Michael Liccione and Neal Judisch Reply to Keith Mathison

Sacra Conversazione
Fra Angelico (c. 1443)

Michael Liccione and Neal Judisch have both written replies to Keith Mathison's Reply.

Michael's article is titled "Mathison’s Reply to Cross and Judisch: A Largely Philosophical Critique." In it he focuses on what he claims is the most important philosophical issue in the debate, namely, that the disagreement is paradigmatic, that is, that the differences between the Protestant and Catholic positions are not intra-paradigmatic, but involve two distinct paradigms that must be understood as distinct paradigms to be understood rightly and to be compared properly. In other words, resolving the disagreement requires comparing the paradigms, and thus comparing the framework that constitutes the respective paradigms. Michael examines and compares the interpretive paradigms operative between Catholicism and Protestantism, and explains how those paradigms can be evaluated against each other.

Neal's article is titled, "Some Preliminary Reflections on Mathison’s Dialectic." In it he offers a critical evaluation of Keith's claim that the principled distinction between Solo Scriptura and Sola Scriptura is visible to the inquirer only if the inquirer presupposes Catholic ecclesiology. Neal argues that Keith's claim is not plausible, and that it does not address the argument we raised in our 2009 article "Solo Scriptura, Sola Scriptura, and the Question of Interpretive Authority." He writes:

[T]he “Catholic presupposition-induced blindness” to the distinction Mathison draws is a putative psychological-cum-epistemological fact about Catholics. But the allegation that our case for the No Distinction Thesis is “circular and question-begging” is a putative fact about the logic of the argument. And there is a principled distinction between these things, which Mathison has perhaps not seen. For arguments (like offspring) need not inherit their parents’ defects; a fortiori when the defects are of categorically different kinds.

Once an argument marches forth into the wider world, the umbilical cord is severed and it takes on a life very much its own – to be praised or to be blamed in accord with its merits. And no amount of blaming its authors for blindness can imply that an argument they gave is guilty of circularity. For it is at any rate possible that Bryan and I in Athenian fashion groped hazily about, read incautiously and uncharitably, or embraced the No Distinction Thesis merely via some quasi-Freudian wish-fulfillment mechanism; but, like the proverbial blind hog, we might for all that have delivered into the world an acorn without so much as knowing how we’d done it.

(continue reading Neal's article)

Keith Mathison's Reply

In November of 2009, Neal Judisch and I posted an article titled "Solo Scriptura, Sola Scriptura, and the Question of Interpretive Authority." The article provoked a good deal of discussion, the comments now number over 1,200. Our article was a reply to Keith Mathison's book The Shape of Sola Scripura, and focused on the distinction Keith makes between sola scriptura and what he calls "solo scriptura."

Keith Mathison

In his book Keith argued strongly against solo scriptura, and endorsed sola scriptura as the rightful alternative. In our article, we argued that there is no essential difference between solo scriptura and sola scriptura. The defining feature of solo scriptura is the retention by each individual of ultimate interpretive authority, but under sola scriptura, each individual likewise retains ultimate interpretive authority, even if that fact is somewhat hidden by forming associations of those sharing similar interpretations of Scripture and appointing officers among such associations.

Last year Keith assured us that he would write a reply. Yesterday, he announced that he has completed his reply. It can be read at the following link: "Solo Scriptura, Sola Scriptura, and Apostolic Succession: A Response to Bryan Cross and Neal Judisch." A pdf version of his reply is available here. I expect that in the coming weeks we will write a reply to Keith's reply; in the mean time, follow the discussion of Keith's reply here.

Evangelicals and the Crisis of Authority

Jim Tonkowich has written a must-read article titled "Evangelicals and the Crisis of Authority." The article describes a present authority crisis at Calvin College regarding homosexuality and academic freedom. One person is quoted as saying "academic freedom means I can interpret Scripture in any way I see fit." The article considers the possibility that this seeming primacy of individual interpretive judgment is intrinsic to the essence of Protestantism. But in the last third of his article Jim concludes that that is a false understanding of Protestantism. I have quoted that last section in full:

[Timothy] George argues that Luther and the other Reformers were far more nuanced than a cursory reading of the dialogue at Worms indicates. Rather than seeing themselves as creating something new based on individual insights, they "saw themselves as part of the ongoing Catholic tradition, indeed as the legitimate bearers of it." The Reformers had a "sense of continuity with the church of the preceding centuries." Neither Luther nor John Calvin rejected the past or even the Roman Church in its entirety.

While the Reformers believed Scripture alone was the final authority for life and doctrine, they insisted that assent to ancient creeds was also incumbent upon Christians. They were so strongly persuaded, says George, that they saw justification by faith, the cornerstone of the Reformation, as "the logical and necessary consequence of the ecumenical orthodoxy embraced by Catholics and Protestants alike."

As to academic freedom, the Reformers were marked, "by their desire to read the Bible in dialogue with the exegetical traditions of the church." George writes:

In their biblical commentaries… the Reformers of the sixteenth century revealed an intimate familiarity with the preceding exegetical tradition, and they used it reverently as well as critically in their own expositions of the sacred text. The Scriptures were seen as the book given to the church, gathered and guided by the Holy Spirit.

These three, the sense of continuity with the Church through the ages, an embrace of ecumenical orthodoxy as expressed in the creeds, and a determination to read the Bible with the Church, form guardrails for academic and personal freedom and inquiry. They prevent biblical interpretation from falling prey to the latest cultural fad, the hippest intellectual fashion, and individual predilections.

As John Armstrong comments:

[W]e need to recover a proper emphasis upon tradition. Some Christians are accused of being stuck in the past, especially by progressive and more liberal Christians. I believe the much greater danger is an uncritical acceptance of new teachings and practices that undermine the historic faith itself. We need what my friend, the late Robert Webber, called "ancient-future faith." It is right to lean into the future and to prepare for what the Spirit will do. But the Spirit does not lead us to abandon the historic faith in the process.

Christian freedom—academic freedom and personal freedom—is not the right to interpret the Bible in any way we see fit and then act on our interpretation. It is the freedom to be fully human in company with and under the authority of the Church throughout the ages and in accord with the unchanging truth that is in Jesus Christ.

The solution to this authority problem, according to Jim, is that present-day Protestants need to recover a sense of continuity with the Church, embrace the orthodoxy of the ancient creeds, and read the Bible in dialogue with the exegetical traditions of the Church. The problem with Jim's suggestion is that it is just that, a mere suggestion. It has no authority. The things he proposes are all good things, but they are not, and cannot be, the solution to the authority vacuum within Protestantism. An authority problem cannot be solved without authority. Appealing to "the authority of the Church,"as he does in the last line of his article, is impossible when "the Church" is ultimately defined by each individual in terms of "those who agree with my general interpretation." Jim is trying to hang on to the solo scriptura / sola scriptura distinction in order to salvage Evangelicalism's decay. But as Neal Judisch and I recently argued in "Solo Scriptura, Sola Scriptura, and the Question of Interpretive Authority," there is ultimately no real distinction between solo scriptura and sola scriptura. By its rejection of apostolic succession Protestantism necessarily makes the individual the ultimate interpretive authority. And that entails that anyone can reject the ancient Church and her creeds as outdated and antiquated, and give no heed to the various exegetical traditions. Merely calling for a "sense of continuity" and an "embrace" of the ancient creeds and for reading the Bible in continuity with ancient exegetical traditions will not stop the flowering of the seeds sown almost five hundred years ago, when Protestants rejected apostolic succession and the authority of the Church. In doing so, they unwittingly made each man his own pope, though the full fruits of this sowing remained hidden under the gradually declining inertia of Catholic Tradition. Those who sow rejection of apostolic succession must ultimately reap the individualism and fragmentation of "solo scriptura." As Louis Bouyer argued:

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.

The only solution to this authority problem is a recovery of apostolic succession.

Is Sola Scriptura in the Bible? A Reply to R.C. Sproul Jr.

R.C. Sproul Jr. recently wrote a short article titled "Is Sola Scriptura in the Bible?" In light of our recent article treating the subject of sola scriptura, it might be helpful to examine Sproul's comments from a Catholic point of view. (Continue reading)

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

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. 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 Neal Judisch and I 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. (Continue reading)

Wilson vs. Hitchens: A Catholic Perspective

I wrote some thoughts here on the Wilson vs. Hitchens debate narrated in the forthcoming film titled Collision.

So much for sola over solo

(For an explanation of the sola vs. solo distinction, see here.)

