Posted on 06/29/2015 7:52:55 AM PDT by Mercat
APOLOGIA
WHY I'M CATHOLIC: SOLA SCRIPTURA ISN'T LOGICAL, PART III 6/28/2015 3 Comments
Even though I've been writing for thirteen weeks now about an obscure Latin phrase (sola scriptura) and using some terms that are so out of vogue in our modern "what I feel is all that's real" world (for instance, "logical") I can't stress enough that I'm talking about something I experienced to the depths of my being. Something existential.
It was like the Northridge Earthquake. But this time it wasn't the foundation of my house moving and shifting and beginning to crumble; it was the foundation of my worldview. I was an evangelical Protestant minister and I was coming to the realization that Bible-only Christianity didn't make sense.
1. It didn't make scriptural sense.
The heart and soul of Sola scriptura was the conviction that when it comes to "revealed truths" -- truths that could only be known if God chose to reveal them -- I should accept only what I could see taught in the Bible. And yet sola scriptura itself did not seem to be taught in the Bible.
2. It didn't make historical sense.
On the question of how a believer knows what the true teachings of the faith are, my answer as an evangelical Protestant would have been: "The Bible -- nothing more, nothing less, and nothing else -- is all that is necessary for faith and practice." Read the Bible. Study the Bible.
But then I read the writings of the early Church and found the Fathers of Christianity quite simply speaking a different language. They spoke of the authority of Scripture. But then they also spoke of the apostolic teaching as something preserved in the Church through apostolic succession and that functioned as a lens through which the light of Scripture comes into focus and is correctly understood. The teaching of the Church [Origen of Alexandria wrote in 220-230 A.D.] has indeed been handed down through an order of succession from the Apostles, and remains in the Churches even to the present time. That alone is to be believed as the truth which is in no way at variance with ecclesiastical and apostolic tradition. Finally, the Fathers spoke of the authority of the Church to deal with controversies and formally decide and define matters of faith and practice.
I read what the great St Athanasius, the leader in the battle against the Arians in the 4th century, said about the first Ecumenical Council of the Church held in Nicea in 325 AD. But the word of the Lord which came though the ecumenical Synod at Nicea, abides forever.... Are they not then committing a crime in their very thought to gainsay so great and ecumenical a Council. What? "The word of the Lord which came through the ecumenical Synod at Nicea"? I was immediately reminded of Acts 15:28, where the decision of the Council of Jerusalem is described as being the decision of the Holy Spirit. "It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us..."
Whether I was looking at the New Testament or the early Church, the pattern was the same: Scripture, tradition, and a Church with the authority to define Christian teaching.
This is what Christianity believed and taught in its early centuries. It did not teach that the Bible is to be treated as the sole and sufficient infallible rule of faith and practice and that each believer has the right to decide for himself what it is teaching. This is not historical Christianity.
But there there more problems with sola scriptura.
3. It didn't make practical sense.
From the moment it became the rule of faith and practice for the Protestant movement, the result was theological chaos and division. "There are more beliefs than there are heads!" Luther complained.
And that was at the beginning. Now, after 498 years of sola scriptura, there are more Protestant sects, denominations, independent churches and fellowships than Luther ever dreamed would exist. It's frightening to imagine how many there would be if sola scriptura had been the belief and practice of the Church for the 1500 years previous to the Reformation.
The question was inescapable: Would the Lord Jesus really choose to build his one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church on this sort of foundation?
4. Finally, it didn't make logical sense
There was a contradiction at the heart of it.
How so? Well, in Protestantism only Scripture has binding authority and yet Scripture doesn't tell us which books are inspired and belong to Scripture. It follows that on the basis of "Scripture alone," we can't know which books are inspired and belong to Scripture.
Put another way, since only what is taught in Scripture is binding, this should mean the decision the Church came to on the canon of Scripture isn't "binding."
I realized that the exact New Testament I had in my Bible was based on decisions made by the Church's leadership, primarily at the Councils of Hippo and Carthage in 393 and 397 A.D. -- councils I would not as a Protestant have considered to be authoritative. I certainly would never have said I trusted the Holy Spirit to lead those councils to infallibly true conclusions.
So why did I treat the issue of the canon as though it has been infallibly decided?
How could I treat the issue of the canon as infallibly decided and at the same time reject the means by which it was decided as merely human and fallible?
And then the even more distressing implication began to creep its way into my mind: If the decision of the Church was fallible, why aren't Christians free to examine the tradition, explore the historical evidences and decide for themselves which books to include in their Bibles?
