Sola scriptura versus sola …?

Alan Roebuck writes to Sage McLaughlin:

Dear Sage,

In the comments miscellany, you said to Mr. Auster:

“… you seem shocked that there are as many as 42 denominations within a single evangelical group. I am as well. After all, isn’t sola scriptura the surest proof against human innovations, according to Alan Roebuck?”

Permit me to respond.

I believe you’ve said you’re a Catholic. If not please let me know.

Sola Scriptura only means one thing: The Bible is the highest authority on all subjects about which it speaks. The highest authority which we can reliably consult here on earth, that is; obviously God is the highest authority.

If, therefore, Sola scriptura is false, then something else is the highest authority. What is your highest authority?

To repeat your comment:

After all, isn’t sola scriptura the surest proof against human innovations, according to Alan Roebuck?

Only if people believe it. Heterodoxy and heresy therefore do not invalidate Sola Scriptura.

Catholics like to compare Catholic unity with Protestant disunity. But the actual beliefs and practices of Catholics are at least as diverse and heretical as those of Protestants; the difference is that the Catholic Church claims a theoretical unity.

In practice, orthodox Catholics practice Sola Ecclesia, because every system must have a highest authority. (For most atheists, for example, the highest authority is science: Sola Scientia.) And this is the weakness of the Catholic system: Sola Scriptura is eminently logical: if the Bible is God’s Word, then it contains no errors, and is the highest truth. But if the Catholic Church is the highest authority, then it would have to have a higher authority than the Bible. Since the words of the Bible were fixed when it was written, but the Catholic Church is made of fallible, changeable humans, how can it possibly have a higher authority than the Bible?

If you want to disagree with Sola Scriptura, disagree with its actual meaning: deny that the Bible is the highest authority.

- end of initial entry -

Daniel B. writes:

The one great fault with Mr. Roebuck’s argument is that it doesn’t provide an explanation of how the Bible was compiled and who decided which books were the inspired word of God and which weren’t. This decision could not be made by an appeal to the authority of sola scriptura. Secondly, if one is to follow sola scriptura, it must be asked where exactly in the bible christians were instructed to do this. Just some thoughts.

Bruce B. writes:

Classical Anglicanism affirms Sola Scriptura, but the question, “How do we interpret scripture, particularly in areas where we commonly vary,” arises. Classical Anglicanism answers “the universal consensus among the early church fathers,” or, as I like to say, “ubiquity in antiquity.” The Anglican Continuum blogspot does a good job defending this position.

Sage McLaughlin writes:

I’m sorry to use your site as a forum for my discussion with Alan Roebuck, but here goes:

His argument fails at the very beginning, because “sola” does not mean “highest,” it means “sole” or “only.” (Just as sola fide means “by faith alone,” not “by faith, for the most part”). He says that, “Sola Scriptura only means one thing: The Bible is the highest authority on all subjects about which it speaks.” Nope, sorry. It means that the Bible is literally the ONLY real source of authority on any religious subject, and that no authoritative interpreter of Scripture exists (like say, the Roman Catholic Church, at whom the doctrine was specifically directed, as was sola fide). Its essentialism is that that no doctrine that cannot be specifically discovered in Scripture can be binding on Christians. If Mr. Roebuck were to re-write his comment with the understanding that “sola” doesn’t mean “highest,” he’d literally have to start over.

I do not say that sola scriptura is invalidated by the existence of heresy—I say that it is heresy. I said that his claim that the doctrine puts to bed the possibility of human invention is anti-empirical, since there are literally thousands of competing Christian sects sprouting up all the time espousing the same doctrine, and accusing one another of “human inventions not found in Scripture.” If sola scriptura were really “proof” against human innovation, as he claimed, then one would expect Protestants basically to agree on all the important particulars of Scripture. This obviously isn’t so, and it certainly isn’t the case that Protestants who do espouse sola scriptura are less prone to human invention than either Catholics or Protestants who do not espouse it. His comment was about the practical effects of the doctrine, and his conclusion about those effects is observably false.

Another commenter has made the critical point that even Mr. Roebuck must trust Church authority so far as to accept its judgment about what constitutes Scripture, so it is his position which runs into logical trouble. If one assumes that the Church possessed the apostolic authority required to compile Scripture, it would be odd to assume that this was a single discreet, and historically unique instance of the Holy Spirit (the true authority) acting through the Church. And of course, Daniel B. also points out the real killer, the real debater’s point: if Scripture alone is the source of all true doctrines, then surely sola scriptura itself must be found somewhere in Scripture—but it isn’t, and is therefore self-refuting.

Catholic teaching is that Scripture and the Church are both legitimate sources of authority. The Church cannot proclaim any doctrine at odds with Scripture, and vice versa, the Holy Spirit being the guiding hand of both. So I do deny sola scriptura. Setting aside the question of whether it’s true (which wasn’t the point of my original comment), I say that claiming it as a source of doctrinal unity is downright bizarre.

