"Our earthly liturgies must be celebrations full of beauty and power: Feasts of the Father who created us—that is why the gifts of the earth play such a great part: the bread, the wine, oil and light, incense, sacred music, and splendid colors. Feasts of the Son who redeemed us—that is why we rejoice in our liberation, breathe deeply in listening to the Word, and are strengthened in eating the Eucharistic Gifts. Feasts of the Holy Spirit who lives in us—that is why there is a wealth of consolation, knowledge, courage, strength, and blessing that flows from these sacred assemblies." unknown source possibly YOUCAT Mal.1.11 For from the rising of the sun even unto the going down of the same my name shall be great among the Gentiles; and in every place incense shall be offered unto my name, and a pure offering: for my name shall be great among the heathen, saith theLord of hosts.

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

How do we decide on Christian Truth

 Saint Vincent De Lerins (writing in the 5th century):

""Here, it may be, someone will ask: ‘Since the canon of Scripture is complete, and is in itself abundantly sufficient, what need is there to join to it the interpretation of the Church?’
The answer is that because of the profundity itself of Scripture, all men do not place the same interpretation upon it. The statements of the same writer are explained by different men in different ways, so much so that it seems almost possible to extract from it as many opinions as there are men.
Novatian expounds in one way, Sabellius in another, Donatus in another, Arius, Eunomius and Macedonius in another, Photinus, Apollinaris and Priscillian in another, Jovinian, Pelagius and Caelestius in another, and latterly Nestorius in another.
Therefore, because of the intricacies of error, which is so multiform, there is great need for the laying down of a rule for the exposition of Prophets and Apostles in accordance with the standard of the interpretation of the Catholic Church. "



Etienne Gilson (A Gilson Reader, essay “Wisdom and Time”)
Since it refused the authority of the Church, which is Christ Himself, interpreting for us His own word, Protestant theology had to take refuge in philology, as though the teaching of our Savior, having died with Him, was reduced to the meaning of certain words pronounced once upon a time and definable with the aid of grammars and dictionaries. The outcome of this undertaking is well known, and the work of the learned Adolf Harnack is its permanent model: beginning with the Gospels, Christianity is thought of as forming a departure from the teaching of Christ, the whole theology of the Fathers is a contamination of that teaching at the hands of the Hellenic spirit, and the Scholasticism of the middle ages is its final corruption. A strange historical method, surely, whose last word is that the history it is recounting is devoid of meaning and strictly without object! . . . . Certain that the word of the Church is the word of the living God, the Catholic theologian knows very well that the unfolding of the divine deposit of faith of which the Church is the guardian will come to an end only when time does, and even then the infinite richness of this deposit will not be exhausted. But the Catholic theologian likewise knows that this work of developing, which does not belong to any one man of whatever holiness or genius, belongs in fact to the Church, of which Christ is the head and he is a member. The teaching voice of the Church is alone the judge of the understanding of faith.
another good one here: http://blogs.ancientfaith.com/orthodoxyandheterodoxy/2014/10/04/protestants-churchless-tradition-sola-vs-solo-scriptura/
see also: http://nannykim-catholicconsiderations.blogspot.com/2013/08/faithdoubt.html

also http://nannykim-catholicconsiderations.blogspot.com/2013/08/interpretive-paradigms.html  this link gives an understanding about how we interpret from Protestant and Catholic views---how we come to truth

below --Here is a good article on the subject of how we settle controversy in the Christian faith--or how we know what the truth is concerning the subject of our Christian faith.:

http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2011/09/controversies-of-religion/

The Westminster confession states:
The supreme judge by which all controversies of religion are to be determined, and all decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men, and private spirits, are to be examined, and in whose sentence we are to rest, can be no other but the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture.

But Catholics teach:
According to the Catholic Church, all interpretations of Scripture — and we could say all attempts at resolving controversies of religion — are “subject to the judgment of the Church which exercises the divinely conferred commission and ministry of watching over and interpreting the Word of God.”

The article does a great job explaining the differences, and the weakness of the Protestant view, backing it up with the early church fathers and the direct results of the Protestant view. The article is well worth the read.