In May of this year I wrote a post titled "Denominational Renewal", about the conference by that name that had taken place here in St. Louis in February, and which I attended. Presently, there is an ongoing five-week discussion about that conference over at "Common Grounds Online". What got my attention, however, were Bob Mattes's recent comments on Jeremy Jones's talk given at the conference. Bob described Jeremy's proposal in this way:

He [Jeremy] proposes to replace sectarianism with Reformed Catholicism theology. He says that we are part of the universal Catholic Church, that the enemy isn't the church down the street but the world, flesh, and the devil. ... But then he says that we need to recovery of the ecclesial identity of the original Reformed fathers, who saw themselves as a branch of Roman Catholic Church. ... Jeremy offers the illustration of a house. The foundation of the house is the Word, the 1st floor is Catholic tradition in the Roman sense. The 2nd floor has the subdivided apartments of Protestantism. TE Jones says that if you’re Protestant, you rest on top of the Roman Catholic tradition - that they mediated the Catholic faith to us. Hence, it is all one building. He claims that a Reformed Catholic identity illumens a broader historic belief, that the creeds come from RCC and the Reformers tried to reform the Roman Catholic Church, not pitch it. He says that they did not alter the core doctrines ... but reformed those they found in error within the bounds of the RCC tradition which remained substantially unaltered. ... He says that this provides a different scale of importance in our theology, so that Catholic creedal orthodoxy becomes more basic than Reformed theology. (emphasis his)

Bob disagrees with Jeremy's position. Bob responds a few paragraphs later with this critical, noteworthy paragraph. He writes:

No, the Reformers bypassed the Roman doctrines to study the Bible itself from the original languages. They pitched the sacrifice of the mass, transubstantiation, purgatory, Mariology, leadership structure, etc. They did not attempt to reform the Roman church itself in the long run, but strove to recapture the truths of, and build upon, the foundation of Christ and His Word directly. They also used the early creeds which were developed before the corruption of Rome trampled the early church into oblivion. In response to the Reformation, the Roman church anathematized the gospel at the Council of Trent. The doctrines canonized at Trent weren’t new. Rome’s long-time doctrines were simply codified there. How can one build upon such a foundation? Surely this is a foundation of sand which our Lord contrasted to the Rock of our salvation. (emphasis his)

When I have pointed out that the Protestant position reduces in principle to biblicism (see, for example, here and here), the reply I typically receive is that I have failed to appreciate fully the distinction between sola scriptura and solo scriptura. Sola scriptura, Keith Mathison tells us, embraces the creeds and the teachings of the Church fathers. But then when people (like Jeremy) start referring to that catholic tradition that would be included in sola scriptura but not in solo scriptura, they're told that the Reformers built on Scripture alone, because the Church that Christ founded had long been trampled into oblivion.

Of course the gates of hell cannot prevail against the Church. Therefore confessional Protestants must posit the existence during that long period of apostasy of at least one person in every generation who believed in justification by faith alone. But since in Protestantism the Church Christ founded is really just the set of all the elect, there is no compelling reason even to posit that anyone from the time of the death of the last Apostle to Luther heard the gospel and was saved, because the only way for hell to prevail over the Church would be to prevent the set of all the elect from attaining the number of members God intends it to have. And that's impossible. So a long period of time without any elect persons on earth is fully compatible with Christ's promise not to allow the gates of hell to prevail against the Church, if the Church is merely the set of all the elect. But just to be safe (perhaps because of vestiges of the notion of a visible Church), Protestants still want to posit a priori that some proto-Lutherans were alive during the long apostasy, even if they have no evidence that such persons existed.

At the time Luther came along, how long had the apostasy been going on? Alister McGrath has pointed out that the notion of justification by "faith alone" was unknown from the time of St. Paul to the Reformation, calling it a "genuine theological novum". According to McGrath, the Council of Trent "maintained the medieval tradition, stretching back to Augustine, which saw justification as comprising both an event and a process -- the event of being declared to be righteous through the work of Christ and the process of being made righteous through the internal work of the Holy Spirit." (Reformation Thought, 1993, p. 115) McGrath is very clear that Luther's notion of justification by faith alone is not that of St. Augustine. Trent's position followed that of St. Augustine, not Luther. B.B. Warfield likewise, condemns the Council of Orange (529 AD) as "semi-semi-Pelagianism", as I pointed out here. So for these Protestants the great apostasy was at least a thousand years in length.

The Protestant argument goes like this.

(1) Clearly Luther was right about justification.

Therefore,

(2) Everyone who preceeded Luther and held a view of justification contrary to that of Luther was wrong.

(3) But everyone [so far as we can tell from history] at least from Augustine on (and perhaps even back to the first century) held a view of justification contrary to that of Luther.

(4) Justification [as imputation alone] by faith alone is the heart of the gospel, the doctrine on which the Church stands or falls.

Therefore

(5) The Church was apostate from the time of Augustine (or even all the way back to the first century) until Luther.

But one man's modus ponens is another's modus tollens. In other words, how much ecclesial deism and ecclesial docetism does it take to call into question the perspicuity assumption underlying premise (1)? At what point does one say, "Wait a second; maybe Luther's interpretation isn't right"? This is the heart of the paradigm shift I have spoken of here.

I talked to a Reformed Protestant recently who said that returning to the Catholic Church would require giving up all the "theological development" (his terms) within Protestantism from the time of Luther and Calvin to the present. Whether that is true or not, Protestants like Mattes seem to have no problem giving up the first 1000 - 1500 years of theological development. If that is the case, then it is not just 'development' per se that such Protestants are adhering to, but rather 'the development I approve of'. And that seems to be the individualism of biblicism, precisely why there is no principled difference with respect to individualism between sola scriptura and solo scriptura.

Sean Michael Lucas, in commenting on Jeremy's talk writes the following:

... it strikes me that [Jeremy's] proposal for renewing theology holds out great hope for "creative theological thinking." And yet, if we pay attention to those witnesses of the past, like Irenaeus and Tertullian, they stressed not their creativity, but their unoriginality. For example, when Irenaeus sought true missional impact, he stressed "this kerygma and this faith the Church, although scattered over the whole world, diligently observes, as if it occupied but one house, and believes as if it had but one mind, and preaches and teaches as if it had but one mouth." Perhaps the agenda for renewing theology should not be to look for "creatively faithful, constructive theology," but for a continuing witness to "the faith once delivered to the saints" (Jude 3). (my emphasis)

This is the same Irenaeus who around 180 AD wrote:

"We do put to confusion all those who ... assemble in unauthorized meetings; [we do this, I say,] by indicating that tradition derived from the apostles, of the very great, the very ancient, and universally known Church founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul; as also [by pointing out] the faith preached to men, which comes down to our time by means of the successions of the bishops. For it is a matter of necessity that every Church should agree with this Church [of Rome], on account of its preeminent authority, that is, the faithful everywhere, inasmuch as the apostolical tradition has been preserved continuously by those [faithful men] who exist everywhere." (Against Heresies 3.3.2)

This is the same Tertullian who around 200 AD wrote:

"Was anything withheld from the knowledge of Peter, who is called the rock on which the church should be built,' who also obtained the keys of the kingdom of heaven, with the power of loosing and binding in heaven and on earth? Moreover, if Peter was reproached [by Paul] because, after having lived with the gentiles, he later separated himself from their company out of respect for persons, the fault certainly was one of procedure and not of doctrine." (Prescription Against the Heretics, 22)

Sean wants unoriginality. But, according to McGrath, originality is precisely what Luther offers. Luther's originality doesn't count as originality, however, because it matches (sufficiently) Sean's interpretation of Scripture. Whatever the fathers say that doesn't match the Protestant's interpretation of Scripture (e.g. claims about Peter being the rock, Rome having the primacy, bishops, apostolic succession, Mary as "Mother of God", prayers for the dead, prayers to saints, Eucharist as sacrifice, etc.) is ipso facto an originality and can thus be dismissed. Originality, therefore, means by definition, any claim or teaching by any post-Apostolic writer over the last 2000 years whose claim goes beyond what is allowed by the Protestant's own interpretation of Scripture. Unoriginality, likewise, means by definition, any claim or teaching by any post-Apostolic writer over the last 2000 years whose claim fits with one's own interpretation of Scripture (and/or the particular confessions one has adopted as representing what one believes to be the best interpretation of Scripture).