Well, from long experience as an Evangelical, I can tell you with a fair degree of conviction: The pastors of Protestant churches would go berserk if individual believers started researching the historical pedigree of the various Old and New Testament books, weighing the evidences, making their own decisions and creating their own Bibles. Or -- even worse! -- praying for the Holy Spirit’s guidance as to which books to keep and which ones to throw in the trash!
But is there any good reason for not allowing the right of private judgment with respect to the canon of Scripture once we've insisted on that right with respect to the meaning of Scripture?
I can think of a profoundly good practical reason: The chaos would be impossible to contain!
What I can't think of are reasons that cohere with the principle of sola scriptura. No. Protestants need to act as though the decisions of those councils were infallible even though they don't believe in the infallible decisions of councils. It's either that or skepticism.
*****
Some Protestant apologists have responded,
OK, we admit that as Protestants we can’t say that we know for sure. The best we can say is that on the basis of history and tradition – the evidences – odds are strong that we have the right books in our Bibles. We’re not going to agree with you Catholics that the Holy Spirit led the Church to an infallible decision. But that’s OK. All we claim is to have a “fallible collection of infallible books.”
With all due respect and affection, when you say your "collection" is fallible, isn't that the same thing as saying you don't know for sure that each book in the collection is the inspired Word of God?
Why not just be honest and say, “We don’t know for sure if all the books we have in our Bible are inspired and from God"? And when the Protestant minister stands in his pulpit to preach on Sunday morning, why not just be honest and say, “Thus saith the Lord... I hope"?
As Catholic apologist Peter Kreeft explains in his book Ecumenical Jihad, A fallible cause cannot produce an infallible effect. But the Church is the efficient cause of Scripture. She wrote it. She is also its formal cause: she defined its canon. Thus, if the Church is only fallible, her canon of Scripture is only fallible, and we do not know infallibly which books are Scripture, that is [which books are] infallible…. Thus sola scriptura undermines the authority of the very Scripture it exalts. Toward Catholicism
Of course this whole issue of the canon presents no problem for the Catholic worldview. After all, Catholics believe that God leads his Church into the recognition of the truth. Authority in Catholicism is rooted in Scripture, Tradition and the leading of the Holy Spirit through the Church -- especially through the Church's ordained leadership when it meets in council to formally define Christian teaching
But I think it's a massive and unanswerable problem for Protestantism.
More and more it seemed to me that I had a choice to make. Either Jesus established an authoritative Church on earth, or Christianity is reduced to billions of believers reading their Bibles and doing their best without really knowing for sure whether they're reading the right books, without really knowing whether the doctrines they hold are the same as those the apostles taught and first Christians believed.
Mulling these ideas over, my good friend Bill Galvan, who is also a fellow convert and Catholic apologist, once described the Protestant predicament: Isn’t it just, “the best you can do’? Aren’t Protestantism’s doctrinal formulations simply the ultimately doubtable result of doing the best you can do? Isn’t the landscape of Protestantism, with its countless denominations, simply the result of other people realizing the arbitrary nature of Protestant doctrinal formulations and going on to claim that they can do better than the best you could do?” It made sense to me that the kind of Church we see functioning in the New Testament -- an authoritative Church, a Church that can speak in his name -- is the kind of Church Christ would want.
It also happened to be the kind of Church the Catholic Church has always claimed to me.
3 Comments Yakobus6/29/2015 Ken, thanks for posting these. They are refreshingly thorough. A more recent defense of Sola Scriptura that I've encountered is Protestant theologians (Reformed mainly) Attempting a compromise by saying that "Sola Scriptura" is not just "me and my Bible" but rather requires that person to submit to a local church authority. They label "me and my Bible alone" as "Solo Scriptura" which they reject. Others are suggesting an "authority in many years of tradition" idea as well. So they admit a sort of Church Traditional authority but suggest it took longer than Catholics believe. I have my own defenses about these ideas but I would like to read your treatment of them whether in reply or even a new post. Reply Yakobus6/29/2015 Also, I've encountered some who readily admit that the councils decided the canon and weighed it by apostolic tradition as a measure. Ravi Zacharias (a brilliant apologist) being one of them. For them this doesn't present a problem. But for me it's simple math. For them, (-) + (-) = (+): Council (-) + Tradition (-) = Scripture (+). It's simply not possible. For Catholics/Orthodox/Oriental, (+) + (+) = (+): Council (+) + Tradition (+) = Scripture (+). Reply Decaon George Sartor6/29/2015 Ken, I am thoroughly enjoying your posts! I had the pleasure to meet you in Massachusetts at the Catholic Apologetics Academy and I'd like to thank you again for your teaching. I recently listened to a debate on Sola Scriptura between James White and a well known Catholic apologist. Mr. White's entire argument for Sola Scriptura seemed to rest on only one scriptural passage, 2 Timothy 3: 16-17. He kept emphasizing that since the Greek text is translated that all scripture is 'God-breathed' and that this statement means that scripture is the highest authority and fully sufficient as a rule of faith. The Catholic Apologist, whom you know very well, did well to refute it. My question is how prevalent is that passage from Timothy for Protestants for use as a defense of Sola Scriptura and are there any others that they try to use as a defense for this doctrine? Thanks and God bless!