It concludes: The primary subject of the extant writings of the early Church Fathers is precisely controversies of religion; this is far from an alien topic to them. And the recurring answer they give is that controversies of religion are settled ultimately from the Church and Scripture in inseparable unison. Only this position allows for binding answers to disputes within the faith. The Catholic Church has held this position steadfastly through two millennia.
See also:http://deepertruthblog.blogspot.com/2012/04/sola-scriptura-show-notes.html


also here from comment 294 http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2010/05/the-tu-quoque/#comment-40058--below


As I see it, the fundamental issue in this debate is whether there is a principled way, as opposed to anad hoc way, of distinguishing between the assent of divine faith and that of human opinion. That is what became clear to me in the debate a few years ago with “Kepha” and his friends. The clam that Bryan, I, and others at CTC makes is that the Catholic interpretive paradigm (CIP) does provide such a principled way and that the conservative-Protestant IP (CPIP) does not. I believe your comment confirms that.
On the CPIP, the best that inquirers can do is examine the scriptural, patristic, and historical evidence for themselves and reach theological conclusions that must be provisional because they are rightly professed to be fallible. That, in effect, is what you have affirmed and what Kepha has done. And if there is no living authority to infallibly distinguish theological opinions from propositions truly conveying divine revelation, that is the best we can do. But that, I argue, yields merely the assent of opinion, not of divine faith. The assent of divine faith entails assenting to truths revealed by God and doing so on divine authority. That in turn entails recognizing certain secondary authorities as infallibly setting forth what God would have us believe, and believing it unreservedly, not provisionally, because it bears the stamp of divine authority. On the CPIP, that secondary authority is the Bible and the Bible alone. But if, as the CPIP would have it, all our acts of assent are fallible, then the conviction that the Bible contains such-and-such books and is divinely inspired is itself fallible and thus provisional. That makes it an opinion, not an an assent of divine faith. On the other hand, the assent of the Catholic to the tripartite authority of Scripture, Tradition, and the Magisterium is an act of divine faith, not a provisionally formed and held opinion. That is because, on the CIP, there is a living authority, the Magisterium, which is divinely protected from error under certain conditions, and thus bears the stamp of divine authority when it rules that Scripture and Tradition have such-and-such content and are to be interpreted in such-and-such a way rather than others.
Now the main reason for acknowledging such an authority is not that its existence can reasonably be inferred from the scriptural, patristic, and historical dataset–though such an inference can be upheld as a reasonable opinion, and should be so upheld by the Catholic–but that, absent such authority, there is no principled way to distinguish the assent of divine faith from that of human opinion. Adherents of the CPIP will of course affirm that the Bible is the sole inerrant rule of faith, and in so doing might imagine they’ve got such a principled distinction. But they do not. They accept the Bible–or at least the bulk thereof–for what it is in fact, but they have no way to explain why that acceptance is anything more than an opinion. The Catholic does. Of course that does not by itself show that Catholicism is true. What it does show, however, is that the CIP has something necessary for the assent of faith, and that the CPIP lacks it.
I realize that Kepha, you, and many others believe that the Magisterium’s claims for itself can be shown to be false by an honest examination of the historical record. That is not an unreasonable opinion, though I believe it to be less cogent than the opposite opinion. My real objection to that approach is that it assumes the validity of the CPIP rather than demonstrating it. It assumes, in other words, that the Magisterium’s claim to have the sort of authority I say is necessary can be adequately assessed by somebody with a more reliable understanding of the deposit of faith than the Magisterium itself has. But that is simply to assume the validity of the CPIP and the invalidity of the CIP. Thus it begs the question.
Given as much, and given also that the CIP has something necessary that the CPIP lacks, I conclude that Kepha and friends have not only failed to make their case, but cannot do so even in principle. Their position leaves us only with opinion, not faith. I’ve noticed that you and many others are willing to bite that bullet, but I hardly think that it allows for what Jesus Christ would consider faith.

from comments 59 and 60 http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2009/09/hermeneutics-and-the-authority-of-scripture/#


