, but I am now quite convinced that the other pillar (sola fide) is quite rotten and crumbling as well. Simul iustus et peccator and alien imputation seem now to me quite unbiblical and unpalatable traditions of men.

Oh, also I would need sacramental confession. I can’t go without that now, and it is just so biblical.

Oh, and also visible sacramental apostolic succession.

Oh and also I must be able to pray to the communion of saints, esp. our Lady.

Also the Real Presence. And the mass. And prayers for the dead. And the doctrine of redemptive suffering.

And I would need the missing books. I am reading the book of Wisdom right now and it is amazing…

O.K., so basically once all you Protestants submit to the Pope and get an ordinariate like the Anglicans I will revert.

-Peace
David Meyer
herbert December 29th, 2010 4:36 pm :
re: #969:

Speaking directly to the thesis of this article, some months ago TurretinFan claimed to identify the very principle by which one can distinguish between revelation and personal opinion. He claimed that the Protestants do indeed have a principled means by which they can distinguish between solo and sola Scriptura. He claimed that this distinction is found in the the Protestant recognition of a “subordinate authority” rightly held by the church (please correct me if I’ve misrepresented you, TurretinFan!!!). thanks, herbert
wilkins December 29th, 2010 4:57 pm :
Hey Herbert,

“the true but subordinate authority of the church” is, according to Mathison, a crucial distinction between the sola and solo crowds; however, Bryan demonstrates in the essay above that even this “subordinate authority” ultimately reduces to solo: eg,

We can see then that there is no principled difference between sola scriptura and solo scriptura because given sola scriptura and the denial of apostolic succession, and thus given the equality in interpretive authority between the individual and the Magisterium, no Church council or promulgation of a dogma can bind the conscience of any individual. For any line in any creed or Church pronouncement, the individual may stand in judgment over it, just as the early Protestants stood in judgment of the decrees and canons of the Council of Trent (and other earlier ecumenical councils), based on their own interpretation of Scripture.

[see section IV, A]
Michael Liccione December 29th, 2010 5:45 pm :
TurretinFan (#957):

Addressing me, you wrote:

I would encourage you to join a Reformed church because that is where the Gospel is preached – not simply because one can make a principled distinction between revelation and personal opinion. Indeed, I’m not sure why the lack of need for Rome would lead one in any particular direction. If Rome’s claims are true – believe them – if not, then depart out.

I am Catholic because I believe that “Rome’s claims are true.” My conditional ‘if’ was not meant to suggest doubt, but to highlight a logical connection that Protestants are typically unaware of. I have no intention of leaving the Catholic Church. I’ve come to see the cost of staying as one more bit of evidence that I am on the right path.

I am well aware that you’re Reformed because you believe that approach to be “the gospel.” Why else be Reformed? Simple integrity demands that one belong to a church only if one believes that what it teaches is the truth. Although I question your judgment, I don’t question your integrity. But I’ve given you no basis for questioning my integrity either. So I’ll just chalk your suggestion up to misunderstanding.

I am also aware that the Reformed believe they have the principled distinction which I claim Protestantism in general lacks–that principle being the authority of the Church subordinate to Scripture. I reject that belief because I find the Protestant hermeneutical paradigm untenable to begin with. On that HP, the way to learn “the gospel” is to study and interpret the sources independently of the claim of any visible church to be the Church Christ founded, so that if one is to be “churched,” as most Protestants believe, then one must pick or found a church on the basis of such an interpretation–one which, of course, is confessedly fallible. By the same token, however, no such church has any authority. On the basis of academic study, bosom-burning, or both, the believer judges the Church’s orthodoxy, not vice-versa. No Protestant church claims the gift of infallibility; therefore no Protestant church has the authority to tell people, in the name of God himself, how they must interpret the “sources” of divine revelation. That of course does not suffice to prove the claim of the Catholic Church for herself; but I have long held, and will continue to hold, that a church which does not make that kind of claim can have no authority. Therefore, I take no such church seriously as a candidate for being “the Church.”

Aside from that epistemological issue, even if I were to become a Protestant, Calvinism is the last version of it I would consider. As I see it, TULIP depicts God as an arbitrary ogre and men as misshapen puppets.

Best,
Mike
BW December 29th, 2010 6:28 pm :
Well, for me to swim the Tiber, the Vatican would have to allow me to hold to the Augsburg Confession. That’s what the Lutherans were pushing for anyway when they presented it to Charles V.

Then I would come under Rome’s oversight.

But since I don’t see that happening anytime soon, I’ll continue to inhabit the mysterious lands in between Rome and Geneva, known as Lutheranism. I say mysterious cause we really don’t fit in with anybody else.
Randy December 29th, 2010 7:04 pm :
Well, for me to swim the Tiber, the Vatican would have to allow me to hold to the Augsburg Confession. That’s what the Lutherans were pushing for anyway when they presented it to Charles V.

So is the Augsburg Confession infallible? If it isn’t then how can you make it the criteria for remaining in schism?

As for me, I would answer the question with a question. What would make you stop being a Christian? Is that a fair question? My answer to that is the same as my answer to what would make me stop being Catholic. It is the idea that I would come to disbelieve in things that I have made the very center of my life. Things that have been confirmed countless time to me by God in a very intimate way. What would cause me to doubt Jesus? What would cause me to doubt His church? It has gone beyond logic. It is more like being in love. Even to ponder the question seems wrong.
herbert December 29th, 2010 7:24 pm :
Wilkins- When you asked the following of TurretinFan:

Are you saying that one can make a principled distinction between revelation and personal opinion?

I cited his persistent appeal to the “subordinate authority” held by the church, not b/c I find his appeal convincing, but mostly b/c he seems to see it as something that was NOT dealt with sufficiently in the article… and therefore continues to stand by it (which explains his comment to Dr. L above in comment #957). I guess I chimed in simply b/c I would indeed like to see 1 of either of these 2 things happen:
1. TurretinFan acknowledges that any “subordinate authority” does not provide a principled basis by which one may distinguish between personal opinion and divine revelation… and thus sola does indeed reduce to solo Scriptura.
2. TurretinFan cede the primary argument of this article and join the rest of us in awaiting a satisfactory rebuttal to Bryan’s (almost painfully) simple argument from Dr. Mathison.
Bryan Cross December 29th, 2010 7:34 pm :
TF, (re: #972, #957)

Concerning your position Herbert wrote:

He claimed that this distinction is found in the the Protestant recognition of a “subordinate authority” rightly held by the church

The concept of “subordinate authority” does not avoid the reduction to solo scriptura, because of the conjunction of the following two truths: (1) without apostolic succession, ecclesial authority can be based only on agreement with one’s own interpretation of Scripture and history, and (2) by its very nature, authority over oneself cannot be based on agreement with oneself. Catholics also believe in subordinate authority (e.g. a priest is a subordinate authority under his bishop), but because we have apostolic succession, we don’t have the reductio problem I just described.

If you want to try to show how “subordinate authority” avoids (1) or (2), or how the concept of “subordinate authority” avoids the reduction to solo scriptura, even given the truth of (1) and (2), you are welcome to do that. Merely asserting that the “fundamental flaw” of my tu quoque post is “its failure to recognize the concept of subordinate authority” does not show what is wrong with my argument.

When you make claims like the following (from #957 above):

Rome’s claims are so plainly contrary both to the historical evidence and (infinitely more importantly) the testimony of Scripture

the difficulty for your position is that the Catholic Church affirms the truth of every verse in Scripture. Therefore the disagreement between Reformed folks (like yourself) and the Catholic Church is not a disagreement about whether every verse of the Bible is true (except some Protestants might deny the truth of some verses in the Deuterocanonical books, because those Protestants do not believe those books to be divinely inspired). So the Reformed-Catholic disagreement you refer to regarding “the testimony of Scripture” has to be over the interpretation of Scripture.

Now, you could say, “I’m not interpreting Scripture, but the Catholic Church is.” But, that would be very strange, and ad hoc, namely, that 1.1 billion people are interpreting Scripture, and yet this group of a few hundred thousand Reformed folks are directly gleaning the meaning of Scripture without interpreting. At least, some kind of evidence that this strange state of affairs has obtained would be needed. You couldn’t just assert that you and those who agree with you are not interpreting Scripture and that everyone else [who disagrees with your interpretation] is interpreting instead of just reading right off the page. (Of course, if you want to try and make that case, again you’re welcome to do so, and I’m all ears.)

The bottom line is that you are interpreting too. So your claim in #957 is really that the Catholic Church’s doctrines are contrary to your interpretation of Scripture, and you think your interpretations are better than those of the Catholic Church. But when I point out that it is not Scripture per se that is opposed to the Catholic doctrines, but it is your interpretations of Scripture which are contrary to the Catholic Church’s teachings, you deny it. You do not want to say that the Catholic Church’s doctrines are merely contrary to your interpretation of Scripture. You want to say (and do say) that the Catholic Church’s doctrines are contrary to Scripture itself.

The reason you want to do that is that as soon as you admit that it is not Scripture per se that is contrary to the Catholic Church’s doctrines, but only your interpretation of Scripture, then since you have no interpretive authority, it is of no theological consequence (for the Catholic Church) that the Catholic Church’s doctrines are incompatible with your interpretation. You are not the Pope, and the Church has no reason to be subject to your hermeneutical opinions. Rather, at that point (when we recognize that it is interpretation vs. interpretation), the need for interpretive authority become obvious, as does the fact Christ would not have left His Church without such an authority, as does the obvious evidential weight of the universal practice of apostolic succession from the Church Fathers to the sixteenth century. And then the opposition between the teaching of the divinely established interpretive authority in the Church’s Magisterium and your interpretation of Scripture, only condemns your interpretation, because the arrogance and presumptuousness of placing one’s own interpretation of Scripture above that of the divinely established Magisterium is just too obvious, unless by signs and wonders you could demonstrate yourself to be a divinely sent prophet. So, you can’t admit that it is only your interpretation that is opposed to the Catholic Church’s doctrine, without either becoming Catholic, or performing signs and wonders.

Therefore you must keep up the pretense of not interpreting Scripture. And yet that leaves you in the ad hoc position I described above, where you (and those who agree with you) are [allegedly] not interpreting, while everyone else who disagrees with you is not only interpreting, but is misinterpreting. That’s the dilemma: if you admit you are interpreting Scripture, then you can’t keep claiming that the Catholic Church’s teachings are contrary to Scripture itself, but if you deny that you are interpreting Scripture, then you place yourself in an ad hoc position in which everyone who disagrees with your [interpretation of] Scripture is interpreting, but you [and those who agree with you] are not interpreting, and the ad hoc nature of that position undermines the very conditions for the possibility of the disagreement in which you are participating.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
donald todd December 29th, 2010 7:44 pm :
re: the question of where I would go.

Leaving a practical atheism for Christianity, I originally became an evangelical Pentecostal because my impression of the other evangelicals I was meeting was that they were unhappy types who wanted others to join them in their misery. I was working with the impression that anyone who worshiped a God Who loved them as Jesus did should be relatively happy. The assumption of happiness was an early failing of mine, but I still believe it was a mistake pointing in the right direction.

Most of non-Pentecostal evangelicals of my acquaintance were glowering and their demeanor was a “get saved or be damned” proposition. This was accompanied by their dislike for anyone who denied their version of the Truth. The feeling was palpable and involved both a harsh judgment and a love of neighbor issues.

Given the differences in beliefs, we determined that the broad swath of Protestants weren’t saved by the Truth (most of which we did not share in common), we were given a pass to heaven based on our sincerity.

However there is much more to the practice of religion than mere happiness. Truth must be part and parcel of it, because the Scripture noted Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life, but nowhere did it state that He was the happiness.

I left evangelicalism because it manifestly did not conform to scripture. Any part of scripture which competed with the beliefs of my old Pentecostal church were denied when it could not be avoided. My perusal of Lutheranism, Methodism and Calvinism did not fare any better than evangelicalism, and Tim’s description of TULIP above was more devastating than my own impression of that particular nasty bit of evil.

The Mormon creed, attractive for family life and involvement, was manifestly not Christian in the orthodox sense of that word. The Anglican communion was devolving in front of my eyes. I looked very hard at the eastern Orthodox, but determined that while they had the history and sacraments, no one was maintaining the household in the owner’s absence. They had virtually everything but Peter, and Peter the Rock was the missing piece.

Where does that leave me? If Catholicism is not true, there is nowhere to go. My impression of nowhere is that it is utopia, a place that does not exist. Fortunately for me, Catholicism is true. My co-religionists and I may reject or fail to live up to the Truth at any given point, but rejecting the Truth does not make the Truth less true. And as was noted above, I can enter the confessional and surrender my sinfulness for a return to grace.

Some of my old Protestant peers asked me if I went into the Catholic Church to save it. I noted that I went into the Catholic Church so that I could be saved. That is still true and will be to the end of my days.

Having been added to the Truth through His Church, His gift to me, I was able to continue with happiness because the scripture I rightly appreciated was being maintained and adhered to. No denials. No avoidances. No equivocations. No missing books. Truth and happiness, what a wonderful combination.

Happy New Year.

dt
wilkins December 29th, 2010 8:45 pm :
Hey Herbert, #977

[TurretinFan] seems to see [the appeal to “subordinate authority”] as something that was NOT dealt with sufficiently in the article… and therefore continues to stand by it

Ah, i get it and agree with you, the appeal he’s making is not convincing.

I see Bryan has responded (#978) with clarity and tact.

Praised be Jesus Christ
TurretinFan December 29th, 2010 9:39 pm :
Mr. Cross:

I’m a troubled by your comment, “you must keep up the pretense,” which seems to call my integrity into question. Perhaps you could clarify what you mean. I’ll wait for your clarification before responding to your comment.

Mr. Liccione:

I am sure there has been some misunderstanding between us. I simply meant to suggest that your comments incompletely captured what would be necessary for you to make a move. I did not mean to suggest (and I hope I did not suggest) that you think your church’s claims are false.

Herbert:

I’ve provided a variety of responses to this blog post. Here’s what I think are perhaps the top three responses.

1. Logical Invalidity Rebuttal
Conclusion 10 (from the argument in the article) does not follow from 4 and 9. The move from 4 and 9 to 10 is a logically invalid generalization.

2. Meaningless Criticism Rebuttal
a) The distinction that we would allege exists between sola and solo scriptura is that in sola scriptura, the church has real authority, whereas in solo scriptura, the church does not have real authority.

b) Since this distinction is apparent from the definitions of the doctrines, the article cannot really deny it.

c) Instead, the article states that there is no “principled” distinction.

d) The resort to saying that the distinction is not a “principled” distinction is not a clear objection, because it is not clear what it means. More specifically, what is the difference between a distinction in general and a “principled” distinction?

e) Is the opposite of a “principled” distinction an “unprincipled” distinction? Surely not. We can rule out such an option as only something to lighten the mood.

f) Is the opposite of a “principled” distinction an arbitrary distinction? The threshold for something to be non-arbitrary is quite low. Surely this distinction should pass that barrier. Thus, we can also rule out this option.

g) What other options are there? If “principled” is just a laudatory adjective, what is the significance? Why not just say “good” instead of “principled,” if that’s what it means? And by what standard of goodness should it be measured? No such standard appears in the article (that I could find). As such, it seems that the criticism the article provides is meaningless criticism, because the meaning of “no principled distinction” cannot be readily ascertained.

3. The Illegitimate Criticism Rebuttal
a) The “final interpretive authority” similarity between the sola and solo positions is a similarity shared by every conceivable rational position, since “interpretive authority” is being used so broadly.

b) Thus, this isn’t really a legitimate criticism, it’s just a statement about the way humans function. In other words, because the individual must come to conclusions himself about what he himself thinks his source of authority tells him, he is the final interpretive authority of the source of authority. That’s true regardless of what the source of authority is.

c) This rebuttal was anticipated in the article and an attempted answer was provided at V(A), with a longer attempted answer in the separate article entitled “The Tu Quoque.”

d) Replies to the answers
(i) To avoid having the same similarity apply, it can be pointed out that there is an additional similarity between the two positions, namely that in both cases the individual is interpreting Scripture. By contrast, those within Rome have a trumping source of authority. That trumping source of authority is the Roman magisterium. That is a distinction – but not one that actually goes to the issue of final interpretive authority in general, only of final interpretive authority of Scripture. Thus, the individual has final interpretive authority over both Scripture and the magisterium (his sources), but when his interpretation of the magisterium conflicts with his interpretation of Scripture, his interpretation of the magisterium is supposed to prevail, since he has no right to interpret Scripture contrary to what the magisterium says. Yet if that is the way by which Rome’s position is to be distinguished, it appears that the criticism amounts to saying that sola and solo have the same source of ultimate authority – the same trumping source, whereas Rome has a different trumping source.

(ii) It is further alleged that, in essence, the criticism is legitimate because there is an ontological difference between a book and a person. However, this reply appears to confuse categories. A book is simply the communication of a person – and the Roman magisterium communicates in writing which can be (and sometimes is) bound into books. Thus, in effect, one can consider both authorities to be persons or both authorities to be books.

(iii) It is additionally alleged, or at least apparently alleged, that subordinate authority is not real or actual authority. If this were true, it would seem to justify saying that sola and solo scriptura have no real distinction, since saying that the church has “no authority” and saying that the church has “subordinate authority” would mean the same thing. However, subordinate authority is real authority. Indeed, since the Roman ecclesiastical hierarchy is a hierarchy, it should be conceded by those in that communion that subordinate authority is real authority. One’s local bishop has real but subordinate authority, for example.

I would say those are really the “top three” rebuttals that come to mind. It’s worth noting that only the first of the three is a “rebuttal” in the strictest sense of the term. It says the argument is invalid. The others say that the argument is useless in the Roman-Reformed dialog.

-TurretinFan
Bryan Cross December 29th, 2010 10:02 pm :
TF (re: #981)

(Please call me Bryan.) By “keep up the pretense” I don’t mean anything about your integrity, and I’m sorry for possibly implying otherwise. I simply mean that in order to defend your position you must make it seem as though you are not interpreting Scripture, when in fact (whether you are aware of it or not) you are interpreting Scripture.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
What Would It Take For You to Become Catholic (or Protestant)? | St. Joseph’s Vanguard And Our Lady’s Train December 29th, 2010 10:20 pm :
[…] at Called to Communion, an oldie-but-goodie post on sola Scriptura reducing to solo Scriptura is stirring up discussion again, with a great question […]
Bryan Cross December 29th, 2010 11:17 pm :
TF (re: #981),

Regarding your “Meaningless Criticism Rebuttal,” the thesis at the beginning of our article is that “there is no principled difference between sola scriptura and solo scriptura with respect to the holder of ultimate interpretive authority.” A principled difference here is not a merely semantic or accidental difference. For example, there is no principled difference in the holder of ultimate political authority between an open dictatorship, and a puppet government run by an underground dictator. In both cases, the dictator holds ultimate political authority, even though in the latter case he masks it by operating in secret behind a cadre of henchmen.

Of course there is a semantic and conceptual difference between solo scriptura and sola scriptura. But as we show in the article, in both positions, the individual remains the holder of ultimate interpretive authority, even though the holder of sola scriptura masks his retention of this authority by seemingly placing himself under the authority of a group he calls ‘the church.’ So though proponents of sola scriptura claim that the church has authority over the individual, when we look carefully at who counts as ‘church,’ and the basis [given sola scriptura] for the alleged authority of the ‘church,’ it turns out to be based ultimately on agreement with the individual. (See, for example, comment #841, where I showed that Keith’s position has this problem.) And this reveals that the individual retains ultimate interpretive authority, even within sola scriptura. That is why both the person holding solo scriptura, and the person affirming sola scriptura, are each their own ultimate interpretive authority. And since the person affirming sola scriptura claims that those holding solo scriptura are wrongly acting as their own ultimate authority, and not submitting to ‘the church,’ the fact that even the sola scriptura adherents are their own ultimate authority shows that their criticism (of solo scriptura folk) undermines their own position.

The attempt by sola scriptura folks to get solo scriptura folks to submit to ‘the church’ is just a power move, i.e. a kind of strong-arm bullying, because ‘church,’ for sola scriptura folks, is just ‘those who mostly agree with my interpretation of Scripture.’ So it is a case of one group of holders of ultimate interpretive authority who agree with each other and have linked up with each other (i.e. proponents of sola scriptura), saying to other holders of ultimate interpretive authority (i.e. solo scriptura folks) who have not linked up with others who agree with themselves, “You must submit to us.” And the solo scriptura folks can just laugh and respond, “You have no more authority than do we. Just because you get together and form a group, does not give you any more authority; it only gives you more numbers.” There is no actual ecclesial authority in sola scriptura, only the appearance of such to those who don’t grasp that authority over oneself cannot be based on agreement with oneself, and that the only basis for ‘authority’ given sola scriptura, is agreement with one’s own interpretation of Scripture. Those holding solo scriptura have essentially seen through the ‘ecclesial authority’ masquerade of sola scriptura.

If you want to show that there is a principled difference between solo scriptura and sola scriptura with respect to the holder of ultimate interpretive authority, then you need to show how ‘church,’ in sola scriptura, does not reduce to those who mostly agree with one’s own interpretation of Scripture. If you could do that, then you would have shown that unlike the holder of solo scriptura, the holder of sola scriptura does not retain ultimate interpretive authority. But, you can’t show that, because as we argued in the article, without apostolic succession, there is no way to ground ecclesial authority except by agreement with one’s own interpretation of Scripture and history.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Andrew McCallum December 29th, 2010 11:43 pm :
I was under the impression that TFan, David King, Steve Hays, and some of the Triablogue guys were frustrated because they posted comments that were filtered out by the mods here.

I have had some posts rejected by Bryan, one time for the egregious crime of using rhetorical questions! No joke. I did get a little frustrated when I got bumped a couple of times right in the middle of making a point. But no big deal. I don’t know how many times folks have had posts rejected, but I actually appreciate the fact that there is some moderation. I think there are times when discussions get out of hand and the moderator should step in.

I’m more of the opinion that problems surrounding these discussions happen when discussions go on too long – both sides have said about everything useful and neither side is convinced. I see Mike L and Bryan and so on making exactly the same statements above that we have already answered and I just don’t see any point in trying to answer them again. The problem that I see is that both sides are so locked into their respective hermeneutical paradigms that they are not going to be convinced. I see some comments from Catholics here saying that they could not be convinced to leave the Catholic Church. If that’s the case then I’m wasting time trying to counter their arguments, right? What would be really interesting is to catch folks in that in-between period when they are considering either joining or leaving the RCC (or an EO communion). My distinct impression from reading interviews like the recently one posted here of David Anders is that they left the Reformed faith with misconceptions as to what they were leaving. Actually it’s more than just an impression, he states as much right out. And I’ve heard Catholic folks talk about testimonies of ex-Catholic gone Evangelical/Reformed that the converts left Rome with false impressions as to the Catholic faith. Well, wouldn’t you guys like to have a few minutes with such folks to set them straight before they made that final decision?
Bryan Cross December 30th, 2010 12:34 am :
TF (re: #981)

You wrote:

It is further alleged that, in essence, the criticism is legitimate because there is an ontological difference between a book and a person. However, this reply appears to confuse categories. A book is simply the communication of a person – and the Roman magisterium communicates in writing which can be (and sometimes is) bound into books. Thus, in effect, one can consider both authorities to be persons or both authorities to be books.

I think your claim here is self-evidently false. Surely you don’t think that because a wife can (and does) sometimes write things down, that therefore being married to a woman is ontologically the equivalent of being married to the writings of a woman. The ontological difference between a person and a book makes a world of difference with respect to the nature and potential of the diachronic relationship with them, even though persons can write things down. Likewise, the fact that the Magisterium can and does write things down, does not “in effect” reduce the Magisterium to a book. The Magisterium continually remains a living teaching authority, irreducible to a book, even though its statements and writings can be published in books. Because the Magisterium is a living organ, it always retains interpretive authority, even over its own writings. Only if that were false, would the Magisterium “in effect” reduce to a book. This is why the claim that the Catholic remains his own ultimate interpretive authority, because he has to interpret the Magisterium, is false. So because of the real ontological difference between persons and books, and because the Catholic Church has a living Magisterium along with Scripture, therefore the Catholic is not his own ultimate interpretive authority. But while the Protestant has Scripture (or most of it) he does not have a living Magisterium, and therefore he remains his own ultimate interpretive authority, for the reasons we have explained above.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Bryan Cross December 30th, 2010 1:03 am :
Hello Andrew (re: #985),

I never blocked any of your comments for having rhetorical questions; I blocked a few for reasons we discussed privately. But, I did tell you in a private discussion that I would not approve comments in which the repeated use of rhetorical questions is the only method of criticizing the other position, because that is sophistry. We’re not an open forum, precisely because we are trying to cultivate charitable, rational dialogue, and that requires screening out those who are just looking for a soapbox, those who do not refrain from personal attacks, or those who have no interest in genuinely engaging the evidence or argumentation of others, or engaging the article to which the combox is attached. But comments like TF’s above are perfectly fine.

(I hope you had a good Texas Christmas. :-)

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
herbert December 30th, 2010 1:41 am :
TurretinFan-

You’ve identified the “Logical Invalidity Rebuttal.” Could you explain how the move from 4 and 9 to 10 is a “logically invalid generalization”? Because if it’s really that simple, Dr. Mathison needn’t bother with his book-length response ;)

1. According to solo scriptura, Scripture is the only ecclesial authority. [def]

2. If solo scriptura is true, then each individual is his own final interpretive authority concerning what he considers to be essential. [1]

3. According to sola scriptura, Scripture is the only infallible ecclesial authority. [def]

4. If sola scriptura entails that each individual is his own final interpretive authority concerning what he considers to be essential, then in this respect there is no principled difference between solo scriptura and sola scriptura.

5. If apostolic succession is false, then no one’s determination of the marks of the Church is any more authoritative than anyone else’s.

6. If no one’s determination of the marks of the Church is any more authoritative than anyone else’s, then each individual is his own final interpretive authority concerning what he considers to be essential.

7. If apostolic succession is false, then each individual is his own final interpretive authority concerning what he considers to be essential. [(5),(6)]

8. The doctrine of apostolic succession is false. [A]

9. If sola scriptura is true, then each individual is his own final interpretive authority concerning what he considers to be essential. [(7),(8)]

10. There is no principled difference between sola scriptura and solo scriptura. [(4),(9)]

Next, you offered the “Meaningless Criticism Rebuttal” (which, along with the third rebuttal you acknowledged isn’t a rebuttal at all). This reaction to the article simply focuses upon the use of the term “principled” in the article’s argumentation. The definition of the term is, however, readily available on the Internet. The term “principled” is defined as: Based on, marked by, or manifesting principle or manifesting objectively defined standards. As I see it, based upon that definition of the term, I hope that you’d recognize the article’s criticism of the doctrine of sola Scriptura as being lacking in “objectively defined standards” to be anything but meaningless.

Third, you presented the “Illegitimate Criticism Rebuttal/Reaction,” saying that the phrase “final interpretive authority” is too broad a term, so broad as to describe pretty much all rational activity. You said:

Thus, this isn’t really a legitimate criticism, it’s just a statement about the way humans function. In other words, because the individual must come to conclusions himself about what he himself thinks his source of authority tells him, he is the final interpretive authority of the source of authority. That’s true regardless of what the source of authority is.

I can think of an exception. What about the point in St. John’s Gospel at which Christ turns to the 12, saying “Do you also want to leave?” and Simon Peter replies “Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God.” (John 6:67-69) Were Simon Peter and the other 11 following the pattern you outlined above, they would have walked away with all the other “final interpretive authorities” who’d concluded, based upon Christ’s words concerning the consumption of His Flesh and Blood, that He was a false prophet or something worse. The 12 remained, however, not because of what Christ had said. Indeed, Christ’s words were causing great scandal and driving away many would-be followers. It was the conviction of who Christ was that caused the 12 to remain, even when the Lord’s words were confounding. Similarly, it’s the Christian’s conviction of what the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church is by nature (the very Bride of Christ), that causes him to submit to her authority, even when he’s not socially/culturally/economically/intellectually inclined to do so!

And finally, I wanted to comment on this point, as it seems to be the weakest point of all when it comes to the your appeal to “subordinate authorities.”:

Indeed, since the Roman ecclesiastical hierarchy is a hierarchy, it should be conceded by those in that communion that subordinate authority is real authority. One’s local bishop has real but subordinate authority, for example.

Your point seems to overlook the fact that in any hierarchy “higher-ups” can overrule the decisions made by “subordinate authorities.” In other words, all subordinate authorities are subject to the decisions made by their superiors. And as this article demonstrates, in the case of the doctrine of Sola Scriptura, each individual subscriber necessarily and unavoidably finds himself in the seat of the ultimate interpretive authority, the final, the ultimate, the solo “higher up.”

TurretinFan, I appreciate your time. Thank you for the interaction!
Michael Liccione December 30th, 2010 2:26 am :
Welcome back, Andrew (#985). You observed:

The problem that I see is that both sides are so locked into their respective hermeneutical paradigms that they are not going to be convinced…What would be really interesting is to catch folks in that in-between period when they are considering either joining or leaving the RCC (or an EO communion)

I’ve actually caught quite a number of people in “that in-between period”: in private life, on this site, and on the now-defunct blog Pontifications (2004-2007), where I was a co-author with Episcopal priest Alvin Kimel. In due course he talked himself into becoming an RC priest, and since then has occasionally commented on this site. My experience there, here, and at my own blog has been quite instructive, even formative for me. The most important thing I’ve learned is greater charity. The next most important thing I’ve learned is that inquirers with the requisite education need to learn how address an essentially philosophical question: How is one to assess the respective HPs against each other? The thing can and must be done if the decision for one HP over against the others is to find rational support.

The assessment is necessarily philosophical, because any attempt to make it by importing premises drawn from revealed theology proper–be it Catholic, Protestant, or Orthodox–only serves to beg the question. One has to think outside each competing HP, if only for the sake of argument, in order to assess them against each other. To that end, the main desideratum is to develop a clear idea of what it would take to distinguish the propositional content of divine revelation itself from human opinions about how to interpret what’s taken to be the relevant data. That requires getting into natural theology, epistemology, the philosophy of language, and related philosophical disciplines, including even the philosophy of science. The kind of debate that Bryan and his associates conduct with Reformed academics and clergy hinges precisely on that sort of stuff. That’s the stuff one needs to master in order to make headway assessing the respective HPs against each other.

Without such a mastery, it’s all too easy to just throw up one’s hands and view the whole thing as an exchange of yeas and nays. As I see it, that’s what you’re doing. Thus, you’re treating as the end of debate what is really its beginning. If you want to participate in such a debate, take some philosophy at Rice or the University of St. Thomas. I once taught at the latter and gave a talk at the former.

Best,
Mike
John Thayer Jensen December 30th, 2010 2:30 am :
@Michael Liccione:

Our trajectories of attitude are similar. When I was considering atheism in high school, it became quite apparent to me that atheism would entail affirming that we are “from nothing, to nothing, for nothing.” I asked myself whether such nihilism made more sense of reality than its opposite would. The question practically answered itself. For me, there was and is no going back on theism.

You give me too much credit. I said that I did not deserve even the name ‘atheist’ because I never even began to think about the meaning of life – indeed, not even about the question whether life might have any meaning or what it might mean to talk about the meaning of life – until my life began to fall apart.

jj
Benjamin Keil December 30th, 2010 4:12 am :
“TurretinFan”,

Thanks for the helpful summary – glad to see you commenting round these here parts again. Particularly relevant to your “logical invalidity rebuttal” are comments 787 and 788 of this (absurdly) long thread. For those particularly interested in this rebuttal, reading those comments would be worthwhile.

In 787, Bryan responded to the query I posed in 785 about the logical structure of his argument. Of course, making an argument logically valid is something anyone who’s had a 300-level philosophy or math course should be able to do, and thus by principles of philosophical charity (sheesh, much less Christian charity,) if there is any at all reasonable way to construe Bryan’s position in a logically valid manner, it should be done. It’s worth highlighting that we’re not even yet talking about soundness but mere validity. And as anyone who is relatively familiar with philosophy or logic knows, mere validity is relatively easy to come by.

Thus, in response to my efforts to construe Bryan’s position in a logically valid fashion, Bryan offered two important clarifications in 787. First, the conclusion needs to be qualified in such a fashion so as to match its premises. Second, there are two implicit premises to be brought forward (which Bryan helpfully made explicit).

You made essentially the same point regarding Bryan’s first clarification in your 788:

It should be noted, however, that actually 10 is U’ not U, because U has a feature, “in this respect” that U’ lacks. Thus, U’ is not U, rather it is an invalid generalization of U.

Fair enough, but I take it that Bryan can add this clarification (as he did) without materially changing his fundamental argument (or conflicting with any other of his premises) at all. And of course, since we are still concerned with mere validity (not yet soundness,) that’s all that needs to be done in order to rebut the charge of invalidity.

Allow me to ask a clarificatory question, then: When you allege that “Conclusion 10 (from the argument in the article) does not follow from 4 and 9” and that such constitutes a “logically invalid generalization”, do you intend to only argue against Bryan’s argument as initially presented in the article, Sec. IV.A or are you claiming that such a problem exists in Bryan’s argument as initially presented in Sec. IV.A and clarified in comment 787?

I’ll be frank: I have taught college logic, and insofar as I can see, Bryan’s position as clarified in 787 is formally valid. (Sidenote: I also think Bryan’s suggestion to “re-write the argument to properly include 8 in getting to 9.5” ought to be done, but that change too is trivial and you can probably see how such a change would work if you give it a few minutes thought.) So if your claim is that IV.A’s summary is formally invalid, sure, but Bryan clarified it (and relevantly further, his clarifications involved no “troubling” changes to his position, so by principles of philosophical charity he ought to be allowed to clarify his position when requested.) But if you’re asserting that IV.A’s summary as clarified in 787 is invalid, could you please clarify why you take that to be the case? (Additionally, if you’re going to say that 787’s version involves a “logically invalid generalization,” could you please explain what the heck that means? I’m unfamiliar with such a term outside of its technical usage in predicate logic, and predicate logic doesn’t seem to come in to play here…Bryan’s argument is completely offered in terms of propositional logic).

To all others,

Apologies for the obtuse and boring comment. If you’re not philosophically inclined, you probably didn’t even keep reading long enough to get to the apology. Whoops.

I belabor the “logical invalidity” rebuttal mainly because it is the only rebuttal that carries a real “punch” behind it, at least to my mind. If the rebuttal is correct, it’s definitely Protestants 1, Catholics 0 for this fight. The “meaningless criticism” rebuttal treads on the allegation that there is no understanding of “principled distinction” sufficient for the argument to work (and frankly, I think there either is or one could be clarified without much ado – in other words, this “rebuttal” alleges an intractable problem in the argument which seems pretty darn tractable to me.) The “illegitimate criticism” rebuttal charges that this article merely points out “a statement about the way humans function”; in so doing this rebuttal admits the “poison pill” to be inherent in the Protestant position, and just attempts to shove the same pill down Catholicism’s throat too. Neither of those rebuttals carry half as much weight as the “logical invalidity” rebuttal in my mind, so I’m focusing there. Just my $0.02.

Sincerely,
Benjamin
Sean December 30th, 2010 9:22 am :
Surely you don’t think that because a wife can (and does) sometimes write things down, that therefore being married to a woman is ontologically the equivalent of being married to the writings of a woman.

I need to remember this when my wife leaves me a list of chores that need to get done around the house every other Saturday!
Sean December 30th, 2010 9:26 am :
Benjamin # 991.

Thank you for belaboring your ‘boring point.’ It is helpful. However, I must say as a philosophical layman that I don’t believe that a well constructed logical proof is even necessary to see that ‘submitting’ to a church only because that church teaches what you think the bible teaches is not really submitting at all.
David Meyer December 30th, 2010 12:21 pm :
This short video by Father Robert Barron explains really well how people should feel about leaving the Church.
Michael Liccione December 30th, 2010 1:03 pm :
Amen, Sean.
Andrew McCallum December 31st, 2010 1:07 am :
The assessment is necessarily philosophical, because any attempt to make it by importing premises drawn from revealed theology proper–be it Catholic, Protestant, or Orthodox–only serves to beg the question.

Michael,

I think there are definitely times when the nature of the discussion needs to take such a course. I can’t think how many times I have watched Protestants give a long list of Church Fathers who have taken a certain position, and then had the Catholics give a long list of Church Fathers who would seem to argue something different. I mean, what percentage of Fathers does it take to affirm a given issue before one can say say that the position is correct? I hear John Newman’s comments about being deep in history, and with all due respect to Newman’s amazing scholarship, this statement seems to me to be somewhat naive. The annals of the history of the Christian Church are certainly no more perspicuous than the corpus of Scripture, and both require an interpretive paradigm.

As I think you know, my tact at these points is often to ask questions about what we can say about our knowledge of other subjects and how we can differentiate what is mere opinion from what we can know with certainty in these other topics. I’ve used analogies from science although we could most any other academic subject for comparison. Theology and science are different, as are theology and every other subject we might care to use as analogies. For me the interesting point to consider with these other topics is firstly, what does it take for us to say that we know something to the degree of certainty that God intended in these subjects, and then secondly, how can we apply these lessons from the world around us to theology? But as you say, these kinds of questions are philosophical in nature. For us hard-headed Protestants and Catholics this is no doubt sometimes a good way to proceed.

I hope you all had a blessed Christmas Season!

Cheers….
Michael Liccione December 31st, 2010 10:58 am :
Andrew (#996):

Merry Christmas! (It’s still Christmas.) I’m glad to see we agree that the pivotal issues are philosophical. All the same, and as you would probably expect, I have a few criticisms.

I hear John Newman’s comments about being deep in history, and with all due respect to Newman’s amazing scholarship, this statement seems to me to be somewhat naive. The annals of the history of the Christian Church are certainly no more perspicuous than the corpus of Scripture, and both require an interpretive paradigm.

That criticism would be fair only if Newman’s method were to just pile up proof-texts in the manner you’re rightly skeptical about. But he was a lot more sophisticated than that. I suggest you read his Essay on Development of Christian Doctrine, or read it more carefully if you’ve already dipped into it. His main thesis was that Christian doctrine developed over time in such a way that it could be said (a) to have a robust kind of rational support in the sources, but (b) not so that one could just logically deduce the entire deposit of faith from those sources. To understand the inner rationale of doctrinal development, therefore, one needs precisely what you call an “interpretive paradigm,” which he duly adumbrated. At the time he wrote, most theologians in all three sectors of Christianity were indisposed to see that. I agree, of course, that his HP itself cannot just be logically deduced from the sources. But that’s just what makes it an HP. And while it calls for development itself, as it stands it’s still a heckuva a lot more sophisticated than what most people who approach these matters end up doing.

For me the interesting point to consider with these other topics is firstly, what does it take for us to say that we know something to the degree of certainty that God intended in these subjects, and then secondly, how can we apply these lessons from the world around us to theology?

While it’s important to do that–Thomas Aquinas did it all the time–it’s only part of what needs to be done in order to answer what I posed as the main question. We also need to ask what is distinctive about knowing something as divine revelation as distinct from what we can know by means of human reason alone. For reasons I’ve explained before, that highlights the need for identifying and following an appropriate ensemble of authorities. The central disagreement between us is over how to discern which precisely which authorities are the appropriate ones, and how they interrelate. For that is the central difference between the competing HPs.

Best,
Mike
Mark December 31st, 2010 12:04 pm :
Michael,
I’ve checked your blog for an article or essay where you lay out how you sorted through the different HP’s and why you settled on the Cath HP. But, I could not find one. Maybe I missed it. Can you provide a link? Thanks.
mateo December 31st, 2010 3:14 pm :
Richard Cronin : What would it take for any of ye guys to convert to protestantism?

Interesting question.

What would it mean for me, a Catholic, to “convert” to Protestantism? Protestantism is thousands upon thousands of denonminations that preach conflicting doctrine. If I were to “convert” to Protestantism, then I would have to quit submitting to a church where I am not the ultimate temporal authority that defines what constitutes orthodox teaching. In order for me to “convert” to Protestantism, I would be forced to become the ultimate temporal authority for deciding what constitutes orthodox teaching, since I would have to evalute the orthodoxy of the thousands upon thousands of Protestant sects. One thing that I know with absolute certainty is that because of the doctrinal chaos reigning within Protestantism, that most Protestant sects preach heresy. It is impossible that all these thousands of sects are teaching orthodoxy. Which means that if I were to become a Protestant, that I might as well go the distance, and found my own personal church that conforms to my own personal understanding of scriptures. What possible reason could I have for joining Protestant sect that doesn’t conform my personal interpretations of scriptures? Why would I choose to become a Methodist or a Moonie if I didn’t believe the doctrines that these Protestant sects teach?

Maybe I could get lucky, and among the thousands upon thousands of existing Protestant sects, I could find a sect that teaches exactly what I think it should teach, and then I wouldn’t have to found my own personal church. Either way, Idon’t see how founding my own personal church, or joining a Protestant sect that teaches what I approve is in any way a “conversion”. It is just me doing my own thing, which is the opposite of conversion.

In both the direct and indirect ways, the individual is acting as his own ultimate interpretive and magisterial authority. But his doing so is more difficult to see in the indirect case because he appears to be submitting to the interpretive authority of a body of persons other than himself. Yet, because he has established or selected this body of persons on the basis of their conformity to his own interpretation of Scripture, and because he ‘submits’ to them only so long as they agree with his interpretation on matters he considers to be essential or important, therefore in actuality his ‘submission’ to this body is in fact ‘submission’ to himself. To submit to others only when one agrees with them, is to submit to oneself. But submission to oneself is an oxymoron, because it is indistinguishable from not submitting at all, from doing whatever one wants.
TurretinFan December 31st, 2010 5:36 pm :
Hi Bryan:

Thank you for your clarification.

You wrote:

The concept of “subordinate authority” does not avoid the reduction to solo scriptura, because of the conjunction of the following two truths: (1) without apostolic succession, ecclesial authority can be based only on agreement with one’s own interpretation of Scripture and history, and (2) by its very nature, authority over oneself cannot be based on agreement with oneself.

I reject both of your assertions as untrue. Upon what basis should accept them? Where is the demonstration that without apostolic succession, church authority can be based only on agreement with oneself? Likewise, where is the demonstration that authority over oneself cannot be based on agreement with oneself?

I’d be happy to explain why I think those are false, but since you posed those assertions, I suppose it is up to you to demonstrate them.

You wrote:

Catholics also believe in subordinate authority (e.g. a priest is a subordinate authority under his bishop), but because we have apostolic succession, we don’t have the reductio problem I just described.

Actually, your problem was characterized this way:

a) If -P, then Q;

b) If Q, then -R; and

c) -P

d) therefore -R.

Where P = apostolic succession; Q = authority is based on agreement with oneself; R = Real authority.

No conclusion can be reached regarding the Roman position from that syllogism, because if at (c) we replace P with -P, we cannot reach any conclusion, because it would be a denial of the antecedent fallacy to assume that If -P then Q implies If P, then -Q. In other words, for the syllogism to demonstrate that the Roman position has real subordinate authority, one would need the even stronger premise at (a) of IFF -P, then Q.

However, if you simply mean that the precise formulation you’ve identified cannot be used as it stands against the Roman position, of course that’s correct.

You wrote:

If you want to try to show how “subordinate authority” avoids (1) or (2), or how the concept of “subordinate authority” avoids the reduction to solo scriptura, even given the truth of (1) and (2), you are welcome to do that. Merely asserting that the “fundamental flaw” of my tu quoque post is “its failure to recognize the concept of subordinate authority” does not show what is wrong with my argument.

a) Of course I agree that merely identifying “the fundamental flaw” in your post is not the same as proving your post is wrong.

b) I’m not willing accept (1) or (2) without modification or explanation from you, as noted above.

c) Your submission to your local priest and bishop is based – at least in part and in some sense – on your agreement with him about what your ultimate authority teaches. If he told you that for penance you should pray several “Hail Satans,” I trust you wouldn’t do it. If he taught that transubstantiation is wrong, I’m confident you’d ignore what he has to say. Why? Because you don’t agree with them about what your ultimate authority teaches. If they say it teaches that is permissible to pray to Satan or deny Transubstantiation, you no longer submit to their authority in that matter. Thus if (2) were true (regardless of whether (1) is true), then you would have no real subordinate authority.

You wrote:

When you make claims like the following (from #957 above):

Rome’s claims are so plainly contrary both to the historical evidence and (infinitely more importantly) the testimony of Scripture

the difficulty for your position is that the Catholic Church affirms the truth of every verse in Scripture.

It would be a difficulty if it were true. Your church may say it affirms the truth of every verse in Scripture, but it is one thing to say that you affirm it, and it is another thing to affirm it in fact.

You wrote:

Therefore the disagreement between Reformed folks (like yourself) and the Catholic Church is not a disagreement about whether every verse of the Bible is true (except some Protestants might deny the truth of some verses in the Deuterocanonical books, because those Protestants do not believe those books to be divinely inspired).

a) I hope it is clear that I didn’t have in mind specifically any issues relating to the apocrypha. If anything, I think some of the apocrypha (especially Wisdom and Sirach) tend to serve as further historical evidence against Rome’s claims.

b) My comment, “Rome’s claims are so plainly contrary … to … the testimony of Scripture” was not an assertion that Rome denies the proposition, “All Scripture is true.” I’m not sure if that was unclear.

You wrote:

So the Reformed-Catholic disagreement you refer to regarding “the testimony of Scripture” has to be over the interpretation of Scripture.

It seems as though your argument seeks to separate the meaning of Scripture from the letter of Scripture. I don’t accept that as legitimate. The “testimony of Scripture” refers to what the Scripture says, which is a meaning, not merely the letters used to express the meaning. Interpretation is simply the way by which we understand the meaning, but it is the meaning that is the issue, not the interpretation.

It’s also inaccurate (or perhaps misleading) to say that it’s over “interpretation of Scripture,” when we observe that some of Rome’s doctrines and practices are not based on “interpretation of Scripture,” and there is no “official” interpretation of many (if not virtually all) of the relevant (or seemingly relevant, if you don’t wish to concede their relevance) verses.

In other words, it is not a battle between interpretations, as such.

The fundamental question is whether the testimony of Scripture (what it says, the meaning and not only the letters) is in conflict with what Rome teaches (what Rome says, the meaning and not only the letters).

You wrote:

Now, you could say, “I’m not interpreting Scripture, but the Catholic Church is.” But, that would be very strange, and ad hoc, namely, that 1.1 billion people are interpreting Scripture, and yet this group of a few hundred thousand Reformed folks are directly gleaning the meaning of Scripture without interpreting.

I don’t say that.

You wrote:

At least, some kind of evidence for this strange state of affairs has obtained would be needed. You couldn’t just assert that you and those who agree with you are not interpreting Scripture and that everyone else [who disagrees with your interpretation] is interpreting instead of just reading right off the page. (Of course, if you want to try and make that case, again you’re welcome to do so, and I’m all ears.)

a) There are, of course, instances where Scripture speaks so plainly that to call understanding its meaning “interpreting,” is to speak technically rather than colloquially. For example, that Christ suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried, and was raised again on the third day is something that is told us by Scripture in plain terms that don’t require what is colloquially referred to as “interpretation.” But, of course, understanding the plain meaning of the text as the plain meaning of the text is (in technical terms) a mode of understanding the text, and consequently (in that technical sense) an “interpretation.”

b) Moreover, this line of reasoning seems to suppose that Roman theology has a single source (Scripture). If it did, then it might seem like a strange state of affairs of such a large number of people interpreting rather than just reading the text.

You wrote:

The bottom line is that you are interpreting too. So your claim in #957 is really that the Catholic Church’s doctrines are contrary to your interpretation of Scripture, and you think your interpretations are better than those of the Catholic Church.

Actually, what I am claiming is that what Scripture says contradicts what Rome says. In both cases I am “interpreting” (in the technical sense of utilizing some mode of understanding) – I am “interpreting” what Scripture says and I am “interpreting” what Rome says too, and I am judging that Rome’s teachings are false because they contradict Scripture.

You wrote:

But when I point out that it is not Scripture per se that is opposed to the Catholic doctrines, but it is your interpretations of Scripture which are contrary to the Catholic Church’s teachings, you deny it.

a) I hope folks will follow that link to see the whole context of the discussion to which you refer. I realize that it too is a long comment box, but folks who are here cannot have any phobias of long comment boxes.

b) Since the meaning of Scripture is not properly separated from the words of Scripture, I am correct to object to your assertion that it is not Scripture which is contrary to Rome’s teachings. Of course, the judgment I’m making implies that I read and understood both what Scripture says and what Rome says. Nevertheless, my claim (which I believe to be true, and with good reason) is that Scripture contradicts Rome’s claims, not that “my interpretation of Scripture” contradicts Rome’s claims – nor that Scripture contradicts “my interpretation of Rome’s claims,” nor the ultimately pedantic “my interpretation of Scripture” contradicts “my interpretation of Rome’s claims.”

You wrote:

You do not want to say that the Catholic Church’s doctrines are merely contrary to your interpretation of Scripture. You want to say (and do say) that the Catholic Church’s doctrines are contrary to Scripture itself.

Correct.

You wrote:

The reason you want to do that is that as soon as you admit that it is not Scripture per se that is contrary to the Catholic Church’s doctrines, but only your interpretation of Scripture, then since you have no interpretive authority, it is of no theological consequence (for the Catholic Church) that the Catholic Church’s doctrines are incompatible with your interpretation. You are not the Pope, and the Church has no reason to be subject to your hermeneutical opinions.

a) Of course, my reasons for wanting to do what I do (otherwise known as my motives) are not really germane to the truth of my claim. I could be wanting to do what I do for all kinds of reasons, but my motives aren’t at issue here. I trust you agree about that, but I just want to point out to you how you’ve expressed yourself.

b) If we re-write your comment in terms of an assertion about the relevant facts, rather than about my motives (and if we avoid the “admit” terminology), we see that you are asserting something like the following (please note that although I’m using a quotation box, this is just my swag at re-written assertion):

If it is not Scripture per se that is contrary to the Catholic Church’s doctrines, but only your interpretation of Scripture, then since you have no interpretive authority, it is of no theological consequence (for the Catholic Church) that the Catholic Church’s doctrines are incompatible with your interpretation. You are not the Pope, and the Church has no reason to be subject to your hermeneutical opinions.

c) We can simplify this even further. The second half is simply a long-winded statement to the effect of “what you say doesn’t matter.” The first half is drawing a distinction between what I say and what Scripture says. If what I say is not the true meaning of Scripture, then of course I agree.

d) To put it another way, if my arguments are not supported by authority, then they lack authority. However, my arguments are supported by authority (namely the authority of Scripture). Therefore, they have authority – that authority derives not from me, but from Scripture.

You wrote:

Rather, at that point (when we recognize that it is interpretation vs. interpretation), the need for interpretive authority become obvious, as does the fact Christ would not have left His Church without such an authority, as does the obvious evidential weight of the universal practice of apostolic succession from the Church Fathers to the sixteenth century.

a) The allegation of “the universal practice of apostolic succession from the Church Fathers to the sixteenth century” needs to be established before it can have any evidential weight. Quite the opposite appears to be the case to me, but I’ll await your demonstration.

b) The idea that “Christ would not have left His Church without such an authority” seems to be an appeal to intuition. It’s not an intuition I share, so I can’t assign much weight to this. Christ did give the Holy Spirit, Scripture, and subordinate authorities. It seems to me that people should be satisfied with that, and not desire something more. But again, one might claim that’s my intuition as opposed to your intuition, and consequently not particularly signfiicant.

c) The idea that when it comes down to a question of competing interpretations, “the need for interpretive authority become obvious,” is really an assertion that such authority is necessary in such situations, when people disagree about the interpretation of something. By saying “obvious,” you’ve let yourself off the hook in terms of providing an argument to demonstrate that your assertion is correct. However, since not only is not “obvious,” to me – but it seems untrue to me – perhaps I can ask you to supply the demonstration (I trust it will be easy for you to do, since the connection is “obvious”).

You wrote:

And then the opposition between the teaching of the divinely established interpretive authority in the Church’s Magisterium and your interpretation of Scripture, only condemns your interpretation, because the arrogance and presumptuousness of placing one’s own interpretation of Scripture above that of the divinely established Magisterium is just too obvious, unless by signs and wonders you could demonstrate yourself to be a divinely sent prophet.

a) I’m not going to take the approach of performing signs and wonders to demonstrate myself a prophet.

b) Of course, neither is Benedict XVI.

c) Moreover, there are quite a few missing steps between simply that there is need for an interpretive authority and Rome is it and then Rome is consequently infallible. There are huge leaps there, but we’re not even able to get there, because of the problems identified above, in terms of an absence of demonstration of a need for such an interpretive authority in the first place.

You wrote:

So, you can’t admit that it is only your interpretation that is opposed to the Catholic Church’s doctrine, without either becoming Catholic, or performing signs and wonders.

Heh. Surely you recognize this as a false dichotomy, and just meant it to be a rhetorical flourish. I’ll let it it go without additional comment.

You wrote:

Therefore you must keep up the pretense of not interpreting Scripture.

You clarified what you meant by this. Hopefully you will be willing to accept, at least for the purposes of dialog, that I really mean what I say. In any event, as should be clear above, there multiple senses to “interpret.” If you just mean “understand,” then of course everyone who does more than the work of a parrot when reading the Scripture “interprets” it. On the other hand, appeals to the meaning of Scripture are appeals to the meaning of Scripture, not appeals to the person who is appealing to the meaning of Scripture.

You continued:

And yet that leaves you in the ad hoc position I described above, where you (and those who agree with you) are [allegedly] not interpreting, while everyone else who disagrees with you is not only interpreting, but is misinterpreting.

I think this adequately answered above already.

You wrote:

That’s the dilemma: if you admit you are interpreting Scripture, then you can’t keep claiming that the Catholic Church’s teachings are contrary to Scripture itself, but if you deny that you are interpreting Scripture, then you place yourself in an ad hoc position in which everyone who disagrees with your [interpretation of] Scripture is interpreting, but you [and those who agree with him] are not interpreting, and the ad hoc nature of that position undermines the very conditions for the possibility of the disagreement in which you are participating.

Hopefully this dilemma is moot in view of the clarification provided above.

-TurretinFan
Bryan Cross December 31st, 2010 6:23 pm :
TF (re: #1000)

I wrote, “the difficulty for your position is that the Catholic Church affirms the truth of every verse in Scripture.”

You replied:

It would be a difficulty if it were true. Your church may say it affirms the truth of every verse in Scripture, but it is one thing to say that you affirm it, and it is another thing to affirm it in fact.

I’ll write a longer reply to your comment (#1000), but let’s have a concrete case in front of us, so it is not all hand-waving. Would you please name one verse (just one) which you think the Catholic Church either denies or does not affirm as true? That would help us work out this disagreement concerning letter, interpretation and meaning.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
TurretinFan December 31st, 2010 6:33 pm :
It will be very hard to pick just one, and New Years festivities are upon me. Lord willing I will return on the 3rd with a good concrete example of a verse of Scripture whose testimony contradicts what your church teaches.

Happy New Year!

-TurretinFan
Bryan Cross December 31st, 2010 6:50 pm :
TF (re: #1002)

I can understand why it might take three days to try to come up with a verse. It is much easier to say, “Your church may say it affirms the truth of every verse in Scripture, but it is one thing to say that you affirm it, and it is another thing to affirm it in fact,” than it is to provide even a single verse that contradicts what the Catholic Church teaches.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Ray Stamper December 31st, 2010 8:14 pm :
TF

Interpretation is simply the way by which we understand the meaning, but it is the meaning that is the issue, not the interpretation.

As a verb, “interpretation” is “the way by which” one understands the meaning. However, the act of interpretation, naturally yields a conceptual “understanding of the meaning”, which conception, is rightly denoted by the noun “interpretation”. It is this “understanding of the meaning” (i.e. interpretation-noun) which is communicated when human beings interact via text or speech. Hence, any evaluation, or discussion, concerning the meaning of a disputed Scriptural text (for instance, the meaning of “Justification” according to St. Paul in his letter to the Romans), must always involve an evaluation of one or more communicated “understandings” (aka interpretations) of said text. Thus, “the issue” (a phrase which often implies verbal/textual dialogue between two or more people – as opposed to mere self-talk) is, in fact, the interpretation of meaning and NOT the unfiltered meaning. Meaning makes its way into “issue-oriented” dialogue through the filtered “understanding” of the communicators, that is, through interpretations.

That I take to be the technical sense of Keith Mathison’s dictum:

All appeals to Scripture are appeals to interpretations of Scripture. The only real question is: whose interpretation?

“Appeals” denote some form of dialogue between persons. Persons in dialogue concerning the meaning of Scripture, in fact, communicate their “understanding” of meaning; not meaning simpliciter. Hence, “appeals” to Scripture are appeals to interpretations of Scripture as Mathison succinctly states.

Pax et Bonum,

Ray
mateo December 31st, 2010 8:29 pm :
A few more thoughts about what it would mean for a practicing Catholic to “convert” to Protestantism ….
TurrintanFan advises Michael Liccone:

… I would encourage you to join a Reformed church because that is where the Gospel is preached …

It seems to me that TurrentinFan believes that his particular “reformed” Protestant sect teaches the unadulterated Gospel truth. But thousands upon thousands of other Protestant sects also make this claim, and the other Protestant sects teach doctrine that contradict the doctrines taught by TurrentinFan’s sect. So how would a practicing Catholic ever decide if TurretinFan’s sect is the only Protestant sect teaching orthodox doctrine, as opposed to beleiving the claims of the thousands of other Protestant sects that insist that they are teaching orthodox doctrine?

Does any “reformed” sect claim that when their church authorities teach doctrine, that these reformed teachers are protected by a charism of infallibility that guarantees that their teachers cannot teach heresy? No. The only thing that “reformed authorities” can offer me, a potential convert, are their opinions basesd on their private interpretations of the Protestant bible. The same is true with most of the other thousands upon thousands of Protestant sects to which I could potentially convert. They also do not claim to be offering me anything more than their opinions about which doctrines I should embrace based on their private interpretations of the Protestant bible. As a potential convert to a sola scriptura confessing sect of Protestantism, I am forced into the position of being my ultimate temporal authority on matters of doctrine.

If I were to convert to Protestantism, I can’t imagine that I would reject every doctrine taught by the Catholic Church. As a Protestant convert, I would be nothing more than a cafeteria Catholic that presumed to possess the authority to pick and chose which doctrines taught by the Catholic Church I would accept based on my own private interpretation of the bible. In short, I would be in the same state as Calvin and Luther who were both cafeteria Catholics that presumed that they had the authority to found their own personal churches – personal churches that taught doctrine that reflected their private interpretations of the bible.

For me, to become a cafeteria Catholic would hardly seem to warrent the title of “convert”. If I am merely creating my own personal do-it-yourself religion, I am not “converting” at all. I am merely creating a personal religion that I claim to believe in.

Do what thou wilt, let that be the whole of the law. – Aleister Crowley, Satanist

The Satanists that I peronally know tell me that one can embrace Satanism without worshipping Satan. Satanism is supposedly about “freedom” – the freedom to do what thou wilt. Do-it-yourself religion is the essence Satanism. Conversion to Christ means giving up the claim to “do as thou wilt”.

