LOGIC AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF PROTESTANTISM

I had had some firsthand experience with several denominations (Presbyterian, Anglican, Lutheran, Methodist) and was far from certain as to which of them (if any) had an overall advantage over the others. So I began to think, study, search, and pray. Was there a true Church? If so, how was one to decide which?

The more I studied, the more perplexed I became. At one stage my elder sister, a very committed evangelical with somewhat flexible denominational affiliations, chided me with becoming "obsessed" with trying to find a "true Church." "Does it really matter?" she would ask. Well, yes it did. It was all very well for a lay Protestant to relegate the denominational issue to a fairly low priority amongst religious questions: lay people can go to one Protestant Church one week and another the next week and nobody really worries too much. But an ordained minister obviously cannot do that. He must make a very serious commitment to a definite Church community, and under normal circumstances that commitment will be expected to last a lifetime. So clearly that choice had to be made with a deep sense of responsibility; and the time to make it was before, not after, ordination.

As matters turned out, my search lasted several years, and eventually led me to where I never suspected it would at first. I shall not attempt to relate the full story, but will focus on just one aspect of the question as it developed for me—an aspect which seems quite fundamental.

As I groped and prayed my way towards a decision, I came close to despair and agnosticism at times, as I contemplated the mountains of erudition, the vast labyrinth of conflicting interpretations of Christianity (not to mention other faiths) which lined the shelves of religious bookshops and libraries. If all the "experts" on Truth—the great theologians, historians, philosophers—disagreed interminably with each other, then how did God, if He was really there, expect me, an ordinary Joe Blow, to work out what was true?

The more I became enmeshed in specific questions of Biblical interpretation—of who had the right understanding of justification, of the Eucharist, Baptism, grace, Christology, Church government and discipline, and so on—the more I came to feel that this whole-line of approach was a hopeless quest, a blind alley. These were all questions that required a great deal of erudition, learning, competence in Biblical exegesis, patristics, history, metaphysics, ancient languages—in short, scholarly research. But was it really credible (I began to ask myself) that God, if He were to reveal the truth about these disputed questions at all, would make this truth so inaccessible that only a small scholarly elite had even the faintest chance of reaching it? Wasn’t that a kind of gnosticism? Where did it leave the nonscholarly bulk of the human race? It didn’t seem to make sense. If, as they say, war is too important to be left to the generals, then revealed truth seemed too important to be left to the Biblical scholars. It was no use saying that perhaps God simply expected the non-scholars to trust the scholars. How were they to know which scholars to trust, given that the scholars all contradicted each other?

Therefore, in my efforts to break out of the dense exegetical undergrowth where I could not see the wood for the trees, I shifted towards a new emphasis in my truth-seeking criteria: I tried to get beyond the bewildering mass of contingent historical and linguistic data upon which the rival exegetes and theologians constructed their doctrinal castles, in order to concentrate on those elemental, necessary principles of human thought which are accessible to all of us, learned and unlearned alike. In a word, I began to suspect that an emphasis on logic, rather than on research, might expedite an answer to my prayers for guidance.

The advantage was that you don’t need to be learned to be logical. You need not have spent years amassing mountains of information in libraries in order to apply the first principles of reason. You can apply them from the comfort of your armchair, so to speak, in order to test the claims of any body of doctrine, on any subject whatsoever, that comes claiming your acceptance. Moreover logic, like mathematics, yields firm certitude, not mere changeable opinions and provisional hypotheses. Logic is the first natural "beacon of light" with which God has provided us as intelligent beings living in a world darkened by the confusion of countless conflicting attitudes, doctrines and world-views, all telling us how to live our lives during this brief time that is given to us here on earth.

Logic of course has its limits. Pure "armchair" reasoning alone will never be able to tell you the meaning of your life and how you should live it. But as far as it goes, logic is an indispensable tool, and I even suspect that you sin against God, the first Truth, if you knowingly flout or ignore it in your thinking. "Thou shalt not contradict thyself" seems to me an important precept of the natural moral law. Be that as it may, I found that the main use of logic, in my quest for religious truth, turned out to be in deciding not what was true, but what was false. If someone presents you with a system of ideas or doctrines which logical analysis reveals to be coherent—that is, free from internal contradictions and meaningless absurdities—then you can conclude, "This set of ideas may be true. It has at least passed the first test of truth—the coherence test." To find out if it actually is true you will then have to leave your logician’s armchair and seek further information. But if it fails this most elementary test of truth, it can safely be eliminated without further ado from the ideological competition, no matter how many impressive-looking volumes of erudition may have been written in support of it, and no matter how attractive and appealing many of its features (or many of its proponents) may appear.

