Why I'm Catholic, Sola Scriptura isn't Logical III

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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

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!

Why don’t you describe it. Sola scriptura means “only scripture” in Latin. The Latin word scriptura means writing. Sola means only. I referenced Luther because I think he coined the phrase. I can cut and paste the Wikipedia definition but you can do that. So again I ask, where in the Gospel did Jesus say, “go forth and teach all nations, writing down books and excluding others”? The first century was a world where although there was the written word, a lot of oral tradition still survived.

I’m now thinking of the movie, A Few Good Men where Cathey is doing re-direct on one of the witnesses, a regular marine from the post where Willie was killed. Kevin Bacon had just asked him to show where in the Marine code or in the military code he could find the term “code red.” He couldn’t. On redirect, Cathey asked him to show in either set of codes where the regs were on the location of the mess hall. He couldn’t but admitted that he ate “three squares” a day and had no trouble finding the mess hall. I go to church to be fed so this is an apt analogy for me. If that Marine had only acted based upon the marine and military code books, he would have starved to death.

So I don’t know whether that’s helpful but it is my rather inadequate response to what I think is your question.

Fine.. you know the meaning...

now back to the question ...

In Jesus’s ministry on earth would his teaching be described as Sola scriptura...I'm not saying he taught a doctrine of it Im saying his teaching was a demonstration of it before the word was coined...

as opposed to the Catholic concept of having the centralized church being the final authority...which in Jesus day would have been the Sanhedrin...that put Jesus for blasphemy for not following in their authority.....

Was Jesus ministry was a demonstration of Protestant to the Central Church authority of his day..

I'm not saying he was a Protestant “the domination” I'm saying he's a demonstration of the concept protestant to the Central Church authority...

he was put on trial for blasphemy by that authority...so somebody had power to get him execute for not saying what he was supposed to be saying per the religious leader of his day

“In Jesus’s ministry on earth would his teaching be described as Sola scriptura...I’m not saying he taught a doctrine of it Im saying his teaching was a demonstration of it before the word was coined...”

The only time that we know that Jesus wrote was when he was telling the people “let he who is without sin caste the first stone.” So the whole scriptura thing didn’t apply. He was telling people things through parables and example and using the culture, the traditions, and the writings of the Hebrew people.

“as opposed to the Catholic concept of having the centralized church being the final authority...which in Jesus day would have been the Sanhedrin...that put Jesus for blasphemy for not following in their authority.....”

God is the final authority. The Body of Christ is the Church and the Bride of Christ. Here are the events of the Passion of Christ. The agony in the garden where Jesus experiences all the sins of everyone past, present, and future; the betrayal by Judas - probably the one person he knew who could approach him in intellect; the trial of the Sanhedrin - his immediate community where he had been worshiping for his entire life - remember - he was presented at the temple, he stayed there when he was 12, he came up to Jerusalem several times a year to observe the feasts as ordered. He knew these people. This was his way of showing us that we cannot rely on human beings, no matter what their titles and institutions, for salvation; He then had to be betrayed by his government. He had lived his entire life under the Romans. No love lost but still another loss and another way that he modeled to us not to rely on our government. These events were all part of his Passion so do I count on my Pope or my bishop to bring me salvation? No. My relationship is directly with Jesus. But my Church with all its sinners and faults is my way to the enrichment of my faith. It is there that I am fed.

“Was Jesus ministry was a demonstration of Protestant to the Central Church authority of his day..

I’m not saying he was a Protestant “the domination” I’m saying he’s a demonstration of the concept protestant to the Central Church authority...

he was put on trial for blasphemy by that authority...so somebody had power to get him execute for not saying what he was supposed to be saying per the religious leader of his day”

I think I already answered this. Protestants spend a lot of time afraid of Rome and of the Virgin Mary. I’m not sure why but still they are. I am blessed to be a Catholic so easily having been born into the faith. But every day I review the history and the traditions. I see nothing inconsistent with the scriptures. I have the faith but also the sacraments and the communion of saints to help me on my faith journey. I rejoice that I have the Church Fathers and the saints and Mary and especially that as Jesus ordered us to do, I can eat his body and drink his blood and become part of him as he is part of me. A “stumbling block” I know but there it is.

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