For whosoever will save his life, shall lose it: and whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel, shall save it. Mark 8:24
GNW_Paul December 31st, 2010 8:48 pm :
@TF

Bryan has rightly decided not to be distracted by every incorrect premise or fallacy in you #1000 reply, but I can’t let this one go by.

c) Your submission to your local priest and bishop is based – at least in part and in some sense – on your agreement with him about what your ultimate authority teaches. If he told you that for penance you should pray several “Hail Satans,” I trust you wouldn’t do it. If he taught that transubstantiation is wrong, I’m confident you’d ignore what he has to say. Why? Because you don’t agree with them about what your ultimate authority teaches. If they say it teaches that is permissible to pray to Satan or deny Transubstantiation, you no longer submit to their authority in that matter. Thus if (2) were true (regardless of whether (1) is true), then you would have no real subordinate authority.

This is a straw man. The Bishops, the Bishop of Rome included have limits to their authority. No Bishop, not even the Pope has authority to command anyone to do something contrary to the Faith like pray to Satan. As for a local Bishop abusing or going beyond his authority by teaching contrary to the Faith (denying transubstantiation or encouraging prayers to Satan) that is why Rome is needed to correct the situation.
Andrew McCallum January 1st, 2011 7:02 am :
That criticism would be fair only if Newman’s method were to just pile up proof-texts in the manner you’re rightly skeptical about…

Michael,

But isn’t this just what happens in so many of these discussions? We get pages of quotes from the Fathers to support the doctrine of interest. The debate is not with Newman but with the way Newman’s quote is used. It seems that a fair amount have been persuaded to come to Rome because they read the Fathers and come to believe that they are more Catholic than Protestant. So when I see one of these multi page listing of Fathers that believed a certain thing at a certain point in time, the first question I have is what percentage of Fathers is necessary to a defend a particular position before you can say that the doctrine is true? Wouldn’t you agree that Catholics often give us these lists because they believe that the history of the Church speaks clearly on certain matters?

So if we are discussing something like the Immaculate Conception, the question about what Father believed what concerning Mary may be an interesting academic question, but in the end the position is believed by the faithful Catholic because it has been defined ex cathedra and must be true whether or not the Fathers of any given previous age would have agreed. So the listing of Fathers who said something perceived to support IC from the early centuries of Christianity is again something of academic interest but not something that helps us confirm or deny what is to be known with certainty concerning the Christian faith. And here is where the Catholic and Protestant get to the often frustrating impasse since it is not just doctrines like IC with are irreformable but dogmas concerning irreformability which are themselves irreformable! Oy vey thinks the Protestant, where do we go from here?

The central disagreement between us is over how to discern which precisely which authorities are the appropriate ones, and how they interrelate. For that is the central difference between the competing HPs.

Yes, these are certainly important matters, as is the question that you and I have discussed over whether or not any summary of doctrine ought to be promulgated infallibly and then whether the Fathers of the early centuries of Christianity would have agreed with the Scholastics concerning such matters of dogmatic certainty. Way back at the very beginning of the thread I asked a question which I thought was helpful since it couched the question of sola scriptura in a different manner. Instead of trying to understand sola scriptura in terms of the positive theology of the Reformers I thought it would be interesting to go back before there were any Protestant/Catholic and East/West splits. Certainly we know that the Early Christians believed that Scriptures comprised a body of infallible information that could be used as a standard, but was there anything else that rose to the level of an infallible standard? If not then we are left with Scripture as the only standard for the Church. Saying that the Scriptures was the only infallible standard for the Church at the time does not deny the Church’s unique ministerial role, but only notes that anything she says about Scripture does not rise to the level of certainty of Scripture itself. So then my second question was what would the Christian congregations have said about Nicea (to pick an example) had they been told that the specific promulgations of Nicea were not infallible themselves but just a faithful summary of the infallible Scriptures under the guidance of God’s Spirit working through the Church. My contention is that it is proper and reasonable to think that the congregations of Christ would have accepted (and did accept) the pronouncements of Nicea without them being understood to be an infallible summary of what the Scriptures and tradition taught. However, in order for the Catholic to consider my whole alternative approach here, he has to look at it through a different paradigmatic framework. I think I was dismissed so quickly when I brought this up because nobody was willing to do this.

And as you may surmise, I asked this question partly because it isolates the variable of what the Church is (since Catholic, RO, and Prot agree that the Church was faithfully represented at Nicea). The issue of proper ecclesiology is important, but I believe that e is that it is possible to talk about the question raised in this thread while temporarily leaving aside the matter of what the Church is.
Jesse January 1st, 2011 11:27 am :
Bryan (1003),

Wouldn’t a better question of TF be: Can you show me an example of where the Catholic Church said, “Here’s what we teach. It doesn’t gel with Scripture, but that’s OK.”

After all, I can point to numerous verses that I think contradict Protestant teaching. And the Protestant will just offer how that verse gels with his or her creed, based on his or her own unique interpretation.

As I like to say, the Sciptures are always 100% sufficient for expressing whatever somebody wants them to say.
Bryan Cross January 1st, 2011 1:12 pm :
TF,

In #957, you wrote:

Rome’s claims are so plainly contrary both to the historical evidence and (infinitely more importantly) the testimony of Scripture

In #978 I replied:

the difficulty for your position is that the Catholic Church affirms the truth of every verse in Scripture. Therefore the disagreement between Reformed folks (like yourself) and the Catholic Church is not a disagreement about whether every verse of the Bible is true (except some Protestants might deny the truth of some verses in the Deuterocanonical books, because those Protestants do not believe those books to be divinely inspired). So the Reformed-Catholic disagreement you refer to regarding “the testimony of Scripture” has to be over the interpretation of Scripture.

Then in #1000, you replied:

The “testimony of Scripture” refers to what the Scripture says, which is a meaning, not merely the letters used to express the meaning. Interpretation is simply the way by which we understand the meaning, but it is the meaning that is the issue, not the interpretation.

So what the Catholic Church’s teachings are “plainly contradictory” to is your determination of the meaning of Scripture, or the-meaning-of-Scripture-as-interpreted-by-you.

In #1001 I asked you for a particular verse, but I’ll just pick one you’ve already discussed. Consider 1 Tim 4:1-3:

But the Spirit explicitly says that in later times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons, by means of the hypocrisy of liars seared in their own conscience as with a branding iron, men who forbid marriage and advocate abstaining from foods which God has created to be gratefully shared in by those who believe and know the truth.

Regarding this passage you claimed:

Nuns, Monks, Priests, and Bishops are forbidden in Roman Catholicism (for the most part, though there are a few married priests in some of the other rites besides the Latin rite) from being married. This is an error and a point at which, while it has a lengthy tradition, the Roman Catholic Church stands against Scripture. … Yes, it is against Scripture. … To eliminate all married men from consideration is to render Scripture void through one’s tradition. … If the Roman Catholic Church followed the doctrine of Scripture, especially as taught in 1 Timothy 4:1-3, then it would not have this particular discipline. … The practice of requiring those who wish to have office in the church to be celibate is wrong. It is contrary 1 Timothy 4:1-3, … Rome is wrong to require such celibacy, Rome is wrong to forbid men and women from marrying, and Rome is wrong to teach that unconditional vows of celibacy are good. On this matter, Rome stands against Scripture. (my emphases)

In your judgment, 1 Tim 4:1-3 means that under no circumstances whatsoever, and in no sense whatsoever, may the Church or the State restrict marriage, such that the Church may not require celibacy for certain ecclesial offices. That’s why, in your judgment, the celibacy requirement for Latin rite bishops and priests “stands against” Scripture. That’s why you think that, in effect, the Catholic Church denies the truth of this passage of Scripture. But, according to the Catholic Church, an absolute prohibition on restricting marriage is not the meaning of 1 Tim 4:1-3. That is, the Catholic Church has always understood the “forbidding marriage” error St. Paul refers to not as a qualified marriage restriction to clergy, but as an unqualified prohibiting of marriage (i.e. no one may marry), which does not therefore entail the error of a celibacy requirement for certain ecclesial offices, just as it does not entail that the Church’s restricting marriage to one man and one woman, the entering into marriage only of those who are not impotent, not mentally retarded, not sufficiently consanguineous, not already married, etc. are errors. In other words, just as St. Paul’s statement here does not make it wrong for the Church to restrict marriage to one man and one woman, to those who are not impotent, not too closely related, not already married, etc. so St. Paul’s statement here does not make it wrong for the Church to require celibacy for certain ecclesial offices.

I have no intention of taking this thread into a discussion of celibacy. My point is about meaning and interpretation. What you assume to be the meaning of this passage of Scripture is based on an extrabiblical assumption that you are bringing to your act of interpretation, namely, that the error St. Paul is condemning is not only an absolute prohibition of marriage but any restriction on marriage. You frequently say things like “Rome’s claims are so plainly contrary … to …the testimony of Scripture.” But in actuality in each case what is contrary to the Catholic Church’s teachings is not “the testimony of Scripture” but your judgment or interpretation of the meaning of Scripture. And when your judgment of the meaning of Scripture differs from that of the Catholic Church, this is due to a difference between the Tradition that the Church brings to the text, and the assumptions that you bring to the text. That is why it is misleading and self-aggrandizing to treat your own judgments concerning the meaning of Scripture as though they were Scripture itself. It is equivalent to what a false prophet does, in treating his own words as though they are the words of God. In frequently speaking of what is (in fact) your own judgment regarding the meaning of Scripture, as though it were Scripture itself, you hide the subjective judgment that is intrinsic to your hermeneutical conclusion regarding the meaning of Scripture, and thus make it seem that Scripture is opposed to Catholic doctrine, when in actuality it is only your judgment of the meaning of Scripture that is opposed to Catholic teaching.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
mateo January 1st, 2011 3:27 pm :
Andrew McCallum : … here is where the Catholic and Protestant get to the often frustrating impasse since it is not just doctrines like IC with are irreformable but dogmas concerning irreformability which are themselves irreformable! Oy vey thinks the Protestant, where do we go from here?

If the dogmas concerning irreformability were not irreformable, that would mean that EVERY dogma of the faith is open for debate, because nothing could ever be settled once and for all. Which is EXACTLY the problem with Protestantism – every single dogma of the faith is disputed by some sect or another. Where do Protestants go from here? Escape from the doctrinal anarchy reigning within Protestantism can only come when Protestants recognize that the source of that anarchy is a blind accetance of Luther’s novelty of sola scriptura.

Andrew McCallum: Certainly we know that the Early Christians believed that Scriptures comprised a body of infallible information that could be used as a standard, but was there anything else that rose to the level of an infallible standard?

The earliest Christians never looked to the Protestant bible as a standard, less yet as their ONLY standard! The earliest Christians knew that they were commanded by Christ to listen to the church that Christ had founded:

If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. Matt 18:17

Andrew McCallum: If not then we are left with Scripture as the only standard for the Church.

You are merely assuming that Luther’s novely of sola scriptura is true, and then expecting Catholics to ignore that while you advance a bogus arguement. Luther’s sola scriptura novely is not an assertion that scriptures are inerrant – Luther’s novelty is an assault on scriptures. Luther’s sola scriptura novely denies that Christians are commanded by Christ to accept the authority of teachings of Christ’s church. Luther is asserting that Christans only need to listen to Christ’s church when His church agrees with Luther’s private interpretation of the Protestant bible (the bible with the Luther defined canon).

Andrew McCallum: Saying that the Scriptures was the only infallible standard for the Church at the time does not deny the Church’s unique ministerial role, but only notes that anything she says about Scripture does not rise to the level of certainty of Scripture itself.

“Saying that the Scriptures was the only infallible standard for the Church” – believing that would require me to ignore what is written in the scriptures. There is not one verse in the scriptures that support Luther’s novelty that scriptures alone are the only infallible standard to which a Christian has access. The scriptures themselves testify against Luther’s false novelty.

Andrew McCallum: My contention is that it is proper and reasonable to think that the congregations of Christ would have accepted (and did accept) the pronouncements of Nicea without them being understood to be an infallible summary of what the Scriptures and tradition taught.

Sure you make this contention, but that is only because you accept without question Luther’s sola scriptura novelty, and then project your belief in Luther’s novelty onto the Christians that accepted the dogmas promulgated by the Ecumenical Council of Nicea. The Christians that accepted the dogmas of Nicea accepted them because they knew Christ’s commandment that they were required to listen to the church.
Andrew McCallum January 1st, 2011 8:33 pm :
You are merely assuming that Luther’s novely of sola scriptura is true, and then expecting Catholics to ignore that while you advance a bogus arguement. Luther’s sola scriptura novely is not an assertion that scriptures are inerrant – Luther’s novelty is an assault on scriptures. Luther’s sola scriptura novely denies that Christians are commanded by Christ to accept the authority of teachings of Christ’s church.

Mateo,

You are missing what I’m trying to do here. I understand why you are missing it because I realize from many attempts how difficult it is to get Catholics to think differently about sola scriptura. I sometimes wish that we did not have to use the terminology of sola scriptura at all since it carries so much baggage with it, but please bear with me and try to understand how I am thinking.

When Keith Mathieson (who hopefully will post his reply to Bryan’s article at some point in the not too far distant future) speaks of sola scriptura he says very forcefully that it is a matter, not of how the individual Christian interprets Scripture, but rather what the final bar of authority was (and is) for the Church as she weighed in on various doctrinal matters. So the concept of sola scriptura is 100% the opposite of what you suppose in your last sentence above.

And so given this, my request is that we look at some of the specific situations where the Church weighed in a given matters such as at Nicea. Why did the congregations of Christendom need Nicea to be promulgated infallibly? Would they have rejected Nicea had they understood the pronouncements to be true but not infallible? My contention is that the congregations did not need infallibility in order to have the assurance that God intended. It’s not just that there there is no historical case that can be made for the concept of infallibility (which I don’t believe there is) but that there is no philosophical need for infallibility.
Bryan Cross January 1st, 2011 8:55 pm :
Andrew, (re: #1011)

You wrote:

When Keith Mathieson (who hopefully will post his reply to Bryan’s article at some point in the not too far distant future) speaks of sola scriptura he says very forcefully that it is a matter, not of how the individual Christian interprets Scripture, but rather what the final bar of authority was (and is) for the Church as she weighed in on various doctrinal matters. So the concept of sola scriptura is 100% the opposite of what you suppose in your last sentence above.

Mateo is right, because given sola scriptura, ‘Church’ is defined as those who sufficiently agree with one’s own interpretation of Scripture, as I showed in response to Keith in #841.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
herbert January 1st, 2011 9:14 pm :
Andrew said:

I understand why you are missing it because I realize from many attempts how difficult it is to get Catholics to think differently about sola scriptura.

Many (if not most) of the individuals writing in these comment threads grew up as protestants. So your comment above really doesn’t make much sense to me. Many of them were raised in dedicated, faith-filled protestant homes. And what’s really interesting is the fact that in many cases, it was in coming to terms with the Biblical & philosophical bankruptcy of sola Scriptura that these individuals set out on a journey by which they came to recognize Christ’s authority in the Catholic Church. thank you. herbert vanderlugt
John Thayer Jensen January 1st, 2011 10:53 pm :
@Andrew McCallum:

Bryan said:

Mateo is right, because given sola scriptura, ‘Church’ is defined as those who sufficiently agree with one’s own interpretation of Scripture, as I showed in response to Keith in #841.

In a way, sola scriptura is a red herring. Many Catholics – Louis Bouyer, a convert from the French Reformed churches, is one – agree that everything in the faith can be found, at least implicitly, in Scripture.

The real questions are what the Church is, and how one discerns amongst conflicting interpretations of Scripture.

As Bryan says, given sola scriptura, combined with private interpretation, the Church is either a limiting concept (“all the elect”) – and not anything that can have authority – or else it is the people who agree with my interpretation of Scripture – and, again, that can have no authority, since, when push comes to shove, I un-Church those who are in sufficient disagreement with me.

But if the Church is an identifiable body of persons – it certainly was that on that first Pentecost Day – and if that body has authority – again, it certainly had at that point – then the correct interpretation can only be decided by asking that body. That is what authority, in this sense, would mean.

And if within that body differences arise – then, ultimately, there must be an umpire. If you like, that is what the Pope is.

Sola scriptura isn’t the fundamental issue. Private interpretation vs the authority of a visible, Christ-appointed body as the Church is.

jj
BW January 1st, 2011 11:18 pm :
Randy @ 976,

The Lutheran Confessions are what we confess to be a correct exposition of the doctrines taught in Scripture. Lutherans believe, teach, and confess that what is discussed and summarized in the Book of Concord is the Christian faith. It is held subordinate to Scripture, not on par with it, so we would not call it infallible because there are non doctrinal portions or passages which are not a part of God’s Word (or the exposition thereof).
Michael Liccione January 2nd, 2011 1:04 pm :
Andrew (#1007):

I find your comment quite disappointing. In your first paragraph, you change the subject from Newman to unnamed Catholic proof-texters, when I’d already conceded that you’re right to be skeptical about such proof-texting and pointed out that Newman didn’t make that kind of argument. You then raise the specific issue of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, about which, as Aquinas noted, there are no texts showing that this-or-that father of the Church explicitly believed DIC. But of course, if Newman’s model of DD is sound, then the absence of such explicit proof-texts is no more cogent an argument rebutting DIC than the use of certain Marian proof-texts by some Catholics is a cogent argument establishing DIC. So your procedure is a relevant response to me only if we already know that Newman’s own method was unavailing. I already knew, of course, that your HP basically rules out the sort of argument Newman made; but as I posed it, the topic of this exchange is how to assess competing HPs against each other. That would involve, among other things, philosophically assessing the sort of thing Newman tried to do. But you don’t even see the need for that, so of course you do not undertake it. Instead, you try to shift the focus of discussion.

That takes the form of posing two questions: whether the early Church would have acknowledged something beyond Scripture as an infallible rule of faith, and whether the early Church would have seen “the specific promulgations of Nicea were not infallible themselves but just a faithful summary of the infallible Scriptures under the guidance of God’s Spirit working through the Church.” That you see such questions as worth raising in this context merely shows that you’re working within your HP; in no way does it address the question how to assess the competing HPs against each other. According to your HP, the way to learn what we must believe as Christians is to see what the early sources available to us explicitly said and what can be logically deduced from what they explicitly said. On that methodology, there is no need to posit an infallible ecclesial authority—especially if, as I’ll grant for argument’s sake, we cannot logically deduce from the early sources any clear affirmation of such an authority. Now, although my HP would certainly accept a study of the early sources as relevant and necessary for determining what we must believe, it does not see that as sufficient. On my HP, an infallible ecclesial authority is necessary for distinguishing between what the early sources actually said and what what we must now believe. And the argument I make for that has always been philosophical. You have not addressed that argument in your response because, so long as you’re working within your HP, you can’t even see such an argument as relevant. For purposes of this discussion, we need to assess the competing HPs against each other without begging the question; by proceeding as though your HP were not itself in question, your argument simply begs the question.

As a purely historical matter, I have no firm opinion about what the Nicene party in the 4th century “would” actually have said about infallibility beyond Scripture, had the question been posed to them explicitly. As I see it, the documentary evidence needed for forming such an opinion is simply insufficient one way or the other. The argument I prefer to make is that the best way to explain how ecclesial authority was actually invoked in the early Church is that, unless they implicitly took such authority to be preserved from error under certain conditions, they would have had no principled way to argue that their particular way of interpreting Scripture was binding on believers as something more than an opinion that was eventually imposed on all the bishops by Emperor Theodosius on pain of civil penalties. In such a situation, the Nicene position could only have been presented as one interpretive model among others; but that’s not how things turned out. So, using a Newmaneque DD model, I go on to argue that ascribing an implicit belief in ecclesial infallibility to the early Church is the best way to explain why the “orthodoxy” that actually emerged from the doctrinal maelstrom of the 4th century is binding on believers.

That’s why the following statement of yours does not advance the discussion:

My contention is that it is proper and reasonable to think that the congregations of Christ would have accepted (and did accept) the pronouncements of Nicea without them being understood to be an infallible summary of what the Scriptures and tradition taught. However, in order for the Catholic to consider my whole alternative approach here, he has to look at it through a different paradigmatic framework. I think I was dismissed so quickly when I brought this up because nobody was willing to do this.

What you call “your contention” is only a speculative opinion that lacks even firm academic authority, never mind ecclesial authority. That’s why we’re not terribly interested in it. Of course, something like that contention must be true if your HP is, antecedently, normative; to that extent, I can see what’s involved in looking at the matter through your “paradigmatic framework.” But the question I keep urging you to consider is how to determine which competing HP is, precisely, normative for believers. You have not begun to address that question.

Best,
Mike
GNW_Paul January 2nd, 2011 2:08 pm :
@Michael L & @Andrew

Were there not Arians who did not accept the council and were then excluded from communion with the Church? And were there not also some who held the Arian position who submitted to the authority of the Council?

I admit that I’m not history scholar, so I am asking rather than asserting. But this quote summarizes pretty well my understanding of the main acts of Nicea and the outcome.

The bishops of the Council stopped their ears on hearing the words of Arius and immediately rejected his teaching as distant and alien from the belief of the Church. They tore to pieces a letter of Eusebius of Nicomedia containing Arius’ teaching, as well as an Arian confession of faith (see the appendix on the Council of Nicea in Baker Book House’s, “Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History”).

Originally seventeen of those bishops gathered at the council were unwilling to sign the Creed penned by the Council, and all but three of these were convinced to sign by the end. It is thus apparent that the Arians were a distinct minority among the bishops. Initially there was some resistance to the Nicene Creed, not because of what it said but because of how it said it. Many objected to the use of the word “homoousias” in an official document because it was not used in Scripture, despite their agreement with the meaning it conveyed.

The Council interrogated Arius using Scripture, only to find that he had a new way of interpreting every verse they brought before him. Finally, they used the argument that Arius’ view had to be wrong because it was new. Athanasius says, “But concerning matters of faith, they [the bishops assembled at Nicea] did not write: ‘It has been decided,’ but ‘Thus the Catholic Church believes.’ And thereupon confessed how they believed. This they did to show that their judgement was not of more recent origin, but was in fact of Apostolic times…” (Volume 1, Faith of the Early Fathers, p338). In this regard also, Athanasius askes rhetorically, “… how many fathers [in other words, the writings of the early Christians] can you cite for your phrases?” (Ibid, p325)

It must be concluded, then, that the controversy was between a great majority who held the belief that the doctrine expressed by the Nicene Creed was ancient and Apostolic, and a minority who believed that Arius’ new interpretation of the faith was correct . (Columbia U.)

Beyond that I am pretty sure there were still some Arians for a couple of centuries after the Council of Nicea and that all Orthodox Christians (i.e.; Catholics) considered them heretics since Arianism had been declared anathema. It also is my understanding of the history that many who professed the belief of Arius submitted to the Council and stopped teaching Arianism.

I thought this one phrase was interesting:

The Council interrogated Arius using Scripture, only to find that he had a new way of interpreting every verse they brought before him.

So even at Nicea, the very first council, could we say it was explicitly an issue of “Who has the right to interpret scripture?” and “Whose interpretation of scripture is in accordance with Apostolic Tradition?”

And just to not get bogged down simply on a debate about Nicea, isn’t it true for each of the early Ecumenical Councils that some beliefs were declared Anathema, that some interpretations of scripture where rejected, and that some groups were excluded from communion?

What that looks like to me, is that a) the participants of the Council saw there actions as authoritative, and they believed they possessed the authority to declare which interpretation of scripture was in accord with the Faith, b) many on the losing side recognized that authority and submitted to it and c) the Bishops of the council acted on their authority and the authority of the council to exclude heretics from the Church.

So to my mind there is no question that the Fathers of the Councils believed they had the authority. I suppose one has to infer to a degree that they believed they were acting infallibly. But how could they have acted so decisively and boldly if they had any thought that they could be wrong? And notice that Arianism never came up for another vote. Is there any evidence that anyone on either side of the issue in the time period (+/- 200 years) thought the decision of the council was not final?
Bryan Cross January 2nd, 2011 2:27 pm :
BW, (re: #975, #1015),

You wrote:

Well, for me to swim the Tiber, the Vatican would have to allow me to hold to the Augsburg Confession. … Then I would come under Rome’s oversight.

Any group of heretics can write up a common confession, call it the “correct exposition of the doctrines taught in Scripture,” and then say that they will return to the Catholic Church only when the Catholic Church allows them to hold their confession.

Such a stance is performatively a complete denial of the authority of the Church, because, as we pointed out in the article, “When I submit, only when I agree, the one to whom I submit, is me.”

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Randy January 2nd, 2011 2:41 pm :
The Lutheran Confessions are what we confess to be a correct exposition of the doctrines taught in Scripture. Lutherans believe, teach, and confess that what is discussed and summarized in the Book of Concord is the Christian faith. It is held subordinate to Scripture, not on par with it, so we would not call it infallible because there are non doctrinal portions or passages which are not a part of God’s Word (or the exposition thereof).

We are not talking here about what you believe but rather what someone else has to believe in order for you to be in the same church. You say if someone rejects the Book of Concord then they don’t confess the true faith. That they are in some serious way separate from the body of Christ simply by denying this document. That is not a subjective statement about what you think is true. It is saying all those who say they believe the scriptures and also say they reject the Book of Concord are objectively wrong. That is quite a statement.

Then you say the Book of Concord is not infallible. I understand why you say that. It is part of protestant dogma that documents like that cannot be infallible. But isn’t that just a word game? Does it not meet the criteria for infallibility? If you make a document a litmus test for Christianity does it not cause a big problem to allow that there can be an error in it? Is that not the very definition of infallibility? If the Book of Concord has any error then you demanding the Catholic church accept it would be downright evil. It has to be right for that to make any sense.
John Thayer Jensen January 2nd, 2011 2:45 pm :
Arianism is an excellent test case for sola scriptura. Arius and his followers all made their case from Scripture alone – as do modern Jehovah’s Witnesses. Their case is quite strong as any discussion with a JW easily demonstrates. “The Father is greater than Me” – Proverbs 8 – I am sure we are all aware of the proof texts. To answer that Arians twist Scripture by, e.g., saying that John 1:1 refers, as JWs say, to the Word being ‘a’ God (good enough Greek, by the way!) is not different from the Arian claiming that Trinitarians twist Scripture by saying that “The Father is greater than Me” only means an economic greatness (if that is the right way of approaching it). Scripture is not a theological textbook. It is a witness. By embracing sola scriptura one precisely removes the authority of Scripture, since no one can ever be required to submit. Each SS adherent claims that he is submitting to Scripture – and that the other guy is not. There is no way for an outside observer to decide who has actually submitted.

If God has ordained that the Church should be the authority, then we can know who has submitted and who has not – the Church tells us. This is so even in those matters where there is no question of infallibility involved. Galileo, I understand, submitted to the Church, even although in the scientific question at stake I wouldn’t say there was any question of ecclesial infallibility. Luther, on the other hand, did not submit. There is no question, regarding those two, as to who has submitted to authority and who has not.

jj
John Thayer Jensen January 2nd, 2011 2:52 pm :
@BW:

Well, for me to swim the Tiber, the Vatican would have to allow me to hold to the Augsburg Confession. … Then I would come under Rome’s oversight.

But then you would not have come under Rome’s oversight. Rome would have come under yours.

jj
mateo January 2nd, 2011 8:59 pm :
Andrew McCallum : Mateo,
You are missing what I’m trying to do here. I understand why you are missing it because I realize from many attempts how difficult it is to get Catholics to think differently about sola scriptura. I sometimes wish that we did not have to use the terminology of sola scriptura at all since it carries so much baggage with it, but please bear with me and try to understand how I am thinking.

I’ll gladly bear with you as you try to make your case.

Personally, I don’t think that I am missing your point, but first let us agree about the point that Bryan and Neal are trying to make in their article, so we don’t go too far off topic. My understanding of the point of the article is that Bryan and Neal claim that there is no principled difference between a belief in the doctine of sola scriptura as it was defined by either Luther or Calvin and the doctrine of solo scriptura as it is taught in a “bible freedom” believing Protestant evangelical church (e.g. Aimee Semple McPhereson’s Foursquare Gospel Church). If there is any weakness in Bryan and Neal article, it would be that the neither the doctrine of sola scriptura nor the doctrine of solo scriptura was ever formally defined. The article assumes that the readers know enough about the sola scriptura vs. solo scriptura controversy mentioned by Keith Mathison that it was not necessary to formally define either sola scriptura or solo scriptura. I believe that Bryan and Neal have made their case, but I admit that I believe that because I assume that my understanding of sola scriptura and solo scriptura is not that different from what Bryan and Neal believe.

I also admit that I have made a stronger accusation against Luther’s doctrine of sola scriptura than either Bryan or Neal. I have claimed that Luther’s docrtine of sola scriptura is an assault on scriptures. I claim that doctrine of sola scriptura as it is defined by Luther (or Calvin) is taught nowhere in the scriptures, and that furthermore, I claim that the the doctrine of sola scriptura as it is defined by either Luther or Calvin contradicts what is taught by scriptures.

Now it is quite easy for you to prove me wrong. All you have to do is formally define either Luther’s or Calvin’s doctrine of sola scriptura, and then show me the scriptures that teach this doctrine. I don’t think that that you, or any other Protestant, (including Luther and Calvin) can ever show that the doctrine of sola scriptura is taught in a Protestant bible (or a Catholic bible). On the contrary, I believe that if you formally define either Luther’s or Calvin’s doctrine of sola scriptura, that I can show you the scriptures from your own Protestant bible that refute the doctrine.

If you have some novel definiton of sola scriptura that you think that I should know, then please feel free to define your doctrine of sola scriptura, and show me the scriptures that teach your personal doctrine of sola scriptura. I am dead serious, please take up my challange and formally define a doctrine of sola scriptura, and then show me where that doctrine is taught in your bible! If you accept this challange, I believe the debate on this thread could advance beyond you merely claiming that I don’t understand the point that you are trying to make.

Andrew McCallum : … my request is that we look at some of the specific situations where the Church weighed in a given matters such as at Nicea. Why did the congregations of Christendom need Nicea to be promulgated infallibly? Would they have rejected Nicea had they understood the pronouncements to be true but not infallible?

First, explain to me how a formally defined dogma of the church could ever be true but not infallible!

I believe that the doctrine of sola scriptura as it is taught by either Luther or Calvin is rank heresy, and that the Christians that accepted the Symbol of Nicea would agree with my assessment that sola scriptura is rank heresy. Therefore, it is fantasy to think the Christians that lived in this era were divided into “congregations” of proto-protestants that conceived of themselves as sola scriptura confessing proto-protestants.

The creed of the First Council of Nicea (325) mentions heresy that is formally condemened by “the holy catholic and apostolic Church”, and the creed developed by the First Council of Constantinople (381) requires Christians to confess a belief in the “one, holy, catholic and apostolic church.” Now if the fourth century Christians actually believed that the Protestant bible was their sole source of inerrant authority, it is also reasonable to think that the creeds developed by the Ecumenical Councils of that era would pound that point home. The creeds of that era should formally state that Christians believe that the Protestant bible is their ONLY inerrant authority to which they are subject. But the creeds of the fourth century don’t even remotley reflect such a proto-Protestant conception of the church. Instead, the creeds of the fourth century reflect the conception of the church that is found in the scriptures – i.e. the church is the church founded by Christ – “the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church” – and Christians must submit to the authority of the church or be excommunicaated (which is exactly what Jesus taught in Matt 18:17.) So of course the fourth century Christians believed that when the church formally defined dogma, that this dogma was infallibly defined. If they didn’t believe that the dogma was infallibly defined by the church, they would have to believe that when the “one, holy, catholic and apostolic church” formally defined dogma, that they were commanded by Christ to accept even heretical teachings, because Jesus implictly commanded an acceptance of moral relativism in Matt 18:17.
Bryan Cross January 2nd, 2011 10:36 pm :
Mateo (re: #1022)

If there is any weakness in Bryan and Neal article, it would be that the neither the doctrine of sola scriptura nor the doctrine of solo scriptura was ever formally defined.

Solo scriptura is defined at the beginning of section II, and sola scriptura is defined at the beginning of section III.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
JD January 2nd, 2011 11:06 pm :
I see the term ‘Magisterium’ used alot, but what exactly is it? Is it the pope in union with the bishops? Is it the councils? When does one known when the Magisterium is speaking authoritatively or not?
I’ve looked this up on both new advent and in the CCC and haven’t gotten a clear answer. Thanks.
David Meyer January 3rd, 2011 12:56 am :
Hi TurretinFan,
In comment #1000 you said: “Nevertheless, my claim (which I believe to be true, and with good reason) is that Scripture contradicts Rome’s claims, not that “my interpretation of Scripture” contradicts Rome’s claims”

Your statement is confusing to me. Here is why:

I 100% agree with Keith Mathison that:
All appeals to Scripture are appeals to interpretations of Scripture. The only real question is: whose interpretation? People with differing interpretations of Scripture cannot set a Bible on a table and ask it to resolve their differences. In order for the Scripture to function as an authority, it must be read and interpreted by someone.

That is simply true. Don’t you agree? But it totally contradicts your statement above.

-David M.
Andrew McCallum January 3rd, 2011 1:07 am :
Michael,

When you say that I am promoting a “speculative opinion that lacks even firm a academic authority,” what do you mean? Are you saying that Protestant academics would disagree with me? Do you want me to quote from Matison, Obermann, etc? I have done this before. And what aspect of my position are you saying lacks this authority? Just throwing out this comment about lacking authority without stipulating the specifics is not very helpful.

The central problem with this particular article and so many others like it is that is assumes something about the nature of sola scriptura which the Reformed specifically reject. The sola/sola article here assumes that sola scriptura is primarily a matter of individual assessment rather than an ecclesiastic standard. We are not questioning that sola and solo collapse together – there is no effective difference between the situation where someone makes individual judgments on Scripture and the same individual aligning with an ecclesiastic group that makes those judgments. This happens in both the Protestant and Catholic groups although with Catholics it is a matter of interpreting tradition rather than Scripture. But the central problem is again that it assumes that sola scriptura concerns itself primarily with individual judgments rather than ecclesiastic standards. Do you want me to quote Mathison or someone else to support this contention?

According to your HP, the way to learn what we must believe as Christians is to see what the early sources available to us explicitly said and what can be logically deduced from what they explicitly said.

The fact that ecclesiastic infallibility has no explicit historical basis is a problem for the Catholic position which is I assume why you rely on your philosophical approach. But my approach does not dwell on the lack of biblical exegetical or early church material to support your position, but rather on the fact that positing the CHP does not explain anything that the PHP could not. As I see it, your position fails on a philosophical as well as a historical and exegetical basis.

On my HP, an infallible ecclesial authority is necessary for distinguishing between what the early sources actually said and what what we must now believe. And the argument I make for that has always been philosophical. You have not addressed that argument in your response because, so long as you’re working within your HP, you can’t even see such an argument as relevant..

I don’t know why you think that I’m not addressing this. I responded by asking you to assume the PHP and tell me why this would not have worked at Nicea (again, just an example). I am first assuming the CHP and agreeing that yes this would have worked at Nicea. But, it is equally true that the PHP would have worked as well. So then, we did not need to posit an HP that contained an element of infallibility in order to have the level of certainty that God intended. I think where you are running into problems is that you never try to explain why it is that PHP would not work, you just state over and over that CHP is necessary. It is not true in other area of human thought, but somehow in theology you hold that it must be true with some theological matters. I’ve heard you say that theology is different and we would not disagree. But why an infallible pronoucment? I’m not asking you about “documentary evidence,” I’m asking you tell us why infallibility is necessary for us human beings only in certain narrowly defined situations in the realm of theology? Rather than just repeating Catholic assumptions on dogmatic certainty to me maybe you could work through an example and tell me why PHP does not work in your example. If you want to pick some other case study to compare CHP vs PHP then go ahead. But I think you need to take your argument outside of the theoretical.

On the Newman quote, it sounds like you are agreeing that it does no good to just list Fathers and ask for a response. But this is what generally happens in these discussions. Take the recent article here on transubstantiation or take a whole host of articles in the Catholic Encyclopedia like the one on IC. I was asking you why we get hit with these kinds of articles if you agree that there is no point to just listing Fathers on a certain position.
Andrew McCallum January 3rd, 2011 1:18 am :
So to my mind there is no question that the Fathers of the Councils believed they had the authority. I suppose one has to infer to a degree that they believed they were acting infallibly.

GNW Paul,

You are right, it is an inference rather than something explicitly stated in the ECF corpus. The heart of the debate between Catholic and Protestant is whether it is a good and necessary inference.

But how could they have acted so decisively and boldly if they had any thought that they could be wrong?

Now why do you think that it is necessary for a given group (in this case the Nicean Fathers) to be granted infallibility in order to act boldly and decisively? In other areas of human thought we don’t need infallibility for those under authority to accept a pronouncement as true. Why here?

And in many other pronouncements by the RCC there are decisive pronouncements with no claim of infallibility attached. Infallibility is only invoked for some dogmatic statements.
John Thayer Jensen January 3rd, 2011 1:26 am :
@Andrew MCallum:

The sola/sola article here assumes that sola scriptura is primarily a matter of individual assessment rather than an ecclesiastic standard.

As an ex-Reformed Church deacon, I agree with you. That is why the issue is not really about sola scriptura – which, as I said, many Catholics think is tenable – in the sense that the whole depositum fidei is at least implicit in Scripture. The issue is about what and where the Church is.

I was brought up with no Christian background whatever, became a Christian in 1970 at age 27, and fairly soon became a member of a Reformed Church. However, this question of ecclesiology was there from the start. I was given a statement of faith and it required me to affirm that I believed in the Christian faith as presented in the Scriptures, and taught in this Christian church. I remember at the time expressing considerable doubt about our form of Communion, which listed – even before things like murder – amongst the gross sins I must not be guilty of if I were to come to the Table, things like invoking dead saints and showing honour to images.

I said to the elders that I didn’t think I was prepared to consider these things as gross sins on a par with the list of sins that came up later, from Scripture. I was told that, of course, I could not be bound by anything that I didn’t find in Scripture.

I laughed, and said that that was a loophole you could drive a tank through – so I made my affirmation.

Nevertheless, I took the idea of Church authority – and of the authority of a visible Church – very seriously. When, later on, I became convinced there was no basis for our practice of communicating young people only at ‘marriageable age’ (the phrase I was given) – this necessary, of course, because of the idea that all communicant members could vote – I was told by the elders that this was their decision and that I must abide by it. I did, and think I did right in so doing.

When, later, I began to read Newman, Knox, and others, I came to see that Church authority had implications – implications that led me to Rome. I cannot adequately express how thankful I am for that!

But I think that Protestantism – not sola scriptura per se must either mean tyrannical government or private judgement. There is no principled place to stand.

jj
Fred January 3rd, 2011 1:29 am :
The central problem with this particular article and so many others like it is that is assumes something about the nature of sola scriptura which the Reformed specifically reject. The sola/sola article here assumes that sola scriptura is primarily a matter of individual assessment rather than an ecclesiastic standard.

If this were true (and I do not accept that it is), it would mean that the reformers had no authority at all for their schism. Either individual believers are authorized in the Protestant schema to weigh their congregations, denominations, and conciliar/credal statements in the scales of Scripture or they aren’t. If they do have the right to do so, then Bryan’s article and its criticisms stand. If they don’t…then I expect you all to rejoin the Catholic Church real soon now, because Luther & Co. would then have had no authority on your own terms to split the Church. :-)
Andrew McCallum January 3rd, 2011 1:32 am :
Mateo (Re: 1022),

The problem is that there is NOT an agreement between us on what sola scriptura is.

And I am not here trying to extract sola scriptura from Scripture. It’s not that I don’t think that there are places in Scripture which speak to the formal sufficiency of Scripture, I’m just not utilizing these texts in my posts above.
TurretinFan January 3rd, 2011 9:37 am :
Mr. Stamper (Re: #962)

If what they say about flattery, sincerity, and imitation are true, I should thank you for your comments. I would note a couple of points, however.

First, I appreciate you calling “Protestantisms” claims “very grand.” While “Protestant” churches don’t make very grand claims for themselves (they don’t claim, for example, to be the one true church), they do make very grand claims for the Holy Spirit and Scripture.

Second, I would point out that “Protestant” is a sociological category that includes a hodge-podge of different groups with different views. It includes some churches that are apostate – places where the Gospel is not preached. It also includes many different denominations of the one true church.

But when we call people out of Rome, we are calling people to faith in Christ alone for salvation. Membership in some one of the denominations that preaches the Gospel comes after that. It’s not the primary concern, but a secondary concern.

-TurretinFan
TurretinFan January 3rd, 2011 9:40 am :
Sean (re: #958)

You wrote:

“Since Rome’s claims are so plainly contrary both to the historical evidence and (infinitely more importantly) the testimony of Scripture.”

The experience and findings of many is quite the opposite and contrary to your claim, the gospel is preached in the Catholic Church every day.

The experience and findings of many support my claim as well. The standard, however, and rule of faith is Holy Scripture. Let it be the measure by which my testimony is judged.

-TurretinFan
TurretinFan January 3rd, 2011 9:54 am :
Wilkins (re: #969):

You asked:

Are you saying that one can make a principled distinction between revelation and personal opinion?

The principle that distinguishes them is authorship, no? If something is merely my personal opinion, it lacks support in revelation. Something can be both my personal opinion and revelation, as when I believe what is divinely revealed. Finally, when I reject divine revelation (μη γενοιτο!) or am simply unaware of divine revelation, it nevertheless remains divine revelation, although not followed by my opinion.

-TurretinFan
TurretinFan January 3rd, 2011 10:08 am :
Mr. Liccione (re: #974):

You wrote:

No Protestant church claims the gift of infallibility; therefore no Protestant church has the authority to tell people, in the name of God himself, how they must interpret the “sources” of divine revelation.

This does not seem to follow. After all, I think you will acknowledge that no individual bishop within your church (except the bishop of Rome) claims the gift of personal infallibility, yet those bishops can teach people and can do so (according to your theology) in the name of God, instructing people how they are to interpret the divine sources.

If you accept that, there does not seem to be a legitimate basis upon which you could reject the idea of churches that don’t claim ecclesiastical infallibility teaching people how to interpret God’s word.

Perhaps, however, I have misunderstood your objection.

-TurretinFan
Ray Stamper January 3rd, 2011 11:37 am :
Dear Andrew,

I am surprised by your recent admission regarding the fact that “sola and solo collapse together”. Let me attempt to summarize the overall situation as it appears to stand at present. In the fourth sentence in this article, Bryan and Neal explain their overarching argument in very plain terms. They write:

In this article we argue that there is no principled difference between sola scriptura and solo scriptura with respect to the holder of ultimate interpretive authority, and that a return to apostolic succession is the only way to avoid the untoward consequences to which both solo scriptura and sola scriptura lead.

Their argument involves two separate propositions joined by the word “and”. The first proposition is as follows:

Proposition 1:

. . . there is no principled difference between sola scriptura and solo scriptura with respect to the holder of ultimate interpretive authority . . .

Here is the second

Proposition 2:

a return to apostolic succession is the only way to avoid the untoward consequences to which both solo scriptura and sola scriptura lead.

What surprises me is that you seem to EXPLICITLY confirm your agreement with Proposition 1. For the record, and to confirm this point, let me set Proposition 1 side by side with your recent comment.

Proposition 1:

. . . there is no principled difference between sola scriptura and solo scriptura with respect to the holder of ultimate interpretive authority . . . [bold emphasis mine]

You wrote the following proposition:

. . . there is no effective difference [PRINCPILED DIFFERENCE] between the situation where someone makes individual judgments on Scripture [SOLO SCROPTURA] and the same individual aligning with an ecclesiastic group [SOLA SCRIPTURA] that makes those judgments.[bold emphasis and brackets mine]

Since making “individual judgments” and “individual aligning with an ecclesiastic group” are both instances of an individual exercising “ultimate interpretive authority” it appears that there is a perfect correspondence between your proposition and Bryan and Neal’s Proposition 1.

Thus, your objection is not that Proposition 1 is faulty, but rather that Bryan, Neal and many/most Catholics crucially misunderstand the very “meaning/nature” of sola scriptura. You write:

The sola/sola article here assumes that sola scriptura is primarily a matter of individual assessment rather than an ecclesiastic standard.[bold emphasis mine]

But neither Bryan or Neal or any other formerly-Reformed Catholic on this site is making the assumption you claim. They/I “get” the distinction you keep trying to make between interpretive “individual assessment” (often called private judgment) and sola scriptura(SS) – in so far as SS entails that “scripture alone” is an simply an ecclesial standard. Its just that we have all come to realize that merely positing sola scriptura as an ecclesiastical standard is positively, existentially and practically useless without reference to the question of “ultimate interpretive authority”. Whatever theoretical work sola scriptura does as an “ecclesiastical standard” is only communicated into the real world THROUGH ecclesiastical (or else individual –solo-) interpretations/assessments of WHAT that standard means or reveals concerning God and His relationship to man – broadly speaking, Divine Revelation. That is why the entire argument in Proposition 1 is “WITH RESPECT TO” the holder of “ultimate interpretive authority” – NOT with respect to the mere definition of sola scriptura as an ecclesiastical standard.

If the ONLY way present-day human beings interact with/access/understand/ Divine Revelation is through the “ecclesiastical standard” of scripture AS COMMUNICATED BY INDIVIDUALS OR ECCLESIASTICAL BODIES; which communications NECESSARILY involve individual or corporate “understandings” of the “meaning” of that “ecclesiastical standard” [i.e. interpretations]; then the TYPE OF AUTHORITY – not merely authority in general which those ecclesiastical bodies or individuals possess becomes a crucial practical/existential concern. Why? Because if the “type” of authority possessed is always and only fallible (susceptible to error); then, as a practical matter, those who receive/evaluate such [fallible] communicated interpretations can never be certain that the “meaning” of Divine Revelation they are being presented with, is exactly what God “means” for them to know. This practical/existential problem is exacerbated, when persons are faced with thousands of competing, contradictory communicated interpretations. Lacking any claim of infallibility on the part of the ecclesial or individual communicator, individuals are left in the lurch about which communicated interpretation(s) [whether ecclesiastic or individual], in fact, conveys the scriptural meaning that God intended the world to know. That, according to Catholics, is a very bad situation which essentially neuters the power of the gospel and undermines the impetus to evangelize since one can never be sure one is spreading the “REAL” gospel. This explains the practical motivation for Catholics to defend what they believe to be the only way to avoid that situation (a way which we, of course, believe was foreseen and provided for by Christ and has both implicit AND explicit scriptural and historical support). Take a look at Proposition 2 again:

a return to apostolic succession is the only way to avoid the untoward consequences to which both solo scriptura and sola scriptura lead.[bold emphasis mine]

Of course, I realize that you dispute that apostolic succession has any historical or exegetical grounding. I also realize that you think it fares no better philosophically than the Catholic position. Of course, I disagree with you on both counts. Still, at this point, I have no desire to re-engage those debates just now. What I am interested in knowing is whether or not you agree that “both solo scriptura and sola scriptura lead” to the “untoward consequences” I just described – even if you think that the Catholic position has the same problem? Or else do you think that the consequences are not really “untoward”? If not, why not?

Pax et bonum,

Ray
Michael Liccione January 3rd, 2011 11:42 am :
Andrew (#1026):

At least there’s a lot in this one to sink my teeth into!

When you say that I am promoting a “speculative opinion that lacks even firm a academic authority,” what do you mean? Are you saying that Protestant academics would disagree with me? Do you want me to quote from Matison, Obermann, etc? I have done this before. And what aspect of my position are you saying lacks this authority? Just throwing out this comment about lacking authority without stipulating the specifics is not very helpful.

As I thought I’d made clear, the opinion of yours I was referring to was your claim about what “what the Nicene party in the 4th century would actually have said about infallibility beyond Scripture, had the question been posed to them explicitly.” I have no “firm opinion” about that because the documentary evidence does not warrant any such opinion one way or the other. It is very difficult to say what people in the distant past “would” have said about an issue that they did not explicitly address and that, even now, is so readily misunderstood that the contending parties often cannot even agree on its meaning.

The central problem with this particular article and so many others like it is that is assumes something about the nature of sola scriptura which the Reformed specifically reject….it assumes that sola scriptura concerns itself primarily with individual judgments rather than ecclesiastic standards.

In the article, Bryan does not “assume” the thesis you identify. He argues for it. Most of the article consists in precisely that argument. That you don’t see that only shows how locked into your own HP you are. You can’t even see when somebody is making an extended argument rather than a mere assumption.

Another illustration of that tendency is what you proceed to address to me:

I am first assuming the CHP and agreeing that yes this would have worked at Nicea. But, it is equally true that the PHP would have worked as well. So then, we did not need to posit an HP that contained an element of infallibility in order to have the level of certainty that God intended. I think where you are running into problems is that you never try to explain why it is that PHP would not work, you just state over and over that CHP is necessary. It is not true in other area of human thought, but somehow in theology you hold that it must be true with some theological matters. I’ve heard you say that theology is different and we would not disagree. But why an infallible pronoucment? I’m not asking you about “documentary evidence,” I’m asking you tell us why infallibility is necessary for us human beings only in certain narrowly defined situations in the realm of theology? Rather than just repeating Catholic assumptions on dogmatic certainty to me maybe you could work through an example and tell me why PHP does not work in your example. If you want to pick some other case study to compare CHP vs PHP then go ahead. But I think you need to take your argument outside of the theoretical.

As a matter of fact, I have repeatedly explained on this site why I don’t think the PHP can do the the job you assign to it. Of course I don’t expect you to agree with me; but I do expect you to see that I have made an argument rather than just repeated an assumption. But apparently you don’t see that in my case any more than you see it in Bryan’s. So I shall reiterate my argument yet again.

First, I shall quote myself making a statement that you don’t seem to disagree with. Addressing you, I wrote:

According to your HP, the way to learn what we must believe as Christians is to see what the early sources available to us explicitly said and what can be logically deduced from what they explicitly said. On that methodology, there is no need to posit an infallible ecclesial authority—especially if, as I’ll grant for argument’s sake, we cannot logically deduce from the early sources any clear affirmation of such an authority.

That is essential to the PHP, which is yours. Now your contention is that the PHP suffices, in the case of Nicene orthodoxy, to yield “the level of certainty that God intended” about the pertinent doctrine. I deny that. Why?

Let’s leave aside the fact that many baptized Protestants would disagree with you. I argue that, if ecclesial authority is not infallible in such matters, as you contend, then it could always be wrong; if it could always be wrong, then we can’t be certain it’s right; and if we can’t be certain it’s right, then we don’t have “the level of certainty God intended.” The only possible response you can make, which indeed you have made concretely in the past, is that the intended level of certainty can be attained in some way other than by positing ecclesial infallibility. I shall now reiterate the argument I’ve so often made in response to that claim.

First, I have repeatedly argued, not just assumed, that the PHP rules out one’s being able to distinguish, in a principled way, statements that are de fide from statements that only express human interpretations of what are taken as the relevant sources. But on your showing, we don’t need ecclesial infallibility for the requisite certainty because we can attain it by demonstrating that a particular set of doctrines is rationally necessitated by the sources transmitting divine revelation to us. Thus your HP requires, for the requisite certainty, that Nicene orthdoxy be rationally necessitated by the sources. But as Bryan has more than once shown, that’s only the case if certain biblical passages are chosen as the hermeneutic key for interpreting others; and absent ecclesial infallibility, there can be no antecedent certainty that such is the choice we must make. It’s all just a matter of opinion.

In response to that, you have sometimes invoked an analogy to the natural sciences, where nobody claims infallibility yet we do attain knowledge. But I answered that months ago on my own blog, in an article I explicitly referred you to. What was my argument?

As an exercise of human reason which does not require any alleged divine revelation for its premises, natural science formulates hypotheses and theories, tests them, and comes to tentative conclusions about which of them are true. Judging from its success in prediction and technological development, we are justified in claiming that science comes up with statements which there is no rationally plausible alternative to affirming. Thus, e.g., no sane person doubts either the fact of gravity or the utility of what are experimentally confirmed as the “laws” of gravity. Of course such “laws” always remain subject to refinement and recontextualizing based on further research whose outcome, as the history of science shows, cannot be clearly predicted. Scientific “laws” are not inerrant and scientists are not infallible, for no mere exercise of human reason is preserved from error by God or anybody else. But granted as much, it is safe to say that the scientific enterprise, as that has come to be understood in modern times, discovers objective truths it would be unreasonable to deny.

Now what about religious doctrines allegedly expressing realities specially revealed by a God assumed to be, himself, infallible? Are they like scientific laws, in that there is no rational basis for denying them even though they are never infallibly set forth? Clearly not. Whether we’re talking Catholicism, Protestantism, or any other “revealed” religion, human reason alone cannot come up with a rationally compelling case for accepting them–granted, as I grant, that human reason in the form of “apologetics” can defend assent to some of them as rationally plausible. If human reason could come up with a rationally compelling case for any tenet of faith, then the tenet would be one of reason, not of faith. So the main basis for accepting this-or-that version of revealed religion is not anything we can discover by a purely rational methodology. That basis must be freely chosen trust in some authority, or ensemble of authorities, that such-and-such doctrinal statements are true expressions of divine revelation. To be sure, the case for putting trust in some such authorities would be the basis for depicting assent to its doctrinal statements as reasonable. But ‘reasonable’ cannot be equated with ‘compelled by considerations of reason alone’.

Now here’s the problem: If one’s HP rules out one’s being able to distinguish, in a principled way, statements that are de fide from statements that only express human interpretations of what are taken as the relevant sources, then one rules out being able to identify any alleged religious authority as having any greater authority than that of tentative human opinion. Thus the authority, if any, is not the sort of authority that’s needed and sought. And that holds as much for Scripture as for anything called “the Church.” For unless one knows by what authority a certain collection of writings is to be understood as the “inerrant” Word of God, as distinct from merely a record of what various people thought, said, and did about God, then affirming scriptural inerrancy can only appear as just one opinion among others. This is why many Protestants deny scriptural inerrancy, and why those who affirm it disagree radically among themselves about which doctrinal statements can legitimately be derived from Scripture. On the Protestant HP, in which the individual is the ultimate judge of the orthodoxy of “the Church,” there is no way in principle to distinguish a set of doctrines that bears the stamp of divine authority from a set which this-or-that individual happens to believe, on the basis of his own inquiries, bears such a stamp.

That is the fundamental problem your HP faces. The article at the head of this thread applies that to the attempt some Protestants make to distinguish solo from sola. In the end, the distinction collapses for the reasons Bryan and I have given.

Best,
Mike
Michael Liccione January 3rd, 2011 11:50 am :
In response to JD’s #1024 and TF’s #1034: I refer you both to Lumen Gentium, §18-25.

Best,
Mike
Bryan Cross January 3rd, 2011 1:59 pm :
TF (re: #1032)

You wrote:

The standard, however, and rule of faith is Holy Scripture. Let it be the measure by which my testimony is judged.

As I explained in more detail in comment #1009, statements such as the “rule of faith is Holy Scripture” gloss over the interpretive act necessary to determine the meaning of Scripture, and thus gloss over the question, “as interpreted by whom?” Likewise, when you say, “I would encourage you to join a Reformed church because that is where the Gospel is preached” (#957), the word ‘Gospel’ here refers to your (and that of those who agree with you) interpretation of the New Testament. For this reason, implicit within your statement that the “rule of faith is Holy Scripture” is the operative assumption that the rule of faith is Holy Scripture-as-interpreted-by-you [and those who agree with your interpretation]. And that then raises the question: By what authority do you make yourself the arbiter of which interpretation of Scripture is the rule of faith? That is, who authorized you to be the interpretive authority for God’s people, the one whose interpretation determines what is the rule of faith? You have no such authority. And therefore your claim that the rule of faith is [your interpretation of] Scripture, is performatively arrogating to yourself authority you do not have. So your claim breaks down as soon as we fill in the details of the necessary interpretive act you are presently glossing.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
John Thayer Jensen January 3rd, 2011 2:14 pm :
@TF:

The standard, however, and rule of faith is Holy Scripture. Let it be the measure by which my testimony is judged.

Of course – all right, TurretinFan – Matthew 16:13-18, together with Luke 22:31-32 and John 21:15-19 – and referring to Isaiah 22:22, clearly demonstrate that the Pope of Rome is the Vicar of Christ on earth and you have, therefore, a Scriptural duty to submit to him.

Scripture has now judged your testimony – or has it?

jj
TurretinFan January 3rd, 2011 3:00 pm :
Bryan:

You wrote:

Regarding your “Meaningless Criticism Rebuttal,” the thesis at the beginning of our article is that “there is no principled difference between sola scriptura and solo scriptura with respect to the holder of ultimate interpretive authority.” A principled difference here is not a merely semantic or accidental difference. For example, there is no principled difference in the holder of ultimate political authority between an open dictatorship, and a puppet government run by an underground dictator. In both cases, the dictator holds ultimate political authority, even though in the latter case he masks it by operating in secret behind a cadre of henchmen.

In that example, there is no difference in the holder of ultimate political authority. In both cases, the holder is the dictator. It seems like you are using “principled” to mean real or substantial, here. But, of course, there is a real and substantial difference between the church having subordinate authority and the church not having any authority.

You continued:

Of course there is a semantic and conceptual difference between solo scriptura and sola scriptura.

I’m glad that you acknowledge that.

You continued:

But as we show in the article, in both positions, the individual remains the holder of ultimate interpretive authority, even though the holder of sola scriptura masks his retention of this authority by seemingly placing himself under the authority of a group he calls ‘the church.’

This doesn’t appear to be an accurate characterization. The adherent of Sola Scriptura does not claim that the church is his ultimate authority – he claims that Scripture is. He quite openly identifies the church and her teachings as a subordinate authority.

Regarding “ultimate interpretive authority” (as distinct from “ultimate authority”), I’ve already addressed this in my prior comment, I think.

You continued:

So though proponents of sola scriptura claim that the church has authority over the individual, when we look carefully at who counts as ‘church,’ and the basis [given sola scriptura] for the alleged authority of the ‘church,’ it turns out to be based ultimately on agreement with the individual. (See, for example, comment #841, where I showed that Keith’s position has this problem.) And this reveals that the individual retain ultimate interpretive authority, even within sola scriptura. That is why both the person holding solo scriptura, and the person affirming sola scriptura, are each their own ultimate interpretive authority. And since the person affirming sola scriptura claims that those holding solo scriptura are wrongly acting as their own ultimate authority, and not submitting to ‘the church,’ the fact that even the sola scriptura adherents are their own ultimate authority shows that their criticism (of solo scriptura folk) undermines their own position.

This portion of the argument may be moot in view of the comments above, but there is at least one additional issue that is worth raising here. It’s unclear what “based ultimately on agreement with the individual” means with reference to “the alleged authority of the ‘church.'” It appears, but I could be mistaken, that the argument is saying that because people join a church based on believing that it is a true church, that consequently the authority of the church is based on agreement between the church and the individual. However, that does not appear to follow in any sort of logical way. Perhaps if this argument could be explained more clearly it would be possible either for you to see that you’ve made a non sequitur, or for me to see how your conclusion follows from premises.