Ha ha, that's rich. How about the Catholic's fallible collection of infallible teaching?
Or better yet, please explain the nobility and manly act of suicide as described in Second Maccabees.
Besides, that statement is a straw man. When determining canon, there was a set of criteria. The books in the collection passed the criteria. We have the witness of Christians since the beginning to testify to the validity of canon and we have the promise of the Holy Spirit as our helper. The promises were made to Christians, not to the Catholic Church.
About the various points... They have been answered many times.
Scriptural sense? Please. The speakers at the time had authority. After they died, their writing had authority.
Historical sense? Read the early church fathers. They always quote scripture. Tradition is useful, but it is subjugated to scripture.
Practical sense? It is the rule of the Christian faith. People don't get to make stuff up. Either it can be backed up by scripture, or it can't. And even when it can be backed up with scripture, that defense has to be sound with the rest of scripture. That some twist scripture to their own ends is scriptural. But the solution given in scripture is not to look towards Rome, but to look towards scripture.
Logical sense? Have you ever heard of the telephone game? Information written down is always more reliable that passed from person to person. Why is it more believable to say that the Holy Spirit will preserve the teaching of the Catholic Church than to say that the Holy Spirit was with the group of Christians that used a rigorous set of criteria to determine canon and that canon has been repeatedly confirmed throughout history.
Logical sense? The scriptures are always true. The teaching of the Catholic Church is always true when it's infallible, but there is no infallible guide to know when it's infallible. My favorite is with the current Pope, if he teaches something as infallible that clearly isn't, all you have to do is question his validity as Pope.
Thanks!
“Yet another ex-Protestant who never understood the meaning of “Sola Scriptura” and now argues against it.”
Define it for us then and please do so from some source with authority such as scripture itself (actually, no such definition exists but feel free to try) or some sort of confessional document from a body of Protestant Christians. Thanks in advance.
Who established the criteria? When you say “the beginning” do you mean Luther or Peter? Is it your position that Roman Catholics are not Christians?
Do your own homework, there is this great invention called “google” now that means you don’t even have to go to the library!
Your post is WHY I’M CATHOLIC: SOLA SCRIPTURA ISN’T LOGICAL...
Yet Jesus ministry was solo scriptural...
and he was branded a heretical and a blasphemer by the “Church” of.his day...just like you try to brand Protestants the don’t follow the Catholic Church ....its was the Sanhedrin that put Jesus on trial....
bookmark
“Do your own homework, there is this great invention called “google” now that means you don’t even have to go to the library!”
But that’s exactly the point: I have done my homework and all the various confessional type statements about sola scriptura (i.e. those that are the most commonly taught by denominations over time) all fail as workable tools. When Catholics at FR bring up sola scriptura - according to how it is actually stated, defined and used in the Protestant world we are often told that we don’t understand sola scriptura. It seems Protestants here use “sola scriptura” in such a way that it isn’t whatever the Catholic just said it was even when the Catholic is using a Protestant source for the definition.
I missed the part where Jesus told the Apostles to go out and write a book. He did read from scripture and was obviously well versed in the scripture but he didn’t write the New Testament.
This is from Catholic Answers:
In John 10:22, Jesus celebrated the Jewish feast of the Dedication of the Temple, also known as Hannukah. But the command to celebrate this feast is found only in 1 Maccabees 4:56–59 and 2 Maccabees 10:5-8. That’s a Deuterocanonical book.
Jesus took this occasion to teach that He also had been specially dedicated by God (in John 10:34-36). If the Feast of Dedication was not a biblical feast, then this passage is not consistent with the rest of the Gospel of John, which thematically portrays Jesus teaching the Jews about Himself at the major biblical feasts that the Jews kept (see John 5:1-47, John 6:4-51, John 7:2-38, John 10:22-39, John 11:56—12:33).