We find here that in sola scriptura as a practice, the content of the authoritative extra-biblical tradition that stands along with (but subordinate to) Scripture is by definition whatever can be found in the last twenty (but especially the first few) centuries of Church history that agrees with the particular Protestant interpretation in question. Solo scriptura is doing all the work to determine what gets included in or excluded from what is presented as the sola scriptura package. Sola is the advertisement photo; solo is what's inside the package. The method being used is not that of reading-Church-history-forward to see how the Church grows organically, but rather, starting from Scripture as read through Protestant lenses, and then reading back into Church history, to try to find whatever is there that agrees with one's own interpretation of Scripture. Any heretics throughout history could use the same method, and call their doctrine the 'apostolic' doctrine because by study and interpretation they 'derived' it from the writings of the Apostles. That methodological parallel should give any Protestant serious pause, to ask these questions: "What makes our activity of study and interpretation so much better that we're immune from heresy? And why is our ecclesial deism any better than theirs?"

Angels Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, on this feast of Michaelmas, do battle against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places, so that the full visible unity of all Christians may be restored, according to the heart of Jesus revealed in His prayer in St. John 17. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Choosing My Tradition

Here I wish to continue discussing the dichotomy between the individualism of ecclesial consumerism and the unity possible only by way of sacramental magisterial authority derived from apostolic succession. Michael Brown recently wrote "Finding the Bull's Eye", as a reply to my earlier post titled "Michael Brown on Sola Scriptura or Scriptura Solo". I am very grateful to Michael for his cordial and respectful manner of responding to my post, especially given that I was criticizing his position.

So what's the point of disagreement between Michael Brown and myself? The point at issue between us, is whether there is any principled distinction between sola scriptura and solo scriptura viz-a-viz individualism. Michael says there is. I say there is not. I think that sola scriptura, so long as it denies or rejects sacramental magisterial authority, remains fundamentally individualistic, and hence intrinsically disposed to fragmentation and disunity.

Confessional Protestants such as Keith Mathison admit that there is a serious problem with the solo scriptura position. They recognize that in solo scriptura the individual is his own final interpretive authority, and thus this position reduces to individualism. And individualism by its very nature leads to disunity and division, as each person does whatever seems right in his own eyes. 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. That is the challenge for overcoming this 500 year-old schism -- finding and coming together in the Church that Christ founded and that is made in His image as His Body.

I had claimed in my original post that the sola scriptura position functions by allowing the individual to "paint a magisterial (or ecclesial) target around his interpretive arrow". In response, Michael writes:
 

I reject Cross's analogy as being true for confessional Protestantism and what Oberman and Mathison call "Tradition 1" (that is, the acceptance of a real tradition, but not as a second source of revelation). Confessional Protestantism is not founded upon shooting one's interpretive arrow into a wall and then painting a magisterial target around it and calling it "church." Rather, confessional Protestantism is a target already painted upon the wall, to which individual Christians must aim their arrow.

Michael claims that while my painting-a-magisterial-target-around-one's-interpretive-arrow analogy applies to biblicism, it does not apply to "confessional Protestantism". According to Michael, "confessional Protestantism is a target already painted upon the wall, to which individual Christians must aim their arrow". What exactly does he mean by "already on the wall"? He goes on to explain:

Personally, when I became Reformed, I did not do so because I worked out Sola Fide, covenant theology, and the doctrines of grace on my own and then hunted for a church that believed those things. In fact, I don't know any Reformed Christian for whom that has happened! I became Reformed much in the same way that most people in the congregation I pastor did: I heard the gospel preached in a way that I never heard before, and followed that preaching to a very old and large target that had been painted on a wall by many people over the past two millennia. In other words, I was confronted with something much larger than myself and my own private experience. I was confronted with an old, yet living, confessional and interpretive community that clearly presented the bulls-eye of the gospel. Yet, there were many outer rings to that bulls-eye that I had never encountered before and wasn't entirely comfortable with at the time. There were "rings" of covenant theology, the Sacraments, ecclesiology, eschatology, on and on it went. Looking at the workmanship of the target, however, I could see that, over the centuries, a vast array of great artists had worked on this target, using the paint and brush of Scripture, as it were. The point I want to make by this is that, in becoming Reformed, I did not do the work of a biblicist. I had to submit myself humbly to the wisdom of those artists and archers that had gone before me. I not only had to apply myself diligently to search the Scriptures and see if their testimony was in fact true, but I also had to listen and reckon with the fact that this target was massive and exhibited the finest workmanship. Most importantly, it presented the clearest and boldest bulls-eye.

By "confessional Protestantism" being already on the wall he means that it is an already existing interpretive tradition; he didn't just make it up himself. So how does Michael's own experience show a principled distinction between sola scriptura and solo scriptura (i.e. biblicism)? According to Michael, the pure biblicist works out all his positions from Scripture alone, and then says "Ok, those who agree with me are the Church".

But that's not what happened to Michael. He heard what he terms "the gospel", and "followed that preaching to a very old and large target that had been painted on a wall by many people over the past two millenia". He found something that seemed right to him ("the gospel"), and that attracted him, and when he started investigating it, he found the whole Reformed theological tradition. He didn't work out the whole Reformed tradition from Scripture on his own. He found a small part of the Reformed tradition that was intriguing and attractive, and through it he found the rest of the Reformed theological tradition, and then determined that the Reformed theological tradition conformed to Scripture better (in his judgment) than did his previous Bible-church theology. So the "confessional Protestant", in contrast with the biblicist, finds an existing interpretive tradition, compares it with Scripture, and then if he determines it to be superior to his present interpretive tradition, he treats the superior interpretive tradition as in some sense authoritative (i.e. a secondary authority under Scripture).

The important part of the account concerns the way in which the "confessional Protestant" evaluates the interpretive tradition that he has encountered but not yet embraced, especially if he is comparing multiple interpretive traditions. There are many different ways to evaluate these interpretive traditions, according to various kinds of evaluative criteria. They can be evaluated by fit-to-Scripture, internal coherence, explanatory depth or explanatory power, simplicity, creativity, helpfulness, popularity, age, scope, personal fulfillment or attractiveness, sweetness, fruit, or even gut-level veracity, just to name a few. For example, many people are drawn to the Benny Hinn / Todd Bentley theological tradition because of its attractiveness, and its seeming fit to many passages of Scripture, as well as the hope it holds out for direct and emotionally powerful encounters with God. Such persons are not biblicists in the sense defined above; they are encountering an interpretive tradition and then determining that it better satisfies their evaluative criteria than does their present interpretive tradition. In the selection of evaluative criteria a person can pick an interpretive tradition that conforms to his own interests or desires or personal interpretive criteria. In this way the "confessional Protestant" can fashion the 'Church' in his own image, by selecting from among interpretive traditions according to the same evaluative criteria he would use to produce and evaluate his own interpretation were he a biblicist. There are certain common features, for example, among the sort of people who tend to be attracted to the Hinn / Bentley interpretive tradition. And that is also true of Calvinism. In this way the "confessional Protestant" can pick a tradition that seems best to him, submit to the 'Church' as defined and fixed by that tradition, and then deny being an individualist, claiming that he is under the authority of a tradition and "the Church".

But is there no principled difference between picking a Protestant tradition and seeking full communion with the Catholic Church? In both cases the person chooses a tradition, so aren't both actions individualistic? (This is the tu quoque objection I have discussed elsewhere.)

What makes the decision individualistic in the case of the person choosing a Protestant interpretive tradition is not that an individual is making this decision. That's unavoidable and unproblematic. What makes the decision problematically individualistic has to do with the type of evaluative criteria being used. Both the biblicist and the person choosing a Protestant tradition are typically looking for best-fit, particularly best-fit between the theology and Scripture. Both are using an evaluative criterion based on form. "Does this interpretation or this interpretive tradition have the best fit to Scripture?" If they encounter another interpretive tradition that has a better fit, that is where they will go. If you asked them, "Is your present ecclesial institution the one that the incarnate Christ founded?" their answer would be something like, "No, but I think we believe and teach what the Bible says more accurately than does any other institution I know."

The person becoming Catholic [in the non-individualistic sort of way], on the other hand, is using an evaluative criterion that is very much dependent on continuity of matter: Is this the Church that Christ founded? Are these the bishops authorized by the bishops who were authorized by the Apostles to speak and teach in Christ's name?

So the Protestant is comparing his interpretation of Scripture with the various interpretive traditions to find the form that most closely matches, so that he can be in a community of persons whose beliefs and teachings are as close as possible to what the Apostles taught in the writings preserved in the New Testament. His focus is entirely on form. He and his friends could start a church today that meets in a school cafeteria, and that's fine (in his mind) so long as its teaching conforms to the Bible.

The person who is becoming Catholic, however, is tracing matter, to ensure that he is joined to that very same Body that the incarnate Christ established on earth. He finds the [orthodox] form by tracing the matter, through the development of the Church. The church-shopping consumerist does just the opposite; he picks a body (i.e. matter) by comparing form.