You wrote:

The attempt by sola scriptura folks to get solo scriptura folks to submit to ‘the church’ is just a power move, i.e. a kind of strong-arm bullying, because ‘church,’ for sola scriptura folks, is just ‘those who mostly agree with my interpretation of Scripture.’ So it is a case of one group of holders of ultimate interpretive authority who agree with each other and have linked up with each other (i.e. proponents of sola scriptura), saying to other holders of ultimate interpretive authority (i.e. solo scriptura folks) who have not linked up with others who agree with themselves, “You must submit to us.” And the solo scriptura folks can just laugh and respond, “You have no more authority than do we. Just because you get together and form a group, does not give you any more authority; it only gives you more numbers.” There is no actual ecclesial authority in sola scriptura, only the appearance of such to those who don’t grasp that authority over oneself cannot be based on agreement with oneself, and that the only basis for ‘authority’ given sola scriptura, is agreement with one’s own interpretation of Scripture. Those holding solo scriptura have essentially seen through the ‘ecclesial authority’ masquerade of sola scriptura.

This doesn’t seem like a very accurate picture of our world. It seems to be premised on the very questionable idea that “the only basis for ‘authority’ … is agreement with one’s own interpretation of Scripture.” This hasn’t been demonstrated.

Secondly, unless the “solo scriptura” people are in our church, we don’t tell them they have to submit to our church. However, they do need to submit to the elders of a church. Submission to the authority of the elders is limited and constrained, of course, but it is a real submission to real authority.

You wrote:

If you want to show that there is a principled difference between solo scriptura and sola scriptura with respect to the holder of ultimate interpretive authority, then you need to show how ‘church,’ in sola scriptura, does not reduce to those who mostly agree with one’s own interpretation of Scripture. If you could do that, then you would have shown that unlike the holder of solo scriptura, the holder of sola scriptura does not retain ultimate interpretive authority. But, you can’t show that, because as we argued in the article, without apostolic succession, there is no way to ground ecclesial authority except by agreement with one’s own interpretation of Scripture and history.

I don’t think I need to prove the negative proposition that it “does not reduce” – instead I await some demonstration that it does so reduce.

– TurretinFan
herbert January 3rd, 2011 3:02 pm :
TurretinFan,
I am asking for a bit of a clarification from you:

Is it your position to suggest that any individual christian can access the Scriptures without any form of interpretation taking place, but simply through accurate cognition of the meaning of a given Scriptural text?

thanks.
TurretinFan January 3rd, 2011 4:42 pm :
Bryan (re: #986)

I had written:

It is further alleged that, in essence, the criticism is legitimate because there is an ontological difference between a book and a person. However, this reply appears to confuse categories. A book is simply the communication of a person – and the Roman magisterium communicates in writing which can be (and sometimes is) bound into books. Thus, in effect, one can consider both authorities to be persons or both authorities to be books.

You responded:

I think your claim here is self-evidently false. Surely you don’t think that because a wife can (and does) sometimes write things down, that therefore being married to a woman is ontologically the equivalent of being married to the writings of a woman.

Your example seems to be a red herring. Yes, there’s a world of difference (whether it is ontological, or some other kind hardly matters) between marriage to a woman and marriage to her books. There’s also a world of difference between burning Luther at the stake and burning his books at the stake. But when it comes to teaching, those differences are no longer relevant differences. Teaching is the communication of information, and a book is one medium of such communication. Marriage involves communication, but it does not reduce to communication. And while both kinds of burning (in my second example) involve the silencing of communication, only the former involves the death of the communicator (a difference which is significant as to the purpose of the act).

You continued:

The ontological difference between a person and a book makes a world of difference with respect to the nature and potential of the diachronic relationship with them, even though persons can write things down.

a) As to teaching, a book is the medium of communication of a person. You can’t deny that. As such, your distinction is simply a false comparison.

b) As to “the nature and potential of the diachronic relationship with them,” the biggest problem is simply the false comparison noted above. A book has an author – a person. The church has writings, teachings. Compare apples with apples and oranges with oranges, not apples with oranges.

You continued:

Likewise, the fact that the Magisterium can and does write things down, does not “in effect” reduce the Magisterium to a book.

a) My primary point here is that whether the writings of the Magisterium are presented as individual documents ro bound as a book is completely immaterial. I assume you agree.

b) My secondary point here is that as to teaching a person being taught by the magisterium is being taught by what amounts to a large book.

You wrote:

The Magisterium continually remains a living teaching authority, irreducible to a book, even though its statements and writings can be published in books.

a) The Magisterium is not really either a natural person or a truly living entity. Instead, it’s more like a corporation. In contrast, the author of the Bible is the Holy Spirit, who is a living person in the highest sense of the term.

b) However, from the standpoint of someone seeking to know the truth, the teaching of the Magisterium is reducible to a book – a very large book.

You continued:

Because the Magisterium is a living organ, it always retains interpretive authority, even over its own writings.

God retains interpretive authority over the Bible. Consequently, we have the maxim (not new to us, of course) that Scripture interprets Scripture. And even though God chooses not to provide additional books, he certainly could do so, if He wished. When you compare apples to apples, you see that there is not the kind of difference you were alleging.

You continued:

Only if that were false, would the Magisterium “in effect” reduce to a book.

It is mystifying why you think that a book’s author in general surrenders interpretive authority.

You continued:

This is why the claim that the Catholic remains his own ultimate interpretive authority, because he has to interpret the Magisterium, is false.

You can’t reasonably deny that the individual person in the Roman religion doesn’t have to understand what the Magisterium is saying. And, of course, to say that the teachings of the Magisterium interpret the teachings of the Magisterium is similar to saying that the Scriptures interpret the Scriptures. If merely having to understand what one’s source is saying makes one one’s own UIA, then both are. If not, then neither is.

You continued:

So because of the real ontological difference between persons and books, and because the Catholic Church has a living Magisterium along with Scripture, therefore the Catholic is not his own ultimate interpretive authority. But while the Protestant has Scripture (or most of it) he does not have a living Magisterium, and therefore he remains his own ultimate interpretive authority, for the reasons we have explained above.

This simply repeats the points rebutted above.

-TurretinFan
wilkins January 3rd, 2011 4:58 pm :
TurretinFan,

in #957 you said (to Michael)

I would encourage you to join a Reformed church because that is where the Gospel is preached – not simply because one can make a principled distinction between revelation and personal opinion.

in response to that, in #969 i asked if you meant that it truly is possible for a Protestant to make a principled distinction between revelation and personal opinion.

in #1033, you’ve kindly responded that

The principle that distinguishes them is authorship, no?

Your use of the term authorship seems to refer to the fact that revelation is authored by God but personal opinion is authored by persons, and perhaps you have WCF in mind (saying, in so many words, the authority of Scripture depends entirely on God its Author).

Okay, but doesn’t authorship apply conceptually both to revelation and opinion? If the concept applies to both, important differences notwithstanding, then it can’t serve as a principle that demonstrates their essential difference, can it? I agree with you that I’m the author of my opinion and God is the author of revelation, but I hope you’ll agree that what we’re saying in that case is that “authorship” is a conceptual similarity and not a principle of essential distinction.

On the other hand, if the point you’re making is that we can tell the difference between mere opinion and the content of divine revelation by simply seeing that the opinion has man as its author, well… then… we’re back to what appears to be a denial of interpretation on the part of those whose interpretations you agree with.

in #1033, you’ve also said

If something is merely my personal opinion, it lacks support in revelation.

I don’t understand what you mean by that. “Support in revelation” is precisely the prize for which one’s personal opinion is deployed in acts of interpretation. I’m looking forward to reading your response to Herbert (1041).

in #1040 you’ve said to Bryan,

It seems like you are using “principled” to mean real or substantial, here. But, of course, there is a real and substantial difference between the church having subordinate authority and the church not having any authority.

The subordinate authority of the church means that the church’s interpretations of Scripture must always be ready to submit to scriptural interrogation (to make sure the church’s interpretations and Scripture align). So… how does one know if they align? Well, he launches a scriptural interrogation in order to find out, comparing his church’s teaching with Scripture to see if he can detect sufficient agreement between them.

Now, allow me to remind you of #281, where you said

The best [this article] can do is show that there is some sense in which the individual in sola scriptura is an ultimate arbiter, but this is not enough to demonstrate that the individual in sola scriptura rejects “the true but subordinate authority of the church and the regula fidei.”

On the contrary, precisely the sense in which the individual in sola scriptura is an ultimate arbiter is the sense in which the individual in sola scriptura interprets, for himself, the Scripture and decides, of his own opinion, whether his “church’s” teaching sufficiently agrees with his interpretation of the Source. Sufficient agreement found then confirms to him that his “church” is part of the “true church.”

In other words, no one needs “to demonstrate that the individual in sola scriptura rejects” anything per se. I think, perhaps, the negative formulation contributes to misunderstanding. We have demonstrated, instead, that the individual in sola scriptura accepts the so-called “subordinate authority of the church” only so long as he detects (of his own opinion) sufficient agreement between his “church’s” interpretations and the Scripture. As such, the individual in sola scriptura is no less his own ultimate authority as the solo individual: both retain final interpretive authority, which is problematic for the reasons outlined in the article.
John Thayer Jensen January 3rd, 2011 5:26 pm :
@TF:

I would really be interested in your response to this question of mine:

Of course – all right, TurretinFan – Matthew 16:13-18, together with Luke 22:31-32 and John 21:15-19 – and referring to Isaiah 22:22, clearly demonstrate that the Pope of Rome is the Vicar of Christ on earth and you have, therefore, a Scriptural duty to submit to him.

Scripture has now judged your testimony – or has it?

You seem to believe that Scripture alone – with no intermediary – can be a judge that all men can appeal to and whose judgement all men will realise has been made by Scripture. You don’t seem to think interpretation need be private interpretation. So I have quoted above three Scriptures which – I claim – make it clear that anyone naming the name of Christ must necessarily submit to the Roman Church, or else be judged by Scripture as being in serious error.

I – naturally! – assume you will not accept that Scripture has so judged your case. Assuming that you do not accept this, I am curious how you will go about showing that this is not the judgement of Scripture, without appealing to any interpretation of these passages, and without pointing to the views of men, either your own or those of others.

Can you accommodate me?

jj
herbert January 3rd, 2011 5:36 pm :
“Every year I tell my Reformation history class that Roman Catholicism is, at least in the West, the default position. Rome has a better claim to historical continuity and institutional unity than any Protestant denomination… in the light of these facts, therefore, we need good, solid reasons for not being Catholic.” -Dr. Carl Trueman

“I don’t think I need to prove the negative proposition that it “does not reduce” – instead I await some demonstration that it does so reduce.” -TurretinFan

TurretinFan,

It seems to me that if the “default position” in the West, the Catholic position, is indeed the position being put forward by Bryan, Neal, Dr. Liccione, John T. Jensen, et al. with respect to this particular topic, and if Dr. Trueman is right, it’s not the Catholics who bear the burden of proof. To frame it in Dr. Trueman’s words, you need to provide the “good, solid reasons” to NOT accept the Catholic default position which Bryan is presenting when he says things like:

If you want to show that there is a principled difference between solo scriptura and sola scriptura with respect to the holder of ultimate interpretive authority, then you need to show how ‘church,’ in sola scriptura, does not reduce to those who mostly agree with one’s own interpretation of Scripture.

Whether it’s this topic or any other, for the reasons Dr. Trueman gave, when arguing against the Catholic position, you bear the burden of proof. It’s not the other way around.
mateo January 3rd, 2011 6:41 pm :
Bryan Cross: Solo scriptura is defined at the beginning of section II, and sola scriptura is defined at the beginning of section III.

Thanks Bryan, I stand corrected. There is no need for me to assume that my understanding of solo scriptura and sola scriptura is basically the same as your understanding – that assumption is irrelevant to this thread. What I need to do is to see if my understanding of solo scriptura and sola scriptura is the same as Keith Mathison’s definiton of solo scriptura and sola scriptura.

Keith Mathison’s definiton of solo scriptura in section II:

In his book and his related article, Keith Mathison criticizes the position he calls ‘solo scriptura,‘ namely, the position that “Scripture [is] not merely the only infallible authority but that it [is] the only authority altogether.”

Keith Mathison’s definiton of solo scriptura in section III:

In contrast to the ‘solo scriptura‘ position, Mathison defends what he calls ‘sola scriptura,’ namely, the position that “Scripture [is] the sole source of revelation; that it [is] the final authoritative norm of doctrine and practice; that it [is] to be interpreted in and by the church, and that it [is] to be interpreted according to the regula fidei.” Notice that for Mathison these four claims together constitute sola scriptura. Mathison is emphatic that sola scriptura is not the notion that Scripture is the only ecclesial authority. In this respect sola scriptura differs from solo scriptura.

I believe that Keith Mathison’s definiton of solo scriptura describes what I meant to convey as the beliefs of the evangelical Protestants that espouse a belief in “bible freedom” and “soul freedom”.

Most Baptist traditions believe in the “Four Freedoms” articulated by Baptist historian Walter B. Shurden …

Soul freedom: the soul is competent before God, and capable of making decisions in matters of faith without coercion or compulsion by any larger religious or civil body

Bible freedom: the individual is free to interpret the Bible for himself or herself, using the best tools of scholarship and biblical study available to the individual.

ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baptists

I believe that Bryan and Neal have made the case in their article that there is no principled difference between sola scriptura as defined by Keith Mathison and solo scriptura as defined by Keith Mathison – which to me would mean that there is no principled difference between Keith Mathison’s sola scriptura and the Baptist’s claim of “bible freedom” and “soul freedom”.

From the main article:

… Mathison claims that it is in the Church that the gospel is found.
But how does he determine what is the Church? Being Reformed, he defines ‘Church’ as wherever the gospel is found, because the early Protestants defined the marks of the Church as including “the gospel,” where the gospel was determined by their own private interpretation of Scripture. So he claims that is in the Church that the gospel is found, but he defines the Church in terms of the gospel. This is what we call a tautology. … telling us that the gospel is found “in the Church” tells us nothing other than “people who share my own interpretation of Scripture about what is the gospel are referred to by me as ‘the Church.’”

—————

Andrew McCallum : The central problem with this particular article and so many others like it is that is assumes something about the nature of sola scriptura, which the Reformed specifically reject. The sola/sola article here assumes that sola scriptura is primarily a matter of individual assessment rather than an ecclesiastic standard. We are not questioning that sola and solo collapse together – there is no effective difference between the situation where someone makes individual judgments on Scripture and the same individual aligning with an ecclesiastic group that makes those judgments.

I agree with you that within Protestantism there is “there is no effective difference between the situation where someone makes individual judgments on Scripture and the same individual aligning with an ecclesiastic group that makes those judgments.” Luther and Calvin both were members of the Catholic Church, and they both rejected the authority of the Catholic Church. In essence, both Calvin and Luther asserted a claim to what the Baptists call “bible freedom” – i.e. “the individual is free to interpret the Bible for himself or herself, using the best tools of scholarship and biblical study available to the individual.” Luther and Calvin founded their own personal churches that taught the theological novelties that they developed through their private interpretation of scriptures. Then there arose men and women within the new Protestant churches of Luther and Calvin that repeated the process – dissenters within these new Protestant churches rejected the authority of Luther’s and Calvin’s personal churches, and through a claim to “bible freedom”, the dissenters created their own personal churches. Repeat this process for five hundred years, and the result is Protestantism as it exists today – thousands upon thousands of Protestant churches that preach contradictory doctrine. Obviously there is no effective difference between me claiming that I have “bible freedom” and that I can found my own personal church (even if it is church with only one member – me), or me exercising my “bible freedom” by church shopping until I find a Protestant church that agrees with my own personal interpretation of the bible.

Andrew McCallum : Mateo (Re: 1022),
The problem is that there is NOT an agreement between us on what sola scriptura is.

And I am not here trying to extract sola scriptura from Scripture. It’s not that I don’t think that there are places in Scripture which speak to the formal sufficiency of Scripture, I’m just not utilizing these texts in my posts above.

If you and I don’t agree about what sola scriptura is, then I don’t think that I am asking too much from you to define what you personally think sola scriptura is.

When you say that “there are places in Scripture which speak to the formal sufficiency of Scripture”, is that a claim by you that the scriptures found in your Protesant bible explicitly teach your definition of sola scriptura? If so, the I ask you to please give me your definition of sola scriptura and quote the scriptures that makes your case.
Bryan Cross January 3rd, 2011 7:07 pm :
TF (re: #1040, #1042)

You wrote:

But, of course, there is a real and substantial difference between the church having subordinate authority and the church not having any authority.

What “subordinate authority” means (without apostolic succession) is “subordinate to one’s own interpretation of Scripture.” So long as an individual believes that the teaching of the [heretical] sect to which he belongs is sufficiently in agreement with his own interpretation of Scripture, he ‘submits’ to its ‘authority.’ (I put it in single quotes because it is only the illusion of submission and the illusion of authority; in actuality there is agreement between the individual and the sect, but no authority and no submission.) But as soon as the sect teaches anything that sufficiently goes against his own interpretation of Scripture, the sect ipso facto ceases to be ‘authoritative’. So this is not genuine authority, but only an illusion of authority. During the time period when the ‘authority’ is teaching in accordance with his own interpretation, he appears to be submitting, but in actuality there is no submission, just agreement. (This can be shown by the fact that if this sect had no ecclesial authority, his ‘submission’ would be the same.) When the sect teaches something contrary to his own interpretation of Scripture, and he refuses to submit, this indicates that all along he has remained his own ultimate interpretive authority, and hence that the sect was never a “subordinate authority” over him, but an illusory ‘authority’ which is actually under him.

The reason for this is that (1) he picked out this sect in the first place on the basis of this sect’s sufficient agreement with his own interpretation of Scripture, and (2) he assumes there is no apostolic succession, and therefore that no one has interpretive authority over him or over anyone else. Hence, the basis for his ‘submission’ to the sect is its sufficient agreement with his interpretation. But an ‘authority’ to which one ‘submits’ only when one agrees, is no authority at all, but only the illusion or pretense of authority.

I wrote: But as we show in the article, in both positions, the individual remains the holder of ultimate interpretive authority, even though the holder of sola scriptura masks his retention of this authority by seemingly placing himself under the authority of a group he calls ‘the church.’

You replied:

The adherent of Sola Scriptura does not claim that the church is his ultimate authority – he claims that Scripture is. He quite openly identifies the church and her teachings as a subordinate authority.

The fact that the adherent of sola scriptura (1) claims that Scripture is his ultimate authority and (2) claims that the church and her teachings are a subordinate authority and (3) does not claim that the church is his ultimate authority, are all compatible with his remaining his own ultimate interpretive authority. Hence those three truths do not refute our argument that the adherent of sola scriptura retains ultimate interpretive authority.

Secondly, unless the “solo scriptura” people are in our church, we don’t tell them they have to submit to our church. However, they do need to submit to the elders of a church.

Case in point. In one sentence you claim not to tell them what to do, but in the very next sentence, you claim that they need to conform to your own interpretation of Scripture [because ‘church’ for you means those who teach according to your interpretation of Scripture.]

Regarding our argument that (given sola scriptura and the denial of apostolic succession) the individual retains ultimate interpretive authority, and that the Catholic position is not subject to this criticism, you wrote (back in #981):

It is further alleged that, in essence, the criticism is legitimate because there is an ontological difference between a book and a person. However, this reply appears to confuse categories. A book is simply the communication of a person – and the Roman magisterium communicates in writing which can be (and sometimes is) bound into books. Thus, in effect, one can consider both authorities to be persons or both authorities to be books.

I responded:

I think your claim here is self-evidently false. Surely you don’t think that because a wife can (and does) sometimes write things down, that therefore being married to a woman is ontologically the equivalent of being married to the writings of a woman.

In #1042 you replied:

Your example seems to be a red herring. Yes, there’s a world of difference (whether it is ontological, or some other kind hardly matters) between marriage to a woman and marriage to her books. There’s also a world of difference between burning Luther at the stake and burning his books at the stake. But when it comes to teaching, those differences are no longer relevant differences. Teaching is the communication of information, and a book is one medium of such communication. Marriage involves communication, but it does not reduce to communication. And while both kinds of burning (in my second example) involve the silencing of communication, only the former involves the death of the communicator (a difference which is significant as to the purpose of the act).

With respect to teaching, there is a relevant difference between persons and books. As I explained in Sola Scriptura: A Dialogue Between Michael Horton and Bryan Cross:

A book by its very nature has a limited intrinsic potency for interpretive self-clarification; a person, on the other hand, by his very nature has, in principle, an unlimited intrinsic potency with respect to interpretive self-clarification. This unlimited potency of persons with respect to interpretive self-clarification ensures that the hermeneutical spiral may reach its goal; we can continue to ask clarification questions, be heard, and receive answers to those very questions, until the questions are answered. … Because persons are alive and have reason, we are not only able to receive and answer questions, we are able to receive and answer questions about previous questions we have received and about previous answers we have given. And we can receive and answer questions about our answers to questions about our answers to questions. And so on. So as persons, we can answer second order questions, third order questions, fourth order questions, etc. And there is no nth order question that in principle we cannot answer. It is not as though there is some limit at 26th order questions, or some other number, that is beyond the power of reason. And that is why for persons the intrinsic potency for interpretive self-clarification is not limited.

Books cannot do that. Your response to this is that a living person has no advantage over Scripture, with respect to the unlimited potential for self-clarification, because “Scripture interprets Scripture.” You wrote:

God retains interpretive authority over the Bible. Consequently, we have the maxim (not new to us, of course) that Scripture interprets Scripture.

The problem with this statement is revealed in what I wrote back in 2007:

The difficulty for the “Evangelical view” is that Scripture alone does not interpret Scripture. In a true sense Scripture does interpret Scripture in that certain passages of Scripture help us understand other passages of Scripture. But the problem with the Evangelical position is that “Scripture interprets Scripture” is taken to imply that Scripture alone is sufficient to interpret Scripture, whereas in actuality there must be a human interpreter involved, and that human interpreter has to make interpretive judgments. Among other things, that human interpreter must determine which are the clearer passages. For example, Calvinists take 1 John 2:2 as less clear, and needing to be qualified by John 10, regarding limited atonement. Others take 1 John 2:2 as the clearer passage. The same is true of passages regarding apostasy. The point is that someone has to decide which passages are clearer and which passages are the ones needing clarification/qualification. Scripture itself does not tell us which passages are clearer and which less clear. And the fact is that when people make these decisions about which passages are clearer and which are less clear, they often disagree.

Once we acknowledge the role of the human interpreter, however, then we have to ask ourselves, “Which humans have the ecclesial authority to say with authority what Scripture means?” If we say, “No one”, then we are left with a kind of individualism where the sheep are without a shepherd, and each man does what is right in his own eyes, and there is no possibility of Christian unity. But if we acknowledge that some humans have ecclesial authority to give the authoritative explanation of Scripture, then at that point we are no longer in the ‘sola scriptura’ camp.

In other words, the “Scripture interprets Scripture” slogan only masks the role of the human interpreter, and thus glosses the problem of interpretive authority, the arrogation of interpretive authority and the existence of divinely bestowed interpretive and teaching authority. Only by glossing over the role of the human interpreter in “Scripture interprets Scripture” can the Protestant create the illusion that the authority situation of the Protestant is the same as that of the Catholic. Without a Magisterium, then even in “Scripture interprets Scripture,” the individual retains ultimate interpretive authority. But with a Magisterium, the individual does not retain ultimate interpretive authority. Hence it is not true that the Catholic, no less than the Protestant, retains ultimate interpretive authority. And that is one of the reasons why the tu quoque falls short.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
TurretinFan January 3rd, 2011 7:16 pm :
Herbert (Re: #988):

You wrote:

You’ve identified the “Logical Invalidity Rebuttal.” Could you explain how the move from 4 and 9 to 10 is a “logically invalid generalization”? Because if it’s really that simple, Dr. Mathison needn’t bother with his book-length response ;)

Of course. First, lets review what 4, 9, and 10 are:

4. If sola scriptura entails that each individual is his own final interpretive authority concerning what he considers to be essential, then in this respect there is no principled difference between solo scriptura and sola scriptura.
…
9. If sola scriptura is true, then each individual is his own final interpretive authority concerning what he considers to be essential. [(7),(8)]

10. There is no principled difference between sola scriptura and solo scriptura. [(4),(9)]

For the purpose of analysis, it’s usually easier to consider symbols rather than the actual propositions. So, let’s change these into a symbolic form:
4. If A then B (where A = “sola scriptura entails that each individual is his own final interpretive authority concerning what he considers to be essential” and B = “in this respect there is no principled difference between solo scriptura and sola scriptura”)
9. If C then D (where C = “sola scriptura is true” and D = “each individual is his own final interpretive authority concerning what he considers to be essential”)
10. E (where E = “There is no principled difference between sola scriptura and solo scriptura.”)

This is not a logically valid syllogism for several reasons. One reason is that none of the terms match up. But let’s be generous. (9) is clearly intended to mean “A”. In other words “If sola scriptura is true, then each individual is his own final interpretive authority concerning what he considers to be essential” is supposed to mean “sola scriptura entails that each individual is his own final interpretive authority concerning what he considers to be essential.”

So, we can rewrite the syllogism as:

4. If A, then B.
9. A
Therefore
10. E
However, E is not B.
E = “There is no principled difference between sola scriptura and solo scriptura”
whereas
B = “in this respect there is no principled difference between solo scriptura and sola scriptura” (bold added for emphasis on the difference)

So you can see that E is too broad. The conclusion needs to have the qualification, “in this respect,” i.e. “in respect to each individual being his own final interpretive authority concerning what he considers to be essential.”

That’s a much narrower conclusion than “no principled difference.” While the article sometimes states the qualification, it often does not – not only at item 10 of the argument, but also at heading IV (“IV. Why There Is No Principled Difference Between Sola Scriptura and Solo Scriptura”) in the summary of section 4 in the introduction (“In section four we show why there is no principled distinction between sola scriptura and solo scriptura.”) and again and again. Here are the places I found it:

The content of the deposit of faith then becomes like a silver dollar hidden among a sea of silver dollars; there is no principled way of distinguishing it from the myriad of contending theological opinions.

So the reason why there is no principled difference between solo scriptura and sola scriptura is that in both cases the individual is his own ultimate interpretive and magisterial authority: solo scriptura in a direct way, sola scriptura in an indirect way.

And there is no principled difference between this and solo scriptura; the former is solo scriptura masking itself from itself. ‘Submitting’ only to those with whom I agree, is merely a species of “submitting only when I agree,” which is itself an indirect form of “submitting only to me,” which is submitting only in semblance.

Because sola scriptura rejects apostolic succession no less than does solo scriptura, and because the rejection of apostolic succession entails the relativization of heresy and orthodoxy, there is also for this reason no principled difference between solo scriptura and sola scriptura.

So there is no principled difference between your practice and ours. [as though spoken by a solo scriptura advocate]

One objection to our argument that there is no principled difference between sola scriptura and solo scriptura is that the Catholic position likewise ultimately reduces to solo scriptura.

In this paper we have argued that apart from apostolic succession, there is no principled difference between solo scriptura and sola scriptura.

In light of our argument that there is no principled difference between sola scriptura and solo scriptura, Mathison’s criticism of solo scriptura turns out to be a criticism of sola scriptura.

If there is no principled difference between sola scriptura and solo scriptura, then we would expect the sola scriptura doctrine taught by the early Protestant to come to manifest its true nature over time as outright solo scriptura.

Perhaps the most upsetting of those comments is the second one, where what ought (from a logical standpoint) to be the qualification is presented as though it is proof of the generality! And the same sort of thing is continued (for a time at least) in the comments. For example, Comment 17 from Brian says:

It claims to be different in a principled way from solo scriptura, but because it understands church authority as being derivative, there is ultimately [as we showed in the article] no principled difference between solo scriptura and sola scriptura.

There were also a small number of places where it was qualified. It was qualified early on in the article and maybe once or twice in the article. Yet the non-qualified way of expressing it seemed to dominate the discussion and the analysis.

Perhaps that’s because in a qualified form the conclusion lacks punch – but that’s not a legitimate excuse to generalize what is a very narrow conclusion.

You continued:

Next, you offered the “Meaningless Criticism Rebuttal” (which, along with the third rebuttal you acknowledged isn’t a rebuttal at all). This reaction to the article simply focuses upon the use of the term “principled” in the article’s argumentation. The definition of the term is, however, readily available on the Internet. The term “principled” is defined as: Based on, marked by, or manifesting principle or manifesting objectively defined standards. As I see it, based upon that definition of the term, I hope that you’d recognize the article’s criticism of the doctrine of sola Scriptura as being lacking in “objectively defined standards” to be anything but meaningless.

That’s not exactly the article’s criticism though. It’s very easy to define the doctrine of sola Scriptura in terms of objective standards. It’s even easy to distinguish the two doctrines in an objective way (based on the fact that one accepts that the church has authority, the other does not). Where the article stands a chance (if at all) is in a heavily qualified conclusion. And what the qualification “principled,” adds to such a conclusion is (to all appearance) just emphasis not meaning.

You continued:

Third, you presented the “Illegitimate Criticism Rebuttal/Reaction,” saying that the phrase “final interpretive authority” is too broad a term, so broad as to describe pretty much all rational activity. You said:

Thus, this isn’t really a legitimate criticism, it’s just a statement about the way humans function. In other words, because the individual must come to conclusions himself about what he himself thinks his source of authority tells him, he is the final interpretive authority of the source of authority. That’s true regardless of what the source of authority is.

I can think of an exception. What about the point in St. John’s Gospel at which Christ turns to the 12, saying “Do you also want to leave?” and Simon Peter replies “Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God.” (John 6:67-69) Were Simon Peter and the other 11 following the pattern you outlined above, they would have walked away with all the other “final interpretive authorities” who’d concluded, based upon Christ’s words concerning the consumption of His Flesh and Blood, that He was a false prophet or something worse.

By way of interruption, a couple of important points:

a) One way of considering Peter’s words is that he has correctly understood the spiritual sense of what Jesus is saying. Hence he says “the words of eternal life.” (Words which have been enscripturated now, by the way, so that anyone can read, believe, and have life.)

b) Furthermore, surely given the fact that Peter calls Jesus’ words the words of eternal life, he does not think that they mean something sinful and inappropriate. So, it’s not clear how this is supposed to be an exception. His correct but minority interpretation of Jesus’ words differed from the incorrect but majority interpretation of those who departed.

You continued:

The 12 remained, however, not because of what Christ had said.

Well, Peter called them the words of life. That could be a reference to what Jesus said.

You continued:

Indeed, Christ’s words were causing great scandal and driving away many would-be followers.

Yes, great scandal among those who interpreted them incorrectly.

You wrote:

It was the conviction of who Christ was that caused the 12 to remain, even when the Lord’s words were confounding.

I think it was because Peter believed Jesus’ words:

John 6:63 It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.
…
John 6:65 And he said, Therefore said I unto you, that no man can come unto me, except it were given unto him of my Father.

When Peter responds, he echos back Jesus’ own words:
John 6:67-69
Then said Jesus unto the twelve, Will ye also go away?
Then Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life. (Cf. vs. 63) And we believe and are sure that thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God (Cf. vs. 65).

You wrote:

Similarly, it’s the Christian’s conviction of what the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church is by nature (the very Bride of Christ), that causes him to submit to her authority, even when he’s not socially/culturally/economically/intellectually inclined to do so!

One ought to be careful to distinguish between the kind of faith one has in Jesus, and the kind of faith one has in one’s church. Consequently, one ought to be more willing to affirm what Scripture teaches than what one’s church teaches, when the two are in conflict. The Church, after all, is not Christ.

You concluded:

And finally, I wanted to comment on this point, as it seems to be the weakest point of all when it comes to the your appeal to “subordinate authorities.”:

Indeed, since the Roman ecclesiastical hierarchy is a hierarchy, it should be conceded by those in that communion that subordinate authority is real authority. One’s local bishop has real but subordinate authority, for example.

Your point seems to overlook the fact that in any hierarchy “higher-ups” can overrule the decisions made by “subordinate authorities.” In other words, all subordinate authorities are subject to the decisions made by their superiors. And as this article demonstrates, in the case of the doctrine of Sola Scriptura, each individual subscriber necessarily and unavoidably finds himself in the seat of the ultimate interpretive authority, the final, the ultimate, the solo “higher up.”

That is the nature of subordinate authority. The lesser authority is trumped by the greater authority. The individual himself is not the highest authority. Nevertheless, it is the responsibility of the individual to follow the highest authority. Thus, for example, an individual in the Roman system must compare what his local bishop says to what the Council of Trent says, and follow Trent when the two disagree. That doesn’t make the individual pope, does it? Of course not. Even so, it does not make the individual the supreme authority when he follows the Word of God in Scripture rather than what his church tells him.

You added:

TurretinFan, I appreciate your time. Thank you for the interaction!

I appreciate your time and interaction as well!

-TurretinFan
John Thayer Jensen January 3rd, 2011 7:28 pm :
@TF:

One ought to be careful to distinguish between the kind of faith one has in Jesus, and the kind of faith one has in one’s church. Consequently, one ought to be more willing to affirm what Scripture teaches than what one’s church teaches, when the two are in conflict.

On the other hand, when one’s Church and the Scripture teach the same thing – for instance, as I said quoting Scripture, that (Matthew16:13-19; Luke 22:31-32; John 21:15-19) one must submit to the Roman Church – what should one do?

Always assuming, as you suggest, that Scripture doesn’t need interpretation. It is obvious that those Scriptural passages mean that one should submit to Rome – is it not? Or, if not, doesn’t this mean that Scripture needs interpretation – and that that interpretation must boil down either to private interpretation – no matter how many magisterial Reformers are cited – or else to a God-given infallible interpreter?

Newman said that ultimately – if one were logically coherent (thank God many are not!) – it is either Rome or infidelity.

jj
TurretinFan January 3rd, 2011 7:44 pm :
Mr. Keil (re: #991)

Thanks for the helpful summary – glad to see you commenting round these here parts again. Particularly relevant to your “logical invalidity rebuttal” are comments 787 and 788 of this (absurdly) long thread. For those particularly interested in this rebuttal, reading those comments would be worthwhile.

Yes, this meshes nicely with my comments to Herbert above. (link to #787)

In 787, Bryan responded to the query I posed in 785 about the logical structure of his argument. Of course, making an argument logically valid is something anyone who’s had a 300-level philosophy or math course should be able to do, and thus by principles of philosophical charity (sheesh, much less Christian charity,) if there is any at all reasonable way to construe Bryan’s position in a logically valid manner, it should be done. It’s worth highlighting that we’re not even yet talking about soundness but mere validity. And as anyone who is relatively familiar with philosophy or logic knows, mere validity is relatively easy to come by.

Indeed. My comment about being generous in response to Herbert was a reference to letting some equivalent of Bryan’s modification in #787 be made. However, that still leaves the problem I identified in my response to Herbert and at #788, namely that the conclusion still needs to be modified.

While it can be modified to make the syllogism valid, the need to modify it also leads to rewrite quite a significant number of passages in the original article, where the overly broad conclusion was made.

I don’t have anything against the article being rewritten, but if we are to judge the article on its merits, I think an overly broad conclusion is a serious flaw.

You continued:

Thus, in response to my efforts to construe Bryan’s position in a logically valid fashion, Bryan offered two important clarifications in 787. First, the conclusion needs to be qualified in such a fashion so as to match its premises. Second, there are two implicit premises to be brought forward (which Bryan helpfully made explicit).

You made essentially the same point regarding Bryan’s first clarification in your 788:

It should be noted, however, that actually 10 is U’ not U, because U has a feature, “in this respect” that U’ lacks. Thus, U’ is not U, rather it is an invalid generalization of U.

Fair enough, but I take it that Bryan can add this clarification (as he did) without materially changing his fundamental argument (or conflicting with any other of his premises) at all. And of course, since we are still concerned with mere validity (not yet soundness,) that’s all that needs to be done in order to rebut the charge of invalidity.

I have highlighted in my response to Herbert (immediately above) the places where the broader wording is used. It would, I think, make a significant difference if the conclusion needed to be a heavily qualified lack of distinction as opposed to a general lack of distinction between the two positions.

Hopefully you noticed in my response to Herbert my willingness to overlook the issue of the missing implicit premise[s], but my reluctance to overlook something that is a major thematic element of the article.

You asked:

Allow me to ask a clarificatory question, then: When you allege that “Conclusion 10 (from the argument in the article) does not follow from 4 and 9” and that such constitutes a “logically invalid generalization”, do you intend to only argue against Bryan’s argument as initially presented in the article, Sec. IV.A or are you claiming that such a problem exists in Bryan’s argument as initially presented in Sec. IV.A and clarified in comment 787?

Hopefully I’ve answered that question already, but to be clear, the fact that the conclusion does not match the premises, and the fact that this non-matching is an oft-repeated element of the article is a significant problem, I think, not a minor correction – despite the fact that the necessary qualification does appear in at least two (I didn’t notice a third, but there may be one) places in the article.

I didn’t notice any other problems of logical validity, although I seem to recall that there were unnecessary items – but of course that in itself is not a formal fallacy.

You wrote:

I’ll be frank: I have taught college logic, and insofar as I can see, Bryan’s position as clarified in 787 is formally valid. (Sidenote: I also think Bryan’s suggestion to “re-write the argument to properly include 8 in getting to 9.5” ought to be done, but that change too is trivial and you can probably see how such a change would work if you give it a few minutes thought.) So if your claim is that IV.A’s summary is formally invalid, sure, but Bryan clarified it (and relevantly further, his clarifications involved no “troubling” changes to his position, so by principles of philosophical charity he ought to be allowed to clarify his position when requested.) But if you’re asserting that IV.A’s summary as clarified in 787 is invalid, could you please clarify why you take that to be the case? (Additionally, if you’re going to say that 787’s version involves a “logically invalid generalization,” could you please explain what the heck that means? I’m unfamiliar with such a term outside of its technical usage in predicate logic, and predicate logic doesn’t seem to come in to play here…Bryan’s argument is completely offered in terms of propositional logic).

Most of your comments there should be answered already, I think. As for the generalization, Bryan’s conclusion is “No Principled distinction …” which is another way of saying “all distinctions are not principled distinctions” whereas all he is entitled to (based on his premises) is “some distinctions are not principled distinctions.” Thus, by moving from some to all he has engaged in a logically invalid generalization (i.e. logically some X is not Y does not imply all X is not Y). I hope that clarifies what I meant, particularly if I used the wrong words to express myself.

-TurretinFan
TurretinFan January 3rd, 2011 7:52 pm :
Bryan:

I am trying to respond in roughly the order in which comments were made. As far as verses go, I see you’ve already picked one for me, and therefore let me off the hook on providing you with a verse. Had you not let me off the hook, I think I would have picked Romans 3:23 or 4:5 – I had narrowed it down basically to one of those, though there were numerous others to pick from.

-TurretinFan
GNW_Paul January 3rd, 2011 8:25 pm :
@TF

Sorry to pile on a bit here – you’re getting it from all directions today, but I’d say your keeping up pretty well.

This follows on my commnent #1006 which also addresses one of your straw man constructions of Catholic subordinate authority.

Your #1048 is another variation of the same straw man:

The lesser authority is trumped by the greater authority. The individual himself is not the highest authority. Nevertheless, it is the responsibility of the individual to follow the highest authority. Thus, for example, an individual in the Roman system must compare what his local bishop says to what the Council of Trent says, and follow Trent when the two disagree. That doesn’t make the individual pope, does it? Of course not. Even so, it does not make the individual the supreme authority when he follows the Word of God in Scripture rather than what his church tells him.

Which is partly true, but effectively wrong. The Pope acting through the Congregation of Doctrine and Faith (The Inquisition as it was formally known) as the authority to make me accountable for my interpretation of Trent, to review my position, and to rule on whether it is heresey or not. If I am found to be holding a hereteical belief I will be allowed to submit to the Church or be excommunicated. That is AUTHORITY! My Bishop also as Subsidary Authority in the matter, although I have the right to appeal to Rome.

I will trust this is an oversight on your part and not disingenuous. Since so many Protestants (not necessarily you personally) get so up in arms about the fact that the Catholic Church claims the AUTHORITY to declare someone a heretic, I am a bit surprised that you so dramatically fail to acknowledge that the Church both claims and regularly (perhaps not often enough for some of us) exercises that Authority.
GNW_Paul January 3rd, 2011 9:01 pm :
The Council of Trent interpretation question here is particularly interesting to me in that I myself was close to incurring an automatic excommunication about 20 years ago, through my association with a schismatic group that rejects Vatican II as a false council and declares that John XXIII was an apostate Pope.

I actually KNOW a good # of people who are actually excommunicated and members of schismatic groups because of their interpretation of Trent. And yes, the local Bishop has the authority to excommunicate them, but most of them are excommunicated automatically. I am also happy that I had the opportunity at midnight Mass on Christmas to see and welcome a group of 23 nuns formerly associated with that group who have rejoined the Catholic Church by submitting to the Local Bishop who had the AUTHORITY to lift their excommunications.
Sean Patrick January 3rd, 2011 9:31 pm :
TFan.

You wrote: It would be a difficulty if it were true. Your church may say it affirms the truth of every verse in Scripture, but it is one thing to say that you affirm it, and it is another thing to affirm it in fact.

Bryan responded: I’ll write a longer reply to your comment (#1000), but let’s have a concrete case in front of us, so it is not all hand-waving. Would you please name one verse (just one) which you think the Catholic Church either denies or does not affirm as true

You answered: “I think I would have picked Romans 3:23 or 4:5

The Catholic Church affirms both of those verses as true. What you need to admit is that the Catholic Church does not affirm the interpretation of those passages that you accept.
mateo January 3rd, 2011 9:39 pm :
TurrrentinFan : It’s very easy to define the doctrine of sola Scriptura in terms of objective standards. It’s even easy to distinguish the two doctrines in an objective way (based on the fact that one accepts that the church has authority, the other does not).

Every Protestant “church” has come into existance by a rejection of church authority by some man or woman. When a Protestant founds his own personal church, he is making a claim for “bible freedom” – the freedom to privately intepret the bible apart from any church authority. Luther and Calvin both created their own personal Protestant churches by presuming solo scriptura to be operative. That both Luther and Calvin claimed that their personal churches were “authoritative” is nothing more than hubris – an empty claim their their solo scriptura interpretations are authoritative simply because they say they are.

TurrrentinFan : One ought to be careful to distinguish between the kind of faith one has in Jesus, and the kind of faith one has in one’s church.

That doesn’t fly if I am a Protestant, and my church is a church with only one member – myself. In that case it would be impossible for me to make a distinction between what I believe about Jesus and what my church believes about Jesus. And if I, as a Protestant, go church shopping until I find a Protestant sect that completely agrees with my private interpretation of scriptures, then I am still in the same boat as I would be by belonging to a church that has me as its only member.

What possible reason can you give a to a Protestant that would compel him to submit to a Protestant sect that doesn’t agree with his personal interpretations of the bible? Why would any sane Protestant choose to submit to a Protestant sect that doesn’t agree with what he personally believes about Jesus?
Bryan Cross January 3rd, 2011 10:32 pm :
TF (re: #1048)

You wrote:

Consequently, one ought to be more willing to affirm what Scripture teaches than what one’s church teaches, when the two are in conflict. The Church, after all, is not Christ.

As I pointed out in #1009 and #1038, your statement here too glosses over the necessary role of the interpreter. Since the Catholic Church affirms the truth of every verse in Scripture, the point of disagreement (between Protestants and the Catholic Church) is not the truth of any verse of Scripture, but the interpretation of verses. When we include the role of the interpreter, your statement turns out to be:

Consequently, one ought to be more willing to affirm one’s own interpretation of Scripture than what one’s church teaches, when the two are in conflict. The Church, after all, is not Christ.

But when we fill out your statement in this way, we see two problems. First, I am not Christ. Therefore, even if the Church were not Christ, this would not provide any reason to place my interpretation over that of the Church. Second, the Church is the Body of Christ. We therefore fittingly express faith in Christ by putting faith in the subordinate authorities He established in His Church and through which He presently governs His Body. To doubt the Church’s teaching regarding the deposit of faith is to doubt Christ the Head of the Church. When we say “I believe in the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church” it is not a mere statement of belief in the existence of the Church; even the demons could do that. Of course, if one’s sect is not the “one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church” that Christ founded, then there is no reason to believe that the teaching of one’s sect is Christ’s teaching, or that submitting to one’s sect is a way of submitting to Christ. So faith in Christ is rightly expressed as faith in the Church only if the Church in question is the Church Christ founded, which is His Body.

At the end of your comment you wrote:

That is the nature of subordinate authority. The lesser authority is trumped by the greater authority. The individual himself is not the highest authority. Nevertheless, it is the responsibility of the individual to follow the highest authority. Thus, for example, an individual in the Roman system must compare what his local bishop says to what the Council of Trent says, and follow Trent when the two disagree. That doesn’t make the individual pope, does it? Of course not.

This is not an accurate presentation of the Catholic position, because you are presenting a false dilemma, namely that in such a case we must choose between following our own interpretation of the Council of Trent, and following our local bishop. But, there is a third, and normative option, namely, that we follow the Magisterium of the Church, i.e. the pope and bishops in communion with him. In doing so we will follow the Magisterial (and thus authoritative) interpretation of the Council of Trent, and follow our local bishop when he is orthodox, and not follow him when he is heretical. There always remains a Magisterial authority to which we must be subject, and so “that doesn’t make the individual pope.” But the Protestant is his own ultimate interpretive authority, and therefore is de facto his own pope, since he retains ultimate ecclesial authority.

Even so, it does not make the individual the supreme authority when he follows the Word of God in Scripture rather than what his church tells him.

Again, “when he follows the Word of God” actually means “when he follows his own interpretation of Scripture.” And when he follows his own interpretation of Scripture over that of the Magisterium Christ established (who speaks with Christ’s authority), then yes, this does make himself out to be the supreme authority. But because he was not given such authority, therefore his act of following his own interpretation over that of the Magisterium is an act of rebelling against Christ, whether he knows it to be so or not.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Ray Stamper January 3rd, 2011 11:11 pm :
TF,

The Church, after all, is not Christ.

“Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? . . . I asked, `Who are you, Lord?’ The Lord answered, `I am Jesus whom you are persecuting‘ [i.e. the Church]

Pax Christi,

Ray
herbert January 4th, 2011 12:28 am :
Hello, TurretinFan-
Concerning the two (primary) concerns you have with the formulation of the argument found in this article (The first of which concerns the usage of the word “principled” and the 2nd of which concerns the phrase “in this respect”) could likely be done away with were Bryan and Neal inclined to alter the argument a wee bit. Maybe they’re waiting for Dr. Mathison’s response before they take such measures (if such measures are indeed called for). Thanks for explaining your rationale, though. I do believe that I have gained some insight into your thinking (hopefully)!

Concerning the reply you offered dealing with St. John, Ch. 6, as well as the other stuff I brought up that wasn’t exactly related to this article (#988), though you kindly responded, I must apologize for derailing the conversation with that subject matter. And despite the fact that your response itself warrants a response, I must refrain in the interest of not drawing away from the focus of the article.

So with the focus of this article in mind, what’s becoming apparent to me through all of this conversation is the fact that the distinction you allege to exist between ecclesiastical authority (or absence thereof) for the solo christian and ecclesiastical authority for the sola christian is rendered meaningless once you acknowledge the fact that your church has no means of exercising its derivative authority due to the fact that it’s interminably, inexorably, temporally subordinate to (your private interpretation of) the Scriptures. Whereas, a Catholic who’s been wronged by his local bishop can appeal to Rome’s Vicar of Christ, and the temporal authority he’s capable of exercising, the authority to which you appeal (the Scriptures), by virtue of your direct access absent any interpretive act) despite your claims to the contrary, cannot act temporally in a definitive manner, hence, the proliferation of protestant sectarianism. When at odds, subscribers to the tradition of sola Scriptura, since both parties are appealing to the same God-breathed source, can do little more than accuse one another of dishonesty… or worse.

Ultimately, even if it’s granted that your alleged difference between sola and solo christianity exists, and your criticisms of the article’s argumentation are accepted as valid (though I’m not in the position to grant such an admission), and that your church does indeed have a valid claim to some form of derivative authority, due to the fact that your church has no right to exercise temporal authority over you should disagreement arise, the authority you ascribe to your church is toothless. thanks again, TurretinFan!

ps- The sense of the word I’m getting at is this: temporal- adj. pertaining to or concerned with the present life or this world.
Andrew McCallum January 4th, 2011 1:56 am :
Ray Stamper says this: Since making “individual judgments” and “individual aligning with an ecclesiastic group” are both instances of an individual exercising “ultimate interpretive authority” it appears that there is a perfect correspondence between your proposition and Bryan and Neal’s Proposition 1.

Ray – Yes, if we are speaking of “individual judgments” and “individuals aligning…” then they both amount to the same thing in the end. This is true of individual Protestant assessments of Scripture as well as individual Catholic assessments of tradition. But in the Protestant case, we are not speaking of individual assessments. Early on in this thread Keith Mathison referred to Hieko Oberman’s Tradition 1, 2, and 3. Here is what Mathison elsewhere has to say about Tradition 1:

The Reformation debate over sola Scriptura did not occur in a vacuum. It was the continuation of a long-standing medieval debate over the relationship between Scripture and tradition and over the meaning of “tradition” itself. In the first three to four centuries of the church, the church fathers had taught a fairly consistent view of authority. The sole source of divine revelation and the authoritative doctrinal norm was understood to be the Old Testament together with the Apostolic doctrine, which itself had been put into writing in the New Testament. The Scripture was to be interpreted in and by the church within the context of the regula fidei (“rule of faith”), yet neither the church nor the regula fidei were considered second supplementary sources of revelation. The church was the interpreter of the divine revelation in Scripture, and the regula fidei was the hermeneutical context, but only Scripture was the Word of God. Heiko Oberman (1930-2001) has termed this one-source concept of revelation “Tradition 1.”

So when Oberman speaks of Tradition 1 and Mathison talks of sola scriptura they are referring to what the Church referenced as its ultimate source of truth, not what the individual bases his individual judgments on. Mathison and Oberman also take up the modern Evangelical notion of each person providing their own interpretation without reference to the Church. This is what Oberman speaks of as “Tradition 0” and Mathison somewhat whimsically speaks of as “solo scriptura.” But please note that the Tradional 1/sola scriptura is not a matter of individual assessments of Scripture. This is why we cannot line up the “sola” and “solo” positions as if they are addressing exactly the same issue.
Andrew McCallum January 4th, 2011 2:04 am :
Mike,

I would like to start with reference to my post above to Ray. Do you get Mathison’s understanding of Tradition 1 and sola scriptura as Mathison/Oberman use them? I want to start here because, like Ray, you sometimes speak as if it is me or an individual Protestant who is coming to a particular decision. But the Mathison/Oberman discussion of Tradition 1 focuses on how the Church came to her determinations beginning in the Early Church. And Mathison’s reliance on Oberman is a reflection on Oberman’s reliance on the Reformers who were in turn commenting on the historical Church beginning in the 1st century. I say this because I want to make sure we are speaking of the same thing. My issue with the article is that Bryan is not always on the same page as Mathison, particularly on the Tradition 1 matter.

I argue that, if ecclesial authority is not infallible in such matters, as you contend, then it could always be wrong; if it could always be wrong, then we can’t be certain it’s right; and if we can’t be certain it’s right, then we don’t have “the level of certainty God intended.”

I take this statement as a summary of what your explanation below is of the problems with PHP, which as you say you have stated before. And I would say again that I really think you need to take your argument out of the realm of the purely theoretical and try to apply it to some example from the Early Church. You seemed to think I was dreaming up some new opinion that had no academic basis with my comments on Nicea, but all I was doing is trying to make application of what Mathison had stated concerning TraditionI/sola scriptura. Of course, this means we need to get straight what Mathison understands by these terms which, as this thread demonstrates, is no easy matter for Catholics.

You are right theoretically that if we cannot say something is infallible then it could be wrong. Of course this is true with everything in every other area of human endeavor including the majority of theology, since as I’m sure you will admit, there is no need for us to be as 100% infallibly certain on most statements that are made about theological matters. Even in the RCC things stated infallibly are relatively few. But the fact that we don’t have this absolute epistemological certainty in every other area of human thought as well as in theological non-de fide matters does not mean that we cannot have the level of certainty that God intended. Where I think you have fallen short is in telling us what exactly the problems are in having something like the pronouncements at Nicea defined non infallibly. It seems you do not want to take actual applications of your thoughts, but for the sake of apologetics, I would encourage you to consider why Nicea had to be promulgated infallibly while other areas of theology did not. But please consider another example if you like.

As another example let’s look at the matter of justification. At a relatively short period of time into the Reformation there were a number of very tightly defined Protestant summaries on justification all saying the same thing with some differences in emphasis. But on the Catholic side before Trent the range of opinions on justification was massive. It was not as if the RCC had not spoken to the matter of justification, it’s just that there was nothing proclaimed infallibly or anything close to it for that matter. And even after Trent the RCC did not get to the type of consensus of the Reformed confessions. Now of course we can see progress in the RCC’s understanding of justification, but there was much that was left to opinion even after Trent on this very important matter. Now maybe it could be said that the RCC will never infallibly work out all the important problems she had dealt with since the Early Church on the matter of justification and so my question to you is why would this be a problem? Certainly there was progress at Carthage (and Orange too) and certainly there was progress at Trent and certainly there has been progress since Trent, but perhaps there will never be anything infallibly promulgated by the RCC on some matters concerning justification. But as long as you feel there is progress being made, why is this a problem?

So now back to Nicea. In God’s providence we got what we did at Nicea, but what if the progress at Nicea had paralleled that of the Church in her determinations on justification? Or what if Nicea had not gotten things right and it took another council meeting in following years to get it right? Why would this have been a problem? You speak of this problem that “we cannot be certain that it is right…” as if not being 100% correct is necessarily a problem. But you know that sometimes the RCC has gotten things wrong (speaking of non-de fide matters) and then corrected them later. So why do we need to be 100% correct in these certain times and certain conditions if we know that in so many times in the past, from the earliest history of God’s people, that errors are corrected and God’s people working through His Word and by the power of His Spirit come to a more perfect understanding of what had been previously understood?
Bryan Cross January 4th, 2011 2:44 am :
TF (re: #1051)

You wrote:

Had you not let me off the hook, I think I would have picked Romans 3:23 or 4:5

Well, let’s look at both of those verses. The point in contention, recall, is whether the disagreement between Catholics and Protestants involves a denial of the truth of some passages of Scripture, or whether it involves a disagreement concerning the interpretation of those passages. You claim that the Catholic Church (effectively) denies the truth of certain passages of Scripture, and I am saying that the Protestant-Catholic disagreement concerning these passages is an interpretive disagreement, not a disagreement about the truth of those passages. I already showed this in one example, in comment #1009. But let’s look at the two additional passages you just mentioned.

First, consider Romans 3:23:

for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,

In your opinion, the ‘all’ [πάντες] means every human exhaustively, taken individually, Christ alone excepted. That’s an assumption you bring to the text. Therefore, because the Catholic Church teaches that Mary was conceived without sin, and never sinned mortally or venially throughout her life, you conclude that this Catholic doctrine is contrary to the meaning of this verse of Scripture. But in the Catholic understanding, by ‘all,’ the Holy Spirit is not referring to “every human exhaustively, taken individually,” but is teaching that the righteousness of Christ is for both Gentiles and Jews, which is why He says in the previous verse, “for there is no distinction.” He is saying that the need for, and gift of the righteousness that comes through Christ is not limited to Gentiles alone, or to Jews alone, but belongs to both without distinction. Hence the ‘all’ is an all of catholicity. Of course it is true that every human being is either a Jew or a Gentile, and therefore falls under the ‘all.’ But because here this term is not intended to mean that every human individually has sinned, this passage is not in conflict with the Church’s doctrine of Mary’s sinlessness for the same reason why this passage is not in conflict with the Church’s doctrine of Christ’s sinlessness; the ‘all’ is not intended in an individually exhaustive way, so as to rule out exceptions such as Christ and His Mother. You’re familiar with this sense of ‘all’ because this is how [some] Calvinists interpret the word ‘all’ in passages like “God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved” (1 Tim 2:4). Again, I have no desire to debate the meaning of these verses. My only point here is to show that the disagreement is not about the truth of Romans 3:23, but about the interpretation of the verse, on account of a disagreement concerning the sense of the term ‘all.’

Second, consider Romans 4:5:

But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness, [τῷ δὲ μὴ ἐργαζομένῳ, πιστεύοντι δὲ ἐπὶ τὸν δικαιοῦντα τὸν ἀσεβῆ, λογίζεται ἡ πίστις αὐτοῦ εἰς δικαιοσύνην, ]

Presumably you think that this verse means that justification is by faith alone, because you take ‘work’ in an unqualified sense, so that St. Paul is saying that no works of any sort play any role in justification. Presumably you also take ‘credited’ in a nominalistic sense, such that this verse means that justification is by extra nos imputation. Presumably you also think that the ‘faith’ in view here is fides informis, not fides formata. (See here.) Presumably you also think that the righteousness [δικαιοσύνην] being referred to here is something other than [instantaneous] sanctification.

For those reasons you (presumably) think that this verse is incompatible with some combination of Canons 9,10,11,20 and 24 of Session 6 of the Council of Trent. But, in a Catholic understanding, by ‘work’ [ἐργαζομένῳ] St. Paul is not speaking here of all human actions simpliciter, but only of attempts to merit heaven apart from the grace that comes through Christ. Hence, in the Catholic understanding, St. Paul is not saying here that we can do nothing to prepare ourselves to receive sanctifying grace. Therefore, given this understanding of the term ‘work,’ this verse is compatible with Canon 9 of Trent 6. Likewise, given this sense of ‘work,’ St. Paul is not here talking about works done in a state of grace, coming out of heart filled with agape. And because he is not talking about works-done-in-grace, he is therefore not saying that [for those who have reached the age or reason] works-done-in-grace are neither necessary for attaining eternal life nor are means of growing in the righteousness received at the moment of regeneration. Therefore, given this understanding of the term ‘work,’ this verse is compatible with Canons 20 and 24 of Trent 6.

In addition, in the Catholic understanding, at the moment of justification we receive [by an infusion] the grace and agape Christ merited for us on the cross, poured out into our hearts by the Holy Spirit (Romans 5:5). The righteousness we receive in us is this agape by which He [instantly] makes us just, and which informs the justifying faith of which St. Paul is writing. Hence the nature of the “credited” [λογίζεται] here (in Rom 4:5) is not an extra nos, nominalistic imputation. Instead, the God who cannot lie (see here) counts (or reckons) us according to what we have actually been made by the immediate regenerating work of the Holy Spirit. Hence, given this understanding of ‘credited,’ this verse is compatible with Canons 10 and 11 of Trent 6.

So when we look carefully at the reasons underlying the incompatibility between Trent and Reformed ways of reading Romans 4:5, we find that the reasons you think this verse is incompatible with Catholic doctrine are based on assumptions you bring to the text of Scripture, concerning the meaning of the terms ‘work,’ ‘faith,’ ‘credited,’ and ‘righteousness.’ Protestants tend to think that the meaning of such terms is best determined by consulting a lexicon, whereas the Catholic mind understands them by way of the Tradition. But this methodological difference involves important philosophical and theological assumptions. (See my “The Tradition and the Lexicon.”)

Again, I don’t wish to debate the meaning of Romans 4:5. My intention here in this comment is only to point out that the Protestant-Catholic disagreement concerning this verse is not about the truth of the verse, but about its interpretation, due to the difference between the linguistic and theological assumptions you are bringing to the text, and the Tradition the Catholic Church is bringing to the text. It would be presumptuous and arrogant to claim that anyone who denies your own interpretation of a verse is ipso facto denying the truth of that verse. Such a stance would be, essentially, to make yourself out to be pope.