I’ll happily let Mr. Roebuck have the last word if he wants it (I started the argument, after all), but I wanted to sketch out the basic Catholicism 101 version of the argument.

Alan Roebuck replies to Sage McLaughlin’s last comment by copying it and inserting his own answers in bold:

His argument fails at the very beginning, because “sola” does not mean “highest,” it means “sole” or “only.” (Just as sola fide means “by faith alone,” not “by faith, for the most part”). [“Sola” literally means “only,” but that is not the content of the doctrine. The actual content of the doctrine is as established by the Reformers, and it is what I said it is.] He says that, “Sola Scriptura only means one thing: The Bible is the highest authority on all subjects about which it speaks.” Nope, sorry. It means that the Bible is literally the ONLY real source of authority on any religious subject, and that no authoritative interpreter of Scripture exists (like say, the Roman Catholic Church, at whom the doctrine was specifically directed, as was sola fide). [Again, the meaning of the doctrine is determined by the Reformers, and they say that the Bible is the highest authority, not the sole authority. Many Protestants think sola scriptura means that there is no other religious authority, but they are mistaken. Proper, traditionalist Protestants understand that secondary authority is possessed by the creeds and catechisms that are faithful summaries of biblical doctrine, by properly trained and credentialed teachers, by properly authorized church bodies, and so on. True Protestantism even believes in extra ecclesia nulla salus [sorry if I’ve inflected incorrectly; I’ve never studied Latin]

Its essentialism is that that no doctrine that cannot be specifically discovered in Scripture can be binding on Christians. If Mr. Roebuck were to re-write his comment with the understanding that “sola” doesn’t mean “highest,” he’d literally have to start over.

I do not say that sola scriptura is invalidated by the existence of heresy—I say that it is heresy. I said that his claim that the doctrine puts to bed the possibility of human invention is anti-empirical, since there are literally thousands of competing Christian sects sprouting up all the time espousing the same doctrine, and accusing one another of “human inventions not found in Scripture.” If sola scriptura were really “proof” against human innovation, as he claimed, then one would expect Protestants basically to agree on all the important particulars of Scripture. This obviously isn’t so, and it certainly isn’t the case that Protestants who do espouse sola scriptura are less prone to human invention than either Catholics or Protestants who do not espouse it. His comment was about the practical effects of the doctrine, and his conclusion about those effects is observably false. [I said “sola scriptura is a defense against man-made innovations.” I did not say “Sola scriptura eliminates man-made innovations.”

Another commenter has made the critical point that even Mr. Roebuck must trust Church authority so far as to accept its judgment about what constitutes Scripture, so it is his position which runs into logical trouble. [Sage is making a subtle but decisive error here. When he says “trust Church authority,” does he mean that the Church is to be trusted because it has the authority to decree which books are scripture (the Catholic position), or because it correctly understands which books are already scripture (the Protestant position)? And if the Roman Catholic Church has the authority to decree what books are Scripture, how do we know that it has this authority? Sage asks how a Protestant can know the Bible is the Word of God without the authority of the Catholic Church to give him certainty; but by the same reasoning we must ask: How can we know that the Catholic Church has the authority he says it does without another authority to give us certainty? The epistemological buck must stop somewhere, and Scripture is the only place it can stop.] If one assumes that the Church possessed the apostolic authority required to compile Scripture, it would be odd to assume that this was a single discreet, and historically unique instance of the Holy Spirit (the true authority) acting through the Church. And of course, Daniel B. also points out the real killer, the real debater’s point: if Scripture alone is the source of all true doctrines, then surely sola scriptura itself must be found somewhere in Scripture—but it isn’t, and is therefore self-refuting. [Sola Scriptura is found in the Bible: Whenever the Bible claims to be the Word of God, it implicitly claims to be the highest authority. Sola scriptura has more biblical warrant than many Catholic doctrines.]

Catholic teaching is that Scripture and the Church are both legitimate sources of authority. The Church cannot proclaim any doctrine at odds with Scripture, and vice versa, the Holy Spirit being the guiding hand of both. [The Catholic Church proclaims several doctrines at odds with scripture.] So I do deny sola scriptura. Setting aside the question of whether it’s true (which wasn’t the point of my original comment), I say that claiming it as a source of doctrinal unity is downright bizarre.

I’ll happily let Mr. Roebuck have the last word if he wants it (I started the argument, after all), but I wanted to sketch out the basic Catholicism 101 version of the argument.

Kristor

I was thinking about this all night, and have a few products of the process. None of them are dispositive, so I make here no argument; rather, I merely denote.

First, I hope this doesn’t devolve into a Protestant versus Catholic fight, as so often happens over at WWWW.

Second, I’m an Anglican—so far—and as an exponent of the Third Way, I feel I have some dogs on both sides of this fight.

Alan is correct that you have to have some sort of anchor. The Bible is the most reliable text we have from the ancient Near East, with more extant ancient copies than still exist for any other document of a like antiquity.

Daniel B. is correct that the contents of the Bible have themselves been a political football since forever BC , and thus vulnerable to the influence of sinful men. In the final go-round, these men were officials of the Church.