You said: ““How does an individual know with infallible certainty, that the Roman Catholic Church is an infallible interpreter”? To become aware of this ‘truth’, you must engage in private interpretation of the historical sources that would lead one to believe that the Catholic Church is infallible. I don’t see how this is any better than an individual having fallible certainty of the canon of the fallible Church being infallible?”
To begin with, there is one thing that Protestants and Catholics share here: we both do not reach certainty without an act of Faith. The Catholic Church does not provide a magic wand that allows you to avoid having to put faith in things in order to certainly believe them and base your life on them. But there is a big difference: the _thing_ that we put our faith in is different,very different, and this difference has consequences.
The Catholic puts his faith in the Church, believing that Christ’s promises to that Church ensure that what that Church claims to proclaim infallibly she really does proclaim infallibly. This allows the Catholic to believe the full Catholic canon, which includes the Protestant canon as a subset.
But in order for the Protestant to have certainty regarding the canon, the Protestant must put his faith in the decisions of the early Protestant reformers as they hashed out their respective histories of the early Church. Once we see this difference, the other differences become more clear:
(1) I find it easier to make an act of faith in a Church that claims to be infallible than to make an act of faith in a group of men who did not claim any infallibility. In other words, the Church at least asks me to have Faith with a capital “F” in its teachings. The Protestant reformers did not ask us to have Faith with a capital “F” in their teachings. They simply asked us to believe that they had done the best human job possible; if God, by some miracle, did prevent them from erring, then so much the better — but they weren’t going to claim that.
(2) Educated Protestants have periodically doubted and rejected the canon that has been offered to them from antiquity. This happened in the original Reformation, in which the highly-educated Martin Luther wanted to reject the epistle of James, for obvious reasons. Ultimately, most Protestants were unified on rejecting one particular set books from the Catholic canon that had been read as scripture in our liturgies for over a thousand years. But as the Reformation has progressed, later spiritual descendants have also revised the canon. Most recently, there were strong attempts to claim high authority for gnostic writings. Now, when this sort of thing happens in the Catholic Church, we have a principled way of labeling these people dissenters: they are denying the infallibility of the Church that Christ founded! But when this happens in protestant circles, there is no principled way to label the culprits dissenters. The culprits are just doing the same thing to their own protestant traditions that Martin Luther did to the Catholic Tradition when he called the epistle of James “an epistle of straw.”
So we both make acts of Faith. But you need to make an act of Faith that God ensured the protestant canon (developed visibly through the historical analysis of a group of Catholic dissenters during a highly politicized era) happened to be the true canon — even when everything else that groups of Christians do is not worthy of faith with a capital “F.” But we make an act of Faith in a Church that claims to have infallibly spoken in several areas, including the Canon, and thus we continue to read the same scriptures in our liturgies that we did one thousand years ago — and when a Catholic tries to dissent from this, we have a principled way of labeling them a dissenter.


 I want to add some scripture here, not to complicate things but to support K’s response on the matter at hand..

Matthew 16:18-19
Acts 15
1 Timothy 3:15

In St. Matthew’s Gospel:
Particularly, confront what “keys” meant to first century Jewish disciples and their Davidic implications; if you see any or otherwise. Secondly, consider the act of “binding” and “loosing”. What did this mean to first century Jews?

In Acts:
Here we see Christ’s words in Matthew acted out for the first time…

In St. Paul’s first letter to Timothy:
Consider the illustrations for the Church used by St. Paul in his epistle….pillar, foundation (some interpretations: bulwark)….For these to be truly fulfilled, so that the Church may house truth, some level of protection has to be available to the Church (don’t overlook that pillar, foundation, and bulwark all have protective implications). In the Catholic Church, it is infallibility…which is a gift given in certain contexts and not a constant. The Pope enjoys it fully yet conditionally (as an arbiter and ratifier at councils and when he speaks ex-cathedra; which has only been done 2 times in the Church’s history!).

If you see these passages as having to be interpreted another way, please indulge.*

from an article here: http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2011/09/what-therefore-god-has-joined-together-divorce-and-the-sacrament-of-marriage/#comment-48820

 The early Protestants generally assumed that the entirety of the Apostolic deposit was either contained explicitly in the Scripture, or was logically demonstrable from what was explicitly stated in Scripture. That assumption is itself neither contained explicitly in Scripture nor logically demonstrable from what is explicitly stated in Scripture. So according to its own criterion it is at best a man-made tradition. But Scripture can be rightly interpreted and understood only in the context of the Tradition within which it was transmitted. Apart from that Tradition, many things contained implicitly in Scripture are veiled, though in the light of that Tradition, they can be seen in Scripture. I have written about the Catholic understanding of the relation between Scripture and Tradition in the section titled “Scripture and Tradition” in my dialogue with Michael Horton.