Some readers may wonder why I am laboring the point about logic. Isn’t all this perfectly obvious? Well, it ought to be obvious to everyone, and is indeed obvious to many, including those who have had the good fortune of receiving a classical Catholic education. Catholicism, as I came to discover, has a quite positive approach to our natural reasoning powers, and traditionally has its future priests study philosophy for years before they even begin theology. But I came from a religious milieu where this outlook was not encouraged, and was often even discouraged. The Protestant Reformers taught that original sin has so weakened the human intellect that we must be extremely cautious about the claims of "proud reason." Luther called reason the "devil’s whore"—a siren which seduced men into grievous error. "Don’t trust your reason, just bow humbly before God’s truth revealed to you in His holy Word, the Bible!"—this was pretty much the message that came through to me from the Calvinist and Lutheran circles that influenced me most in the first few years after I made my "decision for Christ" at the age of 18. The Reformers themselves were forced to employ reason even while denouncing it, in their efforts to rebut the Biblical arguments of their "Papist" foes. And that, it seemed to me, was rather illogical on their part.

Thus, with my awakening interest in logical analysis as a test of religious truth, I was naturally led to ask whether this illogicality in the practice of the Reformers was, perhaps, accompanied by illogicality at the more fundamental level of their theory. As a good Protestant I had been brought up to hold as sacred the basic methodological principle of the Reformation: that the Bible alone contains all the truth that God has revealed for our salvation. Churches that held to that principle were at least "respectable," one was given to understand, even though they might differ considerably from each other in regard to the interpretation of Scripture. But as for Roman Catholicism and other Churches which unashamedly added their own traditions to the Word of God—were they not self-evidently outside the pale? Were they not condemned out of their own mouths?

But when I got down to making a serious attempt to explore the implications of this rock-bottom dogma of the Reformers, I could not avoid the conclusion that it was rationally indefensible. This is demonstrated in the following eight steps, which embody nothing more than simple, commonsense logic, and a couple of indisputable, empirically observable facts about the Bible:

1. The Reformers asserted Proposition A: "All revealed truth is to be found in the inspired Scriptures." However, this is quite useless unless we know which books are meant by the "inspired Scriptures." After all, many different sects and religions have many different books, which they call "inspired Scriptures."

2. The theory we are considering, when it talks of "inspired Scriptures," means in fact those 66 books, which are bound and published in Protestant Bibles. For convenience we shall refer to them from now on simply as "the 66 books."

3. The precise statement of the theory we are examining thus becomes Proposition B: "All revealed truth is to be found in the 66 books."

4. It is a fact that nowhere in the 66 books themselves can we find any statements telling us which books make up the entire corpus of inspired Scripture. There is no complete list of inspired books anywhere within their own pages, nor can such a list be compiled by putting isolated verses together. (This would be the case: (a) if you could find verses like "Esther is the Word of God," "This Gospel is inspired by God," "The Second Letter of Peter is inspired Scripture," etc., for all of the 66 books; and (b) if you could also find a Biblical passage stating that no books other than these 66 were to be held as inspired. Obviously, nobody could even pretend to find all this information about the canon of Scripture in the Bible itself.)

5. It follows that Proposition B—the very foundation of all Protestant Christianity—is neither found in Scripture nor can be deduced from Scripture in any way. Since the 66 books are not even identified in Scripture, much less can any further information about them (e.g., that all revealed truth is contained in them) be found there. In short, we must affirm Proposition C: "Proposition B is an addition to the 66 books. "

6. It follows immediately from the truth of Proposition C that Proposition B cannot itself be revealed truth. To assert that it is would involve a self-contradictory statement: "All revealed truth is to be found in the 66 books, but this revealed truth itself is not found there."

7. Could it be the case that Proposition B is true, but is not revealed truth? If that is the case, then it must be either something which can be deduced from revealed truth or something which natural human reason alone can discover, without any help from revelation. The first possibility is ruled out because, as we saw in steps 4 and 5, B cannot be deduced from Scripture, and to postulate some other revealed extra-Scriptural premise from which B might be deduced would contradict B itself. The second possibility involves no self-contradiction, but it is factually preposterous, and I doubt whether any Protestant has seriously tried to defend it—least of all those traditional Protestants who strongly emphasize the corruption of man’s natural intellectual powers as a result of the Fall. Human reason might well be able to conclude prudently and responsibly that an authority which itself claimed to possess the totality of revealed truth was in fact justified in making that claim, provided that this authority backed up the claim by some very striking evidence. (Catholics, in fact, believe that their Church is precisely such an authority.) But how could reason alone reach that same well-founded certitude about a collection of 66 books which do not even lay claim to what is attributed to them? (The point is reinforced when we remember that those who attribute the totality of revealed truth to the 66 books, namely Protestant Church members, are very ready to acknowledge their own fallibility—whether individually or collectively—in matters of religious doctrine. All Protestant Churches deny their own infallibility as much as they deny the Pope’s.)

