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.

“Where is that written?

Matthew 4:4, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”

“the sacred writings ... are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim. 3:15).

John 17:17, “Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.”

2 Timothy 3:16-17, “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works.”

Yes, I understood his argument.

Thank you for the information on the Canon of Scripture upon which Catholics and Protestants alike agree...specifically the books of the New Testament in which the Gospel of Jesus Christ is most clearly enunciated by the Holy Spirit inspired Words written by human instruments.

Do Catholics agree these New Teatament books in the agreed upon Canon of NT books are infallible, without error?

We agree that the scripture (at least the books we all consider canonical) is necessary for salvation, is truth and can ve a vehicle of sanctifying grace, and is “profitable” for the clergy to round off their education.

Where is it written that “all things necessary to become a Christian, live as a Christian, and grow as a Christian are clearly presented in the Bible”? Where, for example, is it written that the Bible contains one book but not another? Re-read the article, please - you can do better than that.

In isolation from the Old Testament the "sola scriptura" superstition looks even worse, since Jesus, unlike Moses, did not write or instruct the Apostles to write the New Testament

Wow. In one fell swoop, the entire New Testament - and especially The Book of the Revelation of Jesus Christ - is removed from the Catholic Canon, no matter which member of the Trinity was involved in it's writing...

...and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work...
1 Timothy 3:15-17
"Write in a book what you see, and send it to the seven churches: to Ephesus and to Smyrna and to Pergamum and to Thyatira and to Sardis and to Philadelphia and to Laodicea..."
- Revelation 1:11

“Where, for example, is it written that the Bible contains one book but not another? Re-read the article, please - you can do better than that.”

I read the article and many others just like it. The early church that had the original documents “heard” the Holy Spirit in the writings and were convinced as to their authenticity. Through reading, they believed that the Scriptures they had were the very words of God himself and they were able to distinguish the authentic from the spurious. It is as Jesus said in John 10:27: “My sheep hear my voice and they follow me”. The fixing of the “canon” some two to three hundred years later did not authenticate the books of the bible, but merely cataloged them.

If Catholics and Protestants agree that the books of the New Testament are canonical and that they are inspired by the Holy Spirit, and as such are infallible......then we must be able to agree on much.

Such as the fact that Jesus Christ himself endorsed much of the canonical books of the Old Testament by quoting from them (therefore giving them authenticity).

He quoted from Job, from Jonah, from Psalms, from Daniel, from the Torah, and from many other books of the old Testament canon as viewed by Protestants.

As did the writers of the Gospels and the book of Acts and the letters and the Revelation....hundreds of references in the INFALLIBLE New Testament to the canonical books of the Old Testament. There was no need to say: The book of Isaiah is a legitimate canonical book of the Old Testament. By quoting that book, the Holy Spirit (author of the New Testament books upon which we agree are canonical and infallible)....gave those books their AUTHENTICATION ENDORSEMENT BY GOD HIMSELF.

To write all of the passages of the New Testament Scriptures which quote from the Old Testament canonical books would take way too much space since there are HUNDREDS of such references.

How can anyone say the Canon of Old Testament Scripture as endorsed by the Protestant Church has no logical support for its Canon?

That is, simply, an utterly untrue statement.

a direct product of the Church.

Affirmed by the Church Universal at large in the world 300-400 years after the writing of it . . .

But T'was NOT a product of

the political power-mongering RELIGIONISTS in Rome lording it over all the other Christian serfs.

Thankfully.

Though the rubber histories, rubber logic of the RC edifice's magicsterical persistently begs to differ!

Clearly, we have another pontifical effort to shove the revisionist rubber history, rubber Bibles and rubber logic of the RC political power mongers down the collective throat of the rest of the world.

Of course, that includes the standard issuance of special dispensations; special indulgences and special issuances of sackcloth and ashes for the charisteristic wailing and whining and abuse button sitting exercises so !!!!TRADITIONAL!!!! for RC edifice reps. I wonder how many encouragements for Prottys to go commit suicide there will be in this thread.

Is it just me or is it tooooo early for another edition of this nonsense?

Methinks some folks have an obsession or an addiction or both . . . .

to nose twisting and ear twisting . . .

so that when the vicim cries !OUCH!

they can wail in abject self-pity about how unfairly they have been treated and how horribly their favorite idols have been maligned.

Shouldn’t such threads come with free barf bags?

Ok more later on this. The writer didn’t mention Luther - he discussed John Calvin.

Will have to rejoin the discussion later.

Found this good explanation of the History of the Canon of scripture.

Luther isn’t mentioned in that either.

http://www.bible.org/page.php?page_id=697

Just some final scripture passages which we agree are the Infallible Word of God:

16I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. 17For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last,[a] just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”[b]

Our RIGHTEOUSNESS *which fits us for heaven....if from Jesus Christ - and is ours BY FAITH! JUST AS IT IS WRITTEN, THE RIGHTEOUS WILL LIVE BY FAITH.

More tomorrow..good night

INSTITUTES OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION
CHAPTER 7
THE TESTIMONY OF THE SPIRIT…

"Nothings therefore can be more absurd than the fiction, that the power of judging Scripture is in the Church, and that on her nod its certainty depends. When the Church receives it, and gives it the stamp of her authority, she does not make that authentic which was otherwise doubtful or controverted but, acknowledging it as the truth of God, she, as in duty bounds shows her reverence by an unhesitating assent. As to the question, How shall we be persuaded that it came from God without recurring to a decree of the Church? it is just the same as if it were asked, How shall we learn to distinguish light from darkness, white from black, sweet from bitter? Scripture bears upon the face of it as clear evidence of its truth, as white and black do of their colour, sweet and bitter of their taste...

IOW, spirit recognizes spirit.

I meant to add...

"But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.
For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.
Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God." -- 1 Corinthians 2:10-12

"As for me, this is my covenant with them, saith the Lord; My spirit that is upon thee, and my words which I have put in thy mouth, shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy seed's seed, saith the Lord, from henceforth and for ever." -- Isaiah 59:21

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