 from comment 183      here http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2013/03/jason-stellman-tells-his-conversion-story/

You write:
SINCE THE SCRIPTURES ARE GOD-BREATHED AND SUFFICIENT TO SAVINGLY REVEAL CHRIST TO THE REGENERATE.
Shouting that in caps doesn’t give us a reason to believe it. I believe that Scripture is God-breathed because the Church, as described by JTJ just above, so teaches. Why do you believe that Scripture is God-breathed? After all, you don’t believe that anybody who told you that is infallible. And it’s no good quoting 2 Timothy 3:16 to me either. That only works if that letter too is God-breathed, which just brings us back to my question.
Moreover, I do not believe that Scripture can be reliably interpreted in isolation from Tradition and the teaching authority of the Church. Why do you think it can?
You write:
We equate faith with trust with “true knowledge.”
Trusting an authority supplies knowledge when you have reason enough to believe that the authority you trust understands how the knowledge is acquired and has acquired that knowledge themselves. Thus, I trust astronomers when they tell me that the Sun is roughly 93 million mile away from us, even though I haven’t discovered that for myself as I could, because in college I acquired independent evidence that astronomers know how astronomical facts are discovered and have discovered such facts themselves. But in the case of divine revelation, its content is not something any of us could have discovered for ourselves; that’s why God had to tell us. Accordingly, access to divine revelation–for us in this life after the Apostles–cannot dispense with trusting some authority, the way science can dispense with that; and the reasons justifying that trust cannot constitute evidence that the authority has the relevant knowledge, because what the authority says is something human methods of inquiry cannot discover by themselves.
For reasons I explained above in this thread, it’s no good citing the authority of a book; for the book can have only as much authority as those who wrote, collected, and certified it as divinely inspired have themselves.

here from comment 201 http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2013/03/jason-stellman-tells-his-conversion-story/#comment-49256

 What moves us to believe is not the fact that revealed truths appear as true and intelligible in the light of our natural reason: we believe ‘because of the authority of God himself who reveals them, who can neither deceive nor be deceived’. So ‘that the submission of our faith might nevertheless be in accordance with reason, God willed that external proofs of his Revelation should be joined to the internal helps of the Holy Spirit.’ Thus the miracles of Christ and the saints, prophecies, the Church’s growth and holiness, and her fruitfulness and stability ‘are the most certain signs of divine Revelation, adapted to the intelligence of all’; they are ‘motives of credibility’ (motiva credibilitatis), which show that the assent of faith is ‘by no means a blind impulse of the mind’.
(CCC 156, citations ommitted)

 and

 Only faith can recognize that the Church possesses these properties [oneness, holiness, catholicity, and apostolicity] from her divine source. But their historical manifestations are signs that also speak clearly to human reason. As the First Vatican Council noted, the ‘Church herself, with her marvellous propagation, eminent holiness, and inexhaustible fruitfulness in everything good, her catholic unity and invincible stability, is a great and perpetual motive of credibility and an irrefutable witness of her divine mission.’ (CCC 812)

 and from comment 202

  Earlier in that same paragraph, I’d written that if Christianity requires a “principled manner of specifying that which constitutes divine revelation (and hence requires the assent of faith) and that which constitutes human opinion (and hence requires the assent of opinion)”, then Protestantism provides no such method. (Avoid, then, getting hung up on whether or not a “magisterium” is required, but instead focus on whether or not some principled way of distinguishing between divine revelation and human opinion is necessary). If you’re still OPC (or, heck, any kind of robustly confessional Protestant), then you do presumably believe that in fact a principled way to distinguish between divine revelation and human opinion is needed. If so, your disagreement with me isn’t over whether or not such a principled method is necessary – it’ll be over whether or not Protestantism provides such a method. This discussion has already been held at much greater lengthprompted by Dr. Liccione’s post. (I neglected to link to it in my previous post – my bad). If you want to seriously pursue whether or not Protestantism provides a principled way of distinguishing between human opinion and divine revelation, you’ll probably want to make a post over in that thread and interact with Dr. Liccione directly.

 comment 243 http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2009/07/ecclesial-deism/