So, if after three examples (i.e. 1 Tim 4:1-3, Rom 3:23, and Rom 4:5) it is clear that the disagreement in each example is not about the truth of the verses, but about their interpretation, then that takes us back to comment #978, and we can begin to discuss the question of interpretive authority, which is the topic of this article.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Leonard January 4th, 2011 7:54 am :
Andrew says:

Ray – Yes, if we are speaking of “individual judgments” and “individuals aligning…” then they both amount to the same thing in the end. This is true of individual Protestant assessments of Scripture as well as individual Catholic assessments of tradition. But in the Protestant case, we are not speaking of individual assessments. Early on in this thread Keith Mathison referred to Hieko Oberman’s Tradition 1, 2, and 3. Here is what Mathison elsewhere has to say about Tradition 1:

The Reformation debate over sola Scriptura did not occur in a vacuum. It was the continuation of a long-standing medieval debate over the relationship between Scripture and tradition and over the meaning of “tradition” itself. In the first three to four centuries of the church, the church fathers had taught a fairly consistent view of authority. The sole source of divine revelation and the authoritative doctrinal norm was understood to be the Old Testament together with the Apostolic doctrine, which itself had been put into writing in the New Testament. The Scripture was to be interpreted in and by the church within the context of the regula fidei (“rule of faith”), yet neither the church nor the regula fidei were considered second supplementary sources of revelation. The church was the interpreter of the divine revelation in Scripture, and the regula fidei was the hermeneutical context, but only Scripture was the Word of God. Heiko Oberman (1930-2001) has termed this one-source concept of revelation “Tradition 1.”

So when Oberman speaks of Tradition 1 and Mathison talks of sola scriptura they are referring to what the Church referenced as its ultimate source of truth, not what the individual bases his individual judgments on. Mathison and Oberman also take up the modern Evangelical notion of each person providing their own interpretation without reference to the Church. This is what Oberman speaks of as “Tradition 0” and Mathison somewhat whimsically speaks of as “solo scriptura.” But please note that the Tradional 1/sola scriptura is not a matter of individual assessments of Scripture. This is why we cannot line up the “sola” and “solo” positions as if they are addressing exactly the same issue.

Now Bryan or any other writer of CTC would reply to this, but I am just referring to a practical point that I have seen in relation in Sola Scriptura, which self-refutes it.

Here it is claimed: “they are referring to what the Church referenced as its ultimate source of truth”, but what the Scriptures say about let say Baptism (since I also think that especially and in a clearer way, with Eucharist, they indicate this) where does it say it is a symbol, and how the authority of the Scripture can arbitrate between the Lutherans who hold to baptismal regeneration and Calvinists, who don’t. With baptism, the Scriptures, from the OT, with typologies, and explicitly in the NT, are full of references like “water and the Spirit”, analogies of baptism or washing with forgiveness. We have John 3:5, 1 Peter 3:18-22, esp.v21; Acts 22:16 and Titus 3:4-7, among many others, which are not necessary since Bryan has posted an article on this topic. We also have the Eucharist. Here the Reformed are self-contradicting, since they hold to the rule of interpretation, which has been in consensus since the beginning, according to which we should not depart from the literal and obvious sense, except only where reason makes it untenable or necessity requires, why we should not take Christ in his word, when he claimed “This is My Body, or Blood”. The main tenet of the Reformed Faith, Justification by Faith cannot be supported in its “alone” reference, by Sola Scriptura, since Scripture in James (more clearly) and elsewhere says the opposite.

Leonard
TurretinFan January 4th, 2011 9:36 am :
Mr. Stamper (Re: #1004):

I had written:

Interpretation is simply the way by which we understand the meaning, but it is the meaning that is the issue, not the interpretation.

You replied:

As a verb, “interpretation” is “the way by which” one understands the meaning. However, the act of interpretation, naturally yields a conceptual “understanding of the meaning”, which conception, is rightly denoted by the noun “interpretation”. It is this “understanding of the meaning” (i.e. interpretation-noun) which is communicated when human beings interact via text or speech. Hence, any evaluation, or discussion, concerning the meaning of a disputed Scriptural text (for instance, the meaning of “Justification” according to St. Paul in his letter to the Romans), must always involve an evaluation of one or more communicated “understandings” (aka interpretations) of said text. Thus, “the issue” (a phrase which often implies verbal/textual dialogue between two or more people – as opposed to mere self-talk) is, in fact, the interpretation of meaning and NOT the unfiltered meaning. Meaning makes its way into “issue-oriented” dialogue through the filtered “understanding” of the communicators, that is, through interpretations.

That does seem to be the way that humans operate, if I’ve understood you correctly. We understand a statement made by another (whether orally or in writing is immaterial), hopefully according to the intended understanding of the person making the statement.

In other words, the speaker (or writer) intends his statement to mean “X,” and we read or listen to the statement we try to learn what “X” is. Sometimes it happens that two listeners (or readers) hear the same statement and conclude two different things from it. If they argue about it, the statement becomes a disputed statement, and the dispute centers (or ought to center) around whose understanding corresponds to “X,” the objective reality of what the speaker was trying to communicate.

You continued:

That I take to be the technical sense of Keith Mathison’s dictum:

All appeals to Scripture are appeals to interpretations of Scripture. The only real question is: whose interpretation?

Yes, perhaps it is. I don’t think Mathison’s comment is especially helpful, in that I don’t think it is very accurate. Appeals to Scripture normally involve interpretation of Scripture, sometimes explicit, sometimes implicit. But people are appealing to the Scriptures themselves as the rule of faith, not simply to “an interpretation of Scripture.”

You continued:

“Appeals” denote some form of dialogue between persons. Persons in dialogue concerning the meaning of Scripture, in fact, communicate their “understanding” of meaning; not meaning simpliciter. Hence, “appeals” to Scripture are appeals to interpretations of Scripture as Mathison succinctly states.

Of course, one might “appeal” to Scripture to justify one’s own views to oneself, but normally, yes, one appeals to a rule in the context of a discussion with another person.

As for communicating, a person can simply quote Scripture. Sometimes this resolves a dispute. I’ve seen it happen before. Hopefully, in this situation the text itself communicates its meaning – the person quoting it intends to convey that same meaning – and the person listening hears the text and understands that same meaning.

In a second situation, a person who understands a text can explain the meaning of the text to a second party, and the second party can assent to this explanation. Hopefully, in this case, the person who understood the text understood it correctly. If so, the person has communicated the meaning of the text.

In a third situation, a person who does not understand a text tries to explain its meaning to a second party. However, the second party misunderstands the person and yet, thanks to God’s providence, correctly understands the meaning of the text. In this case we would be loathe to say that the person has communicated the meaning of the text, although he was the means by which the meaning was communicated.

There are also other situations. There are situations where a text is quoted, but the listening party does not understand the text. There are situations where a meaning is assigned to the text, but the meaning assigned to the text is not the meaning the author had in mind. There are also situations where the meaning assigned to the text is explained to the listener, but the listener rejects the meaning of the text.

This last case is the case in which all sincere Christians think that they find themselves when disputing a text with another person. Of course, sometimes people are mistaken. Nevertheless, the appeal that they are making is to the text (that is, to the meaning of the text), and if they are mistaken about what that meaning is, they are mistaken. No sincere Christian should say, “I don’t care what the Holy Spirit meant, my interpretation is thus-and-such.”

-TurretinFan
TurretinFan January 4th, 2011 10:06 am :
Jesse (Re #1008):

You asked:

Wouldn’t a better question of TF be: Can you show me an example of where the Catholic Church said, “Here’s what we teach. It doesn’t gel with Scripture, but that’s OK.”

After all, I can point to numerous verses that I think contradict Protestant teaching. And the Protestant will just offer how that verse gels with his or her creed, based on his or her own unique interpretation.

As I like to say, the Sciptures are always 100% sufficient for expressing whatever somebody wants them to say.

It’s not my position that your church openly defies Scripture and says: “Scriptures say, X, but we say unto you, not X.”

That said, the approach endorsed by Rome is this: If you think Scripture says “X,” and you think we say, “not X,” you should believe “not X.”

Hopefully you see the problem with that.

-TurretinFan
Michael Liccione January 4th, 2011 1:13 pm :
Andrew (#1060):

As I understand your comment, you’re inviting me to approach the main question at issue by means of considering an Oberman-esque account of how theologians over time, starting in the early Church, developed their conceptions of the relationship between Scripture, tradition, and the authority of the Church. Now as a matter of fact, I have considered the argument Oberman makes in his book Dawn of the Reformation, in particular the way he distinguishes T1, T2, and T3 both as concepts and as historical developments. On some points I agree with him; on others, I don’t. One major defect of his critique of Catholicism’s development of the idea of Tradition is that he published just before Vatican II’s dogmatic constitution on divine revelation, Dei Verbum, was completed and promulgated, so of course he does not take account of its finely crafted doctrinal presentation. In my view, then his work has only the force of an insufficiently informed opinion. And that brings me to the main point I want to make here.

I thought we had agreed that the main question at issue in this thread–at least between us–is philosophical. But when I make my arguments accordingly, you find them too abstract. What you really want me to do is to make a historical study of how the interrelationship between Scripture, tradition, and the authority of the Church was handled in the early Church. But I just don’t believe that such studies do or would yield a useful template for handling those issues now. Not even in principle can they yield anything decisive for the hermeneutical debate being conducted in this thread, because that same debate would simply carry over into such a study. I experienced that vividly when, a few years ago, I was involved in a lengthy debate on my own blog about how to interpret St. Irenaeus on the interrelationship of Scripture, tradition, and the authority of the Church. All that the debate over exegeting Irenaeus accomplished was to reproduce, in a specific case, the broader, more philosophical debate about hermeneutics that we’d already been having. That goes to show that the real issue is not who said what in the past, but how their words should be interpreted in light of a broader hermeneutical paradigm, so that we can sort out what must be taken as de fide from mere opinions about what this-or-that text or theologian meant. You don’t seem prepared to do that. But that’s what I believe we must do.

I suspect you’re not prepared to do that because you’re still operating from within the Protestant HP, by which the way to learn the Christian religion is to make a study of the early sources and come up with a cogent opinion about what they mean. But without a way to distinguish in principle between what’s de fide and what’s only opinion about how to interpret the sources–whether Scripture or anything else–one is left only with fallible scholarly opinions that lack any binding authority. The debate you need to involve yourself in is precisely how to make the principled distinction that is most definitely needed. And as I said, that issue is philosophical. The interaction between Bryan and TurretinFan shows that. At the core of their debate is a disagreement over what the very concept of interpretation involves.

And of course there are other philosophical debates related to that. Until we get that sort of thing settled, chewing over old texts will get us nowhere. That is why I see your invitation to me to consider the historical development of Nicene orthodoxy and the doctrine of justification as idle in this context. First tell me, as explicitly as you can, how you propose to reach “certainty” about any doctrine at all without ecclesial infallibility. Then I’ll explain once again why you can’t.

Best,
Mike
Ray Stamper January 4th, 2011 1:29 pm :
Dear TF,

Thank you for your response. You wrote:

Appeals to Scripture normally involve interpretation of Scripture, sometimes explicit, sometimes implicit. But people are appealing to the Scriptures themselves as the rule of faith, not simply to “an interpretation of Scripture.”

I must confess that I fail to see the point of this distinction. People are not appealing to the generic term “Scriptures”. In communicating an “appeal” to another person, they are appealing to their understanding of the “meaning” (conceptual if you will) which the Holy Spirit – through the biblical author – has embedded in the text of Scripture. You seem to acknowledge as much when you say (and I agree):

In other words, the speaker (or writer) intends his statement to mean “X,” and we read or listen to the statement we try to learn what “X” is.

What then is the practical point of saying that “people are appealing to Scriptures themselves as a rule of faith, not simply, ‘an interpretation of Scripture’”? In point of fact people are precisely appealing to their understanding (interpretation) of the God-intended “meaning” embedded in Scripture. The Scriptures, as a “rule of faith”, constitute the common textual data-set out of which people attempt to extract the God-intended “meaning” with reference to some point or article of faith. The moment the Scriptural reader begins to communicate his “understanding” of that meaning to another person – what he first and foremost communicates is his understanding. Whether that “understanding” accords with the God-intended “meaning” embedded in the text is the million-dollar-question: the question which specifically raises the problem of “interpretive authority”, since one quite common possibility is that the communicated understanding is mistaken as you seem to acknowledge when you write:

Nevertheless, the appeal that they are making is to the text (that is, to the meaning of the text), and if they are mistaken about what that meaning is, they are mistaken.

You then describe a number of scenarios which highlight various problem points where “mistakes” might creep in – and I agree with these descriptions. However, the obvious possibility for error does nothing to illuminate what possible purpose or goal you have in mind by maintaining some distinction which – as far as I can tell – is meaningless from an existential POV, even if there is a semantic difference in saying: “But people are appealing to the Scriptures themselves as the rule of faith, not simply to “an interpretation of Scripture.”

Given as much, the Reformed “understanding” –say on the God-intended “meaning” of Justification embedded by God through St. Paul in the book of Romans – when it is communicated as an “appeal”, is an appeal-to-another-person to receive/accept the Reformed “understanding” as an accurate mapping of the God-intended “meaning” embedded in the Scriptural epistle (“rule of faith”).

On several occasions now, you have written comments which appear to express the Reformed understanding of “the Gospel”, or understanding of Scripture, as if it were somehow dropped from heaven, having avoided the human process of interpretation such that the Reformed position just is evidently synonymous with the God-intended “meaning” embedded in Scripture; whereas the Catholic understanding (and presumably others) is a mere interpretation (and an errant one at that).

Bryan has now written several responses making the explicit claim that you have repeatedly “glossed” the role of the interpreter in the course of your dialogue on this site. As it stands, I see no way to avoid agreement with Bryan on this point. Perhaps you can explain how the Reformed “understandings” of various doctrines derived from the Scriptures are not, in fact, interpretations? Or else, perhaps you are willing to acknowledge that significant points of Reformed theology are indeed understandings (interpretations) of Scripture and we can move on to the larger problem, which is “how do we know whose interpretation represents the God-intended meaning embedded in Scripture?” As you say, none of us – including the Reformed – want to be an insincere Christian such that we might declare:

“I don’t care what the Holy Spirit meant, my interpretation is thus-and-such.”

But nor do we want to declare:

“my interpretation is thus-and-such, therefore it just is what the Holy Spirit meant”

without giving some explanation as to why we should think such a one-to-one correspondence exists, no?

Pax et Bonum,

Ray
TurretinFan January 4th, 2011 1:29 pm :
Mateo (re: #1005)

I had written:

… I would encourage you to join a Reformed church because that is where the Gospel is preached …

You replied:

It seems to me that TurrentinFan believes that his particular “reformed” Protestant sect teaches the unadulterated Gospel truth. But thousands upon thousands of other Protestant sects also make this claim, and the other Protestant sects teach doctrine that contradict the doctrines taught by TurrentinFan’s sect. So how would a practicing Catholic ever decide if TurretinFan’s sect is the only Protestant sect teaching orthodox doctrine, as opposed to beleiving the claims of the thousands of other Protestant sects that insist that they are teaching orthodox doctrine?

You’re mistaken about my claims. There are many denominations that preach the gospel. I am not a sectarian, that is to say, I do not believe that my denomination is the “one true church.” I don’t even mention which denomination is my denomination! I’m not promoting a particular denomination.

I also don’t claim that everything that each Reformed denomination teaches is 100% correct. What arrogance for any group of fallible men to claim infallibility without divine warrant! No, neither me, nor my denomination, nor any of the other myriad of Gospel-preaching denominations and non-denominational independent churches claims ecclesiastical infallibility.

You seem to recognize this, though, for you continued:

Does any “reformed” sect claim that when their church authorities teach doctrine, that these reformed teachers are protected by a charism of infallibility that guarantees that their teachers cannot teach heresy? No. The only thing that “reformed authorities” can offer me, a potential convert, are their opinions basesd on their private interpretations of the Protestant bible. The same is true with most of the other thousands upon thousands of Protestant sects to which I could potentially convert. They also do not claim to be offering me anything more than their opinions about which doctrines I should embrace based on their private interpretations of the Protestant bible. As a potential convert to a sola scriptura confessing sect of Protestantism, I am forced into the position of being my ultimate temporal authority on matters of doctrine.

You are forced to rely on God’s Word as your ultimate authority in matters of doctrine. Not just forced, but actively encouraged. Any godly minister will tell you to compare his teachings to the Word of God, and if they are in conflict to follow the Word of God.

In contrast, Rome’s teaching requires you to submit to Rome’s teaching even when it appears to you that there is a conflict between what Rome teaches and what Scripture teaches. That’s very different to be sure – but is that difference good?

You continued:

If I were to convert to Protestantism, I can’t imagine that I would reject every doctrine taught by the Catholic Church. As a Protestant convert, I would be nothing more than a cafeteria Catholic that presumed to possess the authority to pick and chose which doctrines taught by the Catholic Church I would accept based on my own private interpretation of the bible. In short, I would be in the same state as Calvin and Luther who were both cafeteria Catholics that presumed that they had the authority to found their own personal churches – personal churches that taught doctrine that reflected their private interpretations of the bible.

For me, to become a cafeteria Catholic would hardly seem to warrent the title of “convert”. If I am merely creating my own personal do-it-yourself religion, I am not “converting” at all. I am merely creating a personal religion that I claim to believe in.

a) Not every doctrine taught by Rome is wrong.

b) Following God’s Word as best you can, trusting in His grace, praying, and seeking the aid of the Holy Spirit is hardly “creating a personal religion.”

Do what thou wilt, let that be the whole of the law. – Aleister Crowley, Satanist

The Satanists that I peronally know tell me that one can embrace Satanism without worshipping Satan. Satanism is supposedly about “freedom” – the freedom to do what thou wilt. Do-it-yourself religion is the essence Satanism. Conversion to Christ means giving up the claim to “do as thou wilt”.

Let me suggest a different comparison:

8. This we have said in the case where the things done are similar. In the case where they are diverse, we find a man by charity made fierce; and by iniquity made winningly gentle. A father beats a boy, and a boy-stealer caresses. If you name the two things, blows and caresses, who would not choose the caresses, and decline the blows? If you mark the persons, it is charity that beats, iniquity that caresses. See what we are insisting upon; that the deeds of men are only discerned by the root of charity. For many things may be done that have a good appearance, and yet proceed not from the root of charity. For thorns also have flowers: some actions truly seem rough, seem savage; howbeit they are done for discipline at the bidding of charity. Once for all, then, a short precept is given you: Love, and do what you will: whether you hold your peace, through love hold your peace; whether you cry out, through love cry out; whether you correct, through love correct; whether you spare, through love do you spare: let the root of love be within, of this root can nothing spring but what is good.

(source)

You concluded by quoting:

For whosoever will save his life, shall lose it: and whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel, shall save it. Mark 8:24

To which I add my hearty “amen.” And the gospel may be found in Scripture.

-TurretinFan
TurretinFan January 4th, 2011 2:22 pm :
GNW_Paul (re: #1006):

You wrote:

Bryan has rightly decided not to be distracted by every incorrect premise or fallacy in you #1000 reply, but I can’t let this one go by.

I’m glad for your comment, although I am eager to have my mistakes corrected.

I had written:

c) Your submission to your local priest and bishop is based – at least in part and in some sense – on your agreement with him about what your ultimate authority teaches. If he told you that for penance you should pray several “Hail Satans,” I trust you wouldn’t do it. If he taught that transubstantiation is wrong, I’m confident you’d ignore what he has to say. Why? Because you don’t agree with them about what your ultimate authority teaches. If they say it teaches that is permissible to pray to Satan or deny Transubstantiation, you no longer submit to their authority in that matter. Thus if (2) were true (regardless of whether (1) is true), then you would have no real subordinate authority.

You replied:

This is a straw man. The Bishops, the Bishop of Rome included have limits to their authority. No Bishop, not even the Pope has authority to command anyone to do something contrary to the Faith like pray to Satan. As for a local Bishop abusing or going beyond his authority by teaching contrary to the Faith (denying transubstantiation or encouraging prayers to Satan) that is why Rome is needed to correct the situation.

I’m not sure why you call my comment a straw man. My point was simply that you recognize that there are limits on subordinate authority.

I notice that you said that denying transubstantiation is “contrary to the Faith.” I agree that this is the Roman position. What you’ve summarized as “the Faith” is your rule of faith. It is what you follow when there is an apparent contradiction. If your local parish priest starts telling you that transubstantiation is a bunch of nonsense, you won’t listen to him. That’s not because his authority is not real in your religion, but because there is a higher authority than him. And that doesn’t mean you’re above your priest, just because you’re entitled to disagree with him when he teaches contrary to “the Faith.” Does it?

And if it does not, then it likewise does not mean that the individual is above the church in sola Scriptura, simply because the individual is not required to submit to teachings of the church that are contrary to the Scriptures (our rule of faith).

That’s my point. I think, if you consider it carefully, you’ll see it is not a straw man.

-TurretinFan
mateo January 4th, 2011 2:33 pm :
Bible freedom: the individual is free to interpret the Bible for himself or herself, using the best tools of scholarship and biblical study available to the individual.

Michael Liccone: … without a way to distinguish in principle between what’s de fide and what’s only opinion about how to interpret the sources–whether Scripture or anything else–one is left only with fallible scholarly opinions that lack any binding authority.

Well said, Michael.

For men and women that believe that the bible is inerrant, the fact that Luther and Calvin offered contradictory opinions in their private interpretations of the bible, means that we know with absolute certainty that either Luther or Calvin must be a heretic.

The question I would ask Anderw McCallum, TurrentinFan, or any other Calvinist, is how they know that Luther was a heretic, but Calvin was not.
Bryan Cross January 4th, 2011 4:45 pm :
TF (re: #1064),

You wrote:

That said, the approach endorsed by Rome is this: If you think Scripture says “X,” and you think we say, “not X,” you should believe “not X.”

Hopefully you see the problem with that.

I don’t. You are talking either about interpretations of Scripture, or about the direct statements of Scripture. Consider both horns of that dilemma. First, if you are talking about interpretations of Scripture, then we should submit our interpretation of Scripture to that of the Church. That’s because Scripture is the Church’s book, not my book. (It is my book only insofar as I belong to the Church.) The Church has interpretive authority, and we don’t. Moreover, we (Catholics) believe that Christ has promised to guide the Church into all truth, by His Holy Spirit. Therefore we ought to submit our interpretation of Scripture to that of the Church, and allow the Church to inform our interpretation of Scripture.

Now consider the other horn of the dilemma. If you are claiming that in her teaching the Church can contradict the direct statements of Scripture, then your statement presupposes something Catholics believe to be impossible, such as the possibility that God could make a rock so large He could not lift it. We believe that God will always prevent His Church from rejecting any verse of the Bible. So claiming that when the Church contradicts a direct statement of Scripture we should continue to believe the direct statement of Scripture, is speaking of an impossible hypothetical.

Therefore, whether you are talking about the interpretation of Scripture or the direct statements of Scripture, we have good reason always to submit our understanding of Scripture to that of the Church, and have no justifying reason to arrogate interpretive authority to ourselves.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
TurretinFan January 4th, 2011 7:21 pm :
Bryan (re: #1009):

I had written:

Rome’s claims are so plainly contrary both to the historical evidence and (infinitely more importantly) the testimony of Scripture

And I had explained:

The “testimony of Scripture” refers to what the Scripture says, which is a meaning, not merely the letters used to express the meaning. Interpretation is simply the way by which we understand the meaning, but it is the meaning that is the issue, not the interpretation.

You have now responded:

So what the Catholic Church’s teachings are “plainly contradictory” to is your determination of the meaning of Scripture, or the-meaning-of-Scripture-as-interpreted-by-you.

What your church’s teachings are contrary to is the meaning of Scripture. That statement reflects a variety of judgments, or if you want to call those judgments “interpretations” – a variety of interpretations. However, the standard and measure is the meaning – the judgment is the comparison of that meaning and your church’s teaching. That judgment involves identifying the meaning of the Scripture and the identifying the meaning of your church’s teaching.

It is strange that you seem to want to insist on changing my claims. My claim is that the meaning of Scripture conflicts with what your church teaches. My claim is not the meta-claim that “my interpretation of Scripture conflicts with what your church teaches” or the meta-claim that “the Scripture conflicts with my interpretation of what your church teaches,” or the doubly-meta-claim “my interpretation of Scripture conflicts with my interpretation of what your church teaches.” Nor is my claim the further extrapolated “it is my opinion that my interpretation of Scripture conflicts with my interpretation of what your church teaches.”

Those are not my claims, although that does not mean that those things are not true. It is my opinion, of course, or I wouldn’t claim it. I don’t claim things that are contrary to my opinion. It is based on my understanding of the Scripture and of the teachings of your church, not just a random guess. Nevertheless, my claim is a claim about the testimony of Scripture and about the teaching of your church. My claim is that the two conflict, and that consequently a person ought to follow Scripture rather than your church.

You continued:

In #1001 I asked you for a particular verse, but I’ll just pick one you’ve already discussed. Consider 1 Tim 4:1-3:

But the Spirit explicitly says that in later times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons, by means of the hypocrisy of liars seared in their own conscience as with a branding iron, men who forbid marriage and advocate abstaining from foods which God has created to be gratefully shared in by those who believe and know the truth.

Regarding this passage you claimed:

Nuns, Monks, Priests, and Bishops are forbidden in Roman Catholicism (for the most part, though there are a few married priests in some of the other rites besides the Latin rite) from being married. This is an error and a point at which, while it has a lengthy tradition, the Roman Catholic Church stands against Scripture. … Yes, it is against Scripture. … To eliminate all married men from consideration is to render Scripture void through one’s tradition. … If the Roman Catholic Church followed the doctrine of Scripture, especially as taught in 1 Timothy 4:1-3, then it would not have this particular discipline. … The practice of requiring those who wish to have office in the church to be celibate is wrong. It is contrary 1 Timothy 4:1-3, … Rome is wrong to require such celibacy, Rome is wrong to forbid men and women from marrying, and Rome is wrong to teach that unconditional vows of celibacy are good. On this matter, Rome stands against Scripture. (my emphases)

In your judgment, 1 Tim 4:1-3 means that under no circumstances whatsoever, and in no sense whatsoever, may the Church or the State restrict marriage, such that the Church may not require celibacy for certain ecclesial offices.

I don’t accept that characterization of my judgment. Perhaps that’s neither here nor there, though. But yes, your church is not permitted to impose celibacy as a general requirement on all bishops, priests, and deacons. I realize that this unbiblical practice has been lifted with respect to deacons, so perhaps I shouldn’t even mention them any more.

You wrote:

That’s why, in your judgment, the celibacy requirement for Latin rite bishops and priests “stands against” Scripture.

I’ve explained why I claim that celibacy requirement for all bishops and for Latin rite priests is unbiblical, just as the former prohibition for deacons was unbiblical. I’ve also (perhaps elsewhere) explained why the requirement for monks and nuns is unbiblical.

You wrote:

That’s why you think that, in effect, the Catholic Church denies the truth of this passage of Scripture.

Taking into account my clarifications and comments above, yes.

You wrote:

But, according to the Catholic Church, an absolute prohibition on restricting marriage is not the meaning of 1 Tim 4:1-3. That is, the Catholic Church has always understood the “forbidding marriage” error St. Paul refers to not as a qualified marriage restriction to clergy, but as an unqualified prohibiting of marriage (i.e. no one may marry), which does not therefore entail the error of a celibacy requirement for certain ecclesial offices, just as it does not entail that the Church’s restricting marriage to one man and one woman, the entering into marriage only of those who are not impotent, not mentally retarded, not sufficiently consanguineous, not already married, etc. are errors.

a) Ah, now I see a possible reason for your re-casting of my argument, as though I had argued that absolutely no restrictions are permitted. That was not my argument. But see above for my actual argument.

b) You have asserted, “the Catholic Church has always understood,” but you cannot substantiate this assertion.

c) Of course, what matters is really what your church teaches today, and specifically that your church teaches (at least implicitly) that the practice of forbidding marriage to bishops and priests is permissible. It has also never formally admitted that forbidding marriage to deacons was an unbiblical practice, although that practice has been discontinued.

d) There is no allegedly infallible interpretation of 1 Timothy 4:1-3 in your religion (at least, let’s say, you have not pointed us to one). So, while you may believe that you’ve identified what your church teaches about the verse, I must respectfully point out that you have not documented your assertion.

You continued:

In other words, just as St. Paul’s statement here does not make it wrong for the Church to restrict marriage to one man and one woman, to those who are not impotent, not too closely related, not already married, etc. so St. Paul’s statement here does not make it wrong for the Church to require celibacy for certain ecclesial offices.

The comparison is inapt, because the former category of marriages are prohibited by God (at least allegedly), whereas the marriage of those in the episcopate/presbteriate and deaconate are encouraged by God but prohibited by your church. The fact that immoral “marriages” may be lawfully forbidden does not mean that lawful marriages may be forbidden.

You add:

I have no intention of taking this thread into a discussion of celibacy.

Assuming you do not respond to my arguments about celibacy, I’m happy to let this matter stand. If people wish to discuss celibacy, they may follow the link to the thread on my own blog, where that subject would be on topic.

You wrote:

My point is about meaning and interpretation.

Ok
You continued:

What you assume to be the meaning of this passage of Scripture is based on an extrabiblical assumption that you are bringing to your act of interpretation, namely, that the error St. Paul is condemning is not only an absolute prohibition of marriage but any restriction on marriage.

a) That’s not actually my position on the meaning of the passage, as I’ve pointed out above.

b) You’re welcome to try to establish that my understanding of the passage is based on assumption, but I think you have to do something more than recasting my argument and then asserting that I’ve assumed things.

You continued:

You frequently say things like “Rome’s claims are so plainly contrary … to …the testimony of Scripture.” But in actuality in each case what is contrary to the Catholic Church’s teachings is not “the testimony of Scripture” but your judgment or interpretation of the meaning of Scripture.

a) The frequency of my claims, of course, is totally irrelevant. I’ll pass over that without further comment.

b) You claim that it is not the testimony of Scripture that is contrary to your church’s teachings, but it is one thing to claim it, and another thing to prove it. That’s a sword with two edges, of course, but I’m quite willing to prove my assertions.

You continued:

And when your judgment of the meaning of Scripture differs from that of the Catholic Church, this is due to a difference between the Tradition that the Church brings to the text, and the assumptions that you bring to the text.

a) As I’ve noted above, I don’t think you’ve actually established that I’ve brought assumptions to the text.

b) Your church hasn’t allegedly infallibly interpreted this text.

c) One would expect that your church would not be willing to admit that its centuries-old practice was wrong. But, of course, many people in your church have been willing to admit that other long-standing practices in your church were wrong. The crusades and the inquisition come to mind. While you might feel the need to justify your church’s implicit teaching regarding this practice, your church may not feel the need to justify it. I think you’re speculating a little here.

d) If your church did aim to justify its practices, then one would expect them to impose that tradition on the text, rather than letting the sense of the text come from the text and from a harmony of Scripture.

e) In contrast, if you could really show that my conclusion about a text was the result of an improper imposition of an assumption on the text, I’d be willing to revise my conclusion.

f) Your church’s hermeneutic and my hermeneutic are different, since our analogies of the faith are different. You impose “Tradition” (both in terms of alleged oral tradition, and more significantly in terms of the teachings of the Magisterium) on Scripture, whereas I do not.

You wrote:

That is why it is misleading and self-aggrandizing to treat your own judgments concerning the meaning of Scripture as though they were Scripture itself.

It would be (and is, if I do it) improper to claim that the Scripture means “X,” when it does not.

You wrote:

It is equivalent to what a false prophet does, in treating his own words as though they are the words of God.

Which is why I don’t do it (or, at any rate, I trust you’ll agree that I try not to do it).

You wrote:

In frequently speaking of what is (in fact) your own judgment regarding the meaning of Scripture, as though it were Scripture itself, you hide the subjective judgment that is intrinsic to your hermeneutical conclusion regarding the meaning of Scripture, and thus make it seem that Scripture is opposed to Catholic doctrine, when in actuality it is only your judgment of the meaning of Scripture that is opposed to Catholic teaching.

a) The frequency is, of course, totally irrelevant.

b) When my arguments are not based on the meaning of Scripture, you’re welcome to point that out. In fact, I welcome such a demonstration.

c) However, when my arguments are based on the meaning of Scripture, it’s perfectly fine for me to state that that Scripture is opposed to the doctrine of your church.

d) Your “subjective judgment” statement comes out of nowhere. What you base your assertion on is unclear. Likewise, how “subjective judgment” is “intrinsic to [my] hermeneutical conclusion” is also unclear. If you’d like to prove these assertions, I’m all ears.

– TurretinFan
TurretinFan January 4th, 2011 7:46 pm :
David Meyer (Re: #1025) :

I hope my comments at #1063, regarding Mathison’s comment have answered your question.

-TurretinFan
TurretinFan January 4th, 2011 8:29 pm :
Mr. Liccione (re: #1037):

Thank you for your link to Lumen Gentium, and your direction to consider sections 18-25, the beginning portion of the discussion of the hierarchical structure of your church, but I don’t see how that passage of LG clarifies your objection (see my comments at #1034).

-TurretinFan
TurretinFan January 4th, 2011 9:35 pm :
Bryan (re: #1038)

I had written:

The standard, however, and rule of faith is Holy Scripture. Let it be the measure by which my testimony is judged.

You responded:

As I explained in more detail in comment #1009, statements such as the “rule of faith is Holy Scripture” gloss over the interpretive act necessary to determine the meaning of Scripture, and thus gloss over the question, “as interpreted by whom?”

No, it doesn’t gloss over those things, it avoids muddying the question of the rule of faith with irrelvant tangents. It speaks clearly to the crucial point.

You added:

Likewise, when you say, “I would encourage you to join a Reformed church because that is where the Gospel is preached” (#957), the word ‘Gospel’ here refers to your (and that of those who agree with you) interpretation of the New Testament.

If it merely referred to that, then your comment would be relevant. But you haven’t established that it merely refers to that, and consequently this is a red herring.

You continued:

For this reason, implicit within your statement that the “rule of faith is Holy Scripture” is the operative assumption that the rule of faith is Holy Scripture-as-interpreted-by-you [and those who agree with your interpretation].

a) No. The rule of faith is the Scriptures.

b) Your red herring has lead you to confusion on this point. The rule of faith is the rule of faith, whether it is properly or improperly understood. The rule of faith is not properly our interpretation of Scripture, and our interpretation is only correct when it corresponds to the objectively true meaning of Scripture.

c) It is possible that this confusion is what leads to your “subjective” comment above, in that you have confused what the rule is, and then concluded that the rule is not the objective truth, but merely a subjective judgment. Nevertheless, I await your support for your assertion.

You continued:

And that then raises the question: By what authority do you make yourself the arbiter of which interpretation of Scripture is the rule of faith?

a) This argument has the faulty premise that it is in the interpretation of Scripture that is the rule of faith, rather than that it is Scripture that is the rule of faith.

b) Indeed, this argument should show you the problem with your red herring. When we seek to understand the Scriptures, it is not a question of who made whom an arbiter – it is a matter of investigation as to the meaning of the text.

You wrote:

That is, who authorized you to be the interpretive authority for God’s people, the one whose interpretation determines what is the rule of faith?

The meaning, however, is an objective truth. We must search after that meaning, but it is an ascertainable, objective truth. And it is the meaning of Scripture that is the rule of faith.

You wrote:

You have no such authority.

I don’t claim such authority, Rome does claim something close to that, but Rome cannot support its authority claim.

You wrote:

And therefore your claim that the rule of faith is [your interpretation of] Scripture, is performatively arrogating to yourself authority you do not have. So your claim breaks down as soon as we fill in the details of the necessary interpretive act you are presently glossing.

This conclusion seems to follow from false premises, as explained above.

-TurretinFan
TurretinFan January 4th, 2011 9:45 pm :
JJ (re: #1044):

You wrote:

Of course – all right, TurretinFan – Matthew 16:13-18, together with Luke 22:31-32 and John 21:15-19 – and referring to Isaiah 22:22, clearly demonstrate that the Pope of Rome is the Vicar of Christ on earth and you have, therefore, a Scriptural duty to submit to him.

Scripture has now judged your testimony – or has it?

Scripture is indeed the standard, and you are right to appeal to Scripture if you want to persuade me of the truth of your position, nevertheless those Scriptures you’ve identified don’t demonstrate that the “Pope of Rome is the Vicar of Christ on earth.” I would refer to you a more detailed discussion of Isaiah 22 (which you may find here)

– TurretinFan
mateo January 4th, 2011 9:54 pm :
TurrentinFan: You’re mistaken about my claims. There are many denominations that preach the gospel. I am not a sectarian, that is to say, I do not believe that my denomination is the “one true church.” I don’t even mention which denomination is my denomination! I’m not promoting a particular denomination.

I read your reply to me after I made my last post, so now I have a better understanding of what you personally believe. Thank you for the response, and please accept my apologies if you think that I was putting words into your mouth.

As to what is preached among the Protestants, well, there are thousands upon thousands of Protestant denominations that preach a gospel, but obviously because these myriad of Protesant sects preach contradictory doctrine, they all can’t be preaching the gospel. Not unless the the teaching in a Protestant church sect is merely a man or a woman that reads outloud passages from the gospel found in the NT, and no interpretation or explication of the gospel is ever attempted by the pastor or preacher.

TurrentinFan: I also don’t claim that everything that each Reformed denomination teaches is 100% correct.

How could you claim that, since the various “reformed” sects don’t agree with each other! That is why there are hundreds of reformed sects, instead of just one reformed sect. But let me ask you this, do you believe that the reformed sect that you are currently a member of teaches correctly 100% of the time? Do you reserve the right to leave your Protestant sect, if your sect begins teaching contrary to your private interpretations of the bible?

TurrentinFan: … neither me, nor my denomination, nor any of the other myriad of Gospel-preaching denominations and non-denominational independent churches claims ecclesiastical infallibility.

Okay, you don’t believe that your private interpretations of the bible are infallible – the possibility exists that your personal interpretations of scripture could be in error, at least theoretically. Do you still reserve the “right” to church shop? Does the reformed sect that you currently belong to have “authority” in your eyes only when it agrees with your admittedly fallible private interpretations of the bible?

TurrentinFan: You are forced to rely on God’s Word as your ultimate authority in matters of doctrine.

To be sure, I believe that the Catholic bible is inerrant, and that God is the author of scriptures. Since your Protestant bible is subset of the Catholic bible, you and I have something that we agree about – within your Protestant bible is God’s inerrant word.

When I read the bible, I see very clearly that scriptures are a source of authority for me, since scriptures claim that the Tanakh is “God breathed” (divinely inspired). If you think that the scriptures in your Protestant bible make an explict claim to be the ONLY source of inerrant authority to which a Christian has access, please quote those scriptures. If you could do that, I would believe in sola scriptura!

TurrentinFan: Any godly minister will tell you to compare his teachings to the Word of God, and if they are in conflict to follow the Word of God.

As well they should, because scriptures are inerrant. When I read the gospel of Matthew, I read that Christ has founded a church against which the powers of death will never prevail, and that Christ has commanded me to listen to His church or be excommunicated. The inerrant scriptures inform me that I am commanded by Christ to listen to Christ’s church, not just any old church. I also read in the epistles that I must avoid heretics, and that I must not depart from the doctrine that Christ’s church teaches. Therefore, if I am to be obedient to the authority of scriptures, I must seek to find Christ’s church against which the powers of death can never prevail, and submit myself to the teachings of Christ’s church. Which is exactly what I cannot do if I become a Protestant, because every single Protestant “church” is founded, not by Christ, but by some man or woman such as John Calvin or Ellen Gould White.

TurrentinFan: In contrast, Rome’s teaching requires you to submit to Rome’s teaching even when it appears to you that there is a conflict between what Rome teaches and what Scripture teaches.

The Catholic church tells me to do exactly what the scriptures command me to do – to listen to Christ’s church or be excommunicated. The Catholic Church also claims to be the church founded by Christ, and she, at least, has a two-thousand year old history that gives some plausibility to that claim, unlike the thousands upon thousands of Protestant churches that are founded by men or women that appeared on the scene over a thouand years after Christ founded his church.

TurrentinFan: Following God’s Word as best you can, trusting in His grace, praying, and seeking the aid of the Holy Spirit is hardly “creating a personal religion.”

Martin Luther and John Calvin did create their own personal religions by privately interpreting the bible – private religions that taught contradictory doctrine – Lutheranism vs. Calvinism. Every Protestant that founds his own personal church is rebelling against the gospel, because Christ commands us to listen to the church, the church that Christ founded! There are no scriptures that authorize men and women to found their own personal churches.

If I follow that path of Luther and Calvin and create my own personal religion, I will be rebelling against the authority of the scriptures. And if I church shop among the Protestant sects, I will also be rebelling against the aurthority of the scriptures, since it is impossible that any Protestant sect is the church that was founded by Christ. It is because I believe that scripture is authoritative that I cannot be a Protestant!
TurretinFan January 4th, 2011 10:01 pm :
Herbert (re: #1041):

You asked:

Is it your position to suggest that any individual christian can access the Scriptures without any form of interpretation taking place, but simply through accurate cognition of the meaning of a given Scriptural text?

What I am saying is that there are some passages of Scripture of which it can be said, “Pay attention, therefore, to what I shall record out of the holy Scriptures, which do not need to be expounded, but only listened to.” (Justin Martyr)

But, of course, not all Scriptures are so easily understood. Some are more difficult than others.

I hope that answers your question.

-TurretinFan
Sean January 4th, 2011 10:05 pm :
TFan –

1071

You said: What your church’s teachings are contrary to is the meaning of Scripture. That statement reflects a variety of judgments, or if you want to call those judgments “interpretations” – a variety of interpretations. However, the standard and measure is the meaning – the judgment is the comparison of that meaning and your church’s teaching. That judgment involves identifying the meaning of the Scripture and the identifying the meaning of your church’s teaching.

How do you know what the meaning is without interpreting the text?

It is based on my understanding of the Scripture and of the teachings of your church, not just a random guess.

So, it is based on your ‘understanding’ of Scripture but not your interpretation? Can you explain the difference?

I am perplexed as I am sure others are as well. You are claiming that the Catholic Church is opposed to the meaning of Scripture. You admit that your statement is based on your ‘understanding’ of Scripture but deny that it is your interpretation of Scripture.

Bryan said: You frequently say things like “Rome’s claims are so plainly contrary … to …the testimony of Scripture.” But in actuality in each case what is contrary to the Catholic Church’s teachings is not “the testimony of Scripture” but your judgment or interpretation of the meaning of Scripture.

And you responded: You claim that it is not the testimony of Scripture that is contrary to your church’s teachings, but it is one thing to claim it, and another thing to prove it. That’s a sword with two edges, of course, but I’m quite willing to prove my assertions.

How would we go about proving this since we are apparently in your view not talking about the interpretation of Scripture? You are asserting that the Catholic Church’s teaching is opposed to the ‘meaning’ of Scripture. You cannot offer any interpretations because how could you? You deny that your problem with the Church’s teaching is that it is against your ‘interpretation.’ You just assert that we are opposed to the meaning and assert that your church apparently is not opposed to the meaning.

Why you won’t admit that you are bringing an interpretation into your judgment of the Catholic Church is beyond me. Anybody can assert that they hold to the ‘meaning’ of scripture. How do we know that you hold to the ‘meaning’ of scripture. If you are going to be consistent than you need to answer that without offering any interpretations of scripture because the moment you bring in your interpretation you admit that it is really just your interpretation that the Church is opposed to and not Scripture per se.
John Thayer Jensen January 4th, 2011 10:12 pm :
@TF:

1 Tim 4:1-3 says:

The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. 2 Such teachings come through hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron. 3 They forbid people to marry and order them to abstain from certain foods, which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and who know the truth.

You say:

the marriage of those in the episcopate/presbteriate and deaconate are encouraged by God

How is it that you know for certain that 1 Tim 4:1-3 means that the marriage of those in the episcopate or presbyteriate are encouraged by God? It doesn’t say that in the passage. It just says that some will come who abandon the faith and forbid marriage. It doesn’t say that all forbidding of marriage is wrong. Indeed, it doesn’t even say that forbidding marriage is wrong. It just says that some will come who abandon the faith and forbid marriage.

Doesn’t this amount to interpretation on your part?

jj
Sean January 4th, 2011 10:15 pm :
TFan # 1075.

JJ in #1044 outlined some scripture. You judged his conclusion and pointed him to a link where you gave some of your interpretations of the text of Isaiah. Why point him to your interpretation of the text at all if you can just assert that we have the wrong meaning? I thought interpretations weren’t involved in your judgement of the Catholic Church’s teaching on scripture.

Am I mistaken?
John Thayer Jensen January 4th, 2011 10:21 pm :
@TF:

Scripture is indeed the standard, and you are right to appeal to Scripture if you want to persuade me of the truth of your position, nevertheless those Scriptures you’ve identified don’t demonstrate that the “Pope of Rome is the Vicar of Christ on earth.”

But of course my point is that I think those Scriptures do ‘demonstrate that the “Pope of Rome is the Vicar of Christ on earth.”’ And my point is that we are reading the same Scriptures – but interpreting them differently.

My only point was that the Scriptures by themselves are not a sufficient way of discovering who is right about essential matters such as this. We each see the same Scriptures, but think they have different meanings. This is interpretation.

jj
SB January 4th, 2011 10:49 pm :
I can’t be the only person following this thread to find it utterly maddening that TurretinFan has yet to answer a simple question of how he knows the objective meaning of Scripture. Perhaps a very simple question: TF, clearly you and Bryan/Mateo/JTJ/Sean/Ray/Michael are reading the same Scriptures and saying they mean mutually exclusive things. Would you please explain why your assertions of their meaning should be taken as accurate? Leave “interpretation” out of it entirely, since that word seems to cause problems here. Why should I, a serious person earnestly seeking to follow Christ, believe that you are correct in what you say is the meaning of Scripture when I understand it to mean something different?

Perhaps a side note, as well: isn’t it remarkable, given the alleged perspicuity of written records of a person’s thought, that this thread is nearing 1100 comments, and yet apparently nobody seems to have clearly understood what anyone else “means?”
Michael Liccione January 4th, 2011 10:51 pm :
TF (#1073):

Thanks for taking seriously my suggestion that you read LG §18-§25. You also responded by referring me back to your #1034, on the ground that you didn’t see how that part of LG answers the argument you made in that comment, which was:

After all, I think you will acknowledge that no individual bishop within your church (except the bishop of Rome) claims the gift of personal infallibility, yet those bishops can teach people and can do so (according to your theology) in the name of God, instructing people how they are to interpret the divine sources.

If you accept that, there does not seem to be a legitimate basis upon which you could reject the idea of churches that don’t claim ecclesiastical infallibility teaching people how to interpret God’s word.

Perhaps, however, I have misunderstood your objection.

You have indeed misunderstood my original objection. I did not, and do not, “reject the idea of churches that don’t claim ecclesiastical infallibility teaching people how to interpret God’s word.” Such teaching goes on all the time in Protestant churches, and some of it is genuinely fruitful, at least to a degree. Two years ago, e.g., I participated in an extended Bible study in an evangelical setting because I happened to respect the pastor as a sincere, intelligent man of God. I never once heard him say anything contrary to the Catholic Faith; indeed, I agreed with almost everything he said. After following his thought and prayer for a period of weeks, and comparing it to that of some of his colleagues, I suspected he might have a Catholic background. He did. And it also turned out that he had left the (Latin) Catholic Church because he wanted to be a married clergyman.

So my argument is not that Protestant churches can’t teach people something about how to interpret Scripture. My argument, rather, is what I had said in #974: “No Protestant church claims the gift of infallibility; therefore no Protestant church has the authority to tell people, in the name of God himself, how they must interpret the sources” of divine revelation” (emphasis added here). That does not entail that no Protestant church can educate in the matter; it entails only that no Protestant church can bind in the matter. Such a church can help equip people to learn things that happen to be truths, but it cannot tell anybody, in the name of God, what they must believe. When they do help people make true interpretations of Scripture, those truths can be offered and professed as only as opinions. And opinions do not enjoy the same epistemic status as divine revelation.

Now that I’ve given you a clearer idea of what my argument was (and is), I shall present and reply to your rebuttal. Thus:

I think you will acknowledge that no individual bishop within your church (except the bishop of Rome) claims the gift of personal infallibility, yet those bishops can teach people and can do so (according to your theology) in the name of God, instructing people how they are to interpret the divine sources.

Well, Lumen Gentium itself says (§25):

Although the individual bishops do not enjoy the prerogative of infallibility, they nevertheless proclaim Christ’s doctrine infallibly whenever, even though dispersed through the world, but still maintaining the bond of communion among themselves and with the successor of Peter, and authentically teaching matters of faith and morals, they are in agreement on one position as definitively to be held.

So the bishops, by divine gift, do teach infallibly under certain conditions, so long as they remain in communion with the bishop of Rome. That is why Catholics can, should, and do receive certain episcopal teachings as binding in God’s name, not just as opinions that strike them, individually, as sound interpretations of the sources. My argument is that only a church like that can teach “with authority, not as the scribes.”

Best,
Mike
Bryan Cross January 4th, 2011 11:26 pm :
TF (re: #1071)

I wrote, “So what the Catholic Church’s teachings are “plainly contradictory” to is your determination of the meaning of Scripture, or the-meaning-of-Scripture-as-interpreted-by-you.

You replied:

What your church’s teachings are contrary to is the meaning of Scripture.

Your statement, again, glosses the interpretive judgment by which you arrived at what you think is the meaning of Scripture, and therefore hides the subjectivity of your hermeneutical conclusion. You are speaking of the result of your determination of the meaning of Scripture as though your hermeneutical conclusion is purely objective, and is not the result of a fallible subjective judgment on your part. And in that respect, your statement is oversimplified and misleading.

Here’s an example of a person who treats his conclusions about the meaning of Scripture as though they are not the result of subjective judgments, but simply taking the meaning right off the page:

We recognize that his interpretations are interpretations, but he doesn’t seem to realize that. And his unawareness of what he is (and isn’t) bringing to the interpretive process adds to his confidence that what he is saying is simply what the Bible says, but makes his confidence more lamentable from the point of view of those who see what he himself isn’t seeing about the role of the interpreter in the interpretive process. Treating Scripture as though the interpreter is simply lifting the meaning right off the page, and not interpreting, is a common phenomenon among many ‘fundamentalist’ preachers. But, your hermeneutical position seems to be very much like that of Steven Anderson, even though your hermeneutical conclusions are not all the same as his. Every time you gloss the interpretive role of your fallible subjective judgment in reaching your conclusions regarding the meaning of Scripture, you give more evidence that your hermeneutical position is like that of Steven Anderson.

You both seem to be sweeping your interpretive act under the rug, and declaring that [what is the result of your interpretative judgment] just is the meaning of Scripture, and that anyone who disagrees with you has misinterpreted Scripture, even though earlier (in this thread) you denied that any Reformed denomination is infallible. You seem to treat your conclusions regarding the meaning of Scripture as though your interpretive judgments are infallible. That’s the impression given when you treat your own [interpretation] of Scripture just as the meaning of Scripture, such that anyone who disagrees with your [interpretation] of Scripture holds a position “contrary to the meaning of Scripture.” A more humble approach would acknowledge your interpretive fallibility, and thus say that the Catholic Church teaches a position contrary to your fallible judgment concerning the meaning of Scripture, thus not performatively and semantically presupposing either that you are bypassing the interpretive process or that you have the charism of infallibility when you interpret Scripture.

In #1015, our Lutheran interlocutor BW wrote:

The Lutheran Confessions are what we confess to be a correct exposition of the doctrines taught in Scripture. Lutherans believe, teach, and confess that what is discussed and summarized in the Book of Concord is the Christian faith. It is held subordinate to Scripture, not on par with it, so we would not call it infallible because there are non doctrinal portions or passages which are not a part of God’s Word (or the exposition thereof).

He claims that the Lutheran Confessions are the correct exposition of the meaning of Scripture. You deny that, and claim that the Reformed confessions provide the correct meaning of Scripture. So you both cannot have the correct meaning of Scripture (regarding the same points). When two or more people claim to have the meaning of Scripture, and yet they disagree with each other concerning the meaning of Scripture, then we can know that they are both interpreting Scripture (unless you want to take the ad hoc position that one person is interpreting and the other is not — see comment #978). And when both persons are aware of this situation, then unless one of them knows that he has the charism of infallibility, both persons should recognize that the one in error could be themselves. Hence, when the meaning of Scripture (or any text) is in dispute, it is essential for both parties to recognize the interpretive judgment intrinsic to their hermeneutical conclusions. Otherwise, there is no way (other than violence) to resolve the interpretive disagreement, and each party can only resort to table-pounding, i.e. “The meaning is x!” “No, the meaning is y!!”, and so on. Only by mutually recognizing the role of the interpretive process in their reaching contrary conclusions concerning the meaning of Scripture, and recognizing the hermeneutical role of what each one is uniquely bringing to that process, can they reason together regarding what is the meaning of Scripture. So long as they each sweep their own interpretive process under the rug, and treat their own hermeneutical conclusions as though no interpretation was involved (or, as though their own interpretive judgment is infallible), they remain self-deceived, incapable of discovering that their interpretation is incorrect, and incapable of participating meaningfully in the activity of resolving hermeneutical disagreements.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
David Meyer January 4th, 2011 11:27 pm :
Tfan:
You said:

David Meyer (Re: #1025) : I hope my comments at #1063, regarding Mathison’s comment have answered your question.

No, they really haven’t. I believe you are overcomplicating a simple thing.

Some of your comment was:

I don’t think Mathison’s comment is especially helpful, in that I don’t think it is very accurate. Appeals to Scripture normally involve interpretation of Scripture, sometimes explicit, sometimes implicit. But people are appealing to the Scriptures themselves as the rule of faith, not simply to “an interpretation of Scripture.”

First, Mathison’s comment is 100% accurate, and your example above I am very confident he would label a solo scriptura view.

Second, everyone (even many non christian pantheistic cults) says “I appeal to the Scriptures themselves…!”. That statement has no meaning outside of knowing what mouth is saying it. (the interpretation) If someone said that to you, I think you would want to know what they mean by it (interpretation), am I correct?

Again, here is Keith’s comment:

All appeals to Scripture are appeals to interpretations of Scripture. The only real question is: whose interpretation? People with differing interpretations of Scripture cannot set a Bible on a table and ask it to resolve their differences. In order for the Scripture to function as an authority, it must be read and interpreted by someone.

You say people are “appealing to the Scriptures themselves as the rule of faith” not an interpretation. OK, nothing out of the ordinary there. But really that is just solo Scriptura. The JW’s at my door this summer were appealing to Scripture itself dude! I wasn’t impressed with their interpretation and neither would you have been. And I was under no illusion that what they were saying was anything other than an interpretation. If it was you at my door preaching the Reformed faith, I would also understand it to be an interpretation. If it were Bryan Cross preaching, I would likewise understand it to be an interpretation. Am I missing something here? Because it sure seems to me (forgive me, I am surely mistaken in this feeling) that you are trying to dodge this reality.

No one here is saying that the Scriptures are merely a matter of interpretation like some pantheistic religion or something where you “get what you want” from it. And I can’t imagine you would think that the arguments here are saying that.

But TurretinFan, it is just as incorrect for you to claim that someone could be “appealing to the Scriptures themselves as the rule of faith, not simply to “an interpretation of Scripture.”

It means nothing to say the Scriptures are ones rule of faith. It might, might mean that one is not a Budhist. But we all know full well that it is the interpretation that counts. Although I guess you perhaps disagree with that? You are at the very least strongly implying (if not declaring) that you don’t need to interpret the Scripture. And that just seems to move this discussion backward.

So again, do you agree with Keith’s statement or not?

-David M.
Michael Liccione January 5th, 2011 12:11 am :
Bryan (#1084):

Bravo. As to that video, I almost wet myself laughing. You will understand why I put it that way. :)

Best,
Mike
Kjetil Kringlebotten January 5th, 2011 12:21 am :
Andrew, (re: #1011)

Why did the congregations of Christendom need Nicea to be promulgated infallibly? Would they have rejected Nicea had they understood the pronouncements to be true but not infallible?

I’m sorry, but how can’t this also apply to Scripture? One could ask: “Why did the congregations of Christendom need the Bible to be promulgated infallibly? Would they have rejected the Bible had they understood the pronouncements to be true but not infallible?”

The question is also wrong: It treats what God reveals through His Church as non-infallible? And how, exactly, can a an authority speaking on behalf of God speak truth while not being infallible? How would you know that the doctrine is true? And if you don’t regard the councils to be infallible, why do you believe their testimony? Can you give an answer to that question which doesn’t ultimately boil down to ‘because it conforms to my personal interpretation of Scripture’ or ‘because it conforms to what I believe’?
Kjetil Kringlebotten January 5th, 2011 3:05 am :
@BW (#1015):

The Lutheran Confessions are what we confess to be a correct exposition of the doctrines taught in Scripture. Lutherans believe, teach, and confess that what is discussed and summarized in the Book of Concord is the Christian faith. It is held subordinate to Scripture, not on par with it, so we would not call it infallible because there are non doctrinal portions or passages which are not a part of God’s Word (or the exposition thereof).

Then why demand that you must be allowed to believe it? If it isn’t infallible, I don’t see any reason why that should constitute a reason to be in schism.

Are you also aware that Confessio Augustana was not regarded as a formal confession at first? It was more of a statement of what was believed. That distinction might not be important, but I think it is. And your usage of ‘lutherans’ is too broad. Many lutherans, for instance many traditional lutherans in Denmark and Norway, don’t regard the whole Book of Concord as binding. For them, the binding documents, outside of Scripture, is these: The three old symbols (the Apostolic Creed, the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, the Athanasian Creed), Confessio Augustana and Luther’s Small Catechism.

So the whole of lutherdom doesn’t agree there. It is also interesting that the use of Confessio Augustana changed once it became a part of the Book of Concord. This is normal; it was now no interpreted only historically (from what is was originally, and how it was used), but as part of a larger whole (in the Book of Concord). But as noted, not all lutherans accepted that. So, what part of lutherdom is right? And why is that part right? And why does your (possible) answer(s) not boil down to, ‘because they agree with me’?

First, I appreciate you calling “Protestantisms” claims “very grand.” While “Protestant” churches don’t make very grand claims for themselves (they don’t claim, for example, to be the one true church), they do make very grand claims for the Holy Spirit and Scripture.

@TF (#1031, 1032, 1034, 1067)

First, I appreciate you calling “Protestantisms” claims “very grand.” While “Protestant” churches don’t make very grand claims for themselves (they don’t claim, for example, to be the one true church), they do make very grand claims for the Holy Spirit and Scripture.

I do not believe that my denomination is the “one true church.”

If a church don’t claim to be the one true church, why should I bother with it?

But when we call people out of Rome, we are calling people to faith in Christ alone for salvation. Membership in some one of the denominations that preaches the Gospel comes after that. It’s not the primary concern, but a secondary concern.

But what if being a Christian includes necessarily being part of a Church? A case can be made for the fact that St. Paul believed that. He called the Church the body of Christ. He said that said Church is ‘the pillar and ground of truth’ and, most importantly, the noun he uses when talking about this body is ἐκκλησία. That isn’t a mere abstraction (the ‘Church’ as apart from ‘one of the denominations’). Ἐκκλησία was used in the Septuagint as a transation of qahal. And to me it is absurd to use qahal as an abstraction apart from the actual, concrete assembly of Israel.