The Protestant doesn't think much of "tracing matter" because he worries that matter can lose its [substantial] form and become another entity, and what he wants most of all is to retain the form found in the writings of the New Testament. He is not worried about tracing matter, because he thinks that what the incarnate Christ bequeathed was something primarily formal, not a form-matter composite. Hence there is no need to trace matter.

The person becoming Catholic, on the other hand, recognizes that false forms can seem to be true, as the existence of so many heresies through history testify. That is why he seeks first to trace matter, so that by following the succession of legitimate ecclesial authority he can be protected from schism, heresy and heretical interpretations of Scripture.

But here are some important questions. First, how do we decide, in a non-question-begging manner, between "finding where to worship by comparing form" or "finding the Church by tracing matter"? In my opinion, the only non-question-begging way to answer that question is to study the fathers, and how they would have answered it.

Second, if comparing form is the priority, then how is the preservation of the unity of the Church possible, as each person follows his own interpretation of Scripture, especially given what Tertullian says here and St. Vincent of Lerins says here? It seems to me (as I have argued above) that individualism necessarily accompanies the "comparing form" mentality, but not the "trace matter" methodology. The "trace matter" approach leaves one at most with Catholicism and Orthodoxy, and that is why we see what we see in Responsa ad quaestiones (2007).

Third, if tracing matter is the priority, then how do we distinguish (in a principled and non-question-begging manner) between genuine organic development and apostasy? (Newman's Essay on the Development of Doctrine is helpful with respect to this question, in my opinion.)

Fourth, could the differences we see between the early church and the present day Catholic Church be due to organic development, rather than the loss of [substantial] form? It seems to me that in order to be [epistemically] justified in separating from the Catholic Church and risking the sin of schism, one would have to rule out the possibility that the differences between the early church and the present day Catholic Church are due to organic development. And that means that one has to find a principled difference between the essence of the early church and the essence of the Catholic Church. Separating from that matter (i.e. that Body) can be justified only if that Body has become an altogether different identity, and not just an organically developed stage of the original Body.

Holy Spirit, Soul of the Church, unite us all perfectly into the Body that you animate.

Dr. Robert Godfrey on sola scriptura: Part 1

Dr. Godfrey

Dr. Robert Godfrey is the President of Westminster Theological Seminary in Escondido, California. He wrote an article titled "What we mean by Sola Scriptura", which originally appeared as the first chapter in Sola Scriptura! The Protestant Position on the Bible, edited by Don Kistler.

His article starts by distinguishing between "Protestant Catholics" and "Roman Catholics". This is odd for two reasons, first because he uses titles that each side generally does not use for itself. Protestants generally do not refer to themselves as Catholics, let alone "Protestant Catholics". And Catholics do not generally refer to themselves as "Roman Catholics". We are Catholics, and if we are in the Latin Rite Particular Church within the Catholic Church, we are properly "Latin Rite Catholics", not Roman Catholics. Second, Dr. Godfrey's terminology suggests that both Protestants and Catholics are members of a larger genus, i.e. Catholic. And yet Dr. Godfrey immediately goes on to say that [Roman] Catholics believe that Protestants departed from the [Catholic] Church in the sixteenth century, and that Protestants think that Catholics departed from [the Catholic] Church even earlier. But if both sides think the other side departed from the Catholic Church, then neither side would agree with Dr. Godfrey that both sides are part of a larger genus, i.e. "the Catholic Church". So he opens his article with semantics opposed to both sides of the disagreement.

His second paragraph focuses on the main topic of his article:

The theme of this opening chapter is one of the issues that still divides us: the source of religious truth for the people of God. (The other main issue, that of how a man is made right with God, has been dealt with in the book Justification by Faith ALONE!, published by Soli Deo Gloria in 1995.) As Protestants we maintain that the Scripture alone is our authority. Our Roman opponents maintain that the Scripture by itself is insufficient as the authority of the people of God, and that tradition and the teaching authority of the church must be added to the Scripture. (my emphasis)

Dr. Godfrey says here that the Protestant conception of sola scriptura is that "Scripture alone is our authority". If we took this statement at face value, it would imply that no Protestant pastor or session or presbytery or general assembly has any authority over any Protestants. But of course in practice such Protestant offices and bodies do exercise some sort of authority over those persons who have placed themselves under them. So either Dr. Godfrey is not being careful here, or he is endorsing the individualism of private judgment and solo scriptura. Later in the article he says, "I am eager to join that historic train of Protestant apologists to defend the doctrine that the Scripture alone is our ultimate religious authority." Notice the word 'ultimate'. So what he means in this earlier statement is that Scripture alone is our ultimate authority". And yet perhaps the slip is revealing, showing the logical implication of sola scriptura.

But he is also here presenting a straw man of the Catholic position. Yes, the Catholic Church would claim that Scripture alone is not sufficient as the authority of the people of God. But no, the Catholic Church has never claimed that tradition and the teaching authority of the Church "must be added to" the Scripture. Rather, the Catholic Church teaches that the oral tradition and teaching authority of the Church already existed, from the day of Pentecost on, in the teaching and preaching of the Apostles. The New Testament Scriptures were eventually added to the oral tradition and to the teaching authority of the Church. The Church (with her teaching authority and oral tradition) existed first, without the New Testament. But the Church has never existed without her teaching authority, and without the oral tradition in the form of the preaching of the Apostles.

When Protestants start defending sola scriptura in terms of the final or ultimate authority of Scripture, they tend to gloss over an ambiguity in the word "final" or "ultimate". (I discussed this in my post titled "C. Michael Patton on sola scriptura".) It is not difficult to show that since Scripture is the Word of God, and obviously nothing can have more authority than the Word of God, that therefore the Scripture must be the "ultimate" [i.e. highest] intrinsic authority in the Church. But no one disagrees with that. That is not what the Protestant-Catholic disagreement concerning sola scriptura is about. The Catholic Church teaches that her leadership is the servant of the Word of God. (CCC 86) So the point of disagreement (between Protestants and the Catholic Church) regarding sola scriptura is not primarily about which authority in the Church has the most or highest intrinsic authority, but is rather about who has final or highest interpretive and teaching authority, and on what ground or basis these persons have such interpretive and teaching authority. (The disagreement between Protestants and the Catholic Church regarding whether the Word of God was also passed down as oral Tradition depends for its resolution on who has interpretive and teaching authority to give the authoritative ecclesial judgment on this question.)

Bound up in the [Protestant] concept of sola scriptura is much more than the mere notion that Scripture is the highest intrinsic authority in the Church. The Protestant conception of sola scriptura includes the assumption of perspicuity, namely, that the Scripture is sufficiently clear and plain that whatever is necessary to be believed for salvation can be known by everyone who reads it. This perspicuity assumption is taught nowhere in Scripture or Tradition; it is a novel assumption imported by Protestants from outside Scripture and Tradition to the process of interpreting Scripture. We do not find it in the first 1500 years of the Church, just as if the Apostles did not teach any such doctrine to the Church. Nor would the Apostles likely have done so, given that the printing press was not invented until the fifteenth century. So the Catholic response to the sixteenth century Protestant claim regarding perspicuity is "Who told you that perspicuity is true, and what ecclesial authority did he have?" But that is not the point I want to make here.

I want to focus not on the origin but on the implications of the perspicuity assumption. The perspicuity assumption implies that we do not need any interpretive authority, if by 'need' we are referring to only what is necessary to know and believe for salvation. (And what is more necessary than that?) Yes we still need to be fed regularly on the Word, and we need fellowship with other believers, etc. But, if the perspicuity assumption is true, then we do not need any interpretive authority; we each can figure out on our own from Scripture whatever is necessary for our salvation. And whatever else might be good to know, we can decide for ourselves whether we want to learn it, and from whom to learn it, etc. So right here, in an implicit assumption hidden behind the more obvious and explicit definition of sola scriptura, is the basis for the individualism that makes each Protestant interpreter his own final interpretive authority. If a person reads Scripture and comes to the conclusion that what is sufficient for salvation is "asking Jesus into my heart" (though the expression is not in Scripture), then anything else that anyone might add to that is mere man-made window-dressing. "Away with institutions and rituals. Away with hierarchies and all these doctrinal standards that just end up dividing Christians." Perspicuity implies that each person gets to decide for himself from Scripture what is necessary and sufficient for salvation. And as a result, whatever falls outside of the individual's determination from Scripture of what is necessary for his own salvation is dismissed as superfluous.