 The topic of the Catholic’s relationship with the Bible versus the Protestant’s relationship with the Bible has been on my mind lately (and I’ve written a bit about it too). Often, Catholics are charged by Protestants with the accusation that they don’t read the Bible (not that you did in your comment, just expanding upon this idea coupled with your question). And, compared to Protestants especially, it’s true, many don’t. Many Catholics may not even own a Bible. This is simply outrageous for our Protestant brethren. However, the spiritual life of a Catholic reaches back 2,000 years, and thus for the majority of history, for lay Catholics Bibles weren’t even available. It wouldn’t have mattered much anyway, as also illiteracy was wide spread. (Average) Modern Catholics don’t appeal to the Bible first because historic Catholics didn’t. Historic Catholics appealed to the Church for teaching. Historic Catholics also had to attend mass to even be exposed to Sacred Scripture. For the historic Catholic, the Church taught him Truth first, and it was supported and further explained by the Sacred Scriptures in mass. Such is still the structure of the Catholic Church. We as literate, educated, first world persons are not so spiritually evolved that we need a new structure such that individuals get to appeal to the Bible first then to the Church second (which seems to be the Protestant structure – post printing press and common place literacy). The Church as the first place to turn for Truth is a very different thought process from the Sola Scriptura tradition, I know. In conclusion, it’s not that there’s no reason for a Catholic to read the Bible, instead Scripture reading is strongly encouraged. However the heart of the matter isn’t best expressed in the question of whether or not there is a need to read the Bible. The Church’s teachings and Sacred Scripture exist to support each other wholly. The Church has Her teachings in order to represent Sacred Scripture as truthfully as possible… Her teachings protect Sacred Scripture. And Sacred Scripture supports and further explains the Church’s teachings. It is a beautiful relationship. I hope my many words might have helped someone reading see the question in a new light.

 and from comment 11 here http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2009/12/justification-catholic-church-and-the-judaizers/
 We don’t read Scripture in an ecclesial or historical vacuum; we read it with the living memory of the community to whom it was entrusted

 comment 13 /part

 See, we’re talking past each other. When I say that we (Catholics) read Scripture through the Fathers, you respond by saying that Scripture is more authoritative than the Fathers. Of course Scripture is more authoritative than the Fathers. That’s not the question. The question is whether we come to Scripture through the Fathers, or we use our own individual interpretation of nuda scriptura to critique the Fathers, accepting from the Fathers only what fits our nuda scriptura interpretation, and rejecting what doesn’t. (And thus making the Fathers hermeneutically superfluous and irrelevant.) Because Catholics are not ecclesial deists, we don’t use nuda scriptura to critique the Fathers; we come to Scripture through the Fathers and the Tradition

 from comment 3 here: http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2011/09/controversies-of-religion/  :
 I would add one critical detail that I believe should have been covered a lot more, and that is to judge the Westminster’s teachings by it’s own standards. For example, in This Article, I point out the Westminster Confession makes many GRAND claims, yet these claims are not even taught in Scripture itself! Yes, a solid argument can be made that the Westminster isn’t approaching things in a manner consistent with the Fathers and Tradition, but in the Protestant mind those are expendable if they believe Scripture is saying something different. In that regard, the Protestant might be ignoring history, but they’re not being logically inconsistent. Thus, in this case, going straight for Scripture is going for the Westminster’s Achilles’s heel.
EVERY significant point the Westminster Chapter 1 makes is totally without Scriptural warrant, and that should be warning sirens to anyone examining the situation.
Here are a couple points worth mentioning:
(1) The WCF Ch1:1 says that although God gave divine revelation through various mediums throughout history, at the close of the Apostolic age this Divine Revelation was committed “wholly unto writing” (i.e. inspired oral teaching was inscripturated), yet the Bible says nothing of the sort.
(2) The WCF Ch1:2-3 goes to list all the books of Scripture, including giving footnotes, yet we’re all aware the Bible gives no canon. This has been discussed ad nausium, but shouldn’t be given a pass.
(3) The WCF Ch1:6-7 says “those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed for salvation are so clearly propounded, and opened in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them.” Nowhere does the Bible ever come close to teaching this dogma.
(4) The WCF Ch1:9 says: “The infallible rule of interpretation of Scripture is the Scripture itself and therefore, when there is a question about the true and full sense of any Scripture, it must be searched and known by other places that speak more clearly,” yet this alleged built-in-truth-finding-algorithm nowhere taught or suggested by Scripture.
(5) And the very passage you focused upon, WCF 1:10, saying the supreme judge for all controversies is Scripture, which is something Scripture never teaches.