It seems quite clear to me that the Church of the New Testament is a concrete, palpable Church, outside of which there is no salvation. This follows from the fact that there is no salvation outside of Christ, and that the Church is his body. When we are in Christ, we are in His Church. And His Church, being His body, is concrete. As Taylor Marshall wrote in his ‘apologia’ for his conversion: “The Church is not the “invisible Soul” of Christ, she is the visible “Body of Christ.” There is no such thing as “an invisible Church,” because the Church is defined as “the Body” which is a visible, empirical reality.”

The experience and findings of many support my claim as well. The standard, however, and rule of faith is Holy Scripture. Let it be the measure by which my testimony is judged.

Why?

This does not seem to follow. After all, I think you will acknowledge that no individual bishop within your church (except the bishop of Rome) claims the gift of personal infallibility, yet those bishops can teach people and can do so (according to your theology) in the name of God, instructing people how they are to interpret the divine sources.

You are not exactly answering his comment at all. Micheal said, “No Protestant church claims the gift of infallibility; therefore no Protestant church has the authority to tell people, in the name of God himself, how they must interpret the “sources” of divine revelation.” You then made a leap from ‘church’ to ‘individual bishops.’ The Catholic Church teaches that the Church as a whole is infallible, but that its main bishop has the office. That doesn’t mean that other persons cannot teach, but that they must teach in accordance with the Church.

And the gospel may be found in Scripture.

How do you know that?
TurretinFan January 5th, 2011 9:18 am :
JJ (re: #1020)

You wrote:

Arianism is an excellent test case for sola scriptura. Arius and his followers all made their case from Scripture alone – as do modern Jehovah’s Witnesses.

The Arians alleged that tradition was on their side, and the Arians held massive councils (larger than Nicaea). So, I’m not sure how you come to the conclusion that they “all made their case from Scripture alone.” If you simply mean that their only rule of faith was Scripture, ok – but that was true of the Nicene fathers as well.

And in subsequent generations, the battle against the Arians and semi-Arians was won on the basis of Scripture. Witness this:

I should not, however, introduce the Council of Nicea to prejudice the case in my favor, nor should you introduce the Council of Ariminum that way. I am not bound by the authority of Ariminum, and you are not bound by that of Nicea. By the authority of the scriptures that are not the property of anyone, but the common witness for both of us, let position do battle with position, case with case, reason with reason.

– See Works of Saint Augustine, Answer to Maximinus, Part I, Vol. 18, ed. John Rotelle, O.S.A., trans. Roland J. Teske, S.J. (New York: New City Press, 1995), p. 282.

– TurretinFan
TurretinFan January 5th, 2011 10:41 am :
Wilkins (re: #1043):

You wrote:

Okay, but doesn’t authorship apply conceptually both to revelation and opinion? If the concept applies to both, important differences notwithstanding, then it can’t serve as a principle that demonstrates their essential difference, can it?

I see what you’re saying I think. The fact that both have an author is a commonality. However, the identity of the author is a critical difference.

You continued:

I agree with you that I’m the author of my opinion and God is the author of revelation, but I hope you’ll agree that what we’re saying in that case is that “authorship” is a conceptual similarity and not a principle of essential distinction.

See above. Yes, both have an author, but the author is different, and the identity of the author, the authorship, is what distinguishes them.

You continued:

On the other hand, if the point you’re making is that we can tell the difference between mere opinion and the content of divine revelation by simply seeing that the opinion has man as its author, well… then… we’re back to what appears to be a denial of interpretation on the part of those whose interpretations you agree with.

There’s an important difference that needs to be identified between a principle of distinction and recognition of that distinction. The fact that it may be difficult to apply this principle in some cases doesn’t mean that the principle isn’t a principle, as I’m sure you must agree.

I had written:

If something is merely my personal opinion, it lacks support in revelation.

you replied:

I don’t understand what you mean by that. “Support in revelation” is precisely the prize for which one’s personal opinion is deployed in acts of interpretation.

Well, a sincere and consistent adherent of sola Scriptura will always try to support his opinions with divine revelation. However, not ever citation to Scripture actually brings support to one’s position. For example, if I were to argue that we cannot celebrate birthdays and quoted the passage in Ecclesiastes that says that the day of one’s death is better than the day of one’s birth, my opinion would have appealed for support from Scripture, but it would not have found it. That verse does not support such an opinion. Such an opinion would be merely my personal opinion. In contrast, if I cited a verse from the gospels saying that Pilate ordered Jesus’ crucifixion as support for my opinion that Jesus suffered under Pontius Pilate, then I have provided support for my opinion out of Scriptures. Consequently, what is my personal opinion is also the testimony of Scripture.

You also wrote:

The subordinate authority of the church means that the church’s interpretations of Scripture must always be ready to submit to scriptural interrogation (to make sure the church’s interpretations and Scripture align). So… how does one know if they align? Well, he launches a scriptural interrogation in order to find out, comparing his church’s teaching with Scripture to see if he can detect sufficient agreement between them.

a) Notice the crucial, “how does one know.” There you have a similar shift to the one I noted above. The shift is from what the principle is, to the application of that principle in practice.

b) Subordinate authority means that there is a higher authority, and that submission to the higher authority trumps submission to the subordinate authority, when the two are in conflict. That’s true whether your talking about the church as subordinate to Scripture or your local bishop as subordinate to the Council of Trent. The application of that principle involves the comparison you talked about.

I had written:

The best [this article] can do is show that there is some sense in which the individual in sola scriptura is an ultimate arbiter, but this is not enough to demonstrate that the individual in sola scriptura rejects “the true but subordinate authority of the church and the regula fidei.”

You replied:

On the contrary, precisely the sense in which the individual in sola scriptura is an ultimate arbiter is the sense in which the individual in sola scriptura interprets, for himself, the Scripture and decides, of his own opinion, whether his “church’s” teaching sufficiently agrees with his interpretation of the Source.

a) I’m not sure how that’s “on the contrary” to what I said.

b) If it helps you, note that you can apply the same principle to your subordinate authority. You are, for yourself and your conscience, permitted to compare your bishop’s teachings with those of your ultimate authority to see if they “sufficiently agreee” (i.e. to see if they conflict).

You wrote:

Sufficient agreement found then confirms to him that his “church” is part of the “true church.”

a) Meaning that one identifies whether a church is a true church based on a process that involves a judgment.

b) Notice, however, that you apply the same thing to your local bishop. You judge whether he is a real bishop or not. The judgment may be very different (it will probably have zero to do with Scripture), but yet you still do make a judgment. There’s a reason you don’t view the Anglican or Orthodox bishop as being a bishop to whom you owe subordinate authority.

You continued:

In other words, no one needs “to demonstrate that the individual in sola scriptura rejects” anything per se. I think, perhaps, the negative formulation contributes to misunderstanding.

I don’t think that’s the problem, but let’s see how you propose to demonstrate it in a positive formulation:

We have demonstrated, instead, that the individual in sola scriptura accepts the so-called “subordinate authority of the church” only so long as he detects (of his own opinion) sufficient agreement between his “church’s” interpretations and the Scripture. As such, the individual in sola scriptura is no less his own ultimate authority as the solo individual: both retain final interpretive authority, …

a) Sorry to cut you off mid-sentence, but it’s important to address these two things separately.

b) All that this shows is that the sola and solo people have the same ultimate authority (Scripture), which we cheerfully admit.

You concluded:

… which is problematic for the reasons outlined in the article.

Actually, the article seems to focus on just trying to get sola to reduce to solo, and then piggy-backs on Mathison’s (perhaps flawed) critique of solo scriptura. Whether Mathison’s critique of solo is correct seems to be beyond the scope of this blog post.

-TurretinFan
Lojahw January 5th, 2011 12:56 pm :
Tim Troutman wrote:

JJS – I’ve never blocked a comment from TFan or any other Reformed blogger that I recall nor have I seen that happen. Whoever is spreading those claims that we don’t allow their comments is most likely lying and they’re at least exaggerating.

I’ve been blocked so many times I quit trying months ago. As noted elsewhere re: Keith’s delayed response, this article is mistaken about a number of Protestant positions. Guilt by association with SOME Protestants’ methodologies is not a fair treatment of all Protestants. Sola scriptura does not teach that the Bible is the solitary authority for faith and practice, but rather that the Bible, accepted as God’s Word, is the only unquestioned authority, as Augustine wrote in On Baptism 2.3.4. Calvin, Luther, Melanchthon, et al., often cited the church fathers in their ‘sola scriptura’ writings. For example, Calvin’s Institutes contain hundreds of citations from the church fathers and other sources. Sola scriptura also teaches, as did Augustine, that the obscure passages of Scripture must be interpreted in light of the clearer passages therein (cf. On Christian Doctrine 3.26.37ff). Moreover, the Reformers endorsed the use of “ordinary means” – including reason and extra-biblical sources – for understanding the Scriptures (cf. Westminster Confession 1.6).

It is a non sequitur to emphasize the fragmentation of Protestant Churches and at the same time assert that they all follow the exact same rules (which they do not). Guilt by association (i.e., using the label “Protestant” to include every belief and practice that is outside of the RCC or EO) is a poor foundation for argument. There are a multitude of reasons for institutional fragmentation that have nothing to do with orthodoxy. On the other hand, institutional unity is no guarantee of being of “one mind” in all particulars of faith (as illustrated by the diversity of belief and practice among Roman Catholics).

The church fathers affirm that the fundamental truths of Christianity as summarized in the 325 AD Nicene Creed are taught by Scripture (cf. Theodoret, Church History 1.6-7). The conflicts between orthodox Christians on secondary issues are often overblown (e.g., modes of baptism, who can administer and partake of the Lord’s Supper, etc.). The most important question of orthodoxy is: who is God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit? On this, all orthodox Christians agree. “This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3). Partisan wrangling about secondary issues distracts Christians from being good witnesses of Jesus Christ and the Gospel: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”

Blessings,
Lojahw
mateo January 5th, 2011 1:40 pm :
TurrentinFan: Well, a sincere and consistent adherent of sola Scriptura will always try to support his opinions with divine revelation. However, not ever citation to Scripture actually brings support to one’s position. For example, if I were to argue that we cannot celebrate birthdays and quoted the passage in Ecclesiastes that says that the day of one’s death is better than the day of one’s birth, my opinion would have appealed for support from Scripture, but it would not have found it. That verse does not support such an opinion. Such an opinion would be merely my personal opinion. In contrast, if I cited a verse from the gospels saying that Pilate ordered Jesus’ crucifixion as support for my opinion that Jesus suffered under Pontius Pilate, then I have provided support for my opinion out of Scriptures. Consequently, what is my personal opinion is also the testimony of Scripture.

It is my personal opinion that I am commanded by Christ to listen to the church, the Church founded by Christ against which the powers of death will never prevail. If I don’t listen to Christ’s church, I am to be excommunicated. My personal opinion is also the testimony of Scripture. So, TurentinFan, how do you justify NOT listening to the church founded by Christ? Can you justify the Protestant practice of church shopping among churches founded by men or women with support from scriptures?
Bryan Cross January 5th, 2011 2:00 pm :
Lojahw (re: #1091)

You have, at last count, around 108 or 109 comments in this thread alone, containing enough words to fill a small book. No other guest has that many comments in this thread. (And you have posted dozens of comments in the canon thread.) Some of your last comments in this thread were blocked for reasons I explained to you privately, mostly because you wanted to use this thread to criticize Catholic doctrines concerning Mary, images, etc., when the purpose of this thread is only to discuss this article. And also because the discussion with you had run its course, and was becoming repetitious and contentious; so I judged that we needed to give it a rest.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
David Pell January 5th, 2011 2:08 pm :
It is my personal opinion that I am commanded by Christ to listen to the church, the Church founded by Christ against which the powers of death will never prevail. If I don’t listen to Christ’s church, I am to be excommunicated. My personal opinion is also the testimony of Scripture.

Well said. When I read in Hebrews that I am to submit to the elders of the Church in all things, or when I read in James 5 that I’m supposed to have the elders anoint me and pray for me if I’m sick, or when Jesus says that when a straying brother should be brought before the Church for judgment, it immediately becomes incumbent upon me to know who these people are that the scriptures are referring me to. Maybe this problem doesn’t seem so huge to people who grew up in a “church,” but it was drastically important for me when I converted to Christianity at age 17 with no background at all. The various models being offered here by our Protestant interlocutors cannot account for this problem, because the Scriptures never tell us how to go about “finding a church.” All of this about getting saved and uniting oneself to a local body that “teaches the gospel” we’ve been hearing is thoroughly unscriptural, and has to be injected into the process of becoming a Christian only because of Protestant assumptions about authority and ecclesiology. What I now think is obvious from the New Testament’s silence on the matter, coupled with what it does say about the vesting and transmission of authority, and the Christian’s duty to be obedient to that authority, is that the New Testament simply assumes the existence of our One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. There is only one Church, and it is spread throughout the world by the successors of the apostles, which is why we’re never told in Scripture how to go about establishing “local church bodies” on our own, or what we’re supposed to do when the body we’re a part of ceases to be a legitimate member of the “visible church.”
Sean Patrick January 5th, 2011 2:24 pm :
Mateo and David Pell.

Well said. Also, it should noted that it wouldn’t be very hard to isolate a passage of scripture that standing alone is in clear opposition to what a Reformed Christian would confess. James 2:24 comes to mind. If the rules are the same than this passages meaning should be evident without bringing any interpretation into the discussion.

Now, I imagine that TFan (correct me if I am wrong) would disagree that James 2:24 is opposed to Reformed Theology. He would probably offer a different interpretation. But alas, this would be an admission that our differences are differences of interpretation which is the very thing being denied.
David Meyer January 5th, 2011 2:33 pm :
LOWJAW:

I can see why you were blocked. As I pointed out in comment #768, you are so verbose but really not engaging the article. You are doing it again, in the same exact ways. You give as the definition of sola scriptura this:

the Bible, accepted as God’s Word, is the only unquestioned authority

That is not the definition! At least it is not Keith Mathisons definition (it certainly is not the definition most Reformed would give). I suggest you read the book, and read the article again.

Then you throw all sorts of stuff out there that is off topic stuff. One of them was this:

The most important question of orthodoxy is: who is God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit? On this, all orthodox Christians agree.

First off, that is just your opinion that that is the most important question. No one has any good reason to take your word for it. Second, that means Catholics (in your opinion) are orthodox Christians and the Protestant gospel of imputation is not a “important question”. I will venture a guess that TFan slightly disagrees with that, along with the vast majority of Reformed commenters here. Third, it is just utterly off topic. Interesting, yes. But you need to focus your comments like a laser beam in this thread. it is outrageously long already.

Peace to you,
David M.
Ray Stamper January 5th, 2011 3:18 pm :
@David Pell

When I read in Hebrews that I am to submit to the elders of the Church in all things, or when I read in James 5 that I’m supposed to have the elders anoint me and pray for me if I’m sick, or when Jesus says that when a straying brother should be brought before the Church for judgment, it immediately becomes incumbent upon me to know who these people are that the scriptures are referring me to. Maybe this problem doesn’t seem so huge to people who grew up in a “church,” but it was drastically important for me when I converted to Christianity at age 17 with no background at all.

THAT is a most excellent point. It was also my experience when I re-approached revealed religion as a serious solution to fundamental human questions after several years of trenchant philosophical agnosticism. If one approaches the Scripture like a true “unchurched” pagan would, without the assumption that one’s “church” of choice-or-heredity is simply THE Church mentioned in the biblical text, or else without the vague Evangelical idea that the “church” is just an invisible conglomeration of groups who share some basic theological positions; it turns out that the Catholic position that Christ was actually building a visible Church with a discoverable historical identity strikes one as quite naturally plausible, if not indeed likely, from an intitial reading of the text.

Pax et Bonum,

Ray
John Thayer Jensen January 5th, 2011 4:07 pm :
@David Pell:

When I read in Hebrews that I am to submit to the elders of the Church in all things, or when I read in James 5 that I’m supposed to have the elders anoint me and pray for me if I’m sick, or when Jesus says that when a straying brother should be brought before the Church for judgment, it immediately becomes incumbent upon me to know who these people are that the scriptures are referring me to. Maybe this problem doesn’t seem so huge to people who grew up in a “church,” but it was drastically important for me when I converted to Christianity at age 17 with no background at all.

David, this is very moving to me. It was exactly my situation. I became a Christian out of nowhere (no religious upbringing at all) at age 27; fairly soon became a member of a Reformed Church, and one of the really important things that impressed me that they taught me was the essential fact that the Church is not just a limiting concept (“all the elect” or something) but a worldly entity, and one that had human authority that one was required by God to submit to.

It was, you may understand, not with pleasure when the found that I had learned the lesson too well. At age 53 I submitted to that divinely-appointed human authority – in the form of the Roman Church and the Bishop of Auckland. That was 15 years ago this last Christmas Eve. It is the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to me. I still find myself astonished at the marvellous fact that I am a Catholic.

jj
GNW_Paul January 5th, 2011 6:48 pm :
Andrew McCallum #1027 “Now why do you think that it is necessary for a given group (in this case the Nicean Fathers) to be granted infallibility in order to act boldly and decisively? In other areas of human thought we don’t need infallibility for those under authority to accept a pronouncement as true. Why here?”

How do you feel about the College Football Bowl System (the BCS)? Isn’t the main objection of most fans who despise it that it doesn’t satisfactorily settle the issue of “which team was best.” This a light hearted comparison, but it leads into my four initial premises: A) Final and definitive decisions are necessary in human affairs; B) A lack of definitive resolution leads to perpetual dispute; C) In every area of life humans use varying combinations of methodology and authority for resolving disputes, D) where there is not a reliable mechanism (combination of method and authority) for resolving disputes in human dispute, Chaos is unavoidable.

Why do we repeat the truism “never discuss politics or religion at the dinner table”? I would posit that is because there is commonly no agreed upon course of resolving such disputes. In many areas of life we learn to avoid conflict which is messy to near pointlessness because there can be no way of resolving the question. Humans recognize this messiness and generally recognize they are disruptive to the smooth flow of human events. This is born out by the mechanisms that do exist at every level of society for resolving those disputes that come up in out interactions with the world and our family. Any family gathering where such disputes are allowed to take hold end up in chaos, hurt feelings, fights and etc. and are overall damaging to the ‘society’ of that meal.

Further, we actually develop other topics to argue about that can’t be resolved on principle, just to have something to dispute, but we make it something of no importance. Sports, art, movies, music, and hobbies. We do this because it is easier to be civil when arguing about things that are of lesser importance. You and I can argue “Ford vs. Chevy” in trucks, or “49ers, vs. Vikings” in football, or the merits of two baseball players and make it enjoyable precisely because we both know that it really doesn’t matter who is right. Even in these areas though there are some methods and authorities as well. There is a Super Bowl and a World Series and an Oscars etc. and most normal people get just about as frustrated with never ending arguments over the designated hitter rule as they do over Sola Scriptura.

Speaking of games, at every level games have rules and anywhere the rules break down or can not be applied definitively the game breaks down into chaos. Children’s games often break down into actual fights when there is no one to resolve disputes. Most sports require referees and judges who make the final call and that call stands, although it isn’t infallible, it is unquestionable and (at some point) irreversible. The decision of the ultimate authority is final and binding.

In science and academics we have standards and methods by which progress is made towards determining the truth or at least the best representation. In politics we have elections and votes in congress or some places have coups and dictatorships. In law we have a hierarchy of police and courts ultimately ending with the Supreme Court whether it be the state or national version.

In other areas of human thought we don’t need infallibility for those under authority to accept a pronouncement as true.

No, not infallibility but we do need finality even in simple things like sports and especially in issues like the 2000 presidential election. The referee in a baseball game isn’t infallible, but he is the final authority and the decision stand. The Supreme Court was not infallible in “Bush v. Gore” but it was recognized as exercising final authority.

Although infallible is not a characteristic that we apply to any other human endeavor, what we do require, is a high degree of finality and irreversibility, and some clear combination of methodology and authority by which we may trust to arrive at conclusions. Anywhere that these things do not exist in a high degree, chaos is the result. Observe a baseball game (at any age group) with no umpire or elections in Afghanistan or Iraq.

So the question is:

Now why do you think that it is necessary for a given group (in this case the Nicean Fathers) to be granted infallibility in order to act boldly and decisively?

Because in order for the decision at Nicea to prevent chaos in the Christian Church it was necessary that it be “irreversible and final and binding.” I will admit that in that time the Father’s of Nicea did not necessarily see this decision as “infallible” by the definition the Church eventually settled upon. I do believe that they saw the decision as final, binding, universal and irreversible. The Fathers of Nicea certainly believed they had the Authority to make a decision and the overwhelming majority of the Church recognized that authority. Certainly as a body and as individuals (with perhaps the exception of the 17 who were convinced to sign) the Fathers believed they were making the right decision.

Over time the Church rightly discerned that decisions of councils were under certain circumstances infallible. This must be true because if such decisions are not infallible, then they are potentially wrong. If they are potentially wrong, they must be reversible. If they are reversible then they are not final. If they are not final, and they are potentially wrong, then they can not be binding. If no body in or of the Church has the ability to make final, binding, irreversible decisions then there will be chaos.

My syllogism:
A) Final and definitive decisions are desired by human beings with the degree of finality and irreversibility varying in proportion to timeliness and importance of the issues.
B) A lack of definitive resolution always leads to perpetual dispute in anything that anyone cares about;
C) In every essential area of society humans use varying combinations of methodology or authority for resolving disputes,
D) where there no reliable mechanism (combination of method and authority) for resolving disputes, Chaos is unavoidable.
Therefore:
1) The Church must be able to make final, binding, irreversible decisions to avoid internal Chaos
a) If all decisions of the Church may be in error they all decisions must be reversible
b) If the all decisions of the Church must be reversible then no decision can be final
c) If all decisions of the Church may be in error and are not final they can not be binding
2) The Church must be able to make infallible decisions in at least some circumstances in order to be able to avoid Chaos internal Chaos.

Thanks for the discussion thus far. God Bless

GNW_Paul
GNW_Paul January 5th, 2011 8:06 pm :
@ Andrew McCollum

Replying to your #1060 Following on my #1099 response on the same issue of why Nicea required infallibility.

Andrew McCallum #1060 As another example let’s look at the matter of justification. At a relatively short period of time into the Reformation there were a number of very tightly defined Protestant summaries on justification all saying the same thing with some differences in emphasis. But on the Catholic side before Trent the range of opinions on justification was massive. It was not as if the RCC had not spoken to the matter of justification, it’s just that there was nothing proclaimed infallibly or anything close to it for that matter. And even after Trent the RCC did not get to the type of consensus of the Reformed confessions. Now of course we can see progress in the RCC’s understanding of justification, but there was much that was left to opinion even after Trent on this very important matter. Now maybe it could be said that the RCC will never infallibly work out all the important problems she had dealt with since the Early Church on the matter of justification and so my question to you is why would this be a problem? Certainly there was progress at Carthage (and Orange too) and certainly there was progress at Trent and certainly there has been progress since Trent, but perhaps there will never be anything infallibly promulgated by the RCC on some matters concerning justification. But as long as you feel there is progress being made, why is this a problem?

The fact that the Church must have the capacity to pronounce an infallible teaching under certain circumstances as I attempted to demonstrate in #1099 does not require that that the Church actually exercise that capacity quickly, or in every question. In fact if the Church did exercise the ability to teach infallible dogma at every hint of question or dispute it might not be inappropriate to characterize the Magesterium as tyrannical (as I think not a few Protestants are wont to claim as it is).

Certainly the U.S. Supreme Court doesn’t take every case, or chose to rule on on every question of law. When the Supreme Court does rule, it sometimes rules broadly and at other times narrowly. Does the fact the the Supreme Court sometimes chooses to make a ruling narrowly leaving some aspects of the question unresolved or sometimes chooses to not rule on a particular issue at all undermine the authority of the Court? No.

Similarly the Church is probably even more judicious in exercising infallible authority. Precisely for the reasons I used to justify the need to infallibility in my #1099. Ordinarily the Church teaches through statements that are not by themselves infallible. In fact I believe it is true that the documents of Vatican II don’t express any dogma in an infallible formulation! At times some development of theology or change in the human condition leads to a gradual change in emphasis or focus on how exactly the Church expresses various doctrines (to a significant degree in Vatican II). One way of interpretting the history of the Councils and infallibility in general is to recognize that the Fathers and every council and every Pope along with the college of Bishops as a whole have always shown restraint; taking seriously the imperative of ultimate authority to teach a particular expression of doctrine as de fide and make it irreversible, binding and final.

I interpret the fact that Councils have restricted themselves to teaching relatively few doctrines infallibly and when teaching infallibly have generally exercised further restraint in defining only to the degree required to reject the specific heresy as an confirmation that even at Nicea it was an implicit recognition by the Fathers that such a declaration was final, irreversible, binding authority and thus as the Church later discerned required the charism of infallibility.

At a relatively short period of time into the Reformation there were a number of very tightly defined Protestant summaries on justification all saying the same thing with some differences in emphasis.

Defining justification too narrowly is precisely where the Protestants fell into error and the decree of Trent was simply declaring that error, and nothing more.

And even after Trent the RCC did not get to the type of consensus of the Reformed confessions.

And seemingly that has been sufficient. Funny Andrew, that as a Protestant who I would guess might claim “In essentials unity, in all else diversity” you would find this to be a flaw and not a strength.

ow maybe it could be said that the RCC will never infallibly work out all the important problems she had dealt with since the Early Church on the matter of justification and so my question to you is why would this be a problem?

It isn’t a problem in general. In specific cases there come times when there is a problem. The Church has the ability to define when it is required. The problem would be a Church that did not have the ability make a final, binding, irreversible declaration and thus has no mechanism making a final and binding decision on anything.

But as long as you feel there is progress being made, why is this a problem?

It isn’t, but it would be if the question of justification (or any other doctrine) where to get out of hand (as it did in the reformation)with individuals leading groups of Christians “off the map.” It isn’t necessary to decide everything. It isn’t wise to decide things and make them binding in the future until there is a very specific circumstance requiring a decision.

Again, thanks for the interaction and Peace

GNW_Paul
Lojahw January 5th, 2011 10:58 pm :
Greetings, David Meyer. How have I misread Mathison? His definition of sola scriptura is entirely consistent with mine: he claims that the Reformers rejected the two-source view of divine revelation for the one-source view of the church fathers “that Scripture [the one-source of divine revelation] is to be interpreted in and by the communion of saints within the theological context of the rule of faith.”

That Scripture (the one divine source after the apostles were gone) as the only unquestioned source applies to the rule of faith is proven historically by the fact that it was created by the bishops of Nicea from the one-source of divine revelation: Scripture (I suggest you read Theodoret’s Church History on the Council of Nicea if you disagree). Granted, T-fan disagrees with me on the rule of faith, but I agree with Mathison. The article does not fairly evaluate sola scriptura in its Reformation historical context.

As to my verbosity, the complexity of the subject matter and the many distortions of contributors requires explanations that may be too much for some readers, but my posts are terse compared to the church fathers, the Reformers, JPII, and a number of others on this blog.

As to the alleged number of my posts (if that count is accurate), more than 150 posts were made to this blog in past 7 days (just 1 from me prior to this one); my posts have been spread over a year.

Blessings,
Lojahw
Andrew McCallum January 6th, 2011 12:34 am :
Mike,

I am not going to be able to reply any time soon so I will have to back out. One closing I have is that just like there is often not a common understanding of the term “sola scriptura” between the two sides (as evidenced in this article), so there is generally not agreement between the two sides on the term “opinion.” You have asked me before about how to differentiate content of divine revelation from what is just human opinion and I have tried to get at the definitional matter first. But I don’t think we have ever agreed on a definition. So perhaps that can be a matter for a future discussion. Thanks for all of your thoughtful comments.

GNW Paul – I’m glad to hear you say that it was the Church later determining that the earlier councils acted infallibly rather than infallibility being part of the thinking of Nicea and the ECF’s. And I think you are right that we all search for finality. You also say that what is really important is that the Church ought to be able to act authoritatively to deal with heresy and schism which again I agree with. As you know, in many theological matters the RCC speaks authoritatively but with lesser than de fide certainty. So again the question that the Catholic must contend with (which I have been going through with Mike) is why just in these certain situations did the RCC need to be infallible in order to be authoritative since in so many cases the RCC speaks authoritatively without infallibility. And this brings us again back to the question that I asked using Nicea as an example right in the very beginning of the comments section. As you say, Nicea would not have seen their pronouncements to be infallible, and yet they were certainly authoritative. Nicea dealt with the question without anyone understanding the Church to be infallible.

But I will have to leave the conversation aside for the time being.

Cheers….
Jesse January 6th, 2011 10:21 am :
Andrew mentions that each side in the debate has a different formulation of sola scriptura.

Here is what John Macarthur offers:

“Sola Scriptura simply means that all truth necessary for our salvation and spiritual life is taught either explicitly or implicitly in Scripture.” Source: https://www.biblebb.com/files/MAC/jm-233828.htm

As a Catholic, could I not affirm this? The Bible tells me about the Church, about its function, and about Tradition? It would seem therefore that all these matters are implied by the Bible.
Michael Liccione January 6th, 2011 1:51 pm :
Jesse:

You wrote:

As a Catholic, could I not affirm this? The Bible tells me about the Church, about its function, and about Tradition? It would seem therefore that all these matters are implied by the Bible.

You are quite right. You’re upholding what’s called the “material sufficiency” of the Bible, and that is certainly a thesis a Catholic may hold, even though the Church has never solemnly defined on the question. But that only brings us back to the question of interpretive authority.

When people disagree about what Bible “implies” about a question of doctrinal importance, we need to know by what authority the disagreement is to be resolved. Absent ecclesial infallibility, there can be no resolution in principle, because the authority allegedly resolving the disagreement could always be wrong. So the question becomes: How do we know it’s right, if in fact it’s right? To say “it’s because such-and-such an interpretation of Scripture is true” just kicks the can down the road.

Best,
Mike
Michael Liccione January 6th, 2011 1:55 pm :
Andrew (#1102):

You have asked me before about how to differentiate content of divine revelation from what is just human opinion and I have tried to get at the definitional matter first. But I don’t think we have ever agreed on a definition. So perhaps that can be a matter for a future discussion. Thanks for all of your thoughtful comments.

Thank you too. I agree we haven’t agreed on “definitions” of various epistemological concepts. That just points to the basic problem: we have philosophical disagreements about epistemology. Unless those are resolved, we won’t make any progress on the other questions at issue.

I look forward to your return.

Best,
Mike
Brad January 6th, 2011 3:10 pm :
At Michael #1104.

You stated:

…How do we know it’s right…

You seem to think that having an ecclesial authority (namely, the RCC) solves this. That is, having an ecclesial authority helps a person to know an interpretive decision is right. Yet, this doesn’t work.

To submit to the RCC is a fallible decision in itself. What a person does in such a submission is to relinquish further interpretations, but not all interpretations. Indeed, they made one interpretation that had a huge consequence namely, the consequence of relinquishing further personal interpretative judgement.

I probably need to read the Tu Quoque article, eh.

Brad
mateo January 6th, 2011 4:23 pm :
Jesse :Andrew mentions that each side in the debate has a different formulation of sola scriptura.
Here is what John Macarthur offers:
“Sola Scriptura simply means that all truth necessary for our salvation and spiritual life is taught either explicitly or implicitly in Scripture.” Source: https://www.biblebb.com/files/MAC/jm-233828.htm
As a Catholic, could I not affirm this? The Bible tells me about the Church, about its function, and about Tradition? It would seem therefore that all these matters are implied by the Bible.

If scriptures are explicitly teaching a doctrine necessary for our salvation, the scriptures can be said to be formally sufficient. If scriptures are implicitly teaching a doctrine necessary for our salvation, the scriptures can be said to be materially sufficient.

I think a Catholic could affirm what John Macarthur has said. I believe that Pope Benidict XVI has said that all dogma is an interpretation of scriptures.

The problem with John Macarthur definition of sola scriptura is that it has nothing to do with the doctrine of sola scriptura that original Protestant “reformers” embraced. Luther’s doctrine of sola scriptura is NOT primarily an assertion by Luther that scriptures are authoritative, or that scriptures are materially sufficient to support the doctrines of Christianity. Luther’s novelty of sola scriptura is his claim that the Church founded by Christ, “the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church”, has no authority whatsoever to teach doctrine that binds the conscience of the Christian. Luther claimed, contrary to what is explicitly taught in scriptures, that he could found his own personal church that taught his personal interpretation of the scriptures, and Luther used the novelty of sola scriptura to justify founding his personal church. Luther’s sola scriptura is Keith Mathison’s solo scriptura, since Luther rejected the authority of the church that he was a member of in order to start a brand new personal church. The same can be said of John Calvin – Calvin’s sola scriptura is Mathison’s solo scriptura. since Calvin also rejected the authority of the church that he was a member of to found his own personal church in Geneva.

Andrew McCallum has said that I don’t understand the “reformed” doctrine of sola scriptura. I have challanged Andrew McCallum formally define the doctrine of sola scriptura as he understands it, and to quote the scriptures that are formally sufficient to support that doctrine. I believe that could be done in a one paragraph responce. Andrew McCallum didn’t bother to respond to my challange.

I also challange to TurrentinFan, Lojawh, and any other Protestant that thinks sola scriptura is taught in scriptures. Formally define a doctrine of sola scriptura, and then quote the scriptures that are formally sufficient to support that doctrine. I am quite confident that no Protestant will rise to this challange, because there are no scriptures that teach the docrtrine of sola scriptura. (Unless, of course, the Protestant redefines sola scriptura in the way John Mcarthur has done, which is a claim that sciptures are an authority for the Christian. Macarthur has taken the sola out of sola scriptura, so his sola scriptura is just an obfuscation.)

Of all the novel doctrines taught by the “reformers”, sola scriptura is the easiest one to refute, since sola scriptura is a self-refuting docrtrine – there are no scriptures that teach sola scriptura, therefore, sola scriptura cannot known to be inerrant doctrine by the standard of sola scriptura.
Ray Stamper January 6th, 2011 4:55 pm :
Dear Brad,

Please review the following comment wherein I addressed precisely this question a few weeks ago:

https://www.calledtocommunion.com/2010/11/sola-scriptura-a-dialogue-between-michael-horton-and-bryan-cross/#comment-13836

Pax et Bonum,

Ray
Ray Stamper January 6th, 2011 4:58 pm :
Brad,

In case the link does not work correct, its comment #78 on the “Sola Scriptura: A Dialogue between Michael Horton and Bryan Cross” article in response to “Richard”

Pax

Ray
Michael Liccione January 6th, 2011 8:21 pm :
Brad (#1104):

I probably need to read the Tu Quoque article, eh.

Yes, you do–and also the comment to which Ray has referred you. In the meantime, I point out that . this entire debate hinges on achieving a sound philosophical grasp of epistemological concepts: knowledge, belief, opinion, fact, faith, reason, interpretation, etc. Obviously I can’t teach Epistemology 101 in a combox entry, but I don’t have to. A few observations will suffice for now.

I do not claim that we can “know” that what the Catholic Church teaches under certain conditions is true because the Catholic Church claims to be infallible when she teaches under those conditions. What the Catholic Church thus teaches are articles of faith, which by definition are not articles of knowledge, like the laws of gravity or the existence of consciousness. On the Catholic HP, what we can “know” is that when the Church teaches under certain conditions, she has formulated a proposition that’s de fide, an article of faith as distinct from just a human opinion. What we thus “know” is part of the content of the deposit of faith “once delivered to the holy ones.” But if we also and thereby knew that such a proposition is true, then it would be an instance of knowledge not faith. (This of course applies only to those things which require divine revelation, as distinct from human reason alone, to apprehend.) Arguing for the truth of the overall deposit of faith is a different task, that of “apologetics.” But even good apologetics is not going to “prove” the truth of said deposit, thus yielding knowledge. The most apologetics can do is give better reason to believe it than not; for if one could prove it, faith would be unnecessary; indeed, all we’d need for faith is good software to make the proper logical deductions from the relevant data. But that would not be faith, which is a gift one accepts or rejects freely. There are good reasons for faith, but not necessitating reasons.

With that understood, the point that Bryan, Ray, I, and others are making is that, absent an ecclesial authority that teaches infallibly under certain conditions, there is no principled way to distinguish what’s de fide from what’s only human opinion about how to interpret what are taken as the “sources” of divine revelation (Scripture, other early-Church writings, tradition, etc). As we see it, the Protestant HP permits no such principled distinction. That reduces the Christian religion to a matter of opinion, which in turn is incompatible with apprehending divine revelation precisely as such.

Now a person’s decision to accept the Catholic Church’s claims for herself can indeed be “fallible” in one sense, in that the “reasons” he finds convincing may not be all that cogent. But if Catholicism is true, then choosing to accept the gift of faith, in the way the Catholic Church understands that gift, is to apprehend the content of the deposit of faith in such wise as to participate in “that infallibility with which Christ willed his Church to be endowed in matters of faith and morals” (Vatican Council I, Pastor Aeternus, 1870). If there is no such infallibility, then we’re back with the Protestant HP. But there’s nothing rationally inevitable about the Protestant HP. There are people who think the Protestant HP is the only way to be reasonable in matters of faith; but that is by no means obvious, and in fact I see no good reason to believe it.

Best,
Mike

Best,
Mike
Michael Liccione January 6th, 2011 8:22 pm :
Oops, that was “Brad #1106”. And I don’t need to wish him my best twice. Sorry about that.
Jesse January 6th, 2011 9:48 pm :
Matteo 1107 and Michael 1110,

Very enlightening. Thank you so much!

At the end of the day, I’m reminded of what a protestant once told me, essentially that, “I don’t have any fundamental problems with the Catholic construct of Scripture + Tradition + Magesterium. It’s coherent and can be reconciled with scripture. My only problem is that the RCC teaches doctrine that is contrary to Scripture, and therefore this construct must be untrue.”

After more than 1100 posts, I think that’s really the brass tacks of this debate.
Lojahw January 6th, 2011 11:46 pm :
GNW_Paul wrote:

The Church has the ability to define when it is required. The problem would be a Church that did not have the ability make a final, binding, irreversible declaration and thus has no mechanism making a final and binding decision on anything.

For Protestants, Scripture, as the Word of God, makes all the final, binding, irreversible declarations that are necessary. What you say about the Church “teaching relatively few doctrines infallibly” and “defining only to the degree required to reject heresy,” Protestants say about Scripture. Going beyond what Scripture dogmatically teaches is presumptuous. “Do not add to His words or He will reprove you and you will be found a liar” (Prov. 30:6). You appeal to your Catechism and other documents of the Church (secondary sources); Protestants appeal to the divine Word itself, the primary source of infallible revealed doctrine. That is the principle followed by the bishops at Nicea in declaring the doctrine of Jesus’ divinity:

“The bishops all agreed … that the Son is by nature only-begotten of God [John 1:18], Word [John 1:1], Power [1 Cor. 1:24], and sole Wisdom of the Father [1 Cor 1:24]; that He is, as John said, ‘the true God,’ [1 John 5:20] and, as Paul has written, ‘the brightness of the glory, and the express image of the person of the Father’ [Col. 1:15; Heb. 1:3] … likewise, ‘I and the Father are one’ [John 10:30]. They then, with still greater clearness, briefly declared that the Son is of [the same nature: homoousios] with the Father; for this, indeed, is the signification of the passages which have been quoted.”

The above excerpt from Theodoret’s Church History (1.7) demonstrates the Council’s appeal to the positive teaching of Scripture on the deity of Christ. The following quote demonstrates their rejection of the Arian heresy explicitly because it was not found nor implied by Scripture (i.e., the material sufficiency of Scripture alone refutes Arianism and other heresies):

. . . “And since no passage of the inspired Scripture uses the terms ‘out of the non-existent,’ or that ‘there was a time when He was not,’ nor indeed any of the other phrases of the same class, it did not appear reasonable to assert or to teach such things.”” (Theodoret, Ecclesiastical History, 1.11)

The problem with your assertion at the top of this post is that the Church at Rome has made a number of “final, binding, irreversible declarations” which appear to be mistaken. For example, the Council of Trent, with the pope’s approval, declared a number of books to be the infallible Word of God in spite of explicit contradictions between them and the books that all Christians accept as the Word of God. I gave a number of examples on the canon thread, such as Judith identifying Nebuchadnezzar as the king of Assyria ruling from Nineveh, and the additions to Esther saying Haman was a Macedonian, not an Agagite. I ask again: on what grounds should I or anyone else suspend logic and reason to accept your Church’s “final, binding, irreversible declarations”?

If you’re looking for a principled basis for believing or rejecting a particular doctrine, look for what is authoritatively and clearly taught in Scripture. Follow the example of the bishops at the Council of Nicea.

Re: “The most important question of orthodoxy is: who is God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit? On this, all orthodox Christians agree.” Please note:

A symbol of faith is a summary of the principal truths of the faith. . . . The symbol of faith is first and foremost the baptismal creed. . . . None of the creeds from the different stages in the Church’s life can be considered superseded or irrelevant. (CCC 188, 189, 193)

Blessings,
Lojahw (Lover of Jesus and His Word)
Michael Liccione January 7th, 2011 5:07 am :
Jesse (#1112):

I’ve heard that sort of thing from Protestants myself. And in a way, you’re right that it’s “the brass tacks of this debate.” But I should think the reply a Catholic should make is obvious, especially after more than 1100 posts.

The Magisterium of the Church insists that its doctrines are in accord with Scripture and must be, since Scripture contains the inerrant Word of God. Obviously the Protestant is interpreting Scripture differently from how the Magisterium does. So, to the charge that some Catholic doctrine is “contrary to Scripture,” the Catholic’s immediate response must “In whose interpretation? Not the Catholic.” The Protestant then has one of two possible answers. One is that the very question is idle, because Scripture needs no interpretation on the relevant points, and thus shows without interpretation that the Catholic position is wrong. For reasons Bryan has explained, that answer just isn’t plausible. The other and more common Protestant answer is that, while Scripture of course requires interpretation, the Catholic interpretation is false on the relevant points. The question then becomes by what criteria interpretations of Scripture are to be assessed.

Recall that the “Catholic construct” you referred to is true if and only if the Magisterium is the sole dispositive interpreter of the sources (cf. Dei Verbum §10), including Scripture. So, on the Catholic HP, the dispositive means of assessing interpretations of Scripture, at least on doctrinally contentious points, just is the Magisterium. But if, as the Protestant claims, one can know that some of the Magisterium’s interpretations of Scripture are false, then the Catholic construct must be false. So, one can be justified in saying that some Catholic doctrines are “contrary to Scripture” only if one is antecedently justified in holding that the Catholic construct is false. Thus, to infer that the Catholic construct must be false because some Catholic doctrines are contrary to Scripture is requires already assuming that the Catholic construct is false. So even the more plausible of the two possible Protestant answers simply begs the question.

Best,
Mike
David Meyer January 7th, 2011 10:09 am :
Lowjaw (#1113)
“For Protestants, Scripture, as the Word of God, makes all the final, binding, irreversible declarations that are necessary.”

That is a bait and switch. You tempt me with God’s word but YOU are the one making “all the final, binding, irreversible declarations”. The Scripture IS A BOOK and cannot speak. If you think the Scripture is somehow directly speaking to you, then you have traded the opinions and interpretations of a fallible man (the traditions of men) for the word of God.

Then you said this

Protestants appeal to the divine Word itself, the primary source of infallible revealed doctrine. That is the principle followed by the bishops at Nicea in declaring the doctrine of Jesus’ divinity:

“The bishops all agreed … that the Son is by nature…”

WAIT a minute! WHO agreed? The BISHOPS all agreed. Another bait and switch. You said “Protestants” in your statement above, then in the example it is the bishops that are doing the interpreting, not Protestants, not laymen, not just anyone claiming “apostolic doctrine”.

No one is saying that the Scripture should not be appealed to. In fact, I would dare say they are materially sufficient. The “appeal” question is by whom? Those who have authorization from the apostles to do so or “Protestants [who] appeal to the divine word itself”? You are comparing yourself to the bishops at the council of Nicea. Do you see how that looks to someone outside your tradition looking in?

You appeal to your interpretation, the bishops of Nicea appeal to theirs. IT IS THAT SIMPLE! AND THE CHOICE IS OBVIOUS!

Sorry for “shouting”, second cup of coffee just hit me!

Peace,
David M.
GNW_Paul January 7th, 2011 10:56 am :
Hi Lojahw

Of course you are right:

Lojahw #1113 “The most important question of orthodoxy is: who is God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit? On this, all orthodox Christians agree.”

And Amen to that Brother.

Your comments don’t interact with anything I’ve said. Frankly, I find it offensive that you direct your handful of bare assertions and easily corrected misunderstandings presented as evidence to me.

For Protestants, Scripture, as the Word of God, makes all the final, binding, irreversible declarations that are necessary.

So if that is the case how is it that nearly all stripes of Protestants have reversed what Jesus teaches regarding divorce?

Luke 16:18 Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery, and the man who marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

Romans 7:2-3 For the married woman is bound by law to her husband while he is living; but if her husband dies, she is released from the law concerning the husband. So then, if while her husband is living she is joined to another man, she shall be called an adulteress; but if her husband dies, she is free from the law, so that she is not an adulteress though she is joined to another man.

So as far as I know every Protestant body contradicts the clear teaching of both Jesus in his own words and the very same Apostle Paul that Protestants believe to have taught sola fide. If Protestants can’t even get that right, why should I trust that when they “appeal to the divine Word itself, the primary source of infallible revealed doctrine” they can tell me anything about what is “infallible revealed doctrine” from the ?

“Do not add to His words or He will reprove you and you will be found a liar” (Prov. 30:6). You appeal to your Catechism and other documents of the Church (secondary sources); Protestants appeal to the divine Word itself, the primary source of infallible revealed doctrine.

So what does that make Luther and all subsequent Protestants who add the word “alone” to Romans 3:28 and invent the doctrine of Sola Fide which isn’t taught in scripture?

For example, the Council of Trent, with the pope’s approval, declared a number of books to be the infallible Word of God in spite of explicit contradictions between them and the books that all Christians accept as the Word of God. I gave a number of examples on the canon thread, such as Judith identifying Nebuchadnezzar as the king of Assyria ruling from Nineveh, and the additions to Esther saying Haman was a Macedonian, not an Agagite.

If that is Protestant Biblical scholarship, you prove my point. Protestants don’t know anything about scripture and how to read it.

Given this forum and your exposure to those of us who interact here, I find this following statement just plain rude. It’s offensive to me that you smugly consider the Catholic Faith illogical and unreasonable.

I ask again: on what grounds should I or anyone else suspend logic and reason to accept your Church’s “final, binding, irreversible declarations”?

That said, Peace and Blessings to you and particularly a blessed Epiphany

GNW_Paul
mateo January 7th, 2011 1:34 pm :
Lojahw: For Protestants, Scripture, as the Word of God, makes all the final, binding, irreversible declarations that are necessary.

The scriptures themselves testify against this statement! In the New Testament, the scriptures explictly teach that Peter was given the power by Jesus to teach in the name of Jesus, and to bind in heaven and earth.

And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Matt 16:19 KJV

Lojahw, you can read your Protestant bible from cover to cover and you will never find a passage in the scriptures where the scriptures make a claim for themselves that they make “all the final, binding, irreversible declarations that are necessary”. In fact, what you will find in your Protestant bible is an explicit refutation of that mistaken notion of Protestantism.

If Protesants really accepted the bible as having authority, they would accept the verses in their Protestant bible that command Christians to listen to the church founded by Christ or be excommunicated. But no Protestant does that. All Protestants either belong to no church at all, or they are members of churches founded not by Christ, but by mere men and women. Thousands upon thousands of Protesant sects founded by men and women that interpret scriptures in contradictory ways – that isn’t “scriptural” by any stretch of the imagination!

Lojawh, my challange to you still stands. Formally define a doctrine of sola scriptura and then show me even a single verse in scriptures that is formally sufficient to maintain your doctrine of sola scriptura. If you can do that, I will believe in your doctrine of sola scriptura since I acknowledge that the scriptures are authoritaitive, and I am bound to believe what is taught by scripture.
Lojahw January 7th, 2011 4:05 pm :
GNW_Paul wrote:

Protestants don’t know anything about scripture and how to read it.

Your private judgment is noted; however, your Church does not teach this position. Nevertheless, could you tell me how you read the cited passages in Judith and Esther and how to reconcile them with the Scriptures that explicitly contradict them?

Your question about divorce rightly criticizes those who do not practice what Scripture teaches; however, your assertion that “nearly all stripes of Protestants have reversed what Jesus teaches” is overblown and does not take into account passages such as 1 Corinthians 7:10-15. Paul consents to divorce between believers and unbelievers when the unbelieving partner wants out. Perhaps you should rethink your sweeping criticism.

On the other hand, your question evades the main point: that interpretation of the fundamental doctrines of Christianity should be the focus. You agreed with me that the doctrine of God is essential. If so, why bring up secondary matters?

How about salvation? How does the Creed or Scripture square with the “final, binding, irreversible declaration” of your Magisterium: ”it is absolutely necessary for the salvation of every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff” in Boniface VIII’s Unam sanctam? You imply that Luther was wrong to oppose this declaration (which he certainly did). Where did Jesus or any apostle teach such a thing? How do you argue that Boniface’s declaration does not represent “another gospel,” imposing a condition on salvation never taught by the founding fathers of the Church?

Re: Luther adding the word “alone” to his German translation, he was out of line. But consider what he later wrote: “where no good works are there is no faith” and “the works are only the fruits of faith, by which one sees where faith is and where unbelief is ” (Commentary on the Epistles of Peter and Jude). The popular Protestant saying is: “faith alone saves, but saving faith is never alone.” BTW – Luther later wrote that his earlier works were offensive not only to his adversaries to but to himself as well; he wished to destroy them but consented to publishing them for the sake of history.

Re: my statement which you said was offensive: you took it out of context. I was referring to the irreversible declaration of the canonicity of books & texts which contradict the books that all Christians accept as divine revelation. I did not include all declarations by your Church. In my view, the Church at Rome has drunk from polluted streams (e.g., sources that do not represent divine revelation, including the deuteros and myths that grew up in later centuries), and thus its declarations should be carefully examined. I agree with much that the Roman Catholic Church teaches, but not all (for the reasons stated).

BTW – you didn’t tell me what is wrong with Protestants following the example of the bishops at the Council of Nicea. Following their example, there is indeed a principled difference between solo scriptura and sola scriptura. Just as the Church does not answer every question or resolve every conflicting interpretation, neither does Scripture – but it clearly declares the essentials.

Blessings,
Lojahw
herbert January 7th, 2011 5:26 pm :
Lojahw (re:#1118)- I hope you can see that asking GNW_Paul to explain the issues you’ve presented would be about as germane to the topic of this thread as it would be for me, playing the role of a modern agnostic skeptic, to ask you to explain the various Resurrection-account discrepancies we find in the Gospels themselves.
Joe Palmer January 7th, 2011 5:44 pm :
Lowjah,

“Your question about divorce rightly criticizes those who do not practice what Scripture teaches; however, your assertion that “nearly all stripes of Protestants have reversed what Jesus teaches” is overblown and does not take into account passages such as 1 Corinthians 7:10-15.”

Re: The Church’s teachings on sacramental marriage and annulment. Once you educate yourself on that, come back to us and tell us where the Church’s teaching on marriage contradicts the Scriptures (canonized by the same Catholic Church).
David Meyer January 7th, 2011 6:05 pm :
Lohjwaw said:

BTW – you didn’t tell me what is wrong with Protestants following the example of the bishops at the Council of Nicea.

Sorry, but this is just ridiculous. The point is that you need to follow the bishops, not to presume to follow their example by doing their job. There is a big difference. They don’t want you to follow their example in the way of defining doctrine. They want you to follow them as they do it! Otherwise all the heretics that were quoting scripture to them would have been commended by those bishops for all the scripture they appealed to instead of excommunicated.

Next: You do not know what “the essentials” are. That determination is in and of itself an interpretation. This is why Jesus rebuked those who voided God’s word for their own tradition. They did not see what the essentials were.

Next, I for one would love to hear you respond to Mateo’s challenge:

Lojawh, my challange to you still stands. Formally define a doctrine of sola scriptura and then show me even a single verse in scriptures that is formally sufficient to maintain your doctrine of sola scriptura. If you can do that, I will believe in your doctrine of sola scriptura since I acknowledge that the scriptures are authoritaitive, and I am bound to believe what is taught by scripture.

I say with all sincerity that if you can meet his challenge I will renounce Roman Catholicism. (I’ve been a Catholic for a mere fortnight) I have looked for an answer to this question for 10 months now, and mainly what I have seen is arguments about Judith and Tobit. So please do your best. Believe me, I was not too happy when I tried and failed. I was embarassed.

Happy Friday folks!

-David M.
wilkins January 7th, 2011 7:42 pm :
Lojahw,

in #1118 you said,

BTW – you didn’t tell me what is wrong with Protestants following the example of the bishops at the Council of Nicea

David M responded

They don’t want you to follow their example in the way of defining doctrine. They want you to follow them as they do it! Otherwise all the heretics that were quoting scripture to them would have been commended by those bishops for all the scripture they appealed to instead of excommunicated.

Of course, i’m with David on that, but i also wanted to remind you what Bryan said all the way up at #204:

The “assumptions” underlying sola scriptura were voiced by heretics, but not by the Church Fathers. That is because the Church Fathers never believed that the individual retained ultimate interpretive authority, or that the individual armed with his own personal Bible could stand in judgment upon the definitive decision of an ecumenical council regarding matters of faith or morals.

Now… i know that was 914 comments ago, but really, it still applies. You keep bringing up this Boniface quotation (201, 275, 540 and maybe a dozen other times) and your varied objections keep getting answered (as in 204, 212, 221, 542, and so on). Now, here we are at 1118 and you bring it up again as if it were fresh material. It’s just not. And the answers already given in the dozen-plus posts still apply.

best,
wilkins
Lojahw January 8th, 2011 12:13 am :
Dear Mateo, I don’t have time for extended dialogue but here’s some food for thought.

You claim that Scripture itself contradicts its sufficiency for all necessary doctrines, yet:
1. Jesus’ promises to Peter do not deny that everything necessary would be written by the apostles – in fact He implied it by commanding them to “teach all that I have commanded” and by promising that “My words will never pass away.” Why would the apostles not write down everything that was necessary in order to protect Jesus’ words and commandments from corruption in oral transmission?

Re: your comments elsewhere on Luther and Calvin founding their own personal churches – you misunderstand. They always claimed to be part of the one body of Christ of which He is head. As Luther wrote in the Smalcald Articles: “it is obvious that the holy church was without a pope for over five hundred years at least, and even today the Greek church and many churches that use other languages have never been under the pope and still are not. . . . Therefore, the church cannot be better ruled and preserved than if we all live under one head, Christ, and all the bishops – equal according to the office (although they may be unequal in their gifts) – keep diligently together in unity of teaching, faith, sacraments, prayers, and works of love, etc.” Your belief that those who have not pledged allegiance to the bishop of Rome are separated from Christ’s body has never been accepted by the EO or by Protestants: it is a partisan position.

2. Your own Catechism states that the essentials of the faith are contained in the baptismal creed and the other creeds, none of which “can be considered superseded” (cf. CCC 188, 189, 193). Notwithstanding arguments that the word “homoousios” is not used in Scripture, it would be wrong to deny that the Scriptures teach that Jesus as God’s only-begotten Son, the express image of the Father, the image of the invisible God, the one who said: “he who has seen Me has seen the Father” and “I and the Father are one” and “before Abraham was I am,” the one by whom all things were made, etc., is of “the same nature” [the meaning of homoousios] as the Father.

3. Scripture contains a number of statements which imply that it sufficiently teaches what is necessary. E.g., John 20:31 “… these have been written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name;” and 2 Peter 1:2, “seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence.” To deny that the Scripture provides “true knowledge of Him who called us” is to deny the infallibility of the Gospel of John, in addition to the other books of the Bible.

You won’t find an explicit statement in the books of Scripture that they contain every necessary doctrine because none of the writers at the time knew who would write the last entry – but when that was written, it contained a stern warning not to add to or take away from the words therein. The principle of sola scriptura is deduced from the facts that 1) the Scriptures are God’s Word (and therefore infallible); 2) Jesus promised the apostles that the Holy Spirit would teach them “all the truth”; 3) there is a clear historical and literary demarcation between the writings up to John’s Apocalypse and the writings after the apostles died; 4) Jude testifies to the finality of “the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints;” and 5) the witness of the church fathers such as Augustine:

“But who can fail to be aware that the sacred canon of Scripture, both of the Old and New Testament, is confined within its own limits, and that it stands so absolutely in a superior position to all later letters of the bishops, that about it we can hold no manner of doubt or disputation whether what is confessedly contained in it is right and true; but that all the letters of bishops which have been written, or are being written, since the closing of the canon, are liable to be refuted … either by the discourse of someone who happens to be wiser in the matter than themselves, or by the weightier authority and more learned experience of other bishops, by the authority of Councils; and further, that the Councils themselves, which are held in the several districts and provinces, must yield, beyond all possibility of doubt, to the authority of plenary Councils which are formed for the whole Christian world; and that even of the plenary Councils, the earlier are often corrected by those which follow them” (On Baptism, Against the Donatists, 2.3.4)

Which essential doctrines do you think are not taught by Scripture? And, if you believe there are such doctrines, how many generations of Christians perished before these doctrines were dogmatically taught as necessary by the Church? If they were not clearly articulated by faith “once for all delivered to the saints” on what basis were they later declared to be necessary?

BTW – in response to onoing comments on this thread: sola scriptura is a practice of interpreting the Scriptures within the COMMUNITY OF FAITH – NOT by isolated individuals (that is solo scriptura) – evidenced by the requirement that interpretation of the Scriptures must be consistent with the creed defined by the bishops at Nicea. Please note what Luther wrote about private judgment in his commentary on the Epistles of Peter and Jude:

“Peter has forbidden you to explain it by your own reason, The Holy Spirit will explain it himself, or it shall remain unexplained. If now any one of the holy fathers can prove that he draws his explanation from the Scriptures, which prove that it should be so explained, then it is right; where this is not the case, I for one shall not believe him.”

In other words, the Holy Spirit teaches from the Scriptures within the community of faith: remove any one of these and you are not practicing sola scriptura. As a number of Protestant scholars have explained, individual interpretation is an aberration from sola scriptura, largely adopted out of the Enlightenment that came after the Reformation.

Blessings,
Lojahw
Lojahw January 8th, 2011 11:52 am :
David M. wrote:

I acknowledge that the scriptures are authoritaitive, and I am bound to believe what is taught by scripture.

I am glad to hear of your commitment to the authority of Scripture. I hope my response to Mateo helps you better understand sola scriptura. Nevertheless, Rome’s way is not the only alternative to sola scriptura. The EO, like Rome, follows a two-source (Scripture + tradition) model of revelation. What distinguishes Rome from the other branches of Christianity is its own interpretation of Christ’s words to Peter in Matt. 16:18ff, etc. How do you know that Rome is right about this?