One danger here, however, is that "salvation" is assumed to be an all or nothing sort of thing. You either go to heaven, or you don't. So all we need to worry about is what is necessary to go to heaven. But what if salvation is more complicated than that? What if there are gradations of happiness in heaven, and our measure of happiness in the life to come has something to do with how we live in this life? What if we are called to be saints in this life, to be perfect, and yet we only do the very minimum, squandering a life-time of opportunities for acts of heroic virtue? In that case, the minimalistic and nominalistic approach to Christianity that seeks to do whatever just gets people inside the pearly gates is a misleading theology that potentially detracts from our eternal happiness. Perspicuity is not an innocent assumption; it has very serious implications.

If as perspicacity implies we do not need an interpretive authority, then there is no point to a Magisterium having authority in perpetual succession from the Apostles. Perspicuity makes the Church's Magisterium both superfluous, obsolete and presumptive, for surely Jesus would not have established an enduring interpretive authority if we did not need such a thing. Therefore, given the perspicuity of Scripture, it follows logically that those persons claiming to have interpretive authority from the Apostles are at best mistaken and at worst presumptive, having at some point arrogated to themselves an authority that they do not have.

Perspicuity in this way is incompatible with the Catholic Church's long-standing teaching regarding the role and authority of the bishops in succession from the Apostles. The Protestant notion of perspicuity entails and grounds the ecclesial consumerism that in practice leads to the vast proliferation of sects, for since there is no given interpretive authority, then by default we are left to accumulate to ourselves teachers who teach according to what we believe. (2 Tim 4:3) And both the explosion of competing Protestant sects and their inability to reconcile with each other over the past five hundred years undermines the notion that we have no need [if not in the sense of personal salvation, at least in the sense of corporate unity] for a living interpretive authority. Protestant history testifies that we need a perpetual interpretive authority in order to maintain ecclesial unity. So in this way Protestant history testifies against perspicuity, and in favor of what the Catholic Church has always taught about her bishops and the nature of their authority as passed on through sacramental succession from the Apostles.

How does Dr. Godfrey defend his claim that Scripture alone is the ultimate ecclesial authority? He appeals to Scripture itself. He writes, "I believe that it can be shown that this position [i.e. sola scriptura] is the clear position of Scripture itself." And that is what he proceeds to do, defends his position by appealing to Scripture.

But already he has begged the question, possibly without realizing it. Consider what is implicit in his claim that "it can be shown that [my] position is the clear position of Scripture". He is implicitly assuming here that no heretic could show [to that heretic's own satisfaction, and to those likeminded to him] that his own heresy is "the clear position of Scripture". For if heretics can in principle do this, then the fact that someone can show [to his own satisfaction and that of those likeminded to him] that his own position is "the clear position of Scripture" does not show whether that position is heretical or orthodox, in which case we would need the living Church authority to adjudicate the question for us. But the need for living Church authority to decide interpretive questions for us is precisely what Dr. Godfrey is rejecting, for as I have pointed out above, perspicuity is bound up in the concept of sola scriptura. If we needed a living church authority to adjudicate interpretive questions for us, then Luther and the early Protestants would not have been justified in defying the Catholic Magisterium regarding the interpretation of Scripture. Nor would they have been justified in leaving the Catholic Church, even given the abuses and corruption of that time. The whole Protestant separation/movement would be thereby undermined. Therefore, Dr. Godfrey's methodology, if it is to be consistent with Protestantism, must assume at least implicitly that in principle no heretic can show [to that heretic's his own satisfaction and to that of those likeminded to him] that his own heresy is "the clear position of Scripture". But that assumption is justified only if the Protestant assumption regarding perspicuity is true. And thus in that way Dr. Godfrey's approach to defending sola scriptura begs the question, for it assumes implicitly precisely what it is trying to prove, namely that the Protestant notion that Scripture alone can be our ultimate authority without the need for Church authority to adjudicate interpretive disagreements is true.

What I am pointing out here is another example of talking past each other, and missing the *paradigmatic* difference between Catholicism and Protestantism. (I have written about this in my "Two Paradigms" post.) To approach Scripture as though each individual has the authority to determine definitively for him or herself what it says, is not to approach the Scripture in a neutral manner. It is to approach Scripture as though the first 1500 years of Christianity were deeply misguided, and Protestantism is true. In order to talk about the issue of sola scriptura, therefore, we have to step back from debating the interpretation of the Scriptures themselves. That is the point Tertullian made here, and St. Vincent of Lerins made here.

We have to examine how exactly the Church has operated from the beginning regarding the resolution of disputes over the interpretation of Scripture. Only if the practice of the early Church was to treat Scripture as self-interpreting, and as though there was no need for adjudication of interpretive disagreements by the Apostles and bishops would we be justified in approaching Scripture as though we ourselves have the authority to determine definitively for ourselves what it says. If, however, the Church did not treat Scripture as self-interpreting, but relied upon the decisions of the bishops to determine what is the orthodox and authorized teaching of the Church and the authoritative interpretation of Scripture, then for us to approach Scripture as though the bishops are not the interpretive authorities of Scripture is performative, if not propositional, heresy.

There is no neutral interpretive starting point here. Either we come to Scripture recognizing and submitting to the ecclesial authority of the bishops, or we come to Scripture rejecting [knowingly or unknowingly] the ecclesial authority of the bishops. And that was no less true during the sixteenth century than it is today. Of course a person can come to Scripture unaware of the authority of the bishops, or in a state of humility toward the bishops as he or she seeks to determine whether the Apostles gave such authority to the bishops. So the impossibility of neutrality here concerns those who know that the Apostles appointed bishops and gave them perpetual authority in the Church. If we wish to know how to approach the Scriptures, we must determine what those bishops taught about their own authority in relation to the deposit of faith and the interpretation of Scripture. Otherwise, we will beg the question and talk past each other in the Protestant-Catholic ecumenical dialogue.

Tu quoque, Catholic convert

I received a good question in the combox of a prior post on sola scriptura, and the matter is important enough, I think, to warrant a post of its own.

As I pointed out in that prior post, one of the problems with sola scriptura is that the individual becomes the de facto interpretive authority, and then defines and locates "the Church" as those who agree with his own interpretation of Scripture. And this obviously leads to a multiplication of sect upon sect, as history shows.

But the objection to this argument is that the person who moves from Protestantism to Catholicism does the very same thing, essentially creates "Church" in his own image by reading the Bible and deciding that the doctrine of the Catholic Church most closely matches what the Bible teaches. So, the objection is a form of the tu quoque (i.e. you too) objection. Below I have pasted my combox response to that objection (with a few changes).


I receive this objection quite frequently. I discussed it briefly in my post titled "The alternative to painting a magisterial target around our interpretive arrow".

The gist of the objection is that in becoming Catholic I'm doing the same thing, i.e. interpreting the Bible and locating those persons who share my interpretation, and then placing myself under their authority.

But there is a very important difference. What is problematic in the Protestant approach is not that the individual uses his own intellect and will in making decisions about the identity and nature of the Church. We can't but use our own intellect and will in making decisions. Individualism is not equivalent to individual agency. So, that's not the issue.

The issue is the criterion by which we decide what is the true Church. The approach in the Protestant case (because in Protestantism "apostolic succession", insofar as the term is used, is thought to refer fundamentally to the doctrine of the Apostles) is to interpret Scripture, while typically assuming sola scriptura, and work out what one thinks was the Apostles' doctrine, and then find a present-day community of persons who shares that doctrine, call them "the Church", and then join "the Church". That very same sort of approach can, though rarely, I think, lead persons to the Catholic Church.

But if a person becomes a Catholic only because he sees that the Catholic Church shares his own interpretation of Scripture, he is not truly a Catholic at heart; he's still a Protestant at heart. One does not rightly become a Catholic on the grounds that one happens to believe (at present) all that the Church teaches; one rightly becomes a Catholic by believing (as an act of faith) all that the Church teaches (even if not fully understanding), on the ground of the sacramental authority of the Magisterium of the Catholic Church. When we are received into the Catholic Church, we say before the bishop, "I believe and profess all that the holy Catholic Church believes, teaches, and proclaims to be revealed by God." We aren't saying that we just happen to believe Catholic doctrines, i.e. we are not merely reporting our present mental state vis-à-vis Catholic doctrine. We are making a confession of faith, an act of the will whereby we are submitting to the sacramental authority of the Church regarding what it is that she "believes, teaches, and proclaims to be revealed by God" on the ground of her sacramental magisterial authority in succession from the Apostles whom Christ Himself appointed and sent.