So before we even examine the WCF’s claims for any historical veracity, I suggest we point out how the claims of the WCF don’t even have Scriptural support and to ignore that is to try and discuss reasonably when the deck is clearly rigged in the WCF’s favor.

end of quote

ST Augustine:

 “But when proper words make Scripture ambiguous, we must see in the first place that there is nothing wrong in our punctuation or pronunciation. Accordingly, if, when attention is given to the passage, it shall appear to be uncertain in what way it ought to be punctuated or pronounced, let the reader consult the rule of faith which he has gathered from the plainer passages of Scripture, and from the authority of the Church, and of which I treated at sufficient length when I was speaking in the first book about things.”
Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, 3,2:2 (A.D. 397).

 Protestantism allows individual interpretations to trump ecclesial interpretations. The Reformation is founded squarely upon this principle. Catholicism offers another hermeneutical principle: The interpretive authority of the Church. This authority is not considered to be superior to Scripture. It is considered, as a matter of principle (i.e. basic theology), superior to individual interpretation. This is a point on which we are always correcting our Protestant friends, who seem not to distinguish between a text and its interpretation.

 from comment 121
Some folks might subscribe to the premise that a text cannot be correctly interpreted, or even be reasonably clear, if there is widespread disagreement over its meaning. They are, of course, wrong.
After all, people disagree about things as crystal clear as the primacy of the Roman Pontiff, justification by formed faith, and the real, objective transformation of the eucharistic elements into the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, but these things are nevertheless obviously biblical to anyone who simply allows the Scriptures to speak for themselves.

Scripture might very well be clear in essentials, but such clarity does not provide for the unity of the Church. The Protestant Reformation has proven this beyond the shadow of any doubt. This last point is not a theory about texts and their interpretation(s).

from 147

You can’t blame us, however, for not pretending that the final interpretive authority of the Church is nonexistent, nor for appealing to that authority, since we are convinced that it does exist, where it has spoken definitively on a matter of doctrine. You could try to argue that the Church is other than the Body of Christ, gifted with the charism of teaching as the Church, expressing the mind of Christ, with the promised guidance of the Holy Spirit, such that your own opinions are potentially superior to hers, norming the normed norm, so to speak. I guess that is exactly what you assert (#139). Hence the charge of rank biblicism.


Your statement that you “hold the Bible as Supreme and supra-authoratative as well as the only infallible Divine arbiter of truth” is complicated by difficult questions regarding what is the Bible, and who has authority to interpret it, which you have not answered. I agree with you that we are both using our free will and cognitive abilities to discern what is true, what scripture means, and what is Christ’s church. However, I do not believe I am employing the same “cognitive move” that you are employing. The Protestant, in essence, declares that he or she has the authority and ability to define and interpret scripture, and, by effect, what Christianity is or isn’t, who are Christians and who are not, etc. The Catholic, using the motives of credibility, recognizes his or her lack of authority to do this. Indeed, I have found nowhere in any version of Christian scriptures a verse that suggests individuals have the authority to infallibly interpret scripture’s meaning. In turn, the Catholic humbly asks if there is anyone or anything who claims such authority, and in virtue of the motives of credibility, considers the Church to be a reasonable and believable authority. It is an act of humility and faith, but it is reasonable.
The more I studied the scriptures and Catholic teaching as a Protestant, the more I realized that my Reformed theological position granted me a remarkable authority. An authority which based on my own study of scripture, I had no reason to believe I possessed. However, strangely, if I strayed from certain core tenets of Reformed theology, I was a heretic, according to the Westminister Standards or Heidelburg Catechism. So, in effect, I was the authority on what scripture meant, as long as I didn’t stray too far from Reformed teaching, in which case I was no longer a Christian. That seemed, and still seems, very strange to me – as if I’m free to do what I want, unless I mess too much with the Westminister Divines or Dutch Reformers. I suppose I could have started “Casey’s Church,” with my own particular bent on scripture’s teaching, as others have done, but that only seems to further demonstrate the weakness and gross individualism of the Protestant system.