The starting point of Roman Catholic interpretation is: “You are Peter and upon you I will found my church.” However, that is not what Matthew wrote. “You are Petros and upon this petra [rock] I will found my church.” The church fathers were divided over how to interpret this, but after much reflection Augustine decided that petra referred to Christ and or Peter’s confession (cf. On Baptism 1.4.5; Sermon 26.1-2). Similarly, Jesus’ offer of the keys was not unique to Peter, but was made to all of the apostles (Matt. 18:18-19; John 20:23). Church fathers including Tertullian, Origen, Hilary of Poitiers, Ambrose, and Jerome all affirmed that the power of the keys was entrusted to all of the apostles, and from them to all their successors – not Peter’s alone.

Because there has never been universal agreement in the Church on the authority of Peter’s successors it is presumptuous to claim that the bishop of Rome has authority over the entire Church. Bryan’s earlier answers in this thread notwithstanding, Boniface VIII’s claim that salvation depends on the “subjection of every creature to the Roman Pontiff” subverts the clear teaching of the Scriptures that salvation is a gift from God which does not depend on subjection to any human authority. Bryan’s comments about diocesan governance and subsidiarity are revisionist red herrings. According to Bryan’s posts (especially 542), all EO’s since the Great Schism are damned to hell because they failed to meet a necessary condition of salvation. Moreover, the Reformers faced a papacy that demanded the power of “two swords:” both temporal and spiritual. Boniface and others in that era were not like John Paul II; their demands of supremacy prompted Luther to write:

All his bulls and books are available, in which he roars like a lion (the angel of Revelation 12 indicates this) that Christians cannot be saved unless they are obedient and submit to him in all things – what he wills, what he says, what he does. [e.g., Bulls Unam Sanctam (Boniface VIII, 1302) and Cantate Domino (Eugene IV, 1442)] This is as much to say: “Even if you believe in Christ and have everything that is necessary for salvation in him, you consider me your god and are subject and obedient to me.” Yet, it is obvious that the holy church was without a pope for over five hundred years at least, and even today the Greek church and many churches that use other languages have never been under the pope and still are not. Thus, as has often been said, it is a human fiction. It is not commanded. There is no need for it. (Smalcald Articles)

Leo X’s response in Decet Romanum proves that Luther was not exaggerating:

On all these [who follow Luther] we decree the sentences of excommunication, of anathema, or our perpetual condemnation and interdict, of privation of dignities, honors, and property on them and their descendents, and of declared unfitness for such possessions; of the confiscation of their goods and of the crime of treason; and these and the other sentences, censures, and punishments which are inflicted by canon law on heretics are set out in our aforesaid missive, we decree to have fallen on all these men to their damnation.

And yet Jesus said:
“Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life” (John 5:24).
“All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out. . . . “For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life, and I Myself will raise him up on the last day.” (John 6:37, 40).

It is therefore God’s will that Christ will raise up all who come to Him, believing in Him for eternal life. Of course many other Scriptures reinforce the above; none say that salvation depends on subjection to any other human being. Do you think popes have the power to overturn God’s will and promise? Is challenging the pope a “sin unto death”?

Blessings,
Lojahw
mateo January 8th, 2011 2:22 pm :
Lojahw: You claim that Scripture itself contradicts its sufficiency for all necessary doctrines …

Never have I made such a claim! Didn’t you read my post # 1107? To clarify what I believe, I agree with what Michael Liccone said his post # 1104, which I will paraphrase as:

1. A Catholic can believe that the scriputrures are materially sufficient to support all the doctrines taught by the Catholic Church
2. A dogma of the material sufficiency of scriptures has never (to my knowledge) been solemnly defined by an extraordinary act of the Magisterium.

Lojawh, I asked you to formally define your doctrine of sola scriptura. You wrote a long response to me, and ignored my request because you “don’t have time for extended dialogue”. Sheesh! Lojawh, let me ask you again, what is your definition of sola scriptura? Jessse, in his post #1103, gives us John Macarthur’s definition: “Sola Scriptura simply means that all truth necessary for our salvation and spiritual life is taught either explicitly or implicitly in Scripture.” I don’t want to put words into your mouth, but I am led to believe by your post #1123 that your definition of sola scriptura and John Macarthur’s definition are essentially identitical. Rest assured that I don’t have a problem with what John Macarthur says here. I also assert that John Macarthur has ripped the sola out of Luther’s doctrine of sola scriptura by this definition.

Lojahw: Jesus’ promises to Peter do not deny that everything necessary would be written by the apostles – in fact He implied it by commanding them to “teach all that I have commanded” and by promising that “My words will never pass away.”

You observe that the scriptures give us a record of Christ’s mandate to Peter to “teach all that I have commanded”, and that scriptures record Christ’s claim that “My words will never pass away.” Very good! One commandment of Christ that we find in scriptures is Christ’s commandment that we must listen to the church that Christ founded or be excommunicated (Matt 18:17). No Protestant accepts this commandment of Christ.

Lojahw: Re: your comments elsewhere on Luther and Calvin founding their own personal churches – you misunderstand.

What do I misunderstand? It is a fact of history that Calvin left the Catholic Church and founded his own personal church in Geneva. It is a fact of history that Luther left the Catholic Church and founded his own personal church. It is also a fact of history that Luther’s personal church taught differnt doctine than Calvin’s personal church, and that is why the religion of Lutheranism is different than the religion of Calvinism. You favor the religion of Lutheranism over the religion of Calvinism, therefore, I assume you believe the Calvinists are teaching heresy on the points of doctrine that they disagree about with the Lutherans. But why should anyone accept that Lutheranism teaches pure doctrine, when no one practicing Lutheranism claims that the novel doctrines taught within Lutheranism are doctrines that are taught infallibly?

Quote by Keith Mathison from the main article: Almost every Christian who has wrestled with theological questions has encountered the problem of competing interpretations of Scripture. . . . Each man will claim that the other is in error, but by what ultimate authority do they typically make such a judgment? Each man will claim that he bases his judgment on the authority of the Bible, but since each man’s interpretation is mutually exclusive of the other’s, both interpretations cannot be correct. How then do we discern which interpretation is correct?

My point is that from the very beginning of the “reformation”, the reformers taught conflicting doctrine because the “reformers” were NOT listening to the church founded by Christ – they were listening instead to themselves – d their own private interpretations of the scriptures. Which is why Keith Mathison’s solo scriptura is an apt description of Luther’s sola scriptura and Calvin’s sola scriptura.

Lojahw:Your own Catechism states that the essentials of the faith are contained in the baptismal creed and the other creeds, none of which “can be considered superseded” (cf. CCC 188, 189, 193).

And in the creed, I profess before man and God that I believe in the “One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church”. I believe in ONE church, the Church founded by Christ – not tens of thousands of “churches” founded by men and woman that preach a cacophony of conflicting doctrine.

Quote by Keith Mathison from the main article: Is there any way to ever resolve the hermeneutical chaos and anarchy that exists within the Protestant church largely as a result of its adoption of radical individualism? Most Protestants do not seem to have taken this question seriously enough if they have considered it at all. If we proclaim to the unbelieving world that we have the one true and final revelation from God, why should they listen to us if we cannot agree about what that revelation actually says? Jesus prayed for the disciples that they would be one (John 17:21a). And why did He pray for this unity? He tells us the reason, “that the world may believe that You sent me” (17:21b). The world is supposed to be hearing the Church preach the gospel of Christ, but the world is instead hearing an endless cacophony of conflicting and contradictory assertions by those who claim to be the Church of Christ. This is the heart of the hermeneutical problem we face in the Church today.

Lojahw:The principle of sola scriptura is deduced from the facts that …

Hold on! You haven’t even bothered to formally define what you believe the doctrine of sola scriptura even is, and now you are going to deduce sola scriptura from scriptures! You need to do what I asked you to do. First, formally define what you believe the doctrine of sola scriptura is so that I know your definition is not the same as John Mcarthur’s definition. After you do that, quote the scriptures that are materially sufficient to maintain your doctrine of sola scriptura. If you want to add your commentary to the scriptures you quote so that I have some insight into what you are deducing from scriptures, that is fine with me.

Lojahw:Which essential doctrines do you think are not taught by Scripture?

The doctrines upon which Protestantism either stands or falls – Luther’s novelties of sola scriptura and sola fide!
wilkins January 8th, 2011 4:04 pm :
Lojawh,

your comments continue to demonstrate that you’re unable to refute the article above.

Failing that, you continue to assert as Catholic doctrine (ridiculous) distortions. Despite your table pounding, the Church does not follow a two-source model, the details of which can be found in the Church’s bold and brilliant Catechism (the exact words used on page 31 are “One common source” and “two distinct modes of transmission” in the light of which your “two-source model” is just wrong, right?)

Nor does the Church teach that popes have the power to overturn God’s will; nor yet does it teach papal authority (or ecclesiastical authority generally) as a dominium whereby men rule as gods, in place of God; nor does it follow that a pope, if he were to sin by abusing his position must therefore invalidate the office itself and void the authority of the Holy Spirit in the Church Christ founded. Right?

Furthermore, you continue to (uncharitably) mischaracterize people’s comments, as when you say

According to Bryan’s posts (especially 542), all EO’s since the Great Schism are damned to hell because they failed to meet a necessary condition of salvation.

What you should do is interact with Bryan’s comment, ie, interact with the truth of the matter as Bryan explained it: your conclusion that Unam Sanctam is inconsistent with Romans is based on your speculative interpretation of Scripture. (Note that Bryan’s comment is also directly related to the article.)

To interact with that, you could try to demonstrate how it is that your conclusion does not rest on your speculative interpretation of Scripture, or you could man up and admit that, yeah, your evaluation of Unam Sanctam depends entirely on your own speculative interpretation of Scripture. Instead, you just redirect focus by forcing the comment to a worst possible conclusion that you then pin on Bryan as the gist of comment.

C’mon Lojahw…
Lojahw January 9th, 2011 10:48 am :
Dear Wilkins,

Thank you for the correction on the two-source model; I got carried away with Mathison’s terminology and had forgotten the CCC explanation.

Re Unam Sanctam: “We declare, say, define and pronounce, that it is absolutely necessary for the salvation of every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff.”

According to Bryan in #542, Scripture identifies what is necessary for salvation, but because the passage I quoted does not explicitly say “sufficient for salvation,” unam sanctam does not contradict Scripture. My recent response attempts to identify an implied contradiction. Bryan had explained that “to be subject to the Roman Pontiff” could involve being subject either directly (at a personal level) or indirectly, through diocesan subsidiarity wherein the diocesan authorities are subject to the pope. Unless I’m missing something, for the past 1000 years EO’s have not been subject to the Roman Pontiff in either of these ways. The implication is that they lack something “that is absolutely necessary” for their salvation. If so, they cannot be saved.

Could you please explain?

your evaluation of Unam Sanctam depends entirely on your own speculative interpretation of Scripture.

Please explain. I have elsewhere affirmed that “saving faith is never alone.” In what way is my interpretation of Scripture speculative? Is my observation wrong that nowhere does Scripture teach anything implying that it is absolutely necessary for the salvation of every human creature to be subject to any human authority, whether Peter or anyone else?

Blessings,
Lojahw
Bryan Cross January 9th, 2011 1:41 pm :
Lojahw (re: #1127)

I have addressed the Unam Sanctam statement earlier in this thread, in comments #204, #213, #542, #546, #547, and #616. I addressed it as it applies to the salvation of Protestants, in comment #480. And I addressed it as it applies to the Orthodox, in this comment in early 2009.

But, as I pointed out to you earlier in this thread, the papacy is not the subject of this article or discussion thread. So this objection you keep raising takes the thread down a rabbit trail. In addition, you are repeating things that you have already said in this thread, and that have already been addressed in this thread. So I think your discussion of this article has runs its course. Thank you for commenting here, but please let comment #1127 be your final comment on this thread, so that other guests can discuss the article here if they wish.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
TurretinFan January 10th, 2011 12:07 pm :
JJ (re: #1044)

By way of preface, I would like to apologize to all that I have fallen behind in my responses, and I doubt I will catch up on all of them today.

You wrote:

I would really be interested in your response to this question of mine:

Of course – all right, TurretinFan – Matthew 16:13-18, together with Luke 22:31-32 and John 21:15-19 – and referring to Isaiah 22:22, clearly demonstrate that the Pope of Rome is the Vicar of Christ on earth and you have, therefore, a Scriptural duty to submit to him.

Scripture has now judged your testimony – or has it?

You seem to believe that Scripture alone – with no intermediary – can be a judge that all men can appeal to and whose judgement all men will realise has been made by Scripture. You don’t seem to think interpretation need be private interpretation. So I have quoted above three Scriptures which – I claim – make it clear that anyone naming the name of Christ must necessarily submit to the Roman Church, or else be judged by Scripture as being in serious error.

I – naturally! – assume you will not accept that Scripture has so judged your case. Assuming that you do not accept this, I am curious how you will go about showing that this is not the judgement of Scripture, without appealing to any interpretation of these passages, and without pointing to the views of men, either your own or those of others.

Can you accommodate me?

a) Answering your last question first, I hope I can accommodate you.

b) As for how I can go about showing that your conclusion (“anyone naming the name of Christ must necessarily submit to the Roman Church”) is not the judgment of the text, the answer is that I would go and read the texts. I would see that they don’t say anything about a Roman church. I suppose I could stop there, but in real life (if you actually thought that the verses taught what you are saying) I’d ask you to explain why you think that, and then examine your explanation in light of Scripture. The standard of judgment throughout would be Scripture.

c) I do suppose (I hope correctly) that you don’t really think that the verses you quoted actually say anything about the Roman church. I don’t want to sidetrack this thread with a debate over the text, but I would be happy to discuss the matter further on my blog if you really felt the verses were talking about the Roman church.

d) But most importantly … you make a few comments for which I think clarification is very important. You state: “You seem to believe that Scripture alone – with no intermediary – can be a judge that all men can appeal to and whose judgement all men will realise has been made by Scripture.”

– “You seem to believe that … whose judgment all men will realize has been made by Scripture.”

I’m under no delusion that everyone will realize that Scripture teaches what it teaches. Paul teaches us

2 Corinthians 3:13-15
And not as Moses, which put a vail over his face, that the children of Israel could not stedfastly look to the end of that which is abolished: but their minds were blinded: for until this day remaineth the same vail untaken away in the reading of the old testament; which vail is done away in Christ. But even unto this day, when Moses is read, the vail is upon their heart.

Even today, there are many with minds that are blinded, so that they will not believe even the most plainly stated doctrines of Scripture.

– “You seem to believe that Scripture … can be a judge that all men can appeal ”

No, I believe Scripture is the standard to which we appeal. There is a difference between a standard and a judge. A judge is supposed to apply a standard to a set of facts. We do the same thing whenever make a judgment. When we say that Rome is in error, we are applying the standard of Scripture to the facts of Roman teaching. In that situation, we are the judge but the standard is Scripture.

– “You seem to believe that Scripture alone – with no intermediary … ”

I’m not sure what you mean by “with no intermediary,” as a qualifier for “Scripture alone.” Can you spell out what you mean here?

-TurretinFan
TurretinFan January 10th, 2011 1:23 pm :
Herbert (re: #1045)
You quoted Dr. Trueman as saying:

“Every year I tell my Reformation history class that Roman Catholicism is, at least in the West, the default position. Rome has a better claim to historical continuity and institutional unity than any Protestant denomination… in the light of these facts, therefore, we need good, solid reasons for not being Catholic.” -Dr. Carl Trueman

You then quoted me as saying:

“I don’t think I need to prove the negative proposition that it “does not reduce” – instead I await some demonstration that it does so reduce.” -TurretinFan

You then added:

It seems to me that if the “default position” in the West, the Catholic position, is indeed the position being put forward by Bryan, Neal, Dr. Liccione, John T. Jensen, et al. with respect to this particular topic, and if Dr. Trueman is right, it’s not the Catholics who bear the burden of proof. To frame it in Dr. Trueman’s words, you need to provide the “good, solid reasons” to NOT accept the Catholic default position which Bryan is presenting when he says things like:

If you want to show that there is a principled difference between solo scriptura and sola scriptura with respect to the holder of ultimate interpretive authority, then you need to show how ‘church,’ in sola scriptura, does not reduce to those who mostly agree with one’s own interpretation of Scripture.

Whether it’s this topic or any other, for the reasons Dr. Trueman gave, when arguing against the Catholic position, you bear the burden of proof. It’s not the other way around.

a) Dr. Trueman’s comments may stimulate thought in his students, but I don’t think that his claim (at least, as you have quoted it) is correct.

b) Dr. Trueman would agree with me (at least, I’m fairly certain he would) that the burden of proving a positive lies on the person advocating the positive. Even if he thinks we need good reasons not to join the RC, he would certainly not think that in every argument the Roman position gets “default” status and the other side bears the burden of proof.

– TurretinFan
John Thayer Jensen January 10th, 2011 11:54 pm :
@TF:

c) I do suppose (I hope correctly) that you don’t really think that the verses you quoted actually say anything about the Roman church. I don’t want to sidetrack this thread with a debate over the text, but I would be happy to discuss the matter further on my blog if you really felt the verses were talking about the Roman church.

Of course I do think that those verses say something about the Roman church – precisely what I said they do – that every man ought to be subject to the Bishop of Rome.

Certainly this is not the place to discuss this – it is, however, the place to assert that two men may come to the same Scripture and come to opposing conclusions – conclusions of the greatest importance, if one of those men – myself – is correct.

Since you quote:

Even today, there are many with minds that are blinded, so that they will not believe even the most plainly stated doctrines of Scripture.

I infer that you believe that anyone who is as totally wrong about an important text such as this as I appear (to you) to be must in fact be blinded as to its actual meaning, so that I will not (not just don’t happen to) believe the most plainly stated doctrines of Scripture.

In my opinion this is your only possible way of explaining my belief. I think those three Scriptures I quoted you – given the history of the Church since Our Lord’s day – do mean, by implication, precisely what I said.

jj
Joe Palmer January 11th, 2011 9:21 am :
TF,

“Even today, there are many with minds that are blinded, so that they will not believe even the most plainly stated doctrines of Scripture.”

I totally agree. For example, there are thousands upon thousands of Protestant ecclessial communities that have separated themselves from the Church that Christ founded because of this very thing.
Brad January 11th, 2011 9:47 am :
At Michael (#1110):

I have read the Tu Quoque article and posted my response (awaiting moderation). I need to read your full response still, as well as Ray’s at the link he provided.

I will wait to comment again on this thread until I have read this article in full.

Thanks.

Brad
TurretinFan January 11th, 2011 1:14 pm :
Bryan (re: #1047)

I had written:

But, of course, there is a real and substantial difference between the church having subordinate authority and the church not having any authority.

You replied:

What “subordinate authority” means is “subordinate to one’s own interpretation of Scripture.”

No. That’s not what “subordinate authority” means. Subordinate authority means that there is a higher authority. In this case, the higher authority is Scripture.

You continued:

So long as an individual believes that the teaching of the [heretical] sect to which he belongs is sufficiently in agreement with his own interpretation of Scripture, he ‘submits’ to its ‘authority.’ (I put it in single quotes because it is only the illusion of submission and the illusion of authority; in actuality there is agreement between the individual and the sect, but no authority and no submission.) But as soon as the sect teaches anything that sufficiently goes against his own interpretation of Scripture, the sect ipso facto ceases to be ‘authoritative’. So this is not genuine authority, but only an illusion of authority.

It is in the nature of subordinate authority that it ceases to be authoritative when it contravenes the ultimate authority. The ultimate authority is Scripture for those in a sola Scriptura church.

You wrote:

During the time period when the ‘authority’ is teaching in accordance with his own interpretation, he appears to be submitting, but in actuality there is no submission, just agreement. (This can be shown by the fact that if this sect had no ecclesial authority, his ‘submission’ would be the same.) When the sect teaches something contrary to his own interpretation of Scripture, and he refuses to submit, this indicates that all along he has remained his own ultimate interpretive authority, and hence that the sect was never a “subordinate authority” over him, but an illusory ‘authority’ which is actually under him.

a) It is in the nature of subordinate authority that it always remains subordinate authority, and consequently is always at risk of coming into conflict with ultimate authority.

b) I cannot, of course, speak to your personal experience. Nevertheless, in many sola scriptura churches there is submission to the authority of the church in a variety of things even when there is not agreement as to those things.

You continued:

The reason for this is that (1) he picked out this sect in the first place on the basis of this sect sufficient agreement with his own interpretation of Scripture, and (2) he assumes there is no apostolic succession, and therefore that no one has interpretive authority over him or over anyone else. Hence, the basis for his ‘submission’ to the sect is its sufficient agreement with his interpretation. But an ‘authority’ to which one ‘submits’ only when one agrees, is no authority at all, but only the illusion or pretense of authority.

a) As a minor point, a person in a Reformed church may have been born to members of the church. Thus, he may not have “picked out” his denomination at all. But let’s simply place this exception to the side.

b) “Assumes” makes it sound like we (Reformed) have not ever considered Rome’s claims, but simply assume them away. Hopefully, you realize that such is not the case. We have considered Rome’s claims and dismissed them on the merits.

c) “Apostolic succession” appears from out of nowhere in this discussion. There is no formal definition of what it means in the argument or in the article. What it seems to be is shorthand for a whole group of ideas, amongst which is the idea that Rome gets to say what Truth is. Phrased that way, it’s not so appealing as something like “apostolic succession,” but – in any event – that does seem to be the gist of it.

d) The characterization, “no one has interpretive authority over him or over anyone else,” does not appear to be accurate. Scripture has interpretive authority over itself. It must be interpreted in light of itself, in its context and in harmony with all its parts.

e) No one has authority over the Truth. And lots of people have access to the Truth. Those are important points that seem to be overlooked. The Scriptures present the Truth to us, and consequently for someone to say that they have “interpretive authority over” it is misleading. The Scriptures were written for everyone to read. They were not written exclusively to the leaders of the churches, but to everyone. And everyone, therefore, is divinely authorized to read and to try to understand. That doesn’t mean everyone always gets it right (obviously), nor does it mean that everyone’s opinion is equal (some people are given a greater measure of wisdom and knowledge). Nevertheless, it means that no one has a monopoly on the Truth.

You had written:

But as we show in the article, in both positions, the individual remains the holder of ultimate interpretive authority, even though the holder of sola scriptura masks his retention of this authority by seemingly placing himself under the authority of a group he calls ‘the church.’

I had replied:

The adherent of Sola Scriptura does not claim that the church is his ultimate authority – he claims that Scripture is. He quite openly identifies the church and her teachings as a subordinate authority.

You now have answered:

The fact that the adherent of sola scriptura (1) claims that Scripture is his ultimate authority and (2) claims that the church and her teachings are a subordinate authority and (3) does not claim that the church is his ultimate authority, are all compatible with his remaining his own ultimate interpretive authority. Hence those three truths do not refute our argument that the adherent of sola scriptura retains ultimate interpretive authority.

a) The way you’ve phrased your response could be taken two ways. One way is the most obvious way, namely “even if the claims are true, nevertheless our point stands.” The other way is less obvious, “his claim that X is true, is not incompatible with the fact of the matter being just the opposite (i.e. X is not true), because his claim may be false.”

b) The way in which you’ve defined “ultimate interpretive authority,” I think you mean the first sense in which your response could be understood. If you do, then I think you’ve acknowledged that we have a principled distinction that is unaffected by your discussion of “ultimate interpretive authority.” In which case, as I said, your article is pretty much moot.

c) If you mean that although they claim X is true, X is false, then you seem to have an uphill battle ahead of you. It also may make dialog difficult, if you are not willing to accept that people’s positions are what people say their positions are.

I had written:

Secondly, unless the “solo scriptura” people are in our church, we don’t tell them they have to submit to our church. However, they do need to submit to the elders of a church.

You responded:

Case in point. In one sentence you claim not to tell them what to do, but in the very next sentence, you claim that they need to conform to your own interpretation of Scripture [because ‘church’ for you means those who teach according to your interpretation of Scripture.]

(bracketed material was yours)
You seem to have analyzed this without care to observe the distinctions. We don’t tell them they have to submit to our church, but we do tell everyone that they must submit to Scriptures. One of the teachings of Scripture is that Christians are to be in churches. Therefore, they must submit to a church, although not necessarily to our church. Perhaps if you paid greater attention to the distinctions we’ve identified, this would be more apparent and the two sentences would be understood harmoniously.

I had written:

It is further alleged that, in essence, the criticism is legitimate because there is an ontological difference between a book and a person. However, this reply appears to confuse categories. A book is simply the communication of a person – and the Roman magisterium communicates in writing which can be (and sometimes is) bound into books. Thus, in effect, one can consider both authorities to be persons or both authorities to be books.

You had responded:

I think your claim here is self-evidently false. Surely you don’t think that because a wife can (and does) sometimes write things down, that therefore being married to a woman is ontologically the equivalent of being married to the writings of a woman.

I had replied:

Your example seems to be a red herring. Yes, there’s a world of difference (whether it is ontological, or some other kind hardly matters) between marriage to a woman and marriage to her books. There’s also a world of difference between burning Luther at the stake and burning his books at the stake. But when it comes to teaching, those differences are no longer relevant differences. Teaching is the communication of information, and a book is one medium of such communication. Marriage involves communication, but it does not reduce to communication. And while both kinds of burning (in my second example) involve the silencing of communication, only the former involves the death of the communicator (a difference which is significant as to the purpose of the act).

You now answer:

With respect to teaching, there is a relevant difference between persons and books. As I explained in Sola Scriptura: A Dialogue Between Michael Horton and Bryan Cross:

A book by its very nature has a limited intrinsic potency for interpretive self-clarification; a person, on the other hand, by his very nature has, in principle, an unlimited intrinsic potency with respect to interpretive self-clarification. This unlimited potency of persons with respect to interpretive self-clarification ensures that the hermeneutical spiral may reach its goal; we can continue to ask clarification questions, be heard, and receive answers to those very questions, until the questions are answered. … Because persons are alive and have reason, we are not only able to receive and answer questions, we are able to receive and answer questions about previous questions we have received and about previous answers we have given. And we can receive and answer questions about our answers to questions about our answers to questions. And so on. So as persons, we can answer second order questions, third order questions, fourth order questions, etc. And there is no nth order question that in principle we cannot answer. It is not as though there is some limit at 26th order questions, or some other number, that is beyond the power of reason. And that is why for persons the intrinsic potency for interpretive self-clarification is not limited.

Books cannot do that.

a) That response doesn’t actually address my objection about category confusion. The extant teachings of the magisterium also cannot do that. The extant teachings of the magisterium are, in practice, a book. If you compare apples with apples, there’s not the ontological difference you’ve alleged.

b) Potential for clarification in the future does nothing for someone living in the present. Consider the person living in the generation before John the Baptist. That person had the Old Testament, and the Old Testament was not the complete canon of Scripture – there was more clarification to come, but that potential for clarification didn’t help the person. The person is only helped by the clarification he actually has.

c) The open canon of the magisterium does leave room for more clarification to come, whereas the closed canon of Scripture does not. However, since the author of the Scripture is God, the completed Scriptures have the power to be sufficiently clear for the purposes for which God intended them, even though no additional clarification is promised or provided. In contrast, the magisterium’s clarification is (apparently) never complete.

You continued:

Your response to this is that a living person has no advantage over Scripture, with respect to the unlimited potential for self-clarification, because “Scripture interprets Scripture.”

That wasn’t the entirety of my response, to be sure. Nevertheless, Scripture does provide sufficient clarification of Scripture. It is sufficiently self-clarifying. That’s a fact that you don’t seem eager to place on the balance.

I had written:

God retains interpretive authority over the Bible. Consequently, we have the maxim (not new to us, of course) that Scripture interprets Scripture.

You replied:

The problem with this statement is revealed in what I wrote back in 2007:

The difficulty for the “Evangelical view” is that Scripture alone does not interpret Scripture. In a true sense Scripture does interpret Scripture in that certain passages of Scripture help us understand other passages of Scripture. But the problem with the Evangelical position is that “Scripture interprets Scripture” is taken to imply that Scripture alone is sufficient to interpret Scripture, whereas in actuality there must be a human interpreter involved, and that human interpreter has to make interpretive judgments. Among other things, that human interpreter must determine which are the clearer passages. For example, Calvinists take 1 John 2:2 as less clear, and needing to be qualified by John 10, regarding limited atonement. Others take 1 John 2:2 as the clearer passage. The same is true of passages regarding apostasy. The point is that someone has to decide which passages are clearer and which passages are the ones needing clarification/qualification. Scripture itself does not tell us which passages are clearer and which less clear. And the fact is that when people make these decisions about which passages are clearer and which are less clear, they often disagree.

Once we acknowledge the role of the human interpreter, however, then we have to ask ourselves, “Which humans have the ecclesial authority to say with authority what Scripture means?” If we say, “No one”, then we are left with a kind of individualism where the sheep are without a shepherd, and each man does what is right in his own eyes, and there is no possibility of Christian unity. But if we acknowledge that some humans have ecclesial authority to give the authoritative explanation of Scripture, then at that point we are no longer in the ‘sola scriptura’ camp.

In other words, the “Scripture interprets Scripture” slogan only masks the role of the human interpreter, and thus glosses the problem of interpretive authority, the arrogation of interpretive authority and the existence of divinely bestowed interpretive and teaching authority.

There’s actually quite a lot of material there, but the quotation may be summarized in this way, in understanding Scripture humans must make judgments. Either some human or group of humans has the authority to make such judgments or all humans do. If all do, unity is allegedly impossible. But we may simply accept the consequence that unity (in the sense of everyone agreeing about everything) is impossible. Once we accept that reality, there is no more objection (at least not in the quoted material) to the fact that all human beings are not just authorized but exhorted to read and understand the Scriptures. Nor is the Scriptures’ ability to self-interpret compromised by the fact that people sometimes (even frequently!) misunderstand Scripture or that people disagree with one another about the meaning of Scripture. Scripture doesn’t promise people a perfect knowledge of God in this life, nor does it promise that everyone will be illuminated.

You continued:

Only by glossing over the role of the human interpreter in “Scripture interprets Scripture” can the Protestant create the illusion that the authority situation of the Protestant is the same as that of the Catholic.

a) The authority situation of the Reformed person is not the same as that of someone in the Roman communion. Our situation is better, because our ultimate authority (Scripture) has lawful authority. Our subordinate authorities are simply that, subordinate authorities. In contrast, your church’s arrangement makes the church de facto the ultimate authority, and the Scriptures are subordinate to the “interpretation” of the ultimate authority. I say “interpretation,” because it is totally irrelevant whether your church actually bothers to interpret Scripture in coming to its conclusions: you’re bound to hold what it defines as dogma even when the explanation given for the dogma is plainly based on an incorrect interpretation of Scripture (for example, the explanation given for the immaculate conception).

You continued:

Without a Magisterium, then even in “Scripture interprets Scripture,” the individual retains ultimate interpretive authority.

a) You haven’t, however, addressed the fact that actually God retains ultimate interpretive authority. Scripture must be interpreted according to the sense of its author, not arbitrarly. Thus, God retains authority over the interpretation of Scripture.

b) Man has to answer to God for his use of the Scripture. Thus, while man may judge for himself what the Scriptures mean, he’s not free to do so however he pleases. He must seek to do the will of the author of Scripture and consequently must seek for the true meaning of the Scriptures.

c) We’ve already seen that the only sense in which man ceases to have “interpretive authority” in the Roman system is that the man in that system must permit the teachings of magisterium to trump those of Scripture. That, however, is just a shift from one book (one with a closed canon) to another book (one with an open canon) – the man still operates the same way. He must interpret the teachings of the magisterium, and until the magisterium issues new teachings, whatever he thinks the magisterium is saying is his ultimate authority.

You continued:

But with a Magisterium, the individual does not retain ultimate interpretive authority. Hence it is not true that the Catholic, no less than the Protestant, retains ultimate interpretive authority. And that is one of the reasons why the tu quoque falls short.

I think this has been fully answered by comments above.

-TurretinFan
John Thayer Jensen January 11th, 2011 1:47 pm :
@TF:

So long as an individual believes that the teaching of the [heretical] sect to which he belongs is sufficiently in agreement with his own interpretation of Scripture, he ‘submits’ to its ‘authority.’ (I put it in single quotes because it is only the illusion of submission and the illusion of authority; in actuality there is agreement between the individual and the sect, but no authority and no submission.) But as soon as the sect teaches anything that sufficiently goes against his own interpretation of Scripture, the sect ipso facto ceases to be ‘authoritative’. So this is not genuine authority, but only an illusion of authority.

It is in the nature of subordinate authority that it ceases to be authoritative when it contravenes the ultimate authority. The ultimate authority is Scripture for those in a sola Scriptura church.

But the question, TurretinFan, is how do you know that the subordinate authority has contravened the ultimate authority? If it is ‘just obvious’ from Scripture that the subordinate authority has contravened the ultimate authority, that kind of leaves all the rest of us out of luck, doesn’t it? And if it is because of your interpretation of Scripture – well, that was the point to be proved, wasn’t it?

jj
Bryan Cross January 11th, 2011 1:56 pm :
TF (re: #1134)

You wrote:

Subordinate authority means that there is a higher authority. In this case, the higher authority is Scripture.

Again, you are glossing the essential role of the interpreter, and thereby painting a misleading picture. As I explained in #978, “the Catholic Church affirms the truth of every verse in Scripture. Therefore the disagreement between Reformed folks (like yourself) and the Catholic Church is not a disagreement about whether every verse of the Bible is true” … but about “the interpretation of Scripture.” So when you talk about “subordinate authority,” you are talking only about people (or confessions) who mostly agree with your interpretation of Scripture, i.e. who are subordinate not to Scripture per se, but to your interpretation of Scripture, i.e. to the conclusion of your judgment concerning the meaning of Scripture. You are treating the conclusion of your judgment concerning the meaning of Scripture, as though it were Scripture itself. In #1084 I explained why that is an error. If you disagree with what I’m saying about “subordinate authority,” please point to one “subordinate authority” that does not agree with your general interpretation of Scripture, and then, without glossing the essential role of the interpreter, give the criteria by which anyone should judge between that “subordinate authority” and the “subordinate authorities” that do agree with your general interpretation of Scripture.

There is no point discussing anything else until we reach agreement concerning the essential role of the interpreter. Your entire position, as you have described it so far, depends on glossing the role of the interpreter.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
TurretinFan January 11th, 2011 3:28 pm :
JJ (re: #)

I had written:

One ought to be careful to distinguish between the kind of faith one has in Jesus, and the kind of faith one has in one’s church. Consequently, one ought to be more willing to affirm what Scripture teaches than what one’s church teaches, when the two are in conflict.

You replied:

On the other hand, when one’s Church and the Scripture teach the same thing – for instance, as I said quoting Scripture, that (Matthew16:13-19; Luke 22:31-32; John 21:15-19) one must submit to the Roman Church – what should one do?

When one’s church and Scripture say the same thing, one should obey (obviously). As noted above, we’ll reserve the discussion of the passages you cited for elsewhere/another time.

You wrote:

Always assuming, as you suggest, that Scripture doesn’t need interpretation. It is obvious that those Scriptural passages mean that one should submit to Rome – is it not? Or, if not, doesn’t this mean that Scripture needs interpretation – and that that interpretation must boil down either to private interpretation – no matter how many magisterial Reformers are cited – or else to a God-given infallible interpreter?

Scripture has objective meaning. That objective meaning is conveyed by the text. Not everyone understands all of it perfectly, but the truth of what the text says is an objective reality. I hope my previous comments have (in the meantime) clarified what I mean in distinguishing between the Scriptures and the interpretation of Scripture. Interpretation is the tool by which we try to grasp the meaning of Scripture. But the Scripture is the standard – its meaning is authoritative and must be submitted to, whether that meaning is pointed out by John Ploughman or by Joseph Ratzinger.

You concluded:

Newman said that ultimately – if one were logically coherent (thank God many are not!) – it is either Rome or infidelity.

Newman was unfaithful to the Anglican church, but presumably was faithful to the Roman church. We’re not surprised he would seek to justify his move, but we need something more than just the weight of his name (particularly since the orthodox Anglicans were opposing his doctrines before he left).

-TurretinFan
mateo January 11th, 2011 4:14 pm :
TurrentinFan: It is in the nature of subordinate authority that it ceases to be authoritative when it contravenes the ultimate authority.

What “ultimate authority” authorized Luther and Calvin to found their own personal churches? You can’t say that scriptures authorized them to do this, because there isn’t a single verse in scripture that supports the Protestant practice of creating personal churches.

TurrentinFan: We don’t tell them they have to submit to our church, but we do tell everyone that they must submit to Scriptures. One of the teachings of Scripture is that Christians are to be in churches. Therefore, they must submit to a church, although not necessarily to our church.

But where do you get the authority to tell people that they need to submit to a church? Not from scripture, that’s for sure! Scriptures tell us we must submit to the church – the church that Christ founded. Nowhere does scripture authorize Christians to submit to a church, i.e. a personal church founded by Aimee Semple McPherson, Charles Taze Russell, Martin Luther, Mary Baker Eddy, Joseph Smith, John Calvin, Chuch Smith, Garner Ted Armstrong, etc., etc., ect.

If the “reformers” really did accept the scriptures as being authoritative, they would have submitted to the church founded by Christ, since the scriptures explicitly teach that Christians must submit to Christ’s church or suffer the pain of excommunication. But neither Luther nor Calvin would submit to the church. Instead, Lutther and Calvin founded their own personal churches, and then demanded that men and women submit to their own eccentric interpretations of scriptures in their brand new personal “churches”.

I could follow the same path as Luther and Calvin. I could become just as bad of a cafeteria Catholic as Luther and Calvin. I could reject the authority of the church, privately interpret the scriptures of the church in an eccentric fashion, and then found my own personal church that taught, not Lutheranism, nor Calvinism, but Mateoism. Suppose I did that, and I managed to get some people to accept Mateoism as the gospel, and I got my converts to join my personal church where they submitted to my eccentric interpretations of the bible. So what if I did that? It would be absolutely ludicrous for me to assert that I am practicing sola scriptura and not solo scriptura just because I am claiming my personal church is a subordinate authority to scriptures! For some mysterious reason that I can’t fathom, Protestants don’t think that when Luther and Calvin did exactly this, that they weren’t just two men blowing a lot of hot air. But if I were to do what Luther and Calvin did, I would be seen as a foolish blowhard that has way too high opinion of his private interpretations of scriptures. Sheesh!

Quote by Keith Mathison from the main article: The Bible itself simply does not teach “solo” Scriptura. Christ established his church with a structure of authority and gives to his church those who are specially appointed to the ministry of the word (Acts 6:2-4). When disputes arose, the apostles did not instruct each individual believer to go home and decide by himself and for himself who was right. They met in a council (Acts 15:6-29). …

Scripture itself indicates that the Scriptures are the possession of the Church and that the interpretation of the Scriptures belongs to the Church as a whole, as a community. In particular it has been entrusted to specially gifted men. … The fundamental point is that Christ established His Church with a structure of authority that is to be obeyed (Heb. 13:7). … The modern Evangelical doctrine of Scripture essentially destroys the real authority of ministers of the Word and the Church as a whole.

(bold emphais mine)

Keith Mathison is exactly right in what he says above, but he is right only if we are clear on the point that his Church and the Church cannot refer to just any old church. His Church/the Church cannot possible be the thousands upon thousands of Protestant “churches” that are founded by mere men and women, since these “churches” have no more authority than a personal “church” than preaches Mateoism.
SB January 11th, 2011 4:46 pm :
TF #1137:

I hope my previous comments have (in the meantime) clarified what I mean in distinguishing between the Scriptures and the interpretation of Scripture.

I’ll say, for myself, they absolutely have not. I have no idea how you think you have come to an accurate understanding of Scripture, because you talk out of both sides of your mouth on this: You say Scripture has objective meaning, but not everyone understands it. You say interpretation is how we come to understand that meaning, but deny that you are appealing to an interpretation when you appeal to Scripture. You have yet to give any evidence that your understanding of its meaning is reliable. The most substantive thing I’ve gleaned from your comments is that you think some people are blinded from understanding what Scripture means, and presumably that you do not think that you are so blinded… at which point I can’t imagine why you would waste your time arguing over the meaning of Scripture with a bunch of people whom you believe to be unable to comprehend that meaning on account of having been blinded to it.

To reiterate the question I asked in 1082, to which you have not responded:

[C]learly you and Bryan/Mateo/JTJ/Sean/Ray/Michael are reading the same Scriptures and saying they mean mutually exclusive things. Would you please explain why your assertions of their meaning should be taken as accurate? […] Why should I, a serious person earnestly seeking to follow Christ, believe that you are correct in what you say is the meaning of Scripture when I understand Scripture to mean something different?
John Thayer Jensen January 11th, 2011 5:14 pm :
@TF:

@SB said:
The most substantive thing I’ve gleaned from your comments is that you think some people are blinded from understanding what Scripture means, and presumably that you do not think that you are so blinded… at which point I can’t imagine why you would waste your time arguing over the meaning of Scripture with a bunch of people whom you believe to be unable to comprehend that meaning on account of having been blinded to it.

Indeed, you, quoting Scripture, think that we are willfully blinded so that we will not understand even the most plainly stated doctrines of Scripture.

So according to you, it is not that we are unable to comprehend the true meaning Scripture; we are unwilling and are just – what? stubborn? prideful? fearful? – so that we are running around with our fingers in our ears, crying “La, la, la! I can’t hear you!”

Sigh.
Ray Stamper January 11th, 2011 5:55 pm :
Dear TF,

Scripture has objective meaning. That objective meaning is conveyed by the text. Not everyone understands all of it perfectly, but the truth of what the text says is an objective reality.

But AGAIN whatever “objective meaning” that God – through the biblical author – has embedded in the text, must OF NECESSITY be extracted by “interpretation”. ALL of us – no exception – must attempt to GET AT that “objective [Divine] meaning” THROUGH an act of “interpretation”. That is the common, unavoidable, epistemic situation. Just a few lines later you admit as much when you say:

Interpretation is the tool by which we try to grasp the meaning of Scripture. But the Scripture is the standard – its meaning is authoritative and must be submitted to, whether that meaning is pointed out by John Ploughman or by Joseph Ratzinger.

But TF, I am absolutely bewildered as to why you cannot seem to grasp the rather obvious fact that the whole trouble centers around the question of whether John Ploughman, Joseph Ratzinger, or neither have, IN FACT, “pointed out” that [Divine] “meaning”. Whose interpretation “just is” the same as the “objective meaning”?

So when you say things like this:

It is in the nature of subordinate authority that it ceases to be authoritative when it contravenes the ultimate authority.

I am scratching my head because you apparently fail to see the problem that the rest of us see clearly: namely, HOW DOES ONE KNOW when any “subordinate authority” [any individual or ecclesial body] has “contravened” the ultimate authority [Scripture], seeing that we are ALL, epistemically, limited to an evaluation of interpretations of Scripture’s “objective meaning”? Not to be obtuse, but the pages and text do not “speak” like a voice from a radio. Individuals READ the text, and thereby gain an “understanding” of what they read. When they communicate that understanding, they are communicating an interpretation. Hence, whether we are considering one’s individual understanding of Scriptures “held within one’s mind” or else considering a communicated understanding of the text; in both cases, we are ALWAYS and EVERYWHERE dealing with INTERPRETATIONS. The only question which matters – the million dollar question – is whether we have any reason to expect that some individual or ecclesiastical interpreter is giving us an interpretation which is identical to the “objective meaning” which God embedded within the text.

Which is why, I again say that your oft-repeated distinction (which you apparently think to be very important): namely that

The ultimate authority is Scripture for those in a sola Scriptura church.

is epistemically and practically POINTLESS for the purpose at hand – which is to discover the “objective [Divine] meaning” of Sacred Scripture.

Like Bryan, I believe the current discussion is stalled until this point is resolved.

Pax et Bonum,

Ray
John Thayer Jensen January 11th, 2011 7:51 pm :
@TF:

Could you explain how it is that you know that your interpretation of the triplet of Scriptural passages I quoted:

– Matthew 16:13-18
– Luke 22:31-32
– John 21:15-19

mean what you think they mean (whatever that is) and not what I said – that you ought to submit to the Bishop of Rome?

Simple question: how do you know you are right and I am wrong?

jj
GNW_Paul January 12th, 2011 3:10 am :
@all

Surprisingly, I feel a bit like we’re being too hard on TF. Although I see where we are all coming from.

First, I think that as TF mentions in 1134:

a) As a minor point, a person in a Reformed church may have been born to members of the church. Thus, he may not have “picked out” his denomination at all. But let’s simply place this exception to the side.

And I agree with him. For a certain category of Protestant believers, there probably is very similar submission to Authority as to what Catholics (maybe more in the past) typically might have among the general faithful. I think particularly groups like Apostolic Lutherans and Missouri Synod Lutherans, Mennonites a lot of the Anabaptist groups and who knows how many others have people who have grown up in that denomination and who follow the confession and elders as authority.

Of course some individuals in those circumstances may actually be doing precisely what TF accuses Catholics of doing – submitting to a merely human authority ahead of the Bible. I know plenty of members and former members of such denominations who stay/stayed out of social and family pressure and the exclusion (? banishment ?) of apostate members is often quite coercive. Conscientious objection to church doctrine may not be welcomed to say the least.

Summary Thoughts

In one way or another all of the Sola Scriptura defenders have argued consistently that a “true Christian” should submit to the ultimate and final authority of Scripture alone. I think the problem with this is two-fold.

The first problem Area as the Catholic participants have consistently pointed out is “what interpretation of scripture.” I am open to correction, but what I here from all sources is the rough answer to that objection:
A) Scripture is clear enough in the whole.

B) With an open mind, prayer and study people will get the essentials.

C) Beyond the essential, some doctrines aren’t clear enough from scripture for all to be required to agree.

D) Believers should belong to a Church and submit to the subsidiary authority

E) Believers should not submit to a church that teaches any contradiction to scripture (does it matter how “small”?)
this will be one of my problem areas to discuss

F) Some people will get things wrong. Some of them very wrong. No one will understand everything perfectly. But somehow (most)(some)(enough)(a few)(the elect) people / churches will mostly Understand Scripture correctly.

There are some things I think are implied, but would appreciate correction of my understanding:
i) beyond basic Christology and soteriology it is it important which church you submit to or what it teaches?

ii) If your church teaches a few non-essential things that you don’t quite accept or don’t find sufficient support for in scripture, is that okay (as long as it doesn’t flat out contradict scripture) and submission can be that you just don’t argue?

iii)Is Sola Scriptura essential? Is the Authority of Sola Scriptura subsidiary to Scripture, or is it of higher Authority than Scripture?

The Second Problem Area Exactly what is the sola scriptura Bible believer submitting to and what is the nature of that submission. I don’t think this area has been explored as systematically. We’ve been beating each other up about submission to Scripture vs. Submission to an interpretation of scripture and exactly whose interpretation.

Questions for the sola scriptura team:
iv) As I understand the arguments here, the position of all sola scriptura believers is that Scripture is the only objectively knowable authority that commands the submission of Christians. And churches are merely subsidiary authorities that can only articulate what is taught in scripture. So your position is that a believer submits in faith to Scripture in some kind of relationship with a church according to how the believer and the church know scripture?

v) So you all agree (to some extent) that a particular church or believer may drastically misconstrue or misunderstand or outright twist scripture and arrive at completely erroneous understandings of scripture? How do you categorize these sects? Do you consider the extent of such errors to be significant, insignificant, or no importance? Why?

vi) An area I am totally clueless about. How do you understand Scripture’s ability to act as an authority when Catholics, Jehovah’s witnesses, 7th Day Adventists and Liberal Episcopalians all claim to follow the authority of scripture? Your subsidiary authority churches can (and do) correct members, call Catholics apostate, declare heresy, and break fellowship with those who are misled, but what can Scripture do by itself to act as an authority?

vii) How would you propose that I, should I be persuaded of sola scriptura, could in any objective way discern whether when I read and study scripture, and know what it means that I am constructing a meaning from scripture ALONE and not from my own subconscious and semi-conscious motivations and biases? How can I discern whether my prospective Pastor and church are objectively UNDERSTANDING scripture and not reading their wants, desires and preconceptions into it? How should I discern “illumination of the Holy Spirit” from over active imagination or outright psychosis?

viii) Would you admit that simply holding firmly the doctrine of sola scriptura actually creates an conceptual impediment to seriously and fairly considering the possible meaning of scripture (as a whole body, and in particular passages)? As a result of believing sola scriptura do you reject from consideration the truth of any doctrine that is justified primarily by an argument that relies on typology, or a “traditional” interpretation of scripture? Having already committed to solo scriptura how can you open your mind to considering any model of ecclesiology that doesn’t center on an invisible communion?

Common Ground
I actually think there is a fair amount that we can agree upon. I think we can agree to some sort of a limited understanding of perspecuity. I think that a typically literate person of good intention who prayerfully reads scripture can find the barest essence of the Gospel and can get that Jesus died for our sins and that God loves us. Scripture – as a whole – is not written to be incomprehensible or impenetrable. On the other hand, it is not written like a confession, or a catechism, or a text book.

I don’t believe any of the Protestants in this discussion would claim that scripture is so clear and obvious that it is realistic for a humble and sincere inquirer could arrive at much more that 25% of any particular confession. I will concede that the Holy Spirit could illuminate the mind of an individual or a group, and even that it has actually happened. I will even grant infused knowledge, I place no limit on the Power of God. But I expect you would all agree that for God actually expects the Church to evangelize and preach, and he doesn’t, as a general rule, do that particular work for us. In the general case, my position is that an inquiring believer coming at the text of scripture without active evangelization and instruction will not get beyond the barest essence of the Gospel. Certainly doctrines like sola scriptura, the Trinity, sola fide, will escape them. Possibly much more problematic are the misguided and erroneous understandings they may reach. The panorama of heresies, and strange sects and gnostic conglomerations, the Santeria amalgamations etc. provide plenty of examples. Just as tragic, when such readers actually investigate Christian churches they actually do reject the Gospel because of the confusion and mutual animosity of Christians.

I’ll save anything else I have to add for later. I am out of time for tonight.
donald todd January 12th, 2011 10:43 am :
This is a brilliant thread. I have been back to read it often and now, having arrived at comment 1142, I see that there is a continued contention on the concept of who.

When I was in the Assemblies, there was a monthly charismatic prayer meeting that involved the Assemblies, a Catholic charismatic prayer group and a Covenant (Swedish Lutheran) charismatic parish. We met at the Catholic school where the gym was large enough to hold us all, and the clergy rotated the leadership for the meeting.

One time we had a visitor with a very good singing voice. At the end of the meeting he introduced himself and passed out literature. He was a pastor for the United Pentecostals, and his literature introduced a new (novel) item, the Oneness of God. Because the gospel finds Jesus saying, “The Father and I are one,” the UPers insisted that there is only one Person of God, that Jesus is the Father and the Holy Spirit.

The disparity of books in the Bible not withstanding, the Assemblies, the Catholics and the Covenant Church people were all Trinitarian in their theological orientation. I note this because it involves a position which is extra-biblical, the Trinity. The word “trinity” does not appear in scripture.

That fact does not necessarily lead to Rome, but it does indicate the difficulty that many of us face. How do we know “our” interpretation of the scripture is correct? It was a problem I faced for several years, and earnestly prayed and studied in the attempt to determine “who” had the correct interpretation.

I had one advantage, I did not believe that “I” was the “who” responsible for this determination, so “I” was out of that loop. I could concur with something but I could not, like the UP pastor, introduce something new. So I worked my way backward, from the more recent history (think Aimee Semple McPherson and the Four Square people) on back through the Great Awakenings. I eventually found myself reading those people who were discipled by the apostles. Unlike an evangelist who spoke at the Covenant Church (buttressing Lutheranism in part by denigrating Rome), I did not believe that the early Church fathers had any reason to lie about Rome, or the sacraments, or Our Lady. In short, I did not believe that the early Church fathers had an agenda other than passing on what they themselves had been taught. Given their histories, often of martyrdom, I found them cogent as well as worthy of emulation and belief.

So the question for me was literally who’s interpretation is correct, knowing that I myself was not the authority, and never could be. It took four years for me to arrive at a satisfactory, wholly desirable answer to that question.

May everyone who enters this site be graced with the answer to that question.

dt
mateo January 12th, 2011 3:14 pm :
GNW Paul:
The first problem Area as the Catholic participants have consistently pointed out is “what interpretation of scripture.” I am open to correction, but what I here from all sources is the rough answer to that objection:

A) Scripture is clear enough in the whole.

B) With an open mind, prayer and study people will get the essentials.

We have the data that we can examine from the great Protestant experiment that has been running continuously now for about five-hundered years. The data clearly shows that Scripture is NOT clear enough to prevent the creation of thousands upon thousands of Protestant sects that teach contradictory doctrine about the essentials.

GNW Paul:
B) With an open mind, prayer and study people will get the essentials.

The data from the Protestant experiment proves otherwise. Protestants are clearly divided over the “essentials”. What temporal authority decides what is essential and what isn’t essential? Protestants bicker and dispute among themselves incessantly about this very thing.

GNW Paul:
C) Beyond the essential, some doctrines aren’t clear enough from scripture for all to be required to agree.

Is the doctrine that maintains the Catholic understanding of the effects of the valid reception of the Sacrament of Baptism an essential doctrine? Catholics and some Protestant sects would say that this is most certainly is an essential doctrine, but there are tens of thousands of Protestant sects that dismiss this doctrine altogether. My point is the same as above. Obviously the alleged perspicuity of scriptures does NOT bring any agreement among Protestants about the “essentials”.

GNW Paul:
D) Believers should belong to a Church and submit to the subsidiary authority

E) Believers should not submit to a church that teaches any contradiction to scripture (does it matter how “small”?)

F) Some people will get things wrong. Some of them very wrong. No one will understand everything perfectly. But somehow (most)(some)(enough)(a few)(the elect) people / churches will mostly Understand Scripture correctly.

There are some things I think are implied, but would appreciate correction of my understanding:
i) beyond basic Christology and soteriology it is it important which church you submit to or what it teaches?

Of course it is important which church you submit to!

Where do the scriptures teach that Christians should belong to a Protestant church founded by a man or a woman? Nowhere! The scriptures teach that Christians must submit to the authority of the church, not a church.

Let us look at what scriptures teaches about submitting to the church. The Gospels only uses the word “church” twice in verses of scripture, and both verses are found in Matthew’s Gospel:

And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” Matt 16:18-19

If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Matt 18: 15-18

Matt 18:17 uses the words “the church”, and “the church” refers to “my church” of Matthew 16:18, i.e the church is the church that Christ founded. Christ has promised that the powers of death will NEVER prevail against his church, so the church that Christ founded must still be alive and well, and still found upon the earth two-thousand years after he founded his church.

Most Protestants read Matt 18:17 as if it says this: “If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to a church; and if he refuses to listen even to a church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.” The Protestant’s confused reading of this verse completely alters Christ’s commandment that Christians must listen to the church, the church that Christ founded. If someone refuses to listen to the church that Christ founded, he or she is to be excommunicated. No Protestant obeys the commandment of Christ. Instead, Protestants listen to churches founded by men and women, if they listen to any church at all. If Protestants really did accept the scriptures as being authoritative, they would quit listening to churches founded by men and women, and start listenening to the church founded by Christ – the “One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.”

GNW Paul:
Questions for the sola scriptura team:

iv) As I understand the arguments here, the position of all sola scriptura believers is that Scripture is the only objectively knowable authority that commands the submission of Christians.

I think that description is what Keith Mathison would label as solo scriptura.

GNW Paul:
And churches are merely subsidiary authorities that can only articulate what is taught in scripture.

Please see the main article and the section: The Delusion of Derivative Authority.
I agree with the article’s conclusion, that Keith Mathison’s sola scriptura is in principle the same as his solo scriptura and it is only the delusion of derivative authority that allows Mathison to maintain a disticition without a differnce.
Mark January 12th, 2011 8:39 pm :
Can’t one be warranted in the correctness in the Canon by mere religious experience plus the use of reason.

First part, religious experience. For example, I have prayed to the God of the Bible and religious experience confirms that the God I just prayed to has in fact responded to my prayers. Then, as a result of this religious experience, I am inclined to think that there is something special about this book. In fact, I think that this book must be connected with the One True God. I eventually think that this book is divinely inspired.

Second part, I use reason. Then I hear the objection that other religions also use subjective experience as a basis for asserting the divine quality of their text. I know that I too am using this basis, but it doesn’t seem like an altogether bad reason for such a belief. However, I reasonably come to think that subjective experience cannot be the only basis- so I use my reason to assess the claims of the Christian religion versus the claims of other religions. Reasons leads me to the Christian religion. Therefore, I stick with my beliefs about the Bible.

I am not Catholic, but I do consider myself a Christian. Therefore, I hold no view of an infallible teaching authority. I am asked why I believe in the correctness of the Canon when historically it had to be decided upon by the Church, and the decision could be fallible since the Church (on my view) is fallible in it’s own teaching capacity. And my reply would be: I believe in the correctness of the Canon for reasons that do not make reference to an infallible teaching authority- like religious experience (which led me to believe that the source of this book was in fact divine) and the use of reason (which affirmed my previous belief, and my philosophical assessment of the claims of other religions which showed me that I could not in good conscience believe them). Is there reason to think that these two claims would not be enough to warrant belief in the correctness of the Canon?

I am actually a Catholic, and I think that there are biblical reasons for thinking that God in fact established One True Church with the ability to teach infallibly (the Roman Catholic Church), and Biblical reasons for thinking that Sola Scriptura is false (the falsity of Sola Scriptura would follow from the truth of God’s having established One True Church with an infallible teaching magisterial authority). . However, the reasons/objections being discussed here and in the other forums seem to be largely philosophical ones, and I have not yet found them to be very convincing- though this might be just because I do not understand them (which I’m okay with, and welcome correction of my understanding).

This line of reasoning only involves the Canon issue. I think the objections concerning the problem of how we can know whose interpretation is correct, are much stronger and more devastating to the Sola Scriptura view. So my point is merely to try and show one way of replying to the Objection to Sola Scriptura as regards the Canon.

Best,
Mark
John Thayer Jensen January 12th, 2011 10:40 pm :
@Mark:

Can’t one be warranted in the correctness in the Canon by mere religious experience plus the use of reason.

First part, religious experience. For example, I have prayed to the God of the Bible and religious experience confirms that the God I just prayed to has in fact responded to my prayers. Then, as a result of this religious experience, I am inclined to think that there is something special about this book. In fact, I think that this book must be connected with the One True God. I eventually think that this book is divinely inspired.

This is precisely the argument Mormons give me for the inspiration of the Book of Mormon. If I understand them correctly, Muslims say the same about the Qur’an (but you have to read it in Arabic – which I do a little bit, but not well enough to have any experience, religious or otherwise).

I don’t think subjective criteria are going to do it.

jj
Randy January 13th, 2011 12:06 pm :
BTW Mark. There is another article just on the canon here:

https://www.calledtocommunion.com/2010/01/the-canon-question/
TurretinFan January 13th, 2011 10:06 pm :
GNW_Paul (re: #1052):

You wrote: “Sorry to pile on a bit here – you’re getting it from all directions today, but I’d say your keeping up pretty well.”

Thanks. I appreciate the interaction, although sometimes I have more time to respond than at other times. Hopefully as I continue to respond to the comments in order, I’ll be able to answer all of the questions to everyone’s satisfaction.

You wrote: “This follows on my commnent #1006 which also addresses one of your straw man constructions of Catholic subordinate authority.”