That is why those persons who decide to wait until they agree with all Catholic doctrines before becoming Catholic are thinking like a Protestant. They're not understanding the act of faith that one makes in becoming Catholic. They are still in the mindset of 'submitting' to church authority on matters of doctrine only when they agree (or mostly agree), or picking a "church" based on whether it teaches what they already believe. They are not recognizing the sacramental authority of the Catholic Church and the difference that sort of authority makes. They are treating the Catholic Church as if it were another denomination, a Protestant "ecclesial community", without Holy Orders from the Apostles. That approach is a form of rationalism, not fides quaerens intellectum (faith seeking understanding). "Faith seeking understanding" is possible only where submission is required, but strictly speaking, submission is not required wherever the identity and nature of the Church is determined and defined by one's own interpretation of Scripture.

So what exactly is the relevant difference between the Protestant picking out a Protestant denomination that fits his own interpretation of Scripture, and the Protestant adult who becomes Catholic for the right reason? In the former case, the individual works out a set of doctrines from Scripture, and then seeks out those persons who are presently teaching according to that set of doctrines, and joins their community and submits to them. In the latter case, by contrast, the individual finds in history those whom the Apostles appointed and authorized, observes what they say about the basis of the transmission of Magisterial authority, and then 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. In both cases the individual inquirer is using his intellect and will. But in the former case he is using his own determination of *doctrine* from his interpretation of Scripture to define and locate "the Church", but in the latter case he is using the *succession of sacramental authority* from the Apostles to locate the Church and then let the Church tell him what is and is not orthodox doctrine.

Michael Brown on "Sola Scriptura or Scriptura Solo"

I recently read Michael Brown's "Sola Scriptura or Scriptura Solo". What I say below is a reply to his post. (On a related note, my post on Keith Mathison's The Shape of Sola Scriptura can be found here.)

Michael claims that the sola scriptura position is not "me-and-my-own-interpretation-is-authoritative". He claims that sola scriptura advocates read and interpret the Bible "with the church". Sola scriptura advocates, he claims, are not biblicists. Their position, according to Michael, is not solo scriptura.

But when you ask sola scriptura advocates what exactly they are referring to by 'church', they will eventually answer with something semantically equivalent to "whoever reads and interprets the Bible just like I do, or at least pretty close to just like I do". And if you ask them, "Which creeds, confessions and historical theology are authoritative?", their ultimate answer is semantically equivalent to "those creeds and confessions and historical theology that agree with me-and-my-own-interpretation-of-Scripture." Some will answer this latter question by claiming that they follow those creeds and confessions and historical theology that were put forward by "the church". But, again, when you ask them what exactly they are referring to by 'church', you find eventually that their ultimate answer is semantically equivalent to "whoever reads and interprets the Bible just like I do, or at least pretty close to just like I do." Sometimes sola scriptura advocates appeal to Protestant confessions like the Westminster Confession or the Belgic Confession. But if you ask them why they believe those confessions to be authoritative, and not, say, the Council of Trent, you will eventually find an answer semantically equivalent to "because those confessions [or those who wrote them] interpret the Bible just like I do, or at least pretty close to just like I do." This is what I have previously called "painting a magisterial target around one's interpretive arrow", like shooting an arrow into a wall, and then painting a target around one's arrow to make it look as if one shot a bullseye.

Advocates of sola scriptura distinguish their position from that of biblicists by claiming that biblicists practice solo scripture. And I imagine that most self-described advocates of sola scriptura are not biblicists in the I-only-use-Scripture sense. But this distinction [between sola scriptura and biblicism/solo scripture] is not relevant to the fundamental authority problem of solo scriptura. That is because for both sola scriptura and solo scriptura/biblicism, the individual remains the final interpretive [of both Scripture and Tradition] authority.

This is more difficult for advocates of sola scriptura to see about themselves, because by claiming that the Church is the final authority [where 'Church' is defined as "whoever reads and interprets the Bible just like I do, or at least pretty close to just like I do"] they create a semantic and social layer between themselves and their treatment of themselves as their own ultimate interpretive authority.

According to Michael, biblicism, but not sola scriptura, encourages people not to "subject themselves to any theological or ecclesiastical authority that might be contrary to their own interpretation." But if you ask sola scriptura proponents to whom they themselves subject their interpretations, you will soon discover that the answer is "those who interpret Scripture mostly or entirely like I do." So in this respect, there is no principled difference between sola scriptura and biblicism.

Michael likewise criticizes biblicists for attempting to restore primitive Christianity. He claims that early-American biblicists wrongly rejected systems of theology because they suspected them as "likely perversion[s] of genuine biblical truth". But sola scriptura advocates typically use quite the same rationale [i.e. restoring primitive Christianity] to reject Catholic doctrines, and have been doing so since leaving the Catholic Church in the sixteenth century. They are no less suspicious than biblicists of uniquely Catholic doctrines, generally treating them as "likely perversions of genuine biblical truth". So here again there is no principled difference between the biblicist and the proponent of sola scriptura.

Michael also claims that in the sola scriptura paradigm, "the church does not give individuals license to think and say whatever they want". But apparently this did not apply to the first Protestants, who thought and said whatever they wanted, thumbing their noses at the Pope and the Catholic bishops under whose ecclesial authority they were. Conveniently, once the early Protestant figures had thumbed their noses at the existing ecclesial authorities, they then refused to allow their *own* followers the "license to think and say" whatever those followers wanted. But one can't have it both ways. If it is a disobedient act of rebellion to think and say whatever we want in defiance of ecclesial authority, then Protestantism is built on a disobedient act. But if rebellion against ecclesial authority is permissible for Protestants in the sixteenth century, then there is no non-arbitrary reason why it must be wrong now. Protestantism is built on this fundamental contradiction: "We rebelled, but you [Protestants] mustn't rebel against us. Our rebellion was justified because the Church was wrong, but you must not rebel against us because we are right."

But the obvious question is "Says who?" The Catholic Church of Luther's time also taught that she was right and that Catholics like Luther should obey the Church's Magisterium. So the contemporary Protestant who insists that Protestants should obey [and not rebel against] their Protestant leaders because Protestants "are right", is saying exactly what the Catholic Church of Luther's time said. So why is rebellion in one case wrong and in the other case right? "Because we [Protestants] are right," comes the reply. But that, obviously, just begs the question. If rebellion is justified when the subordinate thinks the superior is incorrect, then, contra Michael, when Protestants disagree with their pastors, they have the license to think and say whatever they want. They may leave and start their own denomination if they want.

So there is a contradiction between the claim by advocates of sola scriptura that Protestants must submit to the Church, and the actions by the first Protestants on which Protestantism is founded. That contradiction manifests itself more and more over time, because people start to realize that the "don't rebel" position as taught by Protestant 'authorities' is ad hoc. If Luther can do it, why can't I? That is why there is no principled difference with respect to one's relation to ecclesial authority between sola scriptura and solo scriptura -- in both, the individual is his own final authority. The former hides it by including lesser 'authorities' (i.e. creeds, confessions, pastors, historical theology) which are hand-picked by the individual in virtue of their agreement with his own interpretation.

Michael claims that "the Bible was never meant to be interpreted apart from pastoral guidance". He claims that "the Reformers denied the autonomy of the conscience in private, subjectivist interpretation." But Luther didn't agree when it came to his own actions; he spurned the pastoral guidance of his bishop and the bishop of Rome. Here is what Luther said 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 is saying there that he has bound his conscience to his own interpretation of the Scripture. So this is the problem for the defender of sola scriptura. If Luther can do it, and Luther is the father of Protestantism, then Luther's heirs can do it. But if it was not right for Luther to do it, then the Protestant separation from the Catholic Church is built on a fundamental error on Luther's part. The Reformers did deny the autonomy of the conscience of private, subjectivist interpretation for their followers, but they did not deny the autonomy of the conscience of private, subjectivist interpretation for themselves. Yet one can't have it both ways; contraries cannot be held together. That is why even if among Protestants submission to ecclesial authority continued for centuries because of a kind of intertia of Catholic practice and thought, the individual-as-authority kept becoming more and more explicit within Protestantism. It dominates the Protestant scene today in the form of individualism and ecclesial consumerism.

Michael writes:

Tragically, however, things have not changed for the better. As Hatch chillingly points out, "Americans continue to maintain their right to shape their own faith and to submit to leaders they have chosen." The result of eighteenth and nineteenth century biblicism has been a church that increasingly looks less like New Testament Christianity and more like the egalitarian culture in which she lives. Populist hermeneutics and privatized, experiential religion has continuously had wide appeal to the American individualistic ethos. The "chronological arrogance," to borrow C.S. Lewis’ maxim, of disparaging tradition and centuries of theologizing persists with cavalier vigor.