Then there are the editorial decisions involved in actually publishing a Bible, at any time in history, and in any language. There are some sentences in the OT that simply make no sense on any of the alternative interpretations.

Then, there are the inescapable exegetical traditions that successive generations of clerics have inherited, and that inform their understanding of a given text. One must interpret Scripture. To read without interpretation of any kind is the work, not of a man, but of a recording and playback device. To the extent these traditions of interpretation are not themselves spelled out in the Bible, they are extra-Biblical. And everyone’s got ‘em. I’m not enough of a Bible scholar to know whether there are passages in the Bible that it is sensible to interpret as guides to Biblical interpretation, but even if there are, I detect some circularity creeping in to the argument. We must after all interpret the passages that may be interpreted as guides to interpretation, in order to apprehend them as such.

But having said all that, one must set one’s anchor somewhere. So the Church has always set its anchor on the Bible.

Alan is right that the variations of practice and theology within the Catholic Church are as diverse as those to be found outside its pale. This is a strength and a weakness, both. The Church differs from Protestantism in that: it is a pretty big tent; it possesses a means to formal adjudication among these variations, where they are found to be incompatible; and it possesses a formal body of authoritative teachings, set forth in the Catechism (and, it is argued, derived from the Bible), which functions for the believer more or less the way judicial precedent does for the judge. Where you have diversity of opinion, as is inevitable among men, it is useful to have a mutually agreeable system of arriving at agreement where possible.

Maybe I misunderstand sola scriptura, but the term says, and I have always understood it to mean, not that the Bible is the highest authority, but that it is the only authority. I.e., not “Scripture plus e.g. the Calvinist exegetical and theological tradition,” but “Scripture and nothing but scripture.” I am not sure that Catholics would argue with the statement that the Bible is the highest authority; they would add only that if we are to understand what we read there, we have to avail ourselves of some exegetical tradition or other, and that we are least likely to go astray if we stick to the oldest continuous exegetical tradition. If our exegesis is uninformed by any tradition of interpretation, we will be in the same boat as the materialist who recognizes no natural law: free to make things up for ourselves, and (as with any sort of self-interested innovation) likely get them all bollixed up.

Every Christian is indeed a priest. That’s why we are anointed at baptism: in the OT days, anointing was reserved for priests, prophets and kings; we Christians are all three. But each is ordained into a holy order, that transcends and regulates him. We are not free to decide for ourselves what constitutes the Order; rather, the Order and its organs (including all its members) decide that. We each have some authority in that Order, but only qua well-ordered members thereof; in our membership consists all our authority.

Well, enough rambling for now. I’m not a believer in sola scriptura, but I am a believer in ne plus ultra scriptura. Alan, maybe you can help me out with whether these are really the same thing.

October 29

D. from Seattle writes:

I am admitting up front that I am not an expert in theological doctrines; even though I am Eastern Orthodox, I do not know what EO position is on “sola scriptura”—I would have to look it up to be able to speak about it intelligently. On a side note I don’t think that my salvation will depend on the fact that I know it or not anyway.

Alan Roebuck made a few comments to which I can reply, despite my limited theological knowledge; copied below from his reply to Sage, followed by my replies.

Roebuck:

Sage is making a subtle but decisive error here. When he says “trust Church authority,” does he mean that the Church is to be trusted because it has the authority to decree which books are scripture (the Catholic position), or because it correctly understands which books are already scripture (the Protestant position)?

I’d say it’s the former: the Church decided which books are Scripture over a period of time in 3rd and 4th centuries AD. Notice past tense—no need for the Church to revisit issues which have been correctly decided in the past. The latter doesn’t make sense: if the Church correctly understands only which books are already Scripture, shouldn’t it also ask itself how those books came to be the Scripture, and who made them so?

Roebuck:

And if the Roman Catholic Church has the authority to decree what books are Scripture, how do we know that it has this authority?

I’d say just Catholic Church—back when the Scripture was put together there was only one true Church, which was established on Pentecost in 33 AD. Its authority, not just to put together Scripture but to do anything in this world, came from Christ himself.

Roebuck:

Sage asks how a Protestant can know the Bible is the Word of God without the authority of the Catholic Church to give him certainty; but by the same reasoning we must ask: How can we know that the Catholic Church has the authority he says it does without another authority to give us certainty? The epistemological buck must stop somewhere, and Scripture is the only place it can stop.

No, Scripture cannot be the place where the buck stops since it didn’t even exist at all for the first several decades after the Pentecost, and wasn’t finalized for a few more centuries. The Church, which is the living body of Christ in this world, is older than the Scripture and is therefore the ultimate authority, guided by the grace of the Holy Spirit.

LA replies:

As a person who is not versed in these issues, I’m following the discussion with interest but also with doubt that any overall resolution satisfactory, at least to myself, can be found. However, D.’s argument seems a strong one, and I am curious to see how Mr. Roebuck replies.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 27, 2009 03:42 PM | Send