I hope I have accurately portrayed the subordinate authority that exists within the Roman system.

You continued:

Your #1048 is another variation of the same straw man:

The lesser authority is trumped by the greater authority. The individual himself is not the highest authority. Nevertheless, it is the responsibility of the individual to follow the highest authority. Thus, for example, an individual in the Roman system must compare what his local bishop says to what the Council of Trent says, and follow Trent when the two disagree. That doesn’t make the individual pope, does it? Of course not. Even so, it does not make the individual the supreme authority when he follows the Word of God in Scripture rather than what his church tells him.

Which is partly true, but effectively wrong.

I think what you mean is that what I said is true, but that you think I left out something important. I’m quite willing to admit that there is more to the Roman hierarchy than just you and your local bishop and the pope. But, I don’t think those other details change the point I was making.

You continued:

The Pope acting through the Congregation of Doctrine and Faith (The Inquisition as it was formally known) as the authority to make me accountable for my interpretation of Trent, to review my position, and to rule on whether it is heresey or not.

Yes. In theory, that is correct. But:

a) That’s just in theory unless you become famous. The CDF does not have the time or manpower to review the opinions of 1.2 billion people.

b) The judgments of the CDF are “the law,” but they are not alleged to be infallible. Thus, a person may conscientiously refuse to submit to a judgment of the CDF that conflicts with the teachings of the Church.

You continued:

If I am found to be holding a hereteical belief I will be allowed to submit to the Church or be excommunicated. That is AUTHORITY!

Yes, it is authority. And Reformed churches have a similar mechanism, as you may know. We don’t have a CDF, but the elders will (in theory, and sometimes in practice) excommunicate people for heresy. But even in the RCC, excommunication is not allegedly an infallible process.

You continued:

My Bishop also as Subsidary Authority in the matter, although I have the right to appeal to Rome.

Yes, and there are courts (more than one) at Rome, with the highest authority (from which there is no appeal) being the pope himself. However, while there is no appeal from the pope’s judicial decisions in cases of discipline, there is no guarantee of infallibility. Thus, in theory, a person might conscientiously refuse to submit and undergo excommunication. And, as you may know, some of the “saints” of your church were excommunicated by some authority or other at some point.

You continued:

I will trust this is an oversight on your part and not disingenuous. Since so many Protestants (not necessarily you personally) get so up in arms about the fact that the Catholic Church claims the AUTHORITY to declare someone a heretic, I am a bit surprised that you so dramatically fail to acknowledge that the Church both claims and regularly (perhaps not often enough for some of us) exercises that Authority.

I do acknowledge that the avenue of authority you mentioned exists. I am glad for this chance to clarify my position, so that it will be clear that I in no way deny that the CDF can investigate people for heresy.

-TurretinFan
TurretinFan January 13th, 2011 10:14 pm :
Sean Patrick (re: #1054):

I had written: Your church may say it affirms the truth of every verse in Scripture, but it is one thing to say that you affirm it, and it is another thing to affirm it in fact.
Bryan asked for an example verse, to which I responded: “I think I would have picked Romans 3:23 or 4:5”
You responded: “The Catholic Church affirms both of those verses as true.”
I answer: If you just mean that your church says it affirms the truth of those verses, I’ve already addressed that by pointing out that it is one thing to say you affirm it, and it is another thing to affirm it in fact. If you mean to say that your church affirms what those verses in fact mean, I suppose we could discuss that (presumably not here).

-TurretinFan
TurretinFan January 14th, 2011 9:28 am :
Mateo (re: #1055)

:

I had written:

It’s very easy to define the doctrine of sola Scriptura in terms of objective standards. It’s even easy to distinguish the two doctrines in an objective way (based on the fact that one accepts that the church has authority, the other does not).

You responded:

Every Protestant “church” has come into existance by a rejection of church authority by some man or woman. When a Protestant founds his own personal church, he is making a claim for “bible freedom” – the freedom to privately intepret the bible apart from any church authority. Luther and Calvin both created their own personal Protestant churches by presuming solo scriptura to be operative. That both Luther and Calvin claimed that their personal churches were “authoritative” is nothing more than hubris – an empty claim their their solo scriptura interpretations are authoritative simply because they say they are.

a) Actually, some “Protestant” churches are the result of missionary work from a parent church. But I agree that there are many “Protestant” churches whose creation involved someone (or some group) rejecting the attempted exercise of authority of someone else. For example, the Anglicans rejected the attempted exercise of the authority of the bishop of Rome.

b) Every Christian has a duty to read and try to understand the Bible. If he discovers that God’s word contradicts the teachings of his church, he is not free to follow men rather than God.

c) Calvin didn’t create any churches. Calvin joined an already-existing church in Geneva. I’ll leave the defense of Luther to others.

I had written:

One ought to be careful to distinguish between the kind of faith one has in Jesus, and the kind of faith one has in one’s church.

You wrote:

That doesn’t fly if I am a Protestant, and my church is a church with only one member – myself. In that case it would be impossible for me to make a distinction between what I believe about Jesus and what my church believes about Jesus. And if I, as a Protestant, go church shopping until I find a Protestant sect that completely agrees with my private interpretation of scriptures, then I am still in the same boat as I would be by belonging to a church that has me as its only member.

a) Well, a single person by himself is not a church.
b) It is a marvelous time in which we live that there are so many professedly Christian churches that the concept of “church shopping” is even possible. And presumably you recognize that people normally don’t end up in churches of a single person, looking for perfect agreement about every detail of doctrine and practice.

You continued:

What possible reason can you give a to a Protestant that would compel him to submit to a Protestant sect that doesn’t agree with his personal interpretations of the bible? Why would any sane Protestant choose to submit to a Protestant sect that doesn’t agree with what he personally believes about Jesus?

No one should follow man rather than God. If someone is fully persuaded in his own conscience that the Bible says “X,” he should not assent to something he believes contradicts the Bible. If the person is wrong about his conscientious conviction, he will have to answer to God – and he may have to answer in this life to church discipline, but whatever is not of faith is sin.

-TurretinFan
Sean Patrick January 14th, 2011 2:19 pm :
TFan – If I may repeat what Bryan has already said and what was discussed about 100 comments ago….

There is no point discussing anything else until we reach agreement concerning the essential role of the interpreter. Your entire position, as you have described it so far, depends on glossing the role of the interpreter.

I agree that your entire position glosses the role of the interpreter. You need to deal with this.
Mark Morales January 14th, 2011 6:43 pm :
Yea, I think I will move my question over to the combox (that’s what it’s called right?) following the article on the Canon issue.

Mark
mateo January 14th, 2011 10:44 pm :
TurrentinFan: Every Christian has a duty to read and try to understand the Bible. If he discovers that God’s word contradicts the teachings of his church, he is not free to follow men rather than God.

Before a man can read the bible, someone needs to teach him how to read. Where in your Protestant Bible does it say that all men have a duty to become literate so they can privately intepret the Protestant Bible?

I agree that if a Christian knows how to read, he should read the bible and accept what is written in the bible as being authotative. If Protestants would do that, they would see that they are commanded by Christ to listen to the church that Christ founded or suffer excommunication.

TurrentinFan: Well, a single person by himself is not a church.

A single person is not the church that Christ founded, but a single person can be a Protestant church with a membership of one.

TurrentinFan: It is a marvelous time in which we live that there are so many professedly Christian churches that the concept of “church shopping” is even possible.

The thousands upon thousands of Protestant churches teach contradictory doctrine, which means that we know with absolute certainty that many of these Protestant churches are teaching heresy. What is so marvelous about church shopping among a bunch of sects that teach heresy?

TurrentinFan: If someone is fully persuaded in his own conscience that the Bible says “X,” he should not assent to something he believes contradicts the Bible.

You have been claiming that scriptures are a higher authority than the individual, and now you are claiming that the individual’s concience is the ultimate temporal authority when it comes to deciding whether an interpretation of scriptures is orthodox or heterodox. It seems to me, that suddenly you are preaching what Keith Mathison calls solo scriptura. It is only your opinion that the individual is the ultimate temporal authority for deciding whether an interpretation of scriptures is orthodox or heterodox. You can’t show me where your opinion is taught in scriptures, because the Protestant doctrine of the “primacy of conscience” is not taught anywhere in your Protestant bible.
John Thayer Jensen January 15th, 2011 1:32 pm :
@Mateo:

A single person is not the church that Christ founded, but a single person can be a Protestant church with a membership of one.

Pity I can’t do the following with the Dutch accent it was given to me in by my Reformed Church elder – still Reformed, still Calvinist, horrified that I have become a Catholic. He told me this in a rueful acknowledgement of the tendency to fissiparation amongst Protestants:

– One Dutchman – a Christian.
– Two Dutchmen – a Church.
– Three Dutchmen – a heresy trial.

jj
Michael Liccione January 15th, 2011 1:48 pm :
JJ:

LOL! That’s no longer true of the Dutch, but I can think of some American Protestants who come pretty close.

Best,
Mike
John Thayer Jensen January 15th, 2011 2:00 pm :
@Mike:

The New Zealand Reformed Churches are of Dutch background (actually these days increasingly of South African). My elder – a wonderful person, now dying of cancer – was Dutch. During the 20 years that we were members (and founders of the Pukekoke church), there were, I think, three splits – this in a denomination of, I think, 20 congregations and just a few thousand members.

The Dutch Reformed tradition is alive and well in Godzone! :-)

jj
Michael Liccione January 15th, 2011 3:25 pm :
Scott Hahn doesn’t call ’em “the split Ps” for nothing!
GNW_Paul January 16th, 2011 7:37 pm :
@TF re: #1149

I think trying to really address a proper understanding of submission of the faithful in the context of the exercise of authority by the Local Bishop and the parish priests within the hierarchy of the Church and the curial courts would take us far too afield from this discussion. My main objections to your very general (vague) examples which I have called straw men is that they fail to consider how one submits to authority while following conscience and how the hierarchy of authority functions to either correct the injustice or correct the individual conscience. Perhaps it if you constructed a fuller example that would address my concerns, but I tend to think that you are driving at a rhetorical point and looking for a simple parallel to justify your own concepts. Thus my reason for pointing out these straw men.

Perhaps I am not understanding the point you are trying to make by coming back to this issue. As I read your comments I think you are trying to justify the reformed concept of following the Bible as the ultimate temporal authority by drawing a parallel to the Catholics who is some circumstances may object to some teaching of the Catholic Church or a local Bishop. Your examples prove nothing because they are hollow.

The Pope acting through the Congregation of Doctrine and Faith (The Inquisition as it was formally known) as the authority to make me accountable for my interpretation of Trent, to review my position, and to rule on whether it is heresey or not.
(GNW_Paul #1052)

Yes. In theory, that is correct. But:

a) That’s just in theory unless you become famous. The CDF does not have the time or manpower to review the opinions of 1.2 billion people.

b) The judgments of the CDF are “the law,” but they are not alleged to be infallible. Thus, a person may conscientiously refuse to submit to a judgment of the CDF that conflicts with the teachings of the Church.

True, the CDF doesn’t investigate the average Joe Pew-Sitter. There is also a distinction between a privately held opinion and a public statement and actually teaching an error. However, as a Catechist in my parish my Pastor does exercise his authority – believe me he does – over what I teach. The CDF seldom investigates local parish matters because that is ordinarily the function of local ordinaries.

Your (b) really gets to the heart of our little side disagreement however. I can think of plenty of actual examples, but “conscientiously refusing to submit” can have many different hues. There is rebellion , which is to abandon the Church and either join or found a schismatic or heretical sect – this is refusal to submit to authority. There is obedience in silence where one agrees to not teach {a} or {not a}, while holding one’s personal belief on {a} privately – this is submitting to authority while following conscience. There is also acceptance of excomunication, continuing to hold and teach {a} publicly, but also following the Church in other matters and seeking to reconcile one’s beliefs through continued discussion. Further discussion is simply beyond the scope of this thread, but I could provide detailed examples of actual cases in each category.

Yes, it is authority. And Reformed churches have a similar mechanism, as you may know. We don’t have a CDF, but the elders will (in theory, and sometimes in practice) excommunicate people for heresy. But even in the RCC, excommunication is not allegedly an infallible process.

You continued:

My Bishop also has Subsidiary Authority in the matter, although I have the right to appeal to Rome.

Yes, and there are courts (more than one) at Rome, with the highest authority (from which there is no appeal) being the pope himself. However, while there is no appeal from the pope’s judicial decisions in cases of discipline, there is no guarantee of infallibility. Thus, in theory, a person might conscientiously refuse to submit and undergo excommunication. And, as you may know, some of the “saints” of your church were excommunicated by some authority or other at some point.

I am certainly aware that reformed churches will excommunicate members. However, the way that works in your ecclesial structure is part of what leads to confusion when you compare with the Catholic Church.

There are a few things I think are worth addressing here briefly. First one can not refuse to be excommunicated from the Catholic Church. One can avoid excommunication by fully submitting and confessing what the Church commands, or (sometimes) by agreeing to not teach or publicize one’s dissent. Further, one can be obedient in excommunication and continue to seek reconciliation with the Church and one can completely abandon the Church. Worst yet it to set oneself up as an authority in opposition to the Church.

Second, you are correct that some Saints were at times opposed by some segment of authority within the Church and some were even excommunicated or had their teaching condemned and were later rehabilitated. BUT the enormous piece of that you slide over, is that it was because the did not rebel, and they did their best to be obedient in every area they could in conscience, and they never set themselves up as an authority opposed to the Church. Obedience was what made them saints, obedience even when it meant accepting a wrongful judgment and even punishment, imprisonment, loss of position etc. . OBEDIENCE. Sorry for shouting.

And thanks for the continued discussion. I think it would be interesting to pursue some of this more deeply. Perhaps the opportunity develop in another com-box

Peace

GNW_Paul
John Thayer Jensen January 17th, 2011 2:37 am :
@GNW_Paul:

Just a comment on the way this discussion of authority has gone – it strikes me that this is really about discipline, and about what happens when people go astray. Of course this is a part of what authority implies, but what I think is so important to me regarding the fact that the Catholic Church teaches, like Jesus, with authority, is that I can have confidence in its teaching. It is a tremendous blessing to me to know that God will not let me go astray if I follow His Church.

I recall with what emotion – was it in 1995? 6? – I awaited Pope John-Paul II’s encyclical on the ordination of women. I was pretty confident that the ordination of women just wasn’t on. But what would I do if the Pope said that it was? I had full certainty that the Catholic Church was God’s Teacher on earth, so I suppose if it had gone that way, I would – with some feelings – have submitted.

But I felt such a feeling of joy when, as I expected, the Pope upheld what I thought was surely, and obviously, the mind of Christ.

That’s authority. Authority is a voice you can trust.

jj
GNW_Paul January 17th, 2011 3:19 am :
@TF or anyone

Following on my last post, maybe I can clarify something of why the Catholics here have a problem with how TF and others have tried to deny that sola scriptura is really no different than solo scriptura.

As I understand them, all of the reformed defenders of sola scriptura have claimed that a) Scripture is the highest authority and b) that the Church has actual, but subsidiary authority.

So far we Catholics have been seemingly unsuccessful in clearly articulating why we don’t think those claims make sense. My last post clarified my thoughts at least.

For me it comes down to obedience even when one believes they are right. Obedience even to the point of being willing to accept punishment and persecution from the Church while remaining submissive and obedient to the Church, except in the particular matter of conscience. Note, I am not saying that one should act against ones own conscience out of obedience, but I am saying that one can continue to be subject to the Church in humility in every other regard. Further, one can not act against one’s own conscience, but one can act minimally and with humility in how one exercises that right.

And in that lie the two problems I have with the reformed position (and also the Anglican quadrilateral and 3 legged stools etc).

First, it is irrational to suffer humbly in obedience to a church if the ecclesiology of that church is that it is just one fallible church in an invisible unity and other churches have an equally objective claim to truth. How could anyone decide to bear punishment and humiliation from a human institution that is by it’s own admission disposable? So as the reformed defenders of sola scriptura actually admit, if you have concluded scripture is contradicted by your particular church, you can simply move to another. Yes, Protestant churches do excommunicate people, and most people leave on their own sooner, but it doesn’t matter much because none of those churches makes any claim to being the One, True, Apostolic, infallible Church.

SO the Catholic problem with this is that no Protestant church can actually exercise authority because switching confessions is inconsequential – unless perhaps if one becomes Catholic. If switching confessions is of little concern, the authority is an illusion because there is no real reason to humbly accept that authority, and there are no consequences for changing confessions.

The reformed answer seems to be “but Scripture is the highest authority that all must follow.” And the problem here is that there is no way for Scripture to objectively exercise that authority. Scripture, by itself, is incapable of throwing up a STOP sign when people mangle, confuse, twist and manipulate the meaning of scripture. As much as one might be willing or at least profess willingness to submit to the authority of Scripture, there is simply no way to actually DO it. Scripture having actual authority would require that at least at times people who were misreading scripture would be held accountable to Scripture. They will ultimately be held accountable, but not is this world.

Anyone and everyone can claim to be following the ‘clear guidance of Scripture’ and anyone and everyone can accuse just about anyone else of going against Scripture. But Scripture itself has no ability to declare who is right and who is misled by Satan.

Peace to all

GNW_Paul
Michael Liccione January 17th, 2011 2:56 pm :
GNWP:

After 1,160 entries, I don’t agree that Catholics “have been seemingly unsuccessful in clearly articulating why we don’t think” it makes sense to say that “a) Scripture is the highest authority and b) that the Church has actual, but subsidiary authority.” For one thing, there is actually a sense in which Catholics can and ought to accept (a) and (b). The problem, rather, is that Catholics and Reformed Protestants interpret (a) and (b) differently. Just as in the case of particular passages of Scripture, we have a problem of divergent interpretations on this doctrinal point. So the main question becomes: By what means are we to determine whose interpretation of (a) and (b) is the one God wants us to adopt?

To answer that question, it’s best to start with the sense in which Catholics can and ought to accept (a) and (b). In Dei Verbum, Vatican II says:

Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture form one sacred deposit of the word of God, committed to the Church. Holding fast to this deposit the entire holy people united with their shepherds remain always steadfast in the teaching of the Apostles, in the common life, in the breaking of the bread and in prayers (see Acts 2, 42, Greek text), so that holding to, practicing and professing the heritage of the faith, it becomes on the part of the bishops and faithful a single common effort.

But the task of authentically interpreting the word of God, whether written or handed on, has been entrusted exclusively to the living teaching office of the Church, whose authority is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ. This teaching office is not above the word of God, but serves it, teaching only what has been handed on, listening to it devoutly, guarding it scrupulously and explaining it faithfully in accord with a divine commission and with the help of the Holy Spirit, it draws from this one deposit of faith everything which it presents for belief as divinely revealed.

It is clear, therefore, that sacred tradition, Sacred Scripture and the teaching authority of the Church, in accord with God’s most wise design, are so linked and joined together that one cannot stand without the others, and that all together and each in its own way under the action of the one Holy Spirit contribute effectively to the salvation of souls [§10; emphasis added, footnotes omitted].

Catholic doctrine, therefore, is that the Magisterium “serves” the Word and is not “above” it. It serves the Word by being its sole “authentic” interpreter for the faithful, thus adjudicating among competing, mutually incompatible interpretations of the Word on matters of doctrinal significance. That is how the Magisterium facilitates our reception of the Word. In that role, it does not add anything to the deposit of faith, but merely clarifies said deposit over time by means of its definitive interpretations of the deposit’s “sources” of transmission. On the picture sketched in DV, Scripture is the “highest authority” in the sense that Scripture, being God-breathed and thus inerrant, is the norma normans by which Tradition and the doctrines of the Magisterium are to be received. Thus the authority of the Church, as exercised through the Magisterium, is subordinate to that of Scripture as well as of extra-scriptural Tradition. But the ways in which the faithful interpret Scripture and extra-scriptural Tradition must be subordinate to how the Magisterium does it. Thus the Church has authority “subordinate” to that of Scripture, but the interpretation of Scripture by the faithful is subordinate to the definitive teaching of the Church. That is the sense in which Catholics can and ought to accept (a) and (b).

But of course, that interpretation of (a) and (b) differs from the one which Reformed believers such as TF adduce. On their view, the truth presented in Scripture can be adequately understood apart from Tradition and the Magisterium, so that any Spirit-led individual can and ought to judge the orthodoxy of the Church and extra-scriptural Tradition in terms of his own understanding of Scripture. The individual believer can and should do that because, on this view, “the plain meaning” of Scripture suffices to permit such a stance and make it adequate for receiving and understanding the deposit of faith. Thus, while the Reformed also accept (a) and (b), they interpret those statements in a way that’s incompatible with Catholicism.

Now it seems to me that, once that divergence of interpretation is seen for what it is, the Catholic interpretation emerges as the more reasonable. Why?

First, if there really were a “plain meaning” of Scripture permitting any Spirit-led individual to understand it well enough to judge the orthodoxy of Tradition and the Church, then one would expect the interpretations of Scripture reached by intelligent persons of good will to converge over time and thus provide a functionally adequate basis for ecclesial unity. But in fact, what we see in Protestantism is precisely the opposite: interpretations of Scripture on matters of doctrinal significance tend to diverge over time, even among intelligent persons of good will. That accounts in large part for the steady proliferation of Protestant churches even with denominations. Hence, even if the meaning of Scripture is plain enough in itself to permit the individual to determine orthodoxy on the basis of it, it is clearly not plain enough to all intelligent persons of good will to fulfill that role. That’s why a church with divinely granted interpretive authority is needed. And even the Reformed grant as much.

Second and accordingly, it becomes vital to identify the divinely intended referent of the phrase ‘the Church’. For only that church has the needed authority. The Catholic way of identifying the Church is clear enough, so I won’t elaborate on it here. The more germane point is that, on any Protestant picture, we can identify the divinely intended referent of the phrase ‘the Church’ only in terms of a prior, systematic interpretation of Scripture that is taken to be correct independently of the claims of any church to interpretive authority. The Church just becomes that collection of believers who happen to have reached the correct interpretation of Scripture without it. But as Bryan has well argued, the “authority” of something called “the Church” on such a picture is entirely hollow. If we can identify “the Church” only in terms of an interpretation of Scripture reached independently of ecclesial authority, then it is actually believers who severally judge the orthodoxy, and thus the authority, of the Church–not vice-versa.

Third and finally, this means that the distinction between solo and sola ultimately breaks down even for those Protestants, such as the Reformed, who posit the need for ecclesial authority. If Scripture is perspicuous enough to allow individuals to reliably and fully understand the deposit of faith independently of the claims of any particular church to authority, then something called “the Church” only has as much authority as its membership chooses to acknowledge on the basis of their own interpretation of Scripture. The authority of the Church is thus no longer interpretive and definitive, but purely disciplinary and provisional, based only on the acceptance of its membership. Believers who reach interpretations of Scripture incompatible with those of “the Church” need only hive off and start their own church with its own claim to “authority.” Which, of course, is exactly what the early Reformers did, and what Protestants continue to do. It’s become a tradition unto itself. Some are comfortable with that; those who aren’t, are quite resigned to it.

In our view, it’s more reasonable to look for a church that has real authority. That would entail that, when disputes arise about how to interpret divine revelation’s sources of transmission, we should look for a church which claims that her adjudications are divinely preserved from error. On that picture, one cannot say that the Church’s adjudications could always be wrong and thus be corrigible in terms of an interpretation of Scripture reached independently of her. The Church becomes the assessor of our orthodoxy, not vice-versa. That’s real interpretive authority. It’s definitive and binding on the conscience, not merely disciplinary and provisional.

Best,
Mike
TurretinFan January 17th, 2011 6:13 pm :
Bryan (re: #1056):

I had written:

Consequently, one ought to be more willing to affirm what Scripture teaches than what one’s church teaches, when the two are in conflict. The Church, after all, is not Christ.

You responded:

As I pointed out in #1009 and #1038, your statement here too glosses over the necessary role of the interpreter. Since the Catholic Church affirms the truth of every verse in Scripture, the point of disagreement (between Protestants and the Catholic Church) is not the truth of any verse of Scripture, but the interpretation of verses. When we include the role of the interpreter, your statement turns out to be:

Consequently, one ought to be more willing to affirm one’s own interpretation of Scripture than what one’s church teaches, when the two are in conflict. The Church, after all, is not Christ.

I think I’ve pointed out a few times now my responses:

1) It’s one thing to say you affirm the truth of Scripture, and it is another thing to affirm the truth of Scripture. Sometimes the two overlap, sometimes they do not. My comment was not about the situation in which one’s church says, “we disagree with Scripture,” but when one’s church actually does disagree with what Scripture says, even when one’s church denies (or otherwise does not admit) that a disagreement exists.

2) Your assertion, ” glosses over the necessary role of the interpreter,” is not supported. If it were the case that the Bible itself cannot convey its truth to us without an intermediary, then perhaps you would be right. But actually when you say “the necessary role of the interpreter” you can only support that to the extent of the much weaker idea of the fact that words that are read must be understood. In that case, your transformation of my statement is simply misleading.

You continue:

But when we fill out your statement in this way, we see two problems. First, I am not Christ. Therefore, even if the Church were not Christ, this would not provide any reason to place my interpretation over that of the Church.

My argument was not that you are Christ, but that the Scriptures are the teachings of Christ. When the teachings of Christ and the teachings of your church conflict, the teachings of Christ should take the preeminence.

That does not deny that you have to read the Bible and that you have to read your church’s teachings, and that you must (in some more or less limited sense) “interpret” each and compare the two. Nevertheless, the things being compared are not “my interpretation” and “the church’s interpretation.” What are being compared are “Scripture” and “the church’s teaching.”

That’s also why we (Reformed) tell you (Roman) that you should compare our teachings with Scripture. We believe that what we teach and what Scripture teaches are the same thing. Nevertheless, we invite you to examine our teaching in light of Scripture to reject it if it is not what Scripture teaches. If what we teach is not what Scripture teaches, it is not entitled to authority. The same goes for the teachings of your church, however.

You continue:

Second, the Church is the Body of Christ.

a) That sense of “the Church” is all the believing elect, including not only the living but also the glorified dead.

b) Even in your church’s theology, “the Church” as the body of Christ includes all the faithful of both sexes. It does not mean “the magisterium” as such. See, for example, CCC 752:

In Christian usage, the word “church” designates the liturgical assembly, but also the local community or the whole universal community of believers. These three meanings are inseparable. “The Church” is the People that God gathers in the whole world. She exists in local communities and is made real as a liturgical, above all a Eucharistic, assembly. She draws her life from the word and the Body of Christ and so herself becomes Christ’s Body.

You continued:

We therefore fittingly express faith in Christ by putting faith in the subordinate authorities He established in His Church and through which He presently governs His Body.

Christ only requires faith in God, not faith in God’s subordinate authorities. Placing faith in subordinate authorities is specifically condemned in Scripture, and is also implicitly condemned by the warnings about false teachers.

You continued:

To doubt the Church’s teaching regarding the deposit of faith is to doubt Christ the Head of the Church.

In order for that assertion to be true, it would be necessary for you to show that (a) your church is “the Church,” (2) Christ has enabled “the Church” to teach infallibly, and (3) “the Church” is teaching infallibly in the particular instance in question. After all, if your church is not “the Church,” or if Christ has not enabled “the Church” to teach infallibly (for example, if Christ only enabled “the Church” to teach fallibly), or if this particular teaching is not among the set of infallible teachings, then doubting your church is not doubting Christ the Head of the Church.

Moreover, there are good reasons to reject your claim that your church is “the Church.” For example, today your church recognizes the existence of separated brethren. If there are indeed separated brethren, then your church is at best part of “the Church,” and not “the Church.” Alternatively, your church is not “the Church,” because your church has anathematized doctrines that Scripture teaches.

Likewise, there are good reasons to reject your claim that your church is infallible. For example, there are a number of places where your church’s teachings (even those that are allegedly infallible) contradict Scripture or even older teachings within the Roman tradition.

Finally, the question of determining which teachings are fallible and allegedly infallible is not as simple as one might think. We could explore this a bit more if needed.

You continued:

When we say “I believe in the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church” it is not a mere statement of belief in the existence of the Church; even the demons could do that.

I’ve discussed this issue previously (see my discussion here).

You continued:

Of course, if one’s sect is not the “one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church” that Christ founded, then there is no reason to believe that the teaching of one’s sect is Christ’s teaching, or that submitting to one’s sect is a way of submitting to Christ. So faith in Christ is rightly expressed as faith in the Church only if the Church in question is the Church Christ founded, which is His Body.

I hope this has been addressed above.

I had written:

That is the nature of subordinate authority. The lesser authority is trumped by the greater authority. The individual himself is not the highest authority. Nevertheless, it is the responsibility of the individual to follow the highest authority. Thus, for example, an individual in the Roman system must compare what his local bishop says to what the Council of Trent says, and follow Trent when the two disagree. That doesn’t make the individual pope, does it? Of course not.

You continued:

This is not an accurate presentation of the Catholic position, because you are presenting a false dilemma, namely that in such a case we must choose between following our own interpretation of the Council of Trent, and following our local bishop.

It would be sufficient if you simply may choose between them. It’s not necessary to my argument that you must choose between them. So, the “false dilemma” charge does not seem to stick. But let’s what third (or more) option you provide.

You continued:

But, there is a third, and normative option, namely, that we follow the Magisterium of the Church, i.e. the pope and bishops in communion with him.

You surely don’t mean “stalk” the pope bishops. To “follow” them in your statement must mean to follow their teachings. And, of course, Trent is one such teaching (surely you do not object to that). So, you haven’t really proposed a third option. You’ve simply provided another description of the the first option.

You continued:

In doing so we will follow the Magisterial (and thus authoritative) interpretation of the Council of Trent, and follow our local bishop when he is orthodox, and not follow him when he is heretical.

Is there any allegedly infallible interpretation of the Council of Trent? If not, while in theory my original statement should be modified to say “Trent as interpreted by [insert name of infallible interpretation of Trent here],” in practice such further qualification is not necessarily.

You continued:

There always remains a Magisterial authority to which we must be subject, and so “that doesn’t make the individual pope.”

a) There is not always a pope. But perhaps we can leave that aside for the moment.

b) The existence of a vague Magisterial authority may or may not have benefits. However, in the present (that place in time that we all occupy), the teachings of the Magisterium are what you have, in terms of your knowledge of the truth. When you judge your bishop’s teaching, you base that judgment on the teaching of the Magisterium, just as we base our judgments of our subordinate authorities on the teaching of the Holy Spirit, namely the Bible.

You continued:

But the Protestant is his own ultimate interpretive authority, and therefore is de facto his own pope, since he retains ultimate ecclesial authority.

This is equivocal. The “Protestant” is his own ultimate interpretive authority (in some limited sense) of the Bible, but the Roman layman is his own ultimate interpretive authority (in the same sense) of the teachings of the Magisterium. The difference is the rule of faith (Scripture vs. the Teachings of the Magisterium), but it is not a difference with respect to ultimate interpretive authority of the rule. The fact that a human must “ultimately interpret” whatever is his standard of judgment is simply the way that human beings work.

I had written:

Even so, it does not make the individual the supreme authority when he follows the Word of God in Scripture rather than what his church tells him.

You wrote:

Again, “when he follows the Word of God” actually means “when he follows his own interpretation of Scripture.” And when he follows his own interpretation of Scripture over that of the Magisterium Christ established (who speaks with Christ’s authority) , then yes, this does make himself out to be the supreme authority. But because he was not given such authority, therefore his act of following his own interpretation over that of the Magisterium is an act of rebelling against Christ, whether he knows it to be so or not.

Actually, no – “when he follows the Word of God” actually means that. It is a little hard to carry on a dialog when you insist on modifying what we say. We prefer to retain interpretive authority over our own words. ;) While we do not claim perspicuity, we do think we are able to tell you what we mean by what we say, and specifically to deny restatements of our own position.

-TurretinFan
GNW_Paul January 17th, 2011 11:42 pm :
@Michael L

Thanks Mike. I agree we have covered this all many times. Your comment is an excellent and clear summary. I didn’t mean to suggest the issues hadn’t been addressed, I’m just a clumsy writer (lol). It only just clicked in for me at this point that the ability or rationale for submission in humility is completely lacking in the sola scriptura model of ecclesiology, while it is so clearly present in the Catholic. I only thought that perhaps I could express it in a way that ‘bridged the gap’ between the two perspectives.

So what I really meant by:

So far we Catholics have been seemingly unsuccessful in clearly articulating why we don’t think those claims make sense.

Was not that you and Bryan and Ray and others haven’t clearly stated the Catholic case in this regard. Rather, I meant that seemingly Turretin Fan and Lojhw and Andrew McCallum have not apparently been able to see the difference, because they keep asserting the same positions and claiming that there is church authority.

I hoped that coming at it from the “humble obedience” angle might make clear the difference between what we see as the Authority of the Catholic Church and what we see in the authority of “ABC Reformed Church of Peoria” and that it isn’t just a matter of size.

Anyway, thanks for a very clear summary of the arguments.

Peace
donald todd January 18th, 2011 11:56 am :
Jesus is Lord and Mary is His mother

In following the recent arguments, I find that the Protestants are holding to a position of relying on scripture and denying that the Catholics hold the same position. When I was a Protestant, I found that my church was holding to a position of scripture when it was convenient (when it upheld our position) and of denying or avoiding scripture when it manifestly said something with which my church did not agree.

The easy one is the Eucharist. The Synoptics, John 6, and 1st Corinthians 10 and 11 display a single position about the Eucharist. God in His wisdom decided to feed us with Himself. Even as there was a Passover under the Old Covenant, so Jesus Himself became the Passover and the fulfillment of the Passover in the New Covenant. In the Old Covenant Passover, the unblemished lamb was intended to be eaten. One could not fulfill the requirements of the Old Covenant Passover without eating the lamb. That remained true for the New Covenant, however the Passover meal is the Lord Himself, the Lamb of God Who takes away the sins of the world.

The early Church fathers merely reiterated what they had been taught by the apostles about the Eucharist. That witness is maintained for 1500 years before a novelty was introduced. My church (and this was common throughout most of Protestantism) had denigrated the New Covenant Passover meal into a symbol. Even noting that Jesus’ own words were specific about this (easily read in the Gospels), it was denied. It ran contrary to the position of my church, so scripture must not be objectively true, rather it must have an obscure meaning arrived at by tortured reasoning. (My own belief, after a lot of effort, was that the Catholic meaning could not be accepted because it was Catholic. If scripture held the Catholic position, then the scripture itself was not acceptable. Ergo scripture became secondary to unaided human reason.)

This became such a consideration that I applied it to Peter, Mary, and finally the Church. Peter fulfilled the role of chamberlain in the new King’s government as well as fulfilling the role of the assistant to the High Priest. Mary, the most wonderful of all human beings borne of two parents, said yes for us and undid the no given by Eve to God.

The Church fulfilled the dual role of Israel (government under the New Covenant King) and the Temple (maintaining the sacrifice under the New Covenant High Priest), and in doing so, maintained the Word of God, both the Person and, later, under the auspices of the Church, the written Word. I am a sinner in need of salvation and found that I needed to submit to that Church, and not to my own whims or the unworthy positions I was seeing where I was at.

I don’t believe that I did scripture justice until I was contemplating the Roman Catholic Church. Since becoming a Catholic, I am much more open to believing that God is not limited by my conceptions than I was when I had to maintain the position of my old church or of Protestantism in general. I gave up unaided human reason with its very limited scriptural interpretative ability and became Catholic.

I haven’t looked back.
Ray Stamper January 18th, 2011 12:15 pm :
Dear TF,

In response to Bryan you wrote:

But actually when you say “the necessary role of the interpreter” you can only support that to the extent of the much weaker idea of the fact that words that are read must be understood. In that case, your transformation of my statement is simply misleading.[italic emphasis mine]

Could you please help we Catholics understand how the “the fact that words that are read must be understood” is a “much weaker idea” than the notion that reading a text necessarily involves interpretation such that he who interprets is an interpreter? How does “understanding” the text and “interpreting” the text differ in any way whatsoever? Bryan could just as easily have written “the necessary role of the one who understands”. The “meaning” God intended men to know, was instantiated in textual form through the human faculties of the biblical authors thousands of years ago. The task of the reader in 2011 is to attempt to extract that God-intended meaning from the text (as opposed to a meaning that God did not intend). That extraction process entails an interaction with text symbols giving rise to cognitions in the mind of the reader. Cognitions which the reader hopes are identical to the cognitive meanings which God originally instantiated within the text. Whether we call that act of extraction “understanding” or “interpretation” is nothing more than a semantic difference so far as I can tell.

That does not deny that you have to read the Bible and that you have to read your church’s teachings, and that you must (in some more or less limited sense) “interpret” each and compare the two.

No, not “in some more or less limited sense” must one interpret and compare views. One must “interpret” period! Please explain how interpretation of Scripture by the modern reader only occurs in a “more or less limited sense”; because in the VERY NEXT sentence you go on to say:

Nevertheless, the things being compared are not “my interpretation” and “the church’s interpretation.” What are being compared are “Scripture” and “the church’s teaching.

The things being compared ARE your interpretation and the Church’s interpretation – NOT Scripture un-mediated. The word “Scripture” has at least two commonly understood senses. The word can refer to a physical, codified collection of documents (pages covered with text symbols) – as in, “please bring the “Scriptures” with you to class”. In that sense the term is entirely passive. The term “Scriptures” can also be loosely used to refer to a cognitive idea set (a unified collection of ideas with meanings that refer to extra-mental realities) – as in, “the Scriptures reveal God’s plan for man and creation”. In that sense the term has an active component. Surely you would agree that, for purposes of this discussion, the term Scriptures refers to the “meaning of Scripture” rather than a physical book-object (elsewhere you have stated that Scripture has “objective meaning”). But in that case it seems obvious that the “active component” requires a reader who is fundamentally engaged with cognitive ideas and their meaning; an engagement commonly described by the terms “understanding” or “interpretation”. Whatever “revealing” or “teaching” that is ascribed to the Scriptures as an act, is implicitly understood to necessarily involve a human mind as the active subject through which ideas and meanings are understood as “revealed or “taught”. Hence, your claim that “What are being compared are ‘Scripture’ and ‘the church’s teaching’” is false in that such a statement, through lack of clarity, constitutes the precise point wherein you are glossing the necessary role of the interpretive/understanding agent. “What are being compared are a cognitive interpretation/understanding of Scripture and a cognitive interpretation/understanding of the church’s teaching”.

We believe that what we teach and what Scripture teaches are the same thing. Nevertheless, we invite you to examine our teaching in light of Scripture to reject it if it is not what Scripture teaches. If what we teach is not what Scripture teaches, it is not entitled to authority. The same goes for the teachings of your church, however.[bold emphasis mine]

When you invite Catholics to examine Reformed teaching “in light of Scripture” and encourage us to reject Reformed teaching if it does not comport with “what Scripture teaches”; that proposal explicitly entails that the two are not identical – otherwise how could we examine Reformed teaching IN LIGHT OF Scripture? For Scripture to shed light on something, the source of the light that is shed (Scripture) must necessarily be distinct from that which the light is shed upon (Reformed teaching). But you have already said that “We believe that what we teach and what Scripture teaches are the same thing.” So why bother making an invitation to Catholics to compare two things which you – at the outset – assert are not really distinct, but identical? I am sorry, but this is one of the worst kind of sophistic shell games I have ever encountered. For all the reasons I have just given, the phrase “what Scripture teaches” is a phrase which glosses – through lack of precision – the fact that the “meaning taught” always arrives at the individual human mind through a cognitive act of interpretive understanding. Either provide some NON AD-HOC explanation as to why any reasonable person should expect that the Reformed interpretation of the meaning of Scripture just is synonymous with the “objective meaning” which God instantiated in Scripture through the biblical author; or else stop the equivocation and join we Catholics and Keith Mathison in affirming his quite obvious – and yet to be refuted – dictum that:

”All appeals to Scripture are appeals to interpretations of Scripture. The only real question is: whose interpretation?”

Pax et Bonum,

Ray
Sean Patrick January 18th, 2011 1:31 pm :
TFan –

1) It’s one thing to say you affirm the truth of Scripture, and it is another thing to affirm the truth of Scripture.

How do you know that the Catholic Church does not affirm the truth of scripture?

Please respond without appealing to your interpretation of scripture.
Bryan Cross January 18th, 2011 1:32 pm :
TF, (re: #1163)

Nevertheless, the things being compared are not “my interpretation” and “the church’s interpretation.” What are being compared are “Scripture” and “the church’s teaching.”

Again, as I’ve been pointing out since #978, you are glossing the role of the interpreter, as though what is at odds with Catholic teaching is Scripture itself, and not merely your interpretation of Scripture. In order to defend your claim, you would need to provide at least one case where it isn’t your interpretation of Scripture that is at odds with Catholic teaching, but is Scripture itself that is at odds with Catholic teaching. You haven’t yet provided such an example. You had previously claimed that 1 Tim 4:1-3 is contrary to Catholic teaching. But in #1009 I showed that in actuality it is your interpretation of 1 Tim 4:1-3 that is at odds with Catholic teaching, because interpreting it as you do presupposes certain question-begging theological assumptions that you are bringing to the text. In #1051 you claimed that Romans 3:23 and Romans 4:5 are at odds with Catholic doctrine. But in #1061 I showed that it in actuality, it is your interpretation of Romans 3:23 and Romans 4:5 that is at odds with Catholic doctrine, again, because your conclusion regarding the meaning of these texts is based on certain question-begging theological assumptions you are bringing to the text. So you have not yet provided an example of a case where Scripture itself is at odds with Catholic doctrine. And therefore you have not substantiated your claim that Scripture itself is contrary Catholic doctrine.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Brad January 18th, 2011 4:24 pm :
Sean Patrick and Bryan (possibly others):

Please don’t take offense at my forthrightness and fed-upness. :) Although I haven’t read this article, I must say that it is almost maddening to see some of the RC responses. It’s as if you don’t think you fall into the same epistemic dilemma that Protestants do. The RC just pushes it back a step (ie – to their discovery of the RCC).

It seems that this epistemic situation is the base issue between us. All other discussions seem to be secondary. For the RC to say, “How do you know that interpretation is correct” is to beg the question. The RC must answer it as well. How do you know the RCC is the Church Christ founded. Neither can provide the answer the world wants: a seeing-is-believeing type of logical proof.

I’ve read the Tu Quoque article, and from the combox dialogue with Bryan, the Tu Quoque doesn’t seem to be addressing this epistemic issue at it’s core.

I probably won’t engage in a ton of debate. It take so much time – time I’m either unwilling or unable to give. Does anyone else have a family, work, etc? :)

Thanks.

Brad
John Thayer Jensen January 18th, 2011 4:45 pm :
@Brad:

Please don’t take offense at my forthrightness and fed-upness. :) Although I haven’t read this article, I must say that it is almost maddening to see some of the RC responses. It’s as if you don’t think you fall into the same epistemic dilemma that Protestants do. The RC just pushes it back a step (ie – to their discovery of the RCC).

I think you might be mixing up two separate epistemic issues:

1) Recognising that the Bible is God’s Word vs. recognising that the Catholic Church is God’s appointed Teacher;

2) Knowing the actual meaning of a passage of the Bible vs. knowing the actual meaning of a teaching of the Catholic Church.

It is true that every person must engage both 1) and 2), but they are different. Indeed, for the Protestant, 1) involves 2 steps:

1a) The apostles are appointed teachers from God – that is, in fact, recognising the Church;

1b) Their writings are God’s Word, and must be interpreted thereafter without any human authority (e.g. the Roman Church).

But for 2) – understanding the meaning of a passage from the Bible – the Catholic thinks that he has an authoritative Teacher still around today to whom he can go in a pinch to discover if he is on the right track. The Protestant has not. This is sola Scriptura – which really should be called privatione interpretatione (if I have my Latin right) – ‘private interpretation.’

That sola Scriptura ultimately also comes down to solo Scriptura, since the Protestant, whilst free to make use of the wisdom of Christians throughout the ages, must ultimately judge such wisdom by the Scriptures as he understands them.

jj
Brad January 18th, 2011 5:01 pm :
John Thayer Jensen (#1170):

Thank you, but this still doesn’t address my objection that the RC is his/her own interpretive authority, just as the RC claims the Protestant is. Even though the RC gives up interpretive authority to the Magisterium, he/she is their own interpretive authority in doing so. He/she interpreted that the RCC is Christ’s Church. That is being one’s own interpretive authority. It cannot be escaped.

If the RC can’t address this, then the RC’s accusation of the Protestant being his/her own interpretive authority ends up with the accusation pointing right back at them.

Grace and peace.

Brad
Bryan Cross January 18th, 2011 5:02 pm :
Hello Brad, (re: #1169)

I understand the frustration — we’re at 1,171 comments and still climbing. But, no one ever promised that the reconciliation of Protestants and Catholics, or working out the fundamental disagreements between us would be a walk in the park. So, we must be patient, and ask God for the grace to persevere in this pursuit of truth and unity in the truth.

If your objection is the “you too” claim, regarding finding the Church, then let’s discuss that over at the Tu Quoque article. So far as I know, we haven’t yet written an article having as its primary thesis that the Catholic Church is the Church that Christ founded.

This article (“Solo Scriptura, Sola Scriptura and the Question of Interpretive Authority”) is about the relation of solo scriptura and sola scriptura, and why apostolic succession is necessary in order to avoid what is the essence of solo scriptura, i.e. remaining one’s own ultimate interpretive authority. My suggestion is that you read the article first. The various comments are not necessarily reflective of the line of reasoning in the article. And the issue is of such importance that it is worthy of the time required to investigate it; take your time — we have no plans to take down the article.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Randy January 18th, 2011 5:04 pm :
Think of it this way Brad. Suppose you give an interpretation of scripture that says gay marriage is immoral and somebody says your interpretation is biased by your anti-gay bigotry. How do you respond? How can you even be sure that objection is not right? You might have some anti-gay bigotry that is causing you not to see God’s true will in scripture. You don’t think so but how can you declare yourself to be unbiased? It is precisely your ability to make good declarations that is at issue?

What changes for the Catholic? We say gay marriage is immoral but we don’t base that on our own judgment. It is based on the judgment of the church. Can the church be biased? Only if she is a human institution. If she is divine then bias is not an issue. So you can only deny the immorality of gay marriage by denying your entire Catholic faith. You have removed the aspect of judging your fellow Christians to be bigots and reduce it to the simple question of does God speak through His church.
Brad January 18th, 2011 5:06 pm :
Thanks Bryan (#1172).

I might end up reading this article.

Grace and peace.

Brad
JJS January 18th, 2011 5:21 pm :
Mike, [re: #1162]

That is how the Magisterium facilitates our reception of the Word. In that role, it does not add anything to the deposit of faith, but merely clarifies said deposit over time by means of its definitive interpretations of the deposit’s “sources” of transmission.

I think you are right to identify this as the crux of the debate.

Can you see how we Protestants hear this claim that the CC adds nothing to the original deposit, then look at beliefs you hold (such as the Assumption of Mary), and then scratch our heads in utter bemusement?

In the case if the Assumption, it’s not like you’re just connecting some doctrinal dots and reaching a theological conclusion that took a while for the Church to recognize, but rather, you are making a claim about an absolutely incredible event that is purported to have actually happened in history, one that no one seemed to have noticed at the time, or for the several centuries that followed.

My point here is not to debate the Assumption, but simply to ask how utterly bizarre Rome’s most important claim is when compared with her teachings on so many extra-biblical subjects.
herbert January 18th, 2011 5:54 pm :
Brad, I really sense your earnestness and the frustration you’re facing. I believe the heart of what you’re getting at is captured in this tiny portion of text from Pope Paul VI’s (Vatican II’s) “Dignitatis Humanae”:

This Vatican Council likewise professes its belief that it is upon the human conscience that these obligations fall and exert their binding force. The truth cannot impose itself except by virtue of its own truth, as it makes its entrance into the mind at once quietly and with power.

The entire document is brief. And I’d recommend checking it out! In it, I believe Pope Paul speaks to some of the larger issues you’re considering (as he speaks to the fact that Christianity, being rooted in Christ’s love, is simply not a compulsory thing; either intellectually, historically, scientifically, or otherwise).
David Pell January 18th, 2011 5:58 pm :
JJS,

Can you see how we Protestants hear this claim that the CC adds nothing to the original deposit, then look at beliefs you hold (such as the Assumption of Mary), and then scratch our heads in utter bemusement?

I scratch my head when I wonder how Protestants think they know what the “original deposit” is. Of course, I used to be a Protestant who just took the Bible that the folks down at People’s Memorial Christian Church gave him when he converted, so I know that this problem is not readily apparent to everyone.

In the case if the Assumption, it’s not like you’re just connecting some doctrinal dots and reaching a theological conclusion that took a while for the Church to recognize, but rather, you are making a claim about an absolutely incredible event that is purported to have actually happened in history, one that no one seemed to have noticed at the time, or for the several centuries that followed.

Three important thoughts about this:

First, it is not the case that the historical claim is not complemented by the connection of more basic doctrinal dots. You may not accept the validity of all the dots, but that would bring us back to the issue of interpretive validity. As it stands, we believe that Mary was assumed into heaven for scriptural, systematic-theological, and historical reasons.

Second, and perhaps more importantly, Mary’s assumption is not, strictly speaking, an “absolutely incredible event.” You may be forgetting the fact that Mary is not the only person who was ever assumed bodily into heaven. Enoch was assumed into heave. Elijah was assumed into heaven. There is evidence that Moses was assumed into heaven. Recalling these facts should help mitigate the feeling you have that this is some kind of crazy notion that makes no sense whatsoever from within established Christian premises (i.e. “it is possible for someone to be assumed bodily into heaven”).

Third, you say that no one noticed “at the time, or for the several centuries that followed,” but this is false. Explicit references to the assumption go back at least as far as the fourth century, at which point they become relatively common. That there was never any quarrel over these traditions during that formative period is telling. As we would say about many other teachings, the fact that it was believed and celebrated throughout the entire Christian world without a big hoopla means that it was simply accepted, and not as contentious as some other issues. Finally, it is also interesting to note that, although Mary is considered the greatest of the saints, no one has ever claimed to possess her relics, though that tradition is also of ancient origin and caught on throughout all Christendom very quickly.

My point here is not to debate the Assumption, but simply to ask how utterly bizarre Rome’s most important claim is when compared with her teachings on so many extra-biblical subjects.

The claim is not bizarre when the facts re: doctrines like the Assumption are understood properly. Once it is understood that we are collecting theological dots, that there is precedent for the bodily assumption of other saints, and that the tradition is actually quite ancient and widespread, one may still regard it as false, but that’s not the same as bizarre or irrational. You could believe that all Christians everywhere simply conspired to make this up, or perhaps the evidence shows that there’s more to it than you originally thought.

(I know you said you didn’t want to debate this dogma. I just commented on it because you were using the emotional reaction Protestants have to the supposed bizareness of the doctrine as examples of why Protetants find it difficult to take certain Catholic claims seriously.)
Brad January 18th, 2011 6:03 pm :
Thanks Herbert (#1176).

Thank you.

Brad
Ray Stamper January 18th, 2011 6:09 pm :
Dear Brad,

Have you yet had a chance to read my post #78 to Richard in the comment thread of the “Sola Scriptura: A Dialogue between Michael Horton and Bryan Cross” article? It is not a long post, and it is a DIRECT response to the claim of epistemic parity between the Catholic and Protestant interpretive situation, which you think has been avoided. The reason that your concern has not been taken up in this thread is simply because this article is addressing a contention about the respective role of the interpreter in the “Solo” versus “Sola” proposal. There’s no point addressing the deeper epistemic question of interpretation per se, until all parties first acknowledge that they are, in fact, interpreting. Please take a moment to read it when you can. Here again is the link:

https://www.calledtocommunion.com/2010/11/sola-scriptura-a-dialogue-between-michael-horton-and-bryan-cross/#comment-13836

Pax Christi,

Ray
Michael Liccione January 18th, 2011 6:10 pm :
JJS: (re: #1175)

The passage of mine you quote does indeed address a basic point of disagreement between Catholics and conservative Protestants. But it’s essential to keep in mind that it identifies only one aspect of the larger difference, which is that between what I call “hermeneutical paradigms.” I don’t expect to “prove” to you that the Catholic HP is objectively superior, partly because, pace Brad, a choice between religious HPs cannot be rationally necessitated, and partly because doing so here would take us too far afield. I have addressed that issue elsewhere, e.g. in this post. All I want to do here is restate the larger difference and indicate the level at which it needs to be addressed.

As I said to Andrew McCallum, the Protestant HP would have us believe that “the way to learn the Christian religion is to study the early sources and come up with a cogent opinion about what they mean.” Of course those activities also have an important place in the Catholic HP; but for the Protestant it is absolutely central. One consequence of that centrality is that, if we lack documentary evidence that the early Christians believed some doctrine D, then D cannot be considered part of the deposit of faith “given once for all to the holy ones.” To conservative Protestants generally, that seems almost self-evident. And even the Catholic must admit that it is a rationally plausible way to learn the Christian religion.

But as I tirelessly argue, the basic problem with the Protestant HP is not that it calls for studying the early sources and drawing conclusions from them, but rather that, denying ecclesial infallibility, it offers us no principled way to distinguish the doctrinal content of divine revelation itself from human opinions about how to interpret the “sources.” By showing that sola reduces to solo, Bryan’s post at the head of this thread exhibits one aspect of that problem. The point is that, in order to apprehend said doctrinal content, which calls for the assent of faith as distinct from that of opinion, we need a principled, self-consistent way to make and apply the needed distinction. That’s what’s sketched by the passage I quoted from Dei Verbum. Thus Scripture, Tradition, and the teaching authority of the Church “are so linked…that none can stand without the others.” And I have long argued that that makes the Catholic HP superior to the Protestant.

Now if that philosophical argument of mine is sound, then when the Magisterium says that a doctrine D belongs to the deposit of faith, then we have reason enough to believe that. If we have reason enough of that sort to believe it, then we also have reason enough to believe that D is somehow implicit in the early sources. In the case of the Assumption, e.g., we have evidence that the feastday thereof (under the name “Dormition”) was being celebrated throughout the Eastern churches by the end of fourth century. So, if the Catholic HP is reasonable, it’s reasonable to believe that those churches were not pulling belief in the Assumption out of thin air or out of sources other than the tradition of the early Church, in light of which Scripture and other written sources are to be understood and accepted.

And yet, given that the Protestant HP seems almost self-evident to its adherents, that very conclusion seems unreasonable to them. That’s why I keep emphasizing that the underlying, philosophical issues between the Catholic and Protestant HPs need to be addressed before we can address any particular doctrinal difference between them.

Best,
Mike
JJS January 18th, 2011 6:19 pm :
David, [re: #1177]

Thanks for your response.

I scratch my head when I wonder how Protestants think they know what the “original deposit” is.

Well, if there is such a thing as the original deposit of faith, and if that thing is that to which Rome claims not to add, then in order for that claim to be meaningful, the original deposit must be something that we can objectively identify. I mean, it would be silly for Rome to boast about not adding to the deposit, while defining the deposit as whatever they say it is at any given time.

So if the deposit includes Scripture and the apostolic oral traditions that were extant during the first century, then anything that we believe or teach that cannot be found there is de facto an addition to that deposit. And my point is that many of Rome’s teachings, such as the BAOM, are not attested to anywhere in the apostolic times. And just because someone 400 years later taught it, and it caught on, proves nothing other than that teaching was of a later date and is therefore an addition to the apostolic deposit of faith.

Now, maybe I am misunderstanding Rome’s claim. But when they say that they have never added anything to the deposit, I interpret that to mean that everything in the CCC would be recognizable to James, John, Andrew, Thomas, and the others, as being what they themselves preached in obedience to the Great Commission.

If I am indeed misunderstanding the claim, then I’d be happy to be shown how.
JJS January 18th, 2011 6:41 pm :
Mike,

Thanks for your response.

The claim that Rome does not add to the deposit of faith, and the claim that the teaching of the Magisterium is so linked with and dependent upon Tradition and Scripture that they are virtually inseparable, seem inconsistent and mutually exclusive to me. In other words, it sounds like saying on the one hand that there’s this thing out there that can be identified (the deposit) to which Rome can never add (since she is a servant of the Word and not its master), but on the other hand anything Rome says virtually becomes a part of that deposit simply because she says so.

Can you see how dubious this sounds? It seems like your only answer is that this is how things must be, since any other HP makes it impossible to distinguish divine revelation and human opinion.
Bryan Cross January 18th, 2011 7:34 pm :
Jason (re: #1181)

Well, if there is such a thing as the original deposit of faith, and if that thing is that to which Rome claims not to add, then in order for that claim to be meaningful, the original deposit must be something that we can objectively identify.

Imagine, for example, speaking to the Apostles on the day of Pentecost, and using this same criterion on their words: “If there is such a thing as the words Jesus said to you, and if you are also claiming not to add to the things He said, then in order for that claim to be meaningful, the original words He said must be something that we listeners can objectively identify.” Such a test would make the Apostles’ claim not to be adding to Jesus’s words meaningless, because without audio or video recorders or books personally written by Jesus Himself, the bystanders on the day of Pentecost could not “objectively identify” for themselves the words that Jesus had spoken to His Apostles in private. But obviously the Apostles’ claim not to be adding to Jesus’s words would not therefore be meaningless, for then the whole of Christianity would be meaningless. Therefore, our inability to independently “objectively identify” the original deposit does not necessarily justify the conclusion that the Church’s claim not to be adding to that deposit is meaningless.

Loaded into that criterion is a rationalist assumption, namely, if one cannot verify for oneself something that God or God’s spokesmen reveal, one does not have grounds to believe it, let alone an obligation to believe it. But, faith is a different stance, believing not because we can see for ourselves that it is true or because we ourselves witnessed it being delivered directly from God or because we independently verified that these claims were directly delivered by God, but because of the divine authority of the ones speaking. This is how the people in the Old Covenant believed Moses. And so likewise in the New Covenant, as Jesus said to Thomas, “Blessed are they that have not seen, and have believed.” (John 20:29) And a bit earlier, “And not for them only do I pray, but for them also who through their word shall believe in me.” (John 17:20)

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
John Thayer Jensen January 18th, 2011 8:33 pm :
Well, if there is such a thing as the original deposit of faith, and if that thing is that to which Rome claims not to add, then in order for that claim to be meaningful, the original deposit must be something that we can objectively identify.

Or there has to be someone whom I can trust who will tell me what I need to know from that deposit of faith, and can explain to me the bits I have trouble understanding. That is what the Catholic Church is.

jj
Michael Liccione January 18th, 2011 10:26 pm :
JJS (#1182):

Purely for readers’ convenience, I quote most of your comment:

The claim that Rome does not add to the deposit of faith, and the claim that the teaching of the Magisterium is so linked with and dependent upon Tradition and Scripture that they are virtually inseparable, seem inconsistent and mutually exclusive to me. In other words, it sounds like saying on the one hand that there’s this thing out there that can be identified (the deposit) to which Rome can never add (since she is a servant of the Word and not its master), but on the other hand anything Rome says virtually becomes a part of that deposit simply because she says so.

Can you see how dubious this sounds? It seems like your only answer is that this is how things must be, since any other HP makes it impossible to distinguish divine revelation and human opinion.