It seems to me that your epistemic tu quoque argument, like that of many Protestants with whom I’ve had this conversation, simply misses the point we’re making. Our point is not that the Protestant world has, while the Catholic world lacks, “rebellion,” “confusion,” and “differences of opinion.” Both worlds have an abundance of all that. It is that Catholicism as such has, while Protestantism as such lacks, a principled means of distinguishing between expressions of divine revelation and mere theological opinions.
That means is the CIP, whose content is magisterial even if the name is not. Now the Magisterium claims to be infallible under certain conditions. If one accepts that claim, then one acknowledges that what it teaches under those conditions is an expression of divine revelation rather than of mere human opinion. It is precisely in light of such a norm that “rebellion” and “confusion” in the Church can be, and are, exposed precisely as such. That many rebellious and/or confused Catholics either fail to recognize the norm or, if they do recognize it, fail to conform their thought and life to it, does not mean it doesn’t exist, or isn’t recognizable as, just such a norm. It does, and it is–and any Catholic who cares to know that does know it, whether they observe the norm or not. The widespread confusion and rebellion in the Catholic world is therefore not an epistemic problem, but a moral problem: the sins of pride and willful ignorance.
Protestantism, however, contains no such norm. For it is of the essence of Protestantism to deny that anybody after the Apostles and those who canonized their writings is ever infallible by divine gift. That entails that even those Protestants who affirm scriptural inspiration and inerrancy can, by their own lights, only affirm that fallibly. Indeed, by their own lights, they can only affirm fallibly what evencounts as Scripture. Now they can’t plausibly maintain that such affirmations qualify asknowledgeestablished, like scientific truths, simply by the exercise of fallible human reason. For even if one could establish, by such means, that all and only the writings comprised by the NT are “apostolic”–which I seriously doubt–that would not suffice to establish that they are divinely inspired and thus inerrant. That would follow only if the affirmation: “Those wrote the works in the NT were divinely inspired” were, itself, inerrant by virtue of being infallibly taught by those who came after those writers. But on Protestantism, we can only make that affirmation fallibly, and we can’t know by any “scientific” or other purely human method that it’s true. Given, therefore, that the inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture are not simply items of established human knowledge and are otherwise affirmed fallibly, then the status of Scripture and whatever else may be posited as a norm by this-or-that Protestant community must remain a matter of opinion. That means that Protestantism as such lacks a principled means of distinguishing between expressions of divine revelation and human theological opinion, Protestantism as such simply cannot posit a norm of orthodoxy as if that were, itself, an expression of divine revelation. One Protestant’s orthodoxy is another’s heresy, and nobody, on Protestant premises, has either divine or epistemic authority to say who’s right and who’s wrong about that. So the “confusion” and “rebellion” in Protestantism is not just a moral problem, but an epistemic one as well. And that problem is irresolvable in principle, given Protestant premises. That’s why there are as many Protestant denominations as Protestant theologies.
Now the difference, as I’ve described it, between Catholicism and Protestantism does not mean that all “differences of opinion” within Catholicism are going to be resolved, or even that they are all resolvable in principle by the CIP. Some issues, after all, just are matters of opinion, and the Magisterium has never said otherwise. But if the Magisterium’s claims for itself are true, then we can reliably distinguish, if we care to, between what is and what is not a matter of opinion, even if we never end up sharing the same opinions about the issues that are matters of opinion. For the reasons I’ve just given, that can’t be done in Protestantism.
Hence, your your epistemic tu quoque argument fails.

problems with the Bible Alone

You write:
My understanding is that the “principled means” in Protestantism is exegesis and the work of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of those who are being saved. You might reply that is not a proper “principled means” because it reduces everything to opinion. Reformed Christians would not agree with you here in that they would assert that the essentials of salvation are clearly set down in Scripture (cf. WCF I:VII). That which the Lord has spoken is not a matter of opinion. There are things in Scripture that are not plainly propounded, but that does not mean all Scripture is incomprehensible in and of itself.
What you offer as your “principled means” is the principle of the perspicuity of Scripture as understood by the Reformed, as if perspicuity so understood were the only alternative to Scripture’s being per se“incomprehensible.” But that’s a false dichotomy. And in any case it doesn’t really address the