What Michael describes is something that belongs to the essence of Protestantism, even though many Protestants do not recognize that to be so. "I am my own interpretive authority" is part of the essence of Protestantism precisely because Protestantism is founded upon such acts [in defiance of the Church] by the early Protestants themselves. The legitimacy of Protestantism and its separation from the Catholic Church hangs on those acts. If those acts were wrong, then Protestantism (as such) should not exist; Protestants should be in the Catholic Church, and not in schism from her.

Michael continues:

It is in this tempestuous sea of autonomy that creeds and confessions act as an anchor to the ship of Christianity.

But if one picks as one's 'authorities' only those creeds or confessions [or makes new creeds and confessions] that agree with one's own interpretation of Scripture, one is far more likely to be anchoring oneself not to the "ship of Christianity" but to the ship of heresy and schism. Merely adhering to creeds and confessions is not sufficient to anchor one to the ship of Christianity. Heretics can do that by picking and choosing for themselves which creeds and confessions to 'submit' to, and by composing their own confessions and then 'submitting' to them. What heretics have had in common, from the time of the early church, is determining for themselves what is the "true doctrine", and then defining "the Church" as those who teach the "true doctrine". But what anchors us to the ship of Christianity is adhering to the Church that Christ founded, and then submitting to *her* teaching as the true doctrine. The former approach leads to myriads of heresies. The latter approach leads to the one orthodoxy, for there is only one orthodoxy.

The very first Christians did not determine which persons were Christ's Apostles by seeing who taught what they themselves thought must have been Christ's gospel. They determined what Christ's gospel was by finding those whom Christ sent, and then listening to their teaching. And the second generation of Christians did not determine which persons were the bishops by determining who believed and taught what they themselves thought was Christ's gospel, but rather by finding those whom the Apostles had authorized and sent, and then listening to their teaching. And the third generation of Christians did the same. That is the way Christ set up the Church. There was never a time when the bishops said, "Ok, now that the New Testament has been written and the canon settled, we are going to change the way things operate. From now on, the rightful bishops are no longer to be determined by listening to those whom we ordain in sacramental succession from the Apostles, but instead by finding those who agree with your own interpretation of Scripture." In 200 AD we see Tertullian refuting the heretics precisely by pointing out that they do not have the authoritative interpretation of Scripture. But what Tertullian says there also applies to Luther's interpretation of Scripture, and thus to the whole of Protestantism. Luther and Protestantism define "the Church" based not on sacramental succession from the Apostles but rather on agreement with their [i.e. Protestants] own interpretation of Scripture. However, we find such a practice earlier in Church history only among the heretics.

The reconciliation and reunion of Protestants and the Catholic Church depends fundamentally on facing this issue of authority. There cannot be unity so long as people think that the identity of "the Church" is determined as "those who agree with me". There can be unity among Christians only when we recognize that the identity of the Church is determined by those whom Christ authorized, and those whom they authorized, and those whom they authorized, in perpetual succession to the present day. The identity and extent of the Church is determined by them. 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.

C. Michael Patton on sola scriptura

C. Michael Patton recently began a series of posts defending the Protestant belief called 'sola scriptura'. His first post on this subject says this about the Catholic position:

the Church itself is the final authority in all matters of faith and practice since it must define and interpret Scripture and Tradition.

With that one statement, he undermines his later claim that the sola scriptura position makes the Scripture the final authority in all matters of faith and practice. Why? Because if the Scripture's needing to be interpreted by the Church makes the Church the final authority, then the Scripture's needing to be interpreted by the individual Protestant makes the individual Protestant interpreter of Scripture his own final authority. And that conclusion is not compatible with Michael's claim that sola scriptura makes the Scripture the final authority.

One option for Michael, while retaining his position in the quotation cited above, is an ad hoc move: to claim that if the Church interprets Scripture, then the Church is the final authority, but if the individual interprets Scripture, then the individual is not the final authority. The problem with that position is that it is, ad hoc. The other option for Michael, while retaining his position in the quotation above, is to bite the bullet and grant that each Protestant is his own final authority, basically his own pope. The problem with that option is that it contradicts his claim that Scripture is the final authority. The third option, of course, [and the correct one] is either to abandon the argument he makes in the quotation above, or make a distinction between the two senses of 'final', as I explain below.

The mistake in Michael's argument is the univocal conception of "final". He assumes implicitly that final in the order of determination is final [i.e. highest] in the order of intrinsic authority. That would lead to reasoning such as this: if the Church is the buck-stopping point in the determination of what is orthodoxy and what is heresy, then the Church has more intrinsic authority than the Word of God. But nothing can have more authority than the Word of God. Therefore, the Church isn't the buck-stopping point in the determination of what is orthodoxy and what is heresy. Such a perspective fails to see the possibility of the Magisterium being the servant of the Word of God (CCC 86), and having the authoritative interpretation of Scripture and the authoritative determination of what is orthodoxy and what is heresy. It fails to conceive of the possibility of authoritative hierarchy.

If we applied this way of thinking to the relation between the Father, the Son, and ourselves, it would mean that Jesus can't be the interpreter to us of what the Father is saying, without making Jesus the authority over the Father. But that is clearly false. Being the "authority of" is not the same thing as being the "authority over". Jesus is the authority to us concerning what the Father is saying. But Jesus is not an authority over the Father; He is an authority under the Father (see here), while being homoousious with the Father. Likewise, the Church is not greater in authority than the Word of God written in the Scriptures, but the Church is the authority to us *of* the meaning of the Scriptures, and of what is orthodox and what is heresy. Final in the order of authoritative determination is not the same as final in the order of intrinsic authority. Michael's argument fails to take note of that distinction, and thus creates [for his own position] the dilemma of being either ad hoc or contradictory [i.e. claiming that Scripture is the final authority but also entailing that each individual interpreter is his own final authority].

Lord Jesus, please help Protestants and Catholics better understand each other, and be reconciled in true unity. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Monocausalism and sola scriptura

Many Protestants think that sola scriptura is the only proper way of treating the Bible as God's Word. To deny sola scriptura, it seems to them, would be to put the words of mere men on par with the Word of God. And that, obviously, would belittle and reduce the Word of God, treating it as something less than it actually is, i.e. the infallible Word of God. If we do not distinguish the authoritative difference between the Word of God and the words of mere men, then we are performatively denying the ontological difference between God and mere men. And thus it seem to such Protestants that the denial of sola scriptura is either a kind of performative atheism that implicitly denies the existence of Someone who speaks with more authority than that of mere men, or, what is the same, a kind of blasphemy that raises the words of mere men to be equal in authority to those of God. That is commonly how the issue of sola scriptura is conceived of in the minds of many Protestants, in my experience.

But as I argued here, that is a misunderstanding of what sola scriptura is, and what it denies. Such a characteriziation misrepresents the nature of the disagreement between Protestants and the Catholic Church on this subject. Here is what surprises most Protestants: The Catholic Church has just as high a view of Scripture as do Protestants. For Catholics, as for Protestants, the Bible is the inspired and infallible Word of God. Concerning the books of the Bible the first Vatican Council taught (De Catholica Fide 2.7):

These books the Church holds to be sacred and canonical not because she subsequently approved them by her authority after they had been composed by unaided human skill, nor simply because they contain revelation without error, but because, being written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God as their author, and were as such committed to the Church.

And Pope Leo XIII, in section 20 of Providentissimus Deus, wrote:

But it is absolutely wrong and forbidden, either to narrow inspiration to certain parts only of Holy Scripture, or to admit that the sacred writer has erred. For the system of those who, in order to rid themselves of these difficulties, do not hesitate to concede that divine inspiration regards the things of faith and morals, and nothing beyond, because (as they wrongly think) in a question of the truth or falsehood of a passage, we should consider not so much what God has said as the reason and purpose which He had in mind in saying it-this system cannot be tolerated. For all the books which the Church receives as sacred and canonical, are written wholly and entirely, with all their parts, at the dictation of the Holy Ghost; and so far is it from being possible that any error can co-exist with inspiration, that inspiration not only is essentially incompatible with error, but excludes and rejects it as absolutely and necessarily as it is impossible that God Himself, the supreme Truth, can utter that which is not true. This is the ancient and unchanging faith of the Church, solemnly defined in the Councils of Florence and of Trent, and finally confirmed and more expressly formulated by the Council of the Vatican.