Another place where Jesus cites a Deuterocanonical book is in Luke 21:20-24, where He says, “When Jerusalem is surrounded by armies, then you will know that its desolation is near... For this is the time of punishment that fulfills all that has been written... Many shall fall by the edge of the sword.”
This is an allusion to Sirach 28:14-18: “Slander has shaken many, and scattered them from nation to nation, and destroyed strong cities, and overturned the houses of great men. ... Many have fallen by the edge of the sword.”
Sirach 28:14-18 is not usually thought of as a prophecy. It is discussing the dangers of the tongue, including slander. But Jesus used a phrase from its text to describe the sack of Jerusalem that would happen about 40 years later, and he specifically says that it is written somewhere that this would happen. It seems He is talking about Sirach (for the source of that phrase) and some other more clear prophesy (I think there’s one in Daniel about the sack of Jerusalem happening soon after the Messiah appears, so maybe it’s that one). Anyway, this shows us that Jesus wasn’t afraid to use a phrase from Sirach as a prophetic text regarding the sack of Jerusalem, and it indicates that He thought Sirach was inspired. (It also may not be coincidental that the Sirach context says that slander has “destroyed strong cities and overturned the houses of great men.” That may be a vague prophesy, and Jesus may be saying that it applies to Jerusalem.)
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“When Catholics at FR bring up sola scriptura - according to how it is actually stated, defined and used in the Protestant world we are often told that we don’t understand sola scriptura. It seems Protestants here use “sola scriptura” in such a way that it isn’t whatever the Catholic just said it was even when the Catholic is using a Protestant source for the definition.”
I’ve never seen a Catholic around here use an actual valid Protestant source for their definitions. They either pull a definition out of their own nether regions, or they find a poor, misinformed ex-Protestant like the author, and get them to cite a mangled remembrance of the principle.
I’m not trying to “brand” anyone.
“But then I read the writings of the early Church and found the Fathers of Christianity quite simply speaking a different language. They spoke of the authority of Scripture. But then they also spoke of the apostolic teaching as something preserved in the Church through apostolic succession and that functioned as a lens through which the light of Scripture comes into focus and is correctly understood.”
There you have it. Buy into that and you are now unmoored from the God-breathed Word. The “Fathers of Christianity”? I know not what it means. I’ve heard of THE Father.
“They spoke of the authority of Scripture. But then...”
This man is NOT going to Scripture. He’s been lured away from it. Tradition is the lens through which SCRIPTURE is properly interpreted? No sale. You can obsess over terms such as “Protestant” and “sola scriptura” all day, but what is the Truth? How does one know definitively, so as to not be found in a lie?
I hold every teacher’s words up to Scripture, period.
“I’ve never seen a Catholic around here use an actual valid Protestant source for their definitions.”
Well, I know I’ve done it in the past. I used the definition from CARM for instance not too long ago and that is not the only one I have used: http://www.equip.org/article/what-is-sola-scriptura/
And the discussion usually ends up like this: http://209.157.64.200/focus/religion/3283268/replies?c=69
or this:
http://209.157.64.200/focus/religion/3250227/replies?c=109
or this:
http://209.157.64.200/focus/religion/3216634/replies?c=106
“They either pull a definition out of their own nether regions, or they find a poor, misinformed ex-Protestant like the author, and get them to cite a mangled remembrance of the principle.”
Well, what you just said there doesn’t apply to anything I’ve ever done so what will you say now?
All the replies you post there show you don’t understand the doctrine. It doesn’t really matter what source you’ve posted a definition from if you just go and run with your own personal conception of what it is anyway.
Let keep it simple......was Jesus’ ministry solo scriptural or not?..
I guess I don’t know what that means?
Did you not post an article titled
WHY I'M CATHOLIC: SOLA SCRIPTURA ISN'T LOGICAL, PART III
Yet you now say you DO NOT KNOW what SOLA SCRIPTURA means????!!!!
I apologize if my reply seemed terse
“Let keep it simple......was Jesus’ ministry solo scriptural or not?..” OK, it’s this sentence that I don’t understand. I don’t know what you’re asking. Are you asking whether Jesus was a Lutheran?
I do know he celebrated the dedication of the temple which was a Maccabee observance. He read from Isaiah. He made a lot of other references to scripture and at times said, “It is written but I tell you _______________.”
He obviously said a lot of things which were not in the “scriptures” which were available for Jesus to read at the time.
He quoted psalms from the cross. So I guess I’m missing your point. I really am not trying to be obtuse.
The article states Sola Scripture is not logical... And uses that to defendant that the Catholic Church is the only true church because they do not believe in Sola Scripture ....so what is it?.....
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