8. Since Proposition B is not revealed truth, nor a truth which can be deduced from revelation, nor a naturally-knowable truth, it is not true at all. Therefore, the basic doctrine for which the Reformers fought is simply false.

How did the Reformers try to cope with this fundamental weakness in the logical structure of their own first principles? John Calvin, usually credited with being the most systematic and coherent thinker of the Reformation, tried to justify belief in the divine authorship of the 66 books by dogmatically postulating a direct communication of this knowledge from God to the individual believer. Calvin makes it clear that in saying Scripture is "self-authenticated," he does not mean to be taken literally and absolutely. He does not mean that some Bible text or other affirms that the 66 books, and they alone, are divinely inspired. As we observed in step 4 above, nobody ever could claim anything so patently false. Calvin simply means that no extra-Biblical human testimony, such as that of Church tradition, is needed in order for individuals to know that these books are inspired. We can summarize his view as Proposition D: "The Holy Spirit teaches Christians individually, by a direct inward testimony, that the 66 books are inspired by God. "

The trouble is that the Holy Spirit Himself is an extra-Biblical authority as much as a Pope or Council. The third Person of the Trinity is clearly not identical with the truths He has expressed, through human authors, in the Bible. It follows that even if Calvin’s Proposition D is true, it contradicts Proposition B, for "if all revealed truth is to be found in the 66 books," then that leaves no room for the Holy Spirit to reveal directly and non-verbally one truth which cannot be found in any passage of those books, namely, the fact that each one of them is inspired.

In any case, even if Calvin could somehow show that D did not itself contradict B, he would still not have succeeded in showing that B is true. Even if we were to accept the extremely implausible view represented by Proposition D, that would not prove that no other writings are inspired, and much less would it prove that there are no revealed truths that come to us through tradition rather than through inspired writings. In short, Calvin’s defense of Biblical inspiration in no way overthrows our eight-step disproof of the sola Scriptura principle. Indeed, it does not even attempt to establish that principle as a whole, but only one aspect of it—that is, which books are to be understood by the term "Scriptura."

The schizoid history of Protestantism itself bears witness to the original inner contradiction which marked its conception and birth. Conservative Protestants have maintained the original insistence on the Bible as the unique infallible source of revealed truth, at the price of logical incoherence. Liberals on the other hand have escaped the incoherence while maintaining the claim to "private interpretation" over against that of Popes and Councils, but at the price of abandoning the Reformers’ insistence on an infallible Bible. They thereby effectively replace revealed truth by human opinion, and faith by an autonomous reason. Thus, in the liberal/evangelical split within Protestantism since the 18th century, we see both sides teaching radically opposed doctrines, even while each claims to be the authentic heir of the Reformation. The irony is that both sides are right: their conflicting beliefs are simply the two horns of a dilemma, which has been tearing at the inner fabric of Protestantism ever since its turbulent beginnings.

Reflections such as these from a Catholic onlooker may seem a little hard or unyielding to some—ill-suited, perhaps, to a climate of ecumenical dialogue in which gentle suggestion, rather than blunt affirmation, is the preferred mode of discourse. But logic is of its very nature hard and unyielding; and insofar as truth and honesty are to be the hallmarks of true ecumenism, the claims of logic will have to be squarely faced, not politely avoided.

Fr. Brian Harrison is currently teaching at the Pontifical University of Puerto Rico in Ponce.

Confessions to a priest...confessions of certain sins over others, confessions of any sin (remembered, realized or not) as a requirement to keep your salvation.

I'm curious how you interpret John 20:21-23:

"He said therefore to them again: Peace be to you. As the Father hath sent me, I also send you. 22 When he had said this, he breathed on them; and he said to them: Receive ye the Holy Ghost. 23 Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them: and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained."

That seems fairly clear that Christ instituted the sacrament of Penance. Is there another way to interpret it?

prayers to dead saints

Just to be clear, the Church does not require the faithful to ask for the intercession of the Saints - it is encouraged, but in no way required.

baptism into the Catholic Church

The Church recognizes all baptisms done in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit as valid baptisms into the Body of Christ.

The authority of the Church is not based solely on the renaming of Peter episode, but also, and, in fact, primarily on... (Mt 18)

Where is it stated that this is only to Peter?