That is a good, brief statement of why the Catholic HP seems unreasonable to adherents of the Protestant HP. But I respectfully submit that it’s based on a misimpression. When Vatican II claimed that Scripture, Tradition, and the Magisterium stand or fall together, in no way was it suggesting that “anything Rome says virtually becomes part of” the deposit of faith, still less that it becomes so “just because she says so.” That’s how it may sound to Protestant ears, but that’s not what’s being claimed, nor does it logically follow from what’s being claimed.

For one thing, the Magisterium claims to be protected from error only when teaching with its full authority, which it often does not do. Rome says a lot of things nowadays; not all of it is helpful, and some of it, I daresay, isn’t even true. The Magisterium has sometimes erred in the past, and will continue to do so. But as far as I know, rather little of what we hear from Rome these days is considered inerrant even by the Vatican itself, except when what’s said just a restatement of what’s been taught before with the Magisterium’s full authority and thus infallibly. The conditions for that are stated in Lumen Gentium §25 and 26.

But still more important, even when the Magisterium does teach with its full authority, it does not claim to state only what is true once stated, but what has always been true as part of the deposit of faith. And said deposit can, in broad outline, be identified without reference to the Magisterium, as “the word of God as transmitted to us by Scripture and Tradition.” It’s possible for any intelligent person of good will to learn much of that without the Magisterium. On the Catholic HP, however, what cannot be reliably identified without an infallible Magisterium is the correct understanding of what is thereby transmitted and learned. Without the Magisterium, a person can reach what is in fact the correct understanding on most points, but can present it only as a plausible opinion about how to interpret the sources. So the role of the Magisterium is not to invent the truth contained in the deposit of faith, but to clarify it and present it as an object for the assent of faith by means of authoritative doctrinal formulations. There’s nothing untoward about that: Protestant churches that acknowledge a doctrinally significant role for ecclesial authority, such as your own, claim to do the same. The main epistemic difference, however, is that the Catholic ecclesial authority claims infallibility under certain conditions, and the Protestant claims infallibility under no conditions. That’s the difference that makes all the difference.

Accordingly, when assessing the Catholic and Protestant HPs against each other, the key issue is not what you say it is, but rather whether ecclesial infallibility is either necessary or helpful. To the Protestant mind, it is not. And my argument all along has been that, without ecclesial infallibility, we just have fallible and thus provisional opinions about how to interpret the sources. We thus lose any principled way of distinguishing between what all must now believe as divine revelation and what was once believed as such by many. My argument is philosophical, but that doesn’t make it irrelevant or unimportant for theology. For remember: what we’re debating is not whether God has revealed himself and whether Christianity is true, but how we can reliably identify the truths in question as divine revelation rather than human opinion. That comes down to a clash of Christian HPs, with the question being which is the more reasonable. And that’s a philosophical question.

Best,
Mike
JJS January 19th, 2011 3:58 am :
Bryan: Thanks for the response, I will reply tomorrow.

Mike: You mentioned that my comment (about Rome seemingly adding to the deposit of faith) is a perfect example of why the Catholic HP seems unreasonable to a Protestant. But isn’t that the very objection of the Orthodox to you, namely, that you have added novel doctrines to the original apostolic deposit?
David Meyer January 19th, 2011 2:47 pm :
GNW Paul said:

it is irrational to suffer humbly in obedience to a church if the ecclesiology of that church is that it is just one fallible church in an invisible unity and other churches have an equally objective claim to truth. How could anyone decide to bear punishment and humiliation from a human institution that is by it’s own admission disposable? So as the reformed defenders of sola scriptura actually admit, if you have concluded scripture is contradicted by your particular church, you can simply move to another.

Very well said! This is why I saw the potential excommunication from my former PCA church as being toothless. Actually TFan has told me he hopes I am excommunicated by them. I am not sure why he thinks that will matter though. If they will sign off on me leaving and joining Evangelical church X that teaches polar opposite doctrines than they do, and they admit they are fallible and not sure if they have the truth, what does excommunication even mean at that point?
-David M.
Michael Liccione January 20th, 2011 3:17 am :
JJS (#1186):

Many Orthodox make that charge, but at best it only reflects a difference of HPs. As most Catholic thinkers interpret the history of doctrine, few if any distinctively Catholic doctrines lack an explicit basis in what East and West held in common during the first millennium. Even Jaroslav Pelikan, who converted from Lutheranism to Orthodoxy late in life, at least concedes the reasonableness if not the truth of that interpretation. And he’s not the only Orthodox writer I’ve read who does. But as most Orthodox interpret the history of doctrine, distinctively Catholic doctrines altogether lack an explicit basis in the common faith. So once again, the question boils down to that of the authority by which disputes over development of doctrine (DD) are to be resolved.

On that issue, two observations. First, the Catholic and Orthodox HPs share something fundamental that the Protestant HP altogether lacks. On each of the former, the definitive judgment of “the Church” on doctrinal matters is divinely protected from error. The disagreement is simply about which communion of churches, the Roman or the Orthodox, is “the Church.” I have explained before on this site why I found the Catholic HP more reasonable, at a time in my life when I was seriously weighing both, even though the Orthodox HP is also rationally plausible.

Second, and given the rational plausibility of the Catholic and Orthodox HPs, we need to acknowledge DD as a historical fact in all three sectors of Christianity. Many Orthodox as well as conservative Protestants refuse to make that acknowledgment, but such stubbornness is neither historically nor philosophically credible. It’s fundamentalism in a broad sense of that term–the only disagreement being about the size and age of the fundament. Even sola scriptura, however one cares to formulate it, is a development. Once that is acknowledged, the question arises: “By what authority are disputes about the legitimacy of doctrinal developments to be resolved? ” The answer: “Scripture” only kicks the can down the road, for the next question becomes: “On whose interpretation?” And if one’s answer is: “Nobody’s in particular; just the plain sense of Scripture,” one cannot evade the question: “Plain to whom, and why?” My bedrock argument is that the alternatives to an ecclesial authority that’s divinely protected from error under certain conditions are just human opinions. And that reduces the Christian religion entirely to a matter of opinion.

Best,
Mike
Canadian January 20th, 2011 11:08 am :
Mike,
Regarding the EO and your comment to JJS, I have noticed some reasons why they react so strongly.
In the 5th Ec. Council, which Rome accepts, the Council’s attitude toward a sitting pope (Vigilius) is quite remarkable. First the emporer’s letter to the Council spanks Vigilius for refusing his command to attend the council and for “altering his view” concerning the condemed 3Chapters.
The Acts, session VII declares to Vigilius “but if you have written now something contrary to these things which were done by you before, you have condemned yourself by your own writing since you have departed from orthodox doctrine and have defended impiety….”
Then at the end of Session VII, a letter is read that states “….concerning the name of Vigilius that it be no more inserted in the holy diptychs of the Church on account of the impiety which he defended.”
At last, after the Council is over, Vigilius is compelled to condemn the 3 Chapters. Previous to this, Vigilius in his Constitutum forbade by “authority of the Apostolic See” that anyone should condemn the 3 Chapters, then he himself eventually did just that. Vigilius certainly was not seen to have “supreme, full, immediate and universal” authority by this Council.
Several popes declared anathema to the filioque LeoIII and John VIII among them. For over a hundred years, Rome accepted the Council of 879 to have annulled the Council of 869 and accept Photius and condemn the filioque. Rome seems to have considered 879 to be the 8th Ecumenical until the 11th century when under Frankish influence renegged on its declaring the 869 Council to be null and void and began to call the 869 Council the 8th Ecumenical.
All this to say…..that the RC paradigm does not seem to trump the EO paradigm (and 5th Ecumenical paradigm) like it does the protestant HP.
K. Doran January 20th, 2011 11:43 am :
Canadian,

If you haven’t read the Catholic approach to understanding Vigilius and the 5th ecumenical council, why don’t you read “The Age of Justinian” in Dom John Chapman’s “Studies on the Early Papacy”.

As I recall (I don’t have my sources with me), Vigilius ran into trouble with three groups of people:
(1) people who had bought his services in return for making him Pope, and who he betrayed when, upon becoming Pope, he courageously (and uncharacteristically) refused to reconcile the Church to monophysitism as he had apparently promised he would.
(2) Heretics such as monophysites themselves; and
(3) people who were furious with him for contradicting HIMSELF.

But apart from these three groups of people, the general faithful of the eastern churches were amazingly deferential to him. Even though he was a man who had possibly murdered two popes, promised to endorse heresy in order to get the papacy himself, and had contradicted himself embarrassingly. Read some of the attestations of filial love and devotion to him throughout this crisis from _eastern_ sources, and you will see that the whole controversy arose precisely because he _was_ considered to have greater authority in the church than anyone else.

As for whether that authority extends to the right and duty to make irreformable pronouncements on the condemnation of people who are already dead: I don’t know. I’ve never heard a Catholic claim such.

But the key thing is that you need to put the harsh words that were spoken of him in _context_. People in categories 1 through 3 above are not representative samples of unbiased Eastern reaction to papal authority. Look at the vigorous objections that Eastern Catholics made to Justinian for his disgusting treatment of the Pope, and you will see quite a different viewpoint on whether the Pope should ever be coerced on such matters by anyone.

You need to look at the long history of heresy and ecclesial ambition in Constantinople to understand which statements of eastern clerics are simply bloviating BS, and which statements are representations of the ancient faith of the Eastern people. Over time (and it took a very very long time) the common people’s filial love for “old Rome” waned in the East, and the ambitious clerical and imperial parties of division won out without having to resort to heresy to do so (as they had tried under Arianism, Nestorianism, etc). But it took a long time for that compromise to happen. Your post above leaves out all the expressions of adherence to Roman authority and acceptance of Rome’s unique role that come from the East. And that makes me think you haven’t read the context that you need. Hence, I recommend looking at some good Catholic sources for the first time, or looking at them again if you didn’t notice all the examples of Eastern acceptance of Rome’s authority the first time.

Sincerely,

K. Doran
mateo January 20th, 2011 1:03 pm :
GNW Paul: … as the reformed defenders of sola scriptura actually admit, if you have concluded scripture is contradicted by your particular church, you can simply move to another.

David Meyer: Very well said! This is why I saw the potential excommunication from my former PCA church as being toothless.

The Protestant principle of the “primacy of conscience” doesn’t just make an excommunication from a personal church founded by a man or a woman toothless, it makes the scriptures that teach about excommunincation utterly meaningless. The Protestant “primacy of conscience” doctrine ultimately robs the scriptures of all authority.

Pontificator’s Second Law: When the Bible alone is our authority, the Bible ceases to be our authority.

https://pontifications.wordpress.com/pontificators-laws/
Canadian January 20th, 2011 1:06 pm :
K. Doran,
The deferrence and love for the patriarch of the west never has been an issue with the East. However, among your listed groups Vigilius was in trouble with, the one that has the greatest import and which you didn’t directly list among your “three” is that he was in trouble with an Ecumenical Council!
After direct comments regarding the waffling of Vigilius, the Council states “there is no other way…” of arriving at Ecumenical truth than ” the priesthood should, after a common discussion, impose a common faith.” They desired that Vigilius be part of that “common discussion” that would bind the faithful, but they did not require his presiding, his presence or even his acceptance. They stated he could condemn himself for defending impiety if he continued to support heresy.
As in other Councils, letters and writings (including those of popes) were evaluated and accepted based on the received faith of the father’s, not upon the position of Rome. The Council threatened a sitting Pope.
Michael Liccione January 20th, 2011 3:23 pm :
Canadian (#1189):

I have often been involved in debates with Orthodox academics about how to interpret the historical data from first-millennium Church history. Since this thread isn’t really the place to review all that, I shall just offer a few remarks about how the general issues should be addressed.

First, I consider both the Catholic and the Orthodox HP far more reasonable than the Protestant HP. Unlike the latter, each of the former provides a principled way to distinguish between de fide doctrine and human opinions about how to interpret “the sources.” As I said, the basic issue between the Catholic and Orthodox HPs is not about the need to discern and apply that distinction, but about which communion of churches is “the Church” whose infallible authority is needed to make the distinction in a principled way. There are many ways to broach that issue. But my point in the comment I linked to in my previous comment was that, taking all the relevant historical data into account, the Catholic HP supplies a more coherent and consistent way of answering that question than does the Orthodox.

With that understood, I freely admit that both the Catholic and the Orthodox HPs are rationally plausible ways of interpreting the entire, relevant historical dataset. So the question is not whether one is a reasonable way to do so while the other is not, but which is the more reasonable way to do so, all things considered. One cannot fairly answer that question just by looking at a slice of the history and repeating one side’s way of interpreting it. But that’s what you’re doing with your highly sketchy account of certain disputes which arose between Rome and Constantinople in the latter half of the first millennium. As K Doran has indicated, there’s a Catholic way of interpreting the historical facts as well as an Orthodox way. So when the question is which way is the more reasonable, one needs to dig deeper than you have. One needs to ask which ecclesiology is overall the most reliable way to identify something as “the Church” over time, given the historical dataset from the beginning until now. Only then does one have a rational basis for preferring one interpretive narrative over another.

Best,
Mike
Bryan Cross January 20th, 2011 4:49 pm :
Canadian, (re: #1192)

After direct comments regarding the waffling of Vigilius, the Council states “there is no other way…” of arriving at Ecumenical truth than ” the priesthood should, after a common discussion, impose a common faith.”

The “there is no other way” comment in Session 8 is not preceded by any statement about Pope Vigilius waffling. Rather, the preceding comments are about Pope Vigilius having come to Constantinople (by military force under Emperor Justinian) and having already condemned orally and in writing the Three Chapters, and having already agreed to be present at the Council “so that a suitable definition of the right faith might be set forth by us all.” It is perhaps not fair to say that Pope Vigilius ‘waffled’ about attending the Council; his agreement to participate had been conditioned on there being an equal number of Western bishops present. When Justinian refused to allow this, Pope Vigilius refused to attend, or to send papal legates. (The ‘waffling’ comments you may be referring to are in the Seventh Session, and are the included words of the speech by Emperor Justinian’s quaestor, who had no ecclesial authority.)

In your “there is no other way” comment, you [seemingly] imply that the Council is saying that the Pope’s participation is not necessary. But that’s not what they are saying. The full sentence is:

Moreover, the most pious Emperor, according to what had seemed good between us, exhorted both him [i.e. Pope Vigilius] and us to meet together, because it is comely that the priesthood should after common discussion impose a common faith.”

Clearly, they are saying that it is fitting or comely that the Pope together with the other bishops impose a common faith after a common discussion. They are not saying that it is fitting that the bishops without the Pope should impose a common faith.

You next wrote:

but they did not require his presiding, his presence or even his acceptance.

No local council (other than at Rome) requires the Pope’s presiding, presence, or acceptance. (For example, no papal legates were present at the first Council of Constantinople in 381.) They would require the Pope’s ratification in order for this Council to become an ecumenical council. That didn’t happen until the next year (i.e. 554). So the fact that the Council went ahead, without the participation of Pope Vigilius, does not imply anything about the Pope’s ecclesial authority or their recognition of his ecclesial authority. Strictly speaking, he didn’t have to be present at the Council in order for it to become an ecumenical council when he later ratified it, or for it to remain a local council if he didn’t ratify it.

They stated he could condemn himself for defending impiety if he continued to support heresy.

I don’t see that in the acts of the Council. You might be drawing this from the Seventh Session, but the words there are quoting a letter from the Emperor Justinian to Pope Vigilius, in which Justinian claims that if Pope Vigilius has “written now something contrary to these things which were done by you before, you have condemned your own writing, since you have departed from orthodox doctrine and defended impiety.” In this statement Justinian implies that Pope Vigilius’s teaching is authoritative, such that if Pope Vigilius goes against what he [i.e. Pope Vigilius] has already taught, then he has gone against orthodox doctrine. But, again, Emperor Justinian had no ecclesial authority over Pope Vigilius.

All this would definitely take us off the topic of this post. So, let’s table this discussion for a post on the Fifth General Council, or the pope’s role in ecumenical councils.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
K. Doran January 20th, 2011 5:08 pm :
Canadian,

In addition to what Bryan said about your particular quotations, and in addition to what Mike said about the overall spectrum of evidence, I can offer you direct written quotations of patriarchs from the East writing to Vigilius himself after receiving an excommunication from him regarding the Three Chapters that indicate that they did NOT believe that the authority of binding papal decrees (made without the help of an ecumenical council to back them up) was reformable. These include a document signed by patriarchs and metropolitans at the time. I don’t want to get the discussion off base, so just email me if you want me to type these up and send them to you: KBDh02@yahoo.com (I don’t check it much, but I’ll remember to check it several times over the next few days in case you email).

There is a whole different story out there if you’re willing to listen to it.

Sincerely,

K. Doran
Bryan Cross January 20th, 2011 6:19 pm :
Canadian (re: #1189)

Several popes declared anathema to the filioque LeoIII and John VIII among them.

That is not true. Neither Pope Leo III nor Pope John VIII anathematized or condemned the Filioque. As for the eighth council, Rome never “accepted the Council of 879 to have annulled the Council of 869.” The condemnations of Photius, yes, but not the rest of the eighth council. And that council (869) famously said, “let none presumptuously give sentence against the supreme pontiffs of the elder Rome.” We’ll have to discuss these things in future posts dedicated to these subjects. But, it is very important in effecting reconciliation to make sure that we have an accurate account of the historical events.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Canadian January 21st, 2011 1:23 am :
Brian #1194
“The “there is no other way” comment in Session 8 is not preceded by any statement about Pope Vigilius waffling.”

In the “Sentence of the Synod” there is a comment as follows: “Since it is manifest to all the faithful that whenever any question arises concerning the faith, not only the impious man himself is condemned, but also he who when he has the power to correct impiety in others, neglects to do so. A footnote says “this of course refers to Pope Vigilius”. The discussion moves on to affirm “there is no other way” to impose a common faith than in this conciliar fashion. New Advent’s article on the Three Chapters describes Vigilius’ waffling as he issues then withdraws his “Judicatum” against the 3 Chapters then issues his Constitutum which the Council rejects, and six months after the Council, finally he goes against his own requirement to withhold any judgement on the 3 Chapters and condemns them.
As for session VII, my copy (NPNF, II v14 Hendrikson) says “……you have condemned yourself” not “you have condemned your own writing” as you stated in #1194.
What about the Council striking the name of Vigilius from the dyptichs “on account of the impiety which he defended?”
I’ll leave it there for now.
K. Doran January 21st, 2011 8:20 am :
Canadian,

Vigilius himself demanded that no one should bring up the issue of the Three Chapters UNTIL THERE WAS A COUNCIL. He was one of the people who had demanded the conciliar approach. Do you understand? Think about that conciliar passage of the council in light of the conciliarism that Vigilius had himself demanded, suffering depredation and torture to achieve — depredation and torture that so many eastern clergy had deplored — and the tone of that passage changes entirely.

As for his waffling: once he had spoken out of both sides of his mouth, people could legitimately claim that they were following his authority whatever he did — and that’s how Justinian framed it. For this reason, it’s essentially impossible to look at people’s decisions post-waffling and tell what they believe about ordinary Papal authority: they were both following and breaking his ordinary authority whatever they did. Do you understand how this implies we can’t learn much about their viewpoint on papal authority by looking at what they did post-waffling?

But we can learn about their viewpoint on ordinary papal authority by looking at what they said when Vigilius had a relatively constant public viewpoint during the early stages of the crisis. At that early date, Vigilius did not want anyone looking at this issue until all could meet in Council. So he excommunicated Patriarch Menas of Constantinople and other metropolitans and Bishops for not waiting until a council. Then they wrote back to him in the most humble terms and said that they they accept all the things that Rome accepted through common councils, AS WELL AS ANY DECREES OF ROME ITSELF! Do I need to type-up the letter before you take this into account? This implies that they did not believe that they could hold a council among themselves, reject his excommunication by personal fiat, and establish doctrine contrary to Papal decrees.

Just simmer down a little bit and read more of the context. Sure, there were people who wanted to find a way to get around Rome’s ancient authority in Constantinople. Most of them seem to have been heretics, but some were probably christologically orthodox. But so many others in the East were supporters of Rome’s authority and were willing to fight like the dickens to prevent the ambitious party of the Eastern clergy from appropriating ecclesiastical status that everyone could see they tended to use in the cause of schism and division. Partly because of this, the ambitious party never succeeded in getting their peculiar view-point inserted into the faith-determining parts of an ecumenical council on their first seven or so tries. You haven’t found a smoking gun that says otherwise, and you need to let up now so that this thread can go back to normal.

Sincerely,

K. Doran
Michael Liccione January 21st, 2011 9:49 am :
K Doran and Bryan:

I’ve been reading up on the Vigilius issue, just to arm myself for the next round elsewhere. I’ve been through it all before with the Honorius issue. In this case, the facts remind me of what a highly respected journalist across the pond has said about the controversies around our present pope:

Our general policy towards Pope Benedict is basically, shoot first, ask questions later. In fact, whenever you see him attacked over something he has said there are two rules to apply. First, find out if he actually said what he is supposed to have said. Second, if he did say it, find out if he was right before he’s lynched.

Vigilius’ error was that he went back on what he had actually said, so that he wouldn’t be lynched.

The more things change, the more they stay the same….

Best,
Mike
Bryan Cross January 21st, 2011 12:51 pm :
Canadian, (re: #1197)

As I said above, a discussion of Pope Vigilius and the Fifth Ecumenical Council is very much off-topic from the subject of this post. So, if you have questions about it, please send an email to K. Doran or Michael or me.

The discussion moves on to affirm “there is no other way” to impose a common faith than in this conciliar fashion.

Actually, that’s not what it says. It says, “Nor is there any other way in which the truth can be made manifest when there are discussions concerning the faith, since each one needs the help of his neighbor ….” It is saying that when bishops act independently, when there is a disputed theological question between them, then the truth is not manifest to the people. The people in such a case cannot know where is the truth. The statement is not necessarily excluding the possibility of authoritative papal decisions; an authoritative decision by the Apostolic See regarding a disputed question would be a case of the pope helping all his brother bishops, and would thereby make manifest to all the people what is the truth concerning the disputed question. In this particular dispute, the question of the condemnation of the Three Chapters revolved around how and whether it contradicted the previous councils. That’s why bishops in the West were initially resistant to the condemnation of the Three Chapters. Even a council couldn’t ‘manifest the truth’ to the universal Church unless it were known to be an ecumenical council, and hence again, the Pope’s ratification was both necessary and sufficient in order for the council to carry that authority.

New Advent’s article on the Three Chapters describes Vigilius’ waffling as he issues then withdraws his “Judicatum” against the 3 Chapters then issues his Constitutum which the Council rejects, and six months after the Council, finally he goes against his own requirement to withhold any judgement on the 3 Chapters and condemns them.

Actually, the New Advent article does not say that Pope Vigilius waffled. That’s your term, and reflects your own ‘spin’ and negative judgment of Pope Vigilius’ character. Another possibility, is that changes in circumstances required the decisions he made. It seems to me that the principle of charity is apt here. But, even if Pope Vigilius waffled on this matter, it wouldn’t change anything about the authority of the Apostolic See. In these decisions Pope Vigilius was not changing doctrines, but deciding whether or not it was expedient for the Church to condemn certain writings (and persons) for being contrary to what the Church had already taught. So, the ‘waffling’ charge is not relevant to the Catholic-Orthodox question.

As for session VII, my copy (NPNF, II v14 Hendrikson) says “……you have condemned yourself” not “you have condemned your own writing” as you stated in #1194.

As I pointed out before, these are the words of Emperor Justinian, and have no ecclesial authority. In fact, this whole event involving Pope Vigilius and the Fifth Ecumenical Council is a conflict between Catholicism and Caesaro-papism. In order rightly to understand the events, we have to see the threat of Caesaro-papism. Justianian had kept Pope Vigilius imprisoned/exiled for ten years (from 545 till 555). Justinian was the one pushing for a council, and hand-picking which bishops attended, and deciding which bishops didn’t attend. (Hence Pope Vigilius’s decision regarding the council.) Justinian had already banished bishops to far away lands for not consenting to his theological demands. In 551, for example, he deposed the Patriarchs of Alexandria and Antioch. That’s why trying to determine papal authority from this episode is imprudent, because during this whole time the Pope was the Emperor’s prisoner. So for bishops to side publicly with the Pope was to side against the Emperor and thus to face the threat of exile or imprisonment. It is a bit like trying to learn what US soldiers think about the US, by watching video clips of US POWs being held hostage by an opposing army. The viewer should note that the video was filmed with a loaded gun being pointed at them off-screen.

K. Doran pointed out above that if you really want to see what the bishops thought about the pope, read what they said to him in private. For example, in Febrary of 552 Pope Vigilius, while in Chalcedon, had excommunicated Theodore Askidas and Menas the Patriarch of Constantinople “with all his metropolitans and micropolitans and any other bishops of the East who have joined in the prevarication of Theodore, … in the person of, and by the authority of St. Peter the Apostle, whose place we hold, though unworthy.” This document was posted in the churches and public places of Constantinople. Chapman explains what happened:

Patriarch Menas, together with the metropolitans of Ephesus, Caesarea (that is Theodore himself), and many others, having incurred excommunication, came across the Bosphorus and presented to the Pope a petition more searching and humiliating than the formula of Hormisdas. They begin by accepting the four general councils, especially Ephesus and Chalcedon, at which the Popes had presided by their legates.

“And we promise that we will follow throughout and in detail whatever is contained in all the acts of the Council of Chalcedon and of the other aforesaid synods, according as it is written in the four synods, in common consent with the legates and Vicars of the Apostolic See (in whom on each respective occasion the blessed Popes of Elder Rome, your Holiness’s predecessors presided), defined, or judged or constituted or disposed, whether as to faith or to any other cases, judgments, constitutions, or dispositions, immovably, inviolably, irreprehensibly, irreformably, without addition or imminution . . .

Whatever things were there said by common consent with the legates and Vicars of the Apostolic orthodox See, these we venerate and receive as orthodox.

Whatever they anathematized or condemned, that we anathematize and we condemn; and we preserve all irreformably and unchangeably as, by the aforesaid councils in common consent with the Vicars of Apostolic See, they are read to have been judged or defined or constituted or disposed.

And we promise that we will in all things follow and observe also the letters of Pope Leo of blessed memory, and the constitutions of the Apostolic See which have been published whether as to the faith or the confirmation of the aforesaid councils.

Keep in mind that the Council assembled the very next year (553). This is a more reliable picture of what the bishops (including the Patriarch of Constantinople) believed about the authority of the Pope and the Apostolic See.

What about the Council striking the name of Vigilius from the dyptichs “on account of the impiety which he defended?”

Notice, again, who proposed this: Justinian. This is Justinian trying to belittle the Pope’s authority and strong-arm the Pope into doing what he [Justinian] wants by humiliating the Pope. The more Justinian can diminish the Pope, the more that Justinian can run the show. The council responded to this request in a very carefully worded way, maintaining fidelity to the Apostolic See but in a way that could be taken by Justianian as compliance with his request. They replied:

“The holy Synod said: What has seemed good to the most pious Emperor is congruous to the labours which he bears for the unity of the churches. Let us preserve unity to (ad) the Apostolic See of the most holy Church of ancient Rome, carrying out all things according to the tenor of what has been read.

There is much more to be said here, but it would take us way off track. At some point, we will get into this when we have an article on the authority of the Apostolic See.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
TurretinFan January 22nd, 2011 1:04 pm :
Ray (re: #1057)
I had written:

The Church, after all, is not Christ.

You replied:

“Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? . . . I asked, `Who are you, Lord?’ The Lord answered, `I am Jesus whom you are persecuting‘ [i.e. the Church]

I’m glad you brought that I up. That verse is not the only one like it. Recall:

Matthew 25:34-46

Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, “Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: for I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.”
Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, “Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?”
And the King shall answer and say unto them, “Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”
Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, “Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels: for I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.”
Then shall they also answer him, saying, “Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?”
Then shall he answer them, saying, “Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.”
And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.

Christ does indeed treat all believers as himself in certain respects. However, of course, that is all believers – not the corporate structure of the church, as such. It’s not “clergy” that Jesus has in mind either in his comment to Saul or his revelation about judgment day.

-TurretinFan
TurretinFan January 22nd, 2011 1:26 pm :
Herbert (re: #1058)

You wrote:

Concerning the two (primary) concerns you have with the formulation of the argument found in this article (The first of which concerns the usage of the word “principled” and the 2nd of which concerns the phrase “in this respect”) could likely be done away with were Bryan and Neal inclined to alter the argument a wee bit. Maybe they’re waiting for Dr. Mathison’s response before they take such measures (if such measures are indeed called for). Thanks for explaining your rationale, though. I do believe that I have gained some insight into your thinking (hopefully)!

I’m glad my response at least provided some clarity. As I have remarked above, I have highlighted the places where necessary changes would need to be made. The result, I think, would be to take most of the teeth out of the article. Nevertheless, I understand that you may not share my assessment of the article’s post-correction toothlessness/toothiness.

You continued:

Concerning the reply you offered dealing with St. John, Ch. 6, as well as the other stuff I brought up that wasn’t exactly related to this article (#988), though you kindly responded, I must apologize for derailing the conversation with that subject matter. And despite the fact that your response itself warrants a response, I must refrain in the interest of not drawing away from the focus of the article.

Fair enough! I have recently responded on my own blog to something that Francis Beckwith wrote that touches on the issue of John 6. Perhaps that post could serve as a place for discussing the issues you see with respect to John 6.

You continued:

So with the focus of this article in mind, what’s becoming apparent to me through all of this conversation is the fact that the distinction you allege to exist between ecclesiastical authority (or absence thereof) for the solo christian and ecclesiastical authority for the sola christian is rendered meaningless once you acknowledge the fact that your church has no means of exercising its derivative authority due to the fact that it’s interminably, inexorably, temporally subordinate to (your private interpretation of) the Scriptures. Whereas, a Catholic who’s been wronged by his local bishop can appeal to Rome’s Vicar of Christ, and the temporal authority he’s capable of exercising, the authority to which you appeal (the Scriptures), by virtue of your direct access absent any interpretive act) despite your claims to the contrary, cannot act temporally in a definitive manner, hence, the proliferation of protestant sectarianism. When at odds, subscribers to the tradition of sola Scriptura, since both parties are appealing to the same God-breathed source, can do little more than accuse one another of dishonesty… or worse.

Here I would like to draw another distinction that may help clarify. In a Presbyterian church, if one has a serious disagreement with one’s session, one can appeal to the presbytery. And if the church is large enough to have a plurality of presbyteries, one can normally appeal to the general assembly. So, there is a temporal hierarchy there.

Nevertheless, there is no appeal from the general assembly’s decision (something that is structurally similar to the fact that there is no appeal from the pope’s decision). Nevertheless, since there is no charism of infallibility associated with the pope’s disciplinary decisions, it is at least theoretically possible for a person to be judged condemned by the pope, when he ought not to be condemned. Thus, while I cannot recall a reference off hand, I seem to recall reading in some writer from your church that in such a situation that pious thing to do would be to follow the infallible teachings of the church and accept the fallible papal condemnation (i.e. don’t be a rebel, but you must obey infallible teaching over fallible teaching when you cannot obey both).

Let me be more specific. Recall that the dogma of papal infallibility only extends to matters in which the pope is trying to define a doctrine for the whole church. I don’t think most of your church’s theologians would consider a papal decision in a disciplinary case ordinarily to be a matter of defining doctrine for the whole church. I suppose the two could coincide, but I have never heard any educated person from your church argue that – and would expect that such is the exception rather than the rule, if it is an exception at all.

So, in terms of discipline, the person standing before the pope is roughly equivalent to the person standing before the the general assembly. He’s standing before the highest earthly (temporal) authority, but he is before a fallible authority. In contrast, there is a still higher authority in the Scriptures themselves and (according to your church) in the infallibly promulgated teachings of the church.

You continued:

Ultimately, even if it’s granted that your alleged difference between sola and solo christianity exists, and your criticisms of the article’s argumentation are accepted as valid (though I’m not in the position to grant such an admission), and that your church does indeed have a valid claim to some form of derivative authority, due to the fact that your church has no right to exercise temporal authority over you should disagreement arise, the authority you ascribe to your church is toothless. thanks again, TurretinFan!

It’s toothless in some senses, no doubt. Proper exercise of discipline, including admonishment, suspension, and excommunication are serious matters. But, of course, a stubborn man will ignore them.

– TurretinFan
TurretinFan January 22nd, 2011 5:14 pm :
Bryan: (re: #1061):

After providing a response to the two verses I cited (I may respond to the substance of that response, but elsewhere, since it leads us off topic), you wrote:

My intention here in this comment is only to point out that the Protestant-Catholic disagreement concerning this verse is not about the truth of the verse, but about its interpretation, due to the difference between the linguistic and theological assumptions you are bringing to the text, and the Tradition the Catholic Church is bringing to the text. It would be presumptuous and arrogant to claim that anyone who denies your own interpretation of a verse is ipso facto denying the truth of that verse. Such a stance would be, essentially, to make yourself out to be pope.

So, if after three examples (i.e. 1 Tim 4:1-3, Rom 3:23, and Rom 4:5) it is clear that the disagreement in each example is not about the truth of the verses, but about their interpretation, then that takes us back to comment #978, and we can begin to discuss the question of interpretive authority, which is the topic of this article.

Since you are fond of syllogisms (and so am I), let me try to explain this that way:

1) If any verse of Scripture conflicts with a Roman dogma, then the Roman dogma is wrong.

2) Romans 3:23 is a verse of Scripture.

3) Therefore, if Romans 3:23 is in conflict with a Roman dogma, then the Roman dogma is wrong.

4) Romans 3:23 is in conflict with the Roman dogma if, and only if, the meaning of Romans 3:23 cannot be affirmed while simultaneously affirming the Roman dogma.

5) [X] cannot be simultaneously affirmed while affirming the Roman dogma.

6) The meaning of Romans 3:23 is [X].

7) Therefore, the Roman dogma is wrong.

Now, I suspect that you disagree with me about (6). But whether I’m right or wrong about (6) is a matter of objective fact. The way to determine whether I’m right about (6) is to examine the text, in context. That assumes that people can read the Bible and determine its meaning that way. However, that seems like a reasonable assumption.

But the question is about the meaning of the verse. The question isn’t really about the people who are taking sides as to the meaning. The meaning of the verse, after all, is an objective fact imposed on the verse by the author of the verse (the Holy Spirit). It may be easier or more difficult to ascertain, but it is not simply something arbitrarily imposed on it by a third party.

-TurretinFan
Randy January 22nd, 2011 7:04 pm :
So, in terms of discipline, the person standing before the pope is roughly equivalent to the person standing before the the general assembly. He’s standing before the highest earthly (temporal) authority, but he is before a fallible authority. In contrast, there is a still higher authority in the Scriptures themselves and (according to your church) in the infallibly promulgated teachings of the church.

There is one distinction. A Catholic knows the church will eventually get it right. He does not know if the church is right or he is right on the matter in question. But he knows he does not need to save the church from error. If it is an error God will save the church. So if he is disciplined unfairly he can simply bear that cross well and pray for unity and truth in the church. But he may not decide the offices of pope and bishop are suddenly null and void because he thinks they got this matter wrong. There were saints who gave good examples in this regard. So what Luther was called to would have been hard but not unprecedented.
herbert January 22nd, 2011 9:08 pm :
TurretinFan (#1202)-
St. Francis of Assisi is a figure whose requests, initially rejected by Pope Innocent the 3rd, were ultimately fulfilled, not through disobedience, but through submission. St. Francis was vindicated by God through his submission to the Pope. In the case of St. Francis, it was just as Randy noted (#1202), after acquiescing to the Pope, St. Francis was called back and told of the fact that God had sent a dream to the Pope. In it the Pope recognized a little impoverished man, who was alone supporting the weight of an entire Church, as Francis himself, the mendicant who’d come humbly making requests of the Vicar of Christ… IMHO
Bryan Cross January 23rd, 2011 12:27 am :
TF, (re: #1203)

Now, I suspect that you disagree with me about (6). But whether I’m right or wrong about (6) is a matter of objective fact.

You’d have to define what you mean by ‘objective fact’ in order for me to know exactly what you mean by “But whether I’m right ….”.

The way to determine whether I’m right about (6) is to examine the text, in context. That assumes that people can read the Bible and determine its meaning that way. However, that seems like a reasonable assumption.

Protestantism is the daughter of Renaissance Humanism and the midwife of Enlightenment philosophy. In that time especially, men began to place their own reason above the divine authority of the Church. I have addressed the rationalism [i.e. in the sense of trusting in one’s own reason rather than in submitting one’s reason to divine authority] implicit in your “reasonable assumption,” both in “The Tradition and Lexicon,” and in “Ecclesial Deism.” It is not a neutral assumption with respect to faith and the Church.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Where and what is justification? | Katolikken January 29th, 2011 4:01 am :
[…] St. Paul us using the term works in a narrow sense; as our own works, done by our own power and, as Bryan Cross points out, “apart from the grace that comes through Christ.” Our good works can have a degree of merit, […]
Keith Mathison February 15th, 2011 3:52 pm :
I know you aren’t going to believe that I did this so quickly, but I have finished my response to your critique of my book. Since I don’t have a blog or website, I’m not sure what I’ll do with it, but I did want to let you know that it is done – and it only took 15 months! If I find a home for it on the web, I’ll come back here and post a link.

Keith
Keith Mathison February 15th, 2011 10:07 pm :
Bryan and Neal,

Here is the link to my response. Sorry it took so long.

https://turretinfan.blogspot.com/2011/02/solo-scriptura-sola-scriptura-and.html

Keith Mathison
Bryan Cross February 16th, 2011 1:25 am :
Thanks Keith! I’m delighted to hear that you’ve finished a reply. I’m very much looking forward to reading it.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan
Fred February 16th, 2011 3:25 am :
This claim in Mathison’s response is incorrect:

If one assumes the correctness of the Roman Catholic doctrine of the church, then the differences I allege between sola scriptura and solo scriptura become invisible, but if one does not assume the correctness of the Roman Catholic doctrine of the church, the differences can be discerned. (p. 4)

It is incorrect to say that one must assume anything about the Catholic doctrine of the Church in order to see that there are no differences between solo and sola scriptura. I say with complete confidence that it is incorrect, because five years ago as a Protestant I came to conclusions about sola scriptura which are functionally indistinguishable from those in Bryan’s article, and I knew practically nothing about the Catholic doctrine of the Church (or any other Catholic doctrine, for that matter) at the time. Though I did not know it at the time, and I absolutely did not intend it, it was reaching those conclusions that eventually got me started on my way to swimming the Tiber.

I strongly suspect that my experience is not unique. :-)

Fred
Fred February 16th, 2011 3:28 am :
Hmm…I meant to say seven years ago, not five. :-(
Michael Liccione February 16th, 2011 8:00 am :
Fred:

Both you and Mathison are right. He’s right to say that, if you assume the truth of Catholic ecclesiology, the sola-solo distinction disappears. You’re right to say that one doesn’t need to make that assumption to see why the distinction disappears. The trick is to get Protestants to see that your being right doesn’t depend on his being right.

Best,
Mike
wilkins February 16th, 2011 8:01 am :
Hey Fred, #1211

Same here. Long before I knew anything at all about the Catholic Church, I had seen that sola scriptura necessarily reduces to solo scriptura. All by itself.
wilkins February 16th, 2011 8:33 am :
Hey Mike,

Is it fair to say that Mathison’s “only when one begins by assuming…” amounts to saying, in so many words, “only when one begins by rejecting Catholic teaching does the distinction emerge”?
Michael Liccione February 16th, 2011 8:53 am :
Hey Wilkins:

Thanks for pointing that out. I missed that little ‘only’. I should now say that, if he had left it out, he would have been right.

Best,
Mike
TurretinFan February 16th, 2011 8:58 am :
Fred:

Please note that Dr. Mathison’s distinction was between accepting Rome’s claims for herself (in which case there is no apparent difference between the sola/solo positions) and not accepting Rome’s claims for herself (in which case it is possible to discern the differences).

His precise words, you will recall are:

If one assumes the correctness of the Roman Catholic doctrine of the church, then the differences I allege between sola scriptura and solo scriptura become invisible, but if one does not assume the correctness of the Roman Catholic doctrine of the church, the differences can be discerned.

(emphasis mine)
-TurretinFan
Bryan Cross February 16th, 2011 9:04 am :
Friends, because of the number of comments here (which is getting unwieldy), I’m going to close down this combox and direct all further discussion of this article and of Keith’s reply, to “Keith Mathison’s Reply.” Thanks!
Sola Scriptura: Death by a Thousand (or Ten) Qualifications? « Doug Beaumont.Org July 3rd, 2011 8:40 pm :
[…] see Keith Mathison’s The Shape of Sola Scriptura – and for critical responses to this view see CTC or NLG). The first page of a Google search brought up two representative statements of this […]
Mark Driscoll and Submission Holds | St. Joseph's Vanguard July 14th, 2011 9:03 am :
[…] as I point out in my book, and as the Called to Communion guys syllogistically demonstrated: it’s not really submission when I only submit to someone so long as I agree with […]
A Brief Response to “Solo Scriptura, Sola Scriptura, and the Question of Interpretive Authority” | Current Events in Light of the Kingdom of God January 15th, 2013 8:28 pm :
[…] the Scriptures. Scripture itself, according to Mathison, teaches that these men are to be obeyed.34 Because solo scriptura denies the interpretive authority of the Church, claims Mathison, […]
A Reformed Protestant’s Criticism of My Book | St. Joseph's Vanguard January 29th, 2013 6:04 am :
[…] the comments, is that the Called to Communion guys definitively showed it to be false. First in the big sola reduces to solo post and then in Dr. Mike Liccione’s […]
True or False: How Do We Tell? « The Way Home February 24th, 2014 8:09 pm :
[…] [2] See this article and comment. […]
A god Made In Our Image « The Way Home March 16th, 2014 11:22 am :
[…] Protestantism the individual retains ultimate interpretive authority, and so is de facto his own ecclesial and spiritual center of gravity. Ultimately there is no […]
Examining Solo Scriptura and Sola Scriptura | Pillars Institute April 7th, 2014 10:30 am :
[…] the Church, disobey the Church and leave the Church, so long as he is following his conscience.54 According to Mathison, the individual’s conscience is bound only by his own interpretation of […]
Tiber Treading No More | Soul Device April 22nd, 2014 10:24 am :
[…] The problem was that the very existence of these break-off groups was made possible by the same principles that led to the existence of tens of thousands of other Protestant […]
Jason Stellman: I Fought the Church and the Church Won | internetmonk.com October 13th, 2014 12:01 am :
[…] not the Reformed. Therefore as one can imagine, when I was confronted with Catholic claims that called this crucial distinction into question, it was a sucker-punch of epic proportions. Needless to say, my confessional brethren and I did not […]
“I Love Jesus” And Other Non-Religions of Facebook | Aleteia June 15th, 2015 6:36 am :
[…] of seeing if they were true (and to those who make a distinction between sola and solo scriptura, there's ultimately little difference). But that's a whole lot of work! There is a virtually unlimited number of interpretations out […]
Some thoughts on Scripture in Lutheranism « Catholicus Norvegicus May 1st, 2017 7:57 pm :
[…] Reformed scholar Keith A. Mathison maintains that the view of the early Church, and the view of the Reformers, is what we might describe as Feser’s ‘natural’ view. (Mathison, of course, is not writing in response to Feser.) He maintains that for the early Church the «sole source of divine revelation and the authoritative doctrinal norm was understood to be the Old Testament together with the Apostolic doctrine, which itself had been put into writing in the New Testament,» and that this revelation «was to be interpreted in and by the church within the context of the regula fidei (‘rule of faith’),» i.e. Tradition. This seems curiously close to Feser’s position, and it is what late Reformed scholar Heiko Oberman identified as ‘Tradition 1’ (in distinction from ‘Tradition 0,’ where neither the Church nor Tradition has any authority, and ‘Tradition 2,’ where Tradition is also a source of revelation, alongside Scripture). For a Roman Catholic critique of Mathison, see here. […]
Fullness of the Truth Pt. 3: Sola Scriptura - Folly of the Cross March 13th, 2021 9:53 am :
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¿Cómo pueden los protestantes declarar autoritariamente algo incorrecto o herético bajo la Sola Scriptura? - cristianismo April 27th, 2021 6:28 am :
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The Case for Religion (and Catholicism Especially) - Chronicles of Strength May 24th, 2021 3:41 pm :
[…] Solo Scriptura, Sola Scripture, and the Question of Interpretative Authority (article) by Bryan Cross (I) […]
Brian Ortiz November 28th, 2021 7:31 pm :
Michael (re: #1193),

You said:

First, I consider both the Catholic and the Orthodox HP far more reasonable than the Protestant HP. Unlike the latter, each of the former provides a principled way to distinguish between de fide doctrine and human opinions about how to interpret “the sources.”

What is the principled means that the Orthodox HP has to distinguish between de fide doctrine and human opinion? I hope the moderators will permit this off-topic question because, in other threads, authors on this site have called the Orthodox doctrine on this point “circular.”
Bryan Cross March 28th, 2024 10:38 pm :
In criticism of the argument in our Solo Scriptura article above Taylor Barrett writes elsewhere:

To start, he [Bryan] addresses the tu quoque objection and argues that while Catholics encounter something external which can bind the conscience, Protestants do not and are left with merely their own interpretation:

“Here we see precisely why the tu quoque fails against the Catholic. The person who becomes Catholic finds something that binds his conscience viz-a-viz the canon of Scripture and the interpretation of Scripture; he finds the Magisterium that the incarnate Christ established and authorized. By contrast, the person who becomes Protestant, finds nothing outside himself that binds his conscience viz-a-viz the canon of Scripture and the interpretation of Scripture. For this reason, until a person finds the Magisterium, he remains his own final interpretive authority, because he knows of nothing that can bind his conscience regarding the interpretation of Scripture.”

The problem here, of course, is that Protestants do encounter something that can bind their conscience. First, the word of God obviously has divine authority, and Protestants understand and affirm that their conscience is bound by it.

Nothing in what Neal and I wrote denies that Scripture has divine authority, or denies that a Protestant who believes Scripture to be divinely inspired can affirm that his conscience is bound by it. And of course God, being omnipotent, could manifest Himself miraculously to a Protestant regarding the proper interpretation of Scripture, and thereby bind his conscience to that interpretation of Scripture. If that were a regular occurrence among Protestants, their interpretations of Scripture would be in agreement. But without a Magisterium, then apart from such a theophany, the Protestant is free to change his interpretation of Scripture in a way contrary to his present interpretation, and in a way contrary to the interpretation of his present denomination or ecclesial community. By contrast, the Catholic is not free to interpret Scripture in a way contrast to the teaching of the Catholic Church, in virtue of the divine authority of the Magisterium. This is the difference made by the presence of a divinely authorized Magisterium. The fact that a Protestant by the work of the Spirit encounters Christ in coming to faith does not entail that the Protestant’s conscience is bound to any dogma, to any particular interpretation of Scripture, or to any ecclesial community.

Taylor continues:

Second, Protestants do not merely have their own interpretation of the word of God. When a Protestant encounters God in Scripture, and The Holy Spirit grants them divine faith during their reading of it, they encounter God Himself, and have not their own interpretation, but a direct revelation from God which binds them. If a Catholic like Bryan Cross wants to deny this supernatural reality, then they leave the Catholic with merely their own opinion that they have encountered an authoritative magisterium, and not an actual epistemic encounter with such authority.

Again, Neal and I have not claimed that Protestants “merely have their own interpretation of God.” I have argued elsewhere that Protestants do have faith. And of course they have Scripture, baptism, and for those in a state of grace, the theological virtues, along with sanctifying grace and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. And I agree that through baptism and faith, Protestants encounter God. Nothing in our article entails otherwise. But if it were true that Protestants “have not their own interpretation, but a direct revelation from God which binds them,” then they would all believe the same thing, for it is impossible for God to lie. But they do not all believe the same thing, so much so that they split into many many denominations. So it cannot be true that Protestants each receive a “direct relevation from God which binds them” to the truth of Protestant doctrines. Whether divine revelation continues is in fact a question on which Protestants are split, some claiming that revelation continues, and others that revelation ceased with the death of the Apostles. Encountering Christ in coming to faith does not entail having divine revelation regarding the proper interpretation of Scripture. The illumination of the Spirit to some truth about Christ and the gospel, even through Scripture, does not even bind a person in conscience to the Nicene Creed. As for Taylor’s sentence that begins, “If a Catholic like Bryan Cross wants to deny …” I do not understand that sentence.

Taylor continues:

Next, Bryan discusses the response that if Scripture needs an interpreter, so does Church teaching. See below:

“The follow-up objection to our argument takes the form of a dilemma. The dilemma runs like this. Either the individual needs the guidance of an interpretive authority when interpreting Scripture, or not. If the individual needs the guidance of an interpretive authority when interpreting Scripture, then he will need the guidance of another interpretive authority when interpreting the first interpretive authority… The problem with this dilemma is that it ignores the qualitative ontological distinction between persons and books, and so it falsely assumes that if a book needs an authoritative interpreter in order to function as an ecclesial authority, so must a living person…a person can do what a book cannot; a person can correct global misunderstandings and answer comprehensive interpretive questions. A book by its very nature has a limited intrinsic potency for interpretive self-clarification; a person, on the other hand, by his very nature has, in principle, an unlimited intrinsic potency with respect to interpretive self-clarification. This unlimited potency with respect to interpretive self-clarification ensures that the hermeneutical spiral may reach its end.”

Now it must be said that the Magisterium does indeed provide a quantitative benefit in terms of clarifying information. The Catholic has had more issues made sufficiently clear, and has less interpretive questions, than the Protestant. But this is a quantitative difference, not qualitative.

It is not merely a quantitative difference. Protestantism as such has no magisterial organ, and as such is therefore incapable of defining any dogma.

And Bryan overstates the case. Catholics do not have the ability to have a conversation with an infallible human who can answer all their questions and close the hermeneutical spiral. Literally no one in the history of the Church has ever had a conversation with the Pope in which all his responses were offered ex-cathedra –

This, of course, is a straw man. We’ve never claimed that any Catholic can do such a thing. But Catholics can and do submit dubia to the Magisterium. For this reason in Catholicism there is a way in principle for these sorts of questions to be answered, whereas there is no such option within Protestantism, because in Protestantism there is no magisterial organ.

but even if they did, the Pope is not inspired, not a prophet, not omniscient, and does not know how to answer every question,

Again, nothing in our article entails otherwise. So this too is a straw man.

plus, even if the Pope did know how to answer every question, the Catholic would still be in the normal human epistemic situation of a fallible human interpreter, and there would always be the chance for nuances of misunderstanding, etc.

Nothing we have said entails otherwise, so this criticizes a straw man. The fallibility of every human interpreter does not nullify or refute the principled difference between person and text with respect to resolving an interpretive disagreement or answering interpretive questions.

The reality, however, is that the Church has merely made some interpretive questions more clear, but has left plenty of questions unresolved.

Nothing we said entails otherwise, so this criticizes a straw man.

What happens to unbaptized babies? Limbo? What about a person who dies before they can get to Confession? Can a Pope be deposed? What is the relationship between grace and predestination? Can divorced and remarried people undergo a process of discernment and be readmitted to communion? Do Priests have the ability to ordain? I could go on, but debates among Catholics, questions about theology, exist, and the Church has not eliminated them.

Nothing we have said entails otherwise, so this goes after a straw man. I addressed this in the Catholics Are Divided Too article.

The Protestant, on the other hand, has plenty of questions made clear in Scripture. The word of God is not so jumbled and dark and confusing that nothing is thereby made obvious.

Nothing we said entails otherwise, so again this goes after a straw man. See “The Obscurity of Scripture.”

But more importantly, The Holy Spirit is a supernatural interpreter available to us, who can grant us divine faith and supernatural knowledge. If Catholics like Bryan want to deny this, then they are left with merely their own fallible opinion that Catholicism is true, and do not possess any real epistemic encounter, nor any certainty about the Church and its interpretations above their own fallible opinion.

Nothing in our article denies the power of the Holy Spirit to do whatever He wills, including granting divine faith and supernatural knowledge to whomever He wills. So again this is a straw man.

Maundy Thursday, 2024.
Bryan Cross March 29th, 2024 12:00 am :
Taylor replies:

Here is where I think you went wrong:

“of course God, being omnipotent, could manifest Himself miraculously to a Protestant regarding the proper interpretation of Scripture, and thereby bind his conscience to that interpretation of Scripture. If that were a regular occurrence among Protestants, their interpretations of Scripture would be in agreement.”

The Problem with this is you seem to assume that anytime a person encounters God and receives divine faith, they always receive explicit knowledge of every dogma. But this is false.

Nothing in our article or in my reply (#1234) entails that anytime a person encounters God and receives divine faith, that person always receives explicit knowledge of every dogma. So this is a straw man.

It is quite rare, perhaps even never the case, that a person receives from God divine faith in every dogma. That is not how Catholics experience it. A person usually receives divine faith in one thing, and is led to another, and so on; and they may cooperate with and receive grace on one thing, but not cooperate and not receive it on another.

Even if this were true, it would be compatible with the truth of everything in our article and in my reply (#1234). But in fact true faith, which those being received into the Church believe and profess, is in “all that the holy Catholic Church believes, teaches, and proclaims to be revealed by God,” even if the one professing is not yet explicitly aware of all the Church’s dogmas.

Furthermore, the Catechism instructs Catholics that Protestants, generally speaking, already have infused faith, hope, and love (CCC 818-819), so it is strange for a Catholic to act as if it is some rare occurrence.

Nothing in our article or in my reply entails that Protestants rarely have the theological virtues. So this too is a straw man.

“But without a Magisterium, then apart from such a theophany, the Protestant is free to change his interpretation of Scripture in a way contrary to his present interpretation, and in a way contrary to the interpretation of his present denomination or ecclesial community. By contrast, the Catholic is not free to interpret Scripture in a way contrast to the teaching of the Catholic Church, in virtue of the divine authority of the Magisterium. This is the difference made by the presence of a divinely authorized Magisterium. The fact that a Protestant by the work of the Spirit encounters Christ in coming to faith does not entail that the Protestant’s conscience is bound to any dogma, to any particular interpretation of Scripture, or to any ecclesial community.”

This ignores the more fundamental epistemic issue. The Catholic can only be bound to the Magisterium by a “theophany” (sic) on the subject, and nothing prevents the Catholic from abandoning that faith and turning to heresy and schism.

Nothing in our article or in my reply entails that it is not God who reveals the divine authority of the Magisterium to the Catholic, or that no Catholic can fall into heresy or schism. So this too is a straw man.

The Protestant, when they encounter Christ, is bound to everything Christ revealed to them, including the meaning of Scripture.

Nothing in our article or in my reply entails otherwise. Again, encountering Christ in faith does not entail a divine revelation regarding what is the correct interpretation of Scripture. One can encounter Christ in faith without even knowing Scripture exists. The fact that a Protestant may receive a divine revelation regarding how Scripture should be interpreted is fully compatible with the argument in our article above, and with my comment #1234.

“if it were true that Protestants “have not their own interpretation, but a direct revelation from God which binds them,” then they would all believe the same thing, for it is impossible for God to lie”

Again, completely false assumption, that if God illuminates the mind to some truth, that He must therefore illuminate the mind to every truth.

Nothing in our article or in my comment entails that “if God illuminates the mind to some truth, that He must therefore illuminate the mind to every truth.” So this too is criticizing a straw man.

But this is virtually never the way that God works with humans. Almost every Christian in Church history experienced a growth in their knowledge of dogmas. Protestants are no exception.

Again, nothing in our article or in my reply entails otherwise. So this too is criticizing a straw man.

“The illumination of the Spirit to some truth about Christ and the gospel, even through Scripture, does not even bind a person in conscience to the Nicene Creed.”

This is a mere tautology, although, Protestants very well can receive illumination from God about the Nicene creed, and some of them do.

What I wrote is not a tautology; merely asserting so does not show it to be such. But nothing I wrote entails that Protestants cannot receive illumination from God about the Nicene creed, or that none of them do. So this too criticizes a straw man.

“It is not merely a quantitative difference. Protestantism as such has no magisterial organ, and as such is therefore incapable of defining any dogma.”

The difference in question was about the clarity of teaching, not about whether extra scriptural ecclessial authorities of an infallible nature existed. Of course there is a qualitative difference there. But in so far as the Protestant and Catholic both stand in the place of fallible human interpreters, only able to possess divine faith when illuminated by the Spirit, the difference is quantitative: the Catholic has less ambiguities, not zero.

Nothing in our article or in my reply entails that Catholics have zero ambiguities. So again this is another straw man.

“in Catholicism there is a way in principle for these sorts of questions to be answered”

Technically speaking, the Church is utterly incapable of answering questions in the sense of creating unanimous agreement, or perfect understanding without error, since everyone who hears or reads its teachings remains a fallible human interpreter, no matter how much clarification is offered. Practically speaking, the Church simply does not, on many important theological issues, offer the kind of clarification you are claiming it does. It leaves many things unclear and murky.

The claim that “the Church simply does not, on many important theological issues, offer the kind of clarification you are claiming it does” is a mere assertion, without any substantiation. To change this from a mere assertion to an argument, it would need to show how the kind of clarification provided by the Church differs from the kind of clarification we claim she provides.

Maundy Thursday, 2024
Bryan Cross March 31st, 2024 5:48 pm :
Taylor replied:

I am not even sure why you bothered to make that “reply.” It wast a reply at all.

Comment #1235 was in fact a reply. As for why I bothered, it was to explain why your objections to our article do not refute our argument.

For example, you really cannot understand why your previous reply assumed that if God illuminates the mind, that therefore God must illuminate the mind to everything?

Here at CTC we do not allow or engage in ad hominems; instead, we discipline ourselves to focus on the argumentation.

Let me see if I can make it clear for you. You argued that Protestants do not receive illumination from God because Protestants have disagreements with each other.

I never claimed that Protestants do not receive “illumination from God.” In fact, in #1234 I wrote of “the illumination of the Spirit to some truth about Christ and the gospel” that Protestants receive when coming to faith in Christ.

My claim about Protestants disagreeing with each other is that if all Protestants received the very same illumination, then they would all agree. But they do not agree even on the Creed, as I have explained here at CTC elsewhere (see, for example, comment #638 in the “I Fought the Church” thread, and the reference to Grudem at the end of comment #289 of the Sola Scriptura Redux thread).

The only way your argument makes sense is if illumination necessitates complete agreement on every issue such that no disagreements remain.

First, demonstrative arguments are not rightly evaluated by whether they “make sense,” but rather by whether they are sound. Second, nothing in our article or in what I’ve said in my comments above entails that only if no disagreement remains can it be true that Protestants receive illumination. Protestants can receive some illumination about, say Jesus as Lord and Savior, and still disagree with each other on many other things, including articles of the Creed.

That would, of course, require that illumination is always comprehensive and complete. But this is clearly false.

Nothing in our article or in what I’ve said above entails that illumination is always comprehensive and complete.

Again – the Catholic has their conscience bound to Church teaching, some of which is clear and obvious in meaning, some of which is unclear but made clear to them by God, some of which they do not understand and disagree with other Catholics about. Protestants, likewise, have their conscience bound by the word of God – some of which is clear and obvious in meaning, some of which is unclear but made clear to them by God, some of which they do not understand and disagree with others about.

All of this is fully compatible with the argument in our article above.

In the peace of Christ,

-Bryan

Easter, 2024
Bryan Cross June 19th, 2024 5:34 pm :
Trent Horn on Southern Baptists not adopting the Nicene Creed:

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