So if the Catholic Church affirms the inspiration and infallibilty of Scripture, then what is the difference between the Catholic and Protestant positions on the issue of sola scriptura? Let's take a look. The Catholic Church affirms that God has said everything in His Word, who is Christ, (CCC 65), and that there will be no further Revelation until the return of Christ. (CCC 66). According to the Catholic Church the revelation of Christ was given to the Apostles, who handed on the gospel of Christ in two ways: orally and in writing. (CCC 76) So one important difference between the Protestant sola scriptura position and that of the Catholic Church is that Protestants generally believe that whatever Christ wanted Christians to know was written down by the Apostles in the New Testament. Some Protestants claim that if the Apostles had thought something important for subsequent generations of Christians to know, they would have written it down. So, goes their reasoning, whatever the Apostles didn't write down must not have been necessary for us to know. The disagreement here between Protestants and Catholics is not about the authority of the Word of God. Both agree that the Word of God is the highest authority in the Church. (cf. CCC 86) The first disagreement relevant to sola scriptura concerns whether the Word of God was also handed down orally or not. The Catholic Church claims that Christ's gospel was handed down both orally and in writing (CCC 82), and Protestants deny that it was handed down orally (or claim that oral transmission cannot be trusted, and so in practice we cannot rely on the oral tradition). So one Protestant construal of the sola in sola scriptura is that the Word of God is found only in Scripture. According to this notion, the Word of God is not found anywhere else other than in Scripture.

But the second disagreement relevant to sola scriptura is no less important. It may be even more important. This disagreement concerns not *where* the Word of God is found (i.e. only in the Scripture), but *how* the Word of God is found. The Catholic Church teaches that in order to preserve the gospel, the Apostles left bishops as their successors and gave to these bishops their teaching authority, with the command to preserve this teaching authority through the laying on of hands in a continual succession until the end of time. (CCC 77) This living teaching authority is called the "Magisterium". According to the Catholic Church:

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. (CCC 85)

The Protestant position, on the question of *how* the Word of God is to be found, is that Scripture is self-interpreting (this is called the perspicuity of Scripture)(cf. WCF 1.9), and that the Holy Spirit has the authoritative interpretation of Scripture (cf. WCF1.10). This is the second construal of the sola in the Protestant conception of sola scriptura. This way of conceiving sola scriptura implicitly denies that the Apostles established a perpetual living teaching authority in the Church. It does this by asserting implicitly that only the [Holy Spirit speaking through the] Scripture-interpreted Scripture is ultimately authoritative. Since the Holy Spirit (not any mere man) has the authoritative interpretation of Scripture, and since we all have equal access to the self-interpreting Scriptures and the Holy Spirit, therefore any claim that some body of mere men has the authoritative teaching concerning the gospel and the authoritative interpretation of Scripture is an encroachment (it is thought) upon Scripture's highest authority. The verse commonly used here is Acts 5:29, "We must obey God rather than men." If this manner of thought was good enough for the Apostles, then it is good enough for us.

So what lies behind this disagreement? The Catholic Church agrees that when what God says is contrary to what men are saying, we must obey God rather than those men. But what we are talking about here is how we know in the first place what it is exactly that God is saying. The Catholic Church teaches that it is through the Magisterium descended in sacramental succession from the Apostles that we may know in the first place what God is saying, just as Philip explained to the Ethiopian eunuch what the Scripture was saying. The Magisterium "is not superior to the Word of God, but is its servant." (CCC 86) Protestants, on the other hand, believe that ultimately it is through our own [Holy Spirit and Scripture assisted] interpretation of Scripture that we know what God is saying. Of course many Protestants believe in various doctrines promulgated by the early Ecumenical Councils, but they do so not because they think of these Councils as authoritative, as shown by the fact that they reject anything in them they think is unbiblical (i.e. contrary to their own interpretation of Scripture). They accept the teachings of Ecumenical Councils only insofar as what a council teaches accords with the individual Protestant's interpretation of Scripture. And "if I accept what an authority says only when that authority agrees with me, then my authority is me."

So what I want to point out here is that the disagreement between Protestants and the Catholic Church is not about the authority of Scripture. Protestants and the Catholic Church both agree about the divine and supreme authority of Scripture. The disagreement between Protestants and the Catholic Church regarding sola scriptura is about the authority of the Magisterium. The Catholic Church teaches that the Magisterium has teaching and interpretive authority; Protestants deny this, placing their own [Holy Spirit and Scripture assisted] interpretation of Scripture above the authority of the Magisterium. That belief necessarily underlies their justification for their departure from the Catholic Church in the sixteenth century. In this way sola scriptura is fundamentally a negative judgment, i.e. either there is no Magisterium or the Magisterium has no authority over my own personal interpretation of Scripture, as assisted by the Holy Spirit and Scripture itself.

What's behind this? I discussed monocausalism recently here, and I want to point out how it applies to this second construal of sola scriptura. (Both construals can be held at the same time, by the way.) Monocausalism is implicit in the notion that if men are speaking, then it cannot be the Holy Spirit who is speaking. Or, in addition, if mere men have such teaching and interpretive authority, then this must detract from the authority of the Scripture, or the Scripture and these men must be equal in authority. The two authorities (i.e. Magisterium and Scripture) are conceived of as in competition in some sense. To recognize the authority of the Magisterium is to exalt mere men to the status of the Word of God. And that is blasphemous and dishonoring to the Scriptures.

The flaw of this monocausal view of authority becomes more clear when we think about the role of the Apostles and how we got the New Testament. The Apostles were mere men, and yet their teaching and preaching and writing was authoritative. Their interpretation of their own writings was the authoritative interpretation of their own writings. The Holy Spirit was speaking through them in what they preached and wrote. To recognize the authority of the Apostles was not to exalt mere men to the status of the Word of God. And that was true of the bishops whom the Apostles appointed. The bishops appointed by the Apostles were not themselves Apostles, and their writings were not divinely inspired the way the writings of the Apostles were. But the bishops' interpretation of the Apostles' writings was authoritative for all Christians. Where in the early centuries do we find the idea of placing one's own interpretation above that of the teaching and interpretation of the bishops? In the practices of the heretics. (See here and here.) When the bishops spoke in unison, that was the authoritative teaching of the Church, and if you disagreed with it based on your own interpretation of Scripture, then ipso facto your interpretation was heretical. "Heretical" did not merely mean "contrary to my own interpretation of Scripture", it meant contrary to the authoritative teaching of the Church, as determined by the bishops in communion with the successor of St. Peter. And that has never changed.

The Protestant attempt to distinguish sola scriptura from solo scriptura fails, as I have argued here, precisely because without a Magisterium, sola scriptura necessarily reduces to solo scriptura. If ecclesial authority does not derive its authority sacramentally from the Apostles, then it derives its authority democratically, according to its agreement with our own interpretation of Scripture. And that is precisely the great error that St. Paul warned would arise in the end times, when men would gather around themselves teachers who taught according to what their itching ears wanted to hear. (2 Tim 4:3) It is the ecclesial consumerism of our time.

To doubt the Apostles was to doubt Christ. "He who listens to you listens to Me; he who rejects you rejects Me; but he who rejects Me rejects Him who sent Me." (Luke 10:16) That was just as true of the bishops appointed by the Apostles as it was of the Apostles themselves. In order to have faith in Christ, one had to listen to and trust the Apostles, the bishops they appointed, and the bishops whom those bishops appointed, etc. To doubt the Apostles was to lack faith. And so likewise, to doubt and distrust the bishops they appointed is to lack faith. Today is the feast day of St. Thomas the Apostle, sometimes called "doubting Thomas". He said, "Unless I see the nails marks in His hands and put my fingers where the nails where, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe it." (John 20:25) Jesus said to Thomas, "Because you have seen Me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed." (John 20:29) We are blessed who believe without having seen Jesus ourselves, but who believe on the basis of the testimony of those bishops in succession from the Apostles.

Sola scriptura is a formalization of a denial of the authority of the Magisterium, and thus a formalization of a lack of faith. It presents itself as exalting the authority of Scripture, but as I have shown, it has no higher view of Scripture than the Catholic Church has always had. In that way sola scriptura engages in false advertising, for it isn't what it advertises itself to be. It is essentially a denial of Magisterial authority, at best a lack of trust, at worst a form of rebellion. But it shouldn't surprise us that a form of rebellion would characterize itself as seeking to exalt God alone, for the chief rebel of all "masquerades as an angel of light". (2 Corinthians 11:14)

Lord Jesus, on this feast day of St. Thomas the Apostle, help our unbelief (Mark 9:24), that we may be one, as You and the Father are one.