Consider Matthew 18:18-20

“Assuredly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. “Again I say to you that if two of you agree on earth concerning anything that they ask, it will be done for them by My Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them.”

That doesn't sound exclusive to Peter. And you bind and loose using keys...

But what about the renaming episode?

Peter is the first who showed faith saying Jesus is God, and is granted the name as an echo of Jesus (the rock) as we are all in calling ourselves Christians (little Christs). The foundation is Christ, and the Church is built though belief as Peter showed in Matt. 16.

That seems fairly clear that Christ instituted the sacrament of Penance. Is there another way to interpret it?

But the Holy Spirit was passed on to others when they were baptized. Oh, I think you mean to ask about verse 23. This is the keys to the kingdom as before, which is the gospel message itself. It was Jesus' payment for our penalties that forgave all our sins, but we still had to hear it before we could accept that forgiveness. The message has power and refusing it to someone was up to them.

The Church recognizes all baptisms done in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit as valid baptisms into the Body of Christ.

Really. I heard differently, and that it was to such a point that Communion (Eucharist?) is refused to those baptized in Protestant denominations.

This is the keys to the kingdom as before, which is the gospel message itself. It was Jesus' payment for our penalties that forgave all our sins, but we still had to hear it before we could accept that forgiveness. The message has power and refusing it to someone was up to them.

See, I disagree here on it being the Keys. The Keys are explicitly mentioned as being handed to Peter. In both John and Matthew 18:18 the power of binding and loosing are mentioned without any explicit reference to the Keys. In Matthew, it is specific that Jesus conveys this power to all the Apostles before Peter again comes forward to speak one-on-one with Jesus. If the Keys were to be the Good News, why would that imagery appear only in a conversation explicitly between Jesus and Peter, and then neglected when the same power was passed to the other Apostles? Further, how do the Keys relate to Isaiah 22:22 where the "key to the House of David" is a symbol of authority?

Really. I heard differently, and that it was to such a point that Communion (Eucharist?) is refused to those baptized in Protestant denominations.

Baptism done in the name of the Trinity is valid - however, Protestants are denied the Holy Eucharist not due to an invalid baptism, but rather because they denied the Real Presence of Jesus Christ. Under John 6:54

"Then Jesus said to them: Amen, amen, I say unto you: except you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you"

Catholics believe that the Eucharist is the True Flesh and Blood of the Christ, in accordance with His Words. But that is a whole 'nother conversation...

Hmmmm, Gamecock . . . doesn’t quite sound like selective perception . . .

But there sure seems to be a lot of energetic diligence to do a lot of other . . . rather . . . dubious things. LOL.

Ahhhhh well, we Prottys should just keep our place and remember that we were created for target practice by the RC edifice . . . that !!!!TRADITIONAL!!!! monstrosity of political power mongering, history mangling, Bible mangling, cobbled together 300-400 years after Christ out of skillful political maneuvers and Roman military and economic might. Terribly righteous, those latter two. LOL.

/sar

Now look, Brother . . .

you have no right to be historically accurate!

You have no right to be Biblically accurate!

You have no right to be logical!

After all, the RC edifice magicsterical has spicked and therefore all else must remain silent.

After all, who knows when they might get their . . . dander . . . in an uproar and implement another Inquisition because everyone else didn’t believe the same lies they pretended to believe!

Sometimes, I think that it must be Monty Python’s ancestors who thunk up the Roman edifice. It’s almost too much of an evil farce to be real in too many corners of those lichen encrusted towers.

See, I disagree here on it being the Keys. The Keys are explicitly mentioned as being handed to Peter.

Well, if you want the specific word "keys", Jesus has them in Revelation 1:18. Maybe Peter gave them back. :-P

If the Keys were to be the Good News, why would that imagery appear only in a conversation explicitly between Jesus and Peter, and then neglected when the same power was passed to the other Apostles?

There's the problem with keeping the keys separate from binding and loosing. Bind and loose are associated directly with the keys in Matt. 16:18, and then he uses the same language in Matt 18:18, it has to be referencing the power of the Keys.

Further, how do the Keys relate to Isaiah 22:22 where the "key to the House of David" is a symbol of authority?

What was the point of the House of David? What was the point or the lineage of David? Jesus. He is the everlasting King in the line of David, and the authority. But what does he do? He asks us, starting with the disciples, to let others into the kingdom of God. What does He give for that purpose? A helper (the Holy Spirit) and Keys to the Kingdom of Heaven--the Gospel. Both are right next to each other in John 20:22-23.

“the RC edifice . . . that !!!!TRADITIONAL!!!! monstrosity of political power mongering, history mangling, Bible mangling, cobbled together 300-400 years after Christ”

Catholics are hardly Bible mangling. In fact, you can thank St. Jerome for translating the Holy Bible and the Catholic Church for authorizing the original canon of the Holy Word.

“300-400 years after Christ”

Actually Christ set up his Church with the Apostles He Chose and the first Pope, Peter. We Catholics are the original Church of Christ...you may want to be careful about mocking what Christ has initiated.

Peace be with you. Praise God for the graces he has bestowed upon you as a Protestant.

“We can’t save ourselves, only God can.”

Thank you.

Yes, indeed.

ALL facets of our Salvation, including our sanctification (the process by which we are made Holy) and our glorification, the eternal state in eternal heaven with Jesus Christ where we will glorify Jesus Christ together forever (ah, won’t that be wonderful!), are from God who works in us to will and to do of His good pleasure. Yes we are to “work out our salvation with fear and trembling”, knowing that it is God who is transforming us from within, who cleanses us from all sin as we confess our sins TO HIM, who renews our minds as we dwell on His Word, who conforms us to the image of His dear Son.

We walk by faith - meaning - we trust in the One who called us, who saved us, who is sanctifying us, who will glorify us - trusting in HIS FINISHED WORK on the Cross and in His Resurrection, trusting that when He says that when we are Born Again by the Holy Spirit, that we are, therefore, NEW CREATURES, walking in the power of the Resurrection Life He died to bring us.....He means it. We can believe Him. We walk by faith in what GOD SAYS (and Jesus Christ is GOD, the living Word).

Paul said this before there was a Roman Catholic church.

Sorry to jump in here so late - having to catch up on this thread.

I regret there is quite a bit of slinging vituperative remarks back and forth......but, then, I’ve not been on many of these types of threads - preferring to avoid the “debates” and concentrate on what unites us.

Sadly, our unChristian words to each other matter a great deal because we,who both claim to be Christians, belonging to Jesus Christ, are “discussing Christianity” before a watching world.

Later would like to retell a story upon which (perhaps) we can together rejoice - as those who belong to Jesus Christ! and who long to carry out Jesus’ command to take the Gospel to all the world, baptizing them and making disciples of all nations!

Next we'll be told it's idolatry to put flowers on Grandma's grave

Sounds like that very challenging task for some nutty cult reps to distinguish between

SAME

DIFFERENT

yet again.

I guess the intent of such preposterous assertions is to proudly proclaim how diligent folks are in worshipping Grandma . . . a la the Chinese?

I wasn't aware the nutty RC edifice cult was so much

the SAME

as traditional Chinese ancestor worship.

But it's odd . . .
1. I've never seen altars in RC cult homes to their ancestors.
2. I've never heard them sing any songs to their ancestors.
3. I've never read any poetry to their ancestors.
4. I've never seen them put plastic idols of their ancestors on the dashboards of their cars.
5. I've never seen them finger beads while praying to their ancestors.
6. I've never seen them twist rubber Bible verses around their ancestors' lives as an excuse to worship them.
7. I've never heard of the satanic oligarchy and their fallen angel/nephilium/watcher/ET cohorts staging any hoaxed 'visitations' by their departed ancestors in a way to foster worship of said ancestors.

Yet, we are supposed to believe that WE BELIEVE putting flowers on relatives' graves = all the Magnificent Magical Mary Earth Mother Maryolatry stuff in the lives of the nutty cult RC reps???

That SAME vs DIFFERENT handicap is turning out to be a horrendously appalling problem, it seems to me. I had no idea it was such a huge thing.

I wonder . . . is there something in the "holy" water that washes discrimmination skills right out of the fabric of the bodily being of the RC cult's RELIGIOUS serfs?

Perhaps it's an organizational prince and power of the air that early on deluded folks into construing everything having to do with the IN-GROUP of the nutty RC edifice cult with "holy" and everything having to do with all other OUT-GROUP folks = evil.

That would be a pretty wholesale mangling of the distinctions between SAME vs DIFFERENT.

Yes, that's right, serfs, line up right here . . . all together now . . . genuflect on cue . . . pansy beads on cue . . . "holy" water on cue . . . bowing to the idols on cue . . . now take the mind numbing soma capsule on cue . . .

I must say . . . it's been a pretty effective way to homogonize a lot of faithful RELIGIOUS mind-numbed slaves for a lot of centuries.

But it must have been some trick initially around 300-400 AD to convince folks that the magicsterical = the Apostles. Oh, that's right . . . they had lots of political power and clever oratory over a lot of uneducated serfs . . . how could I forget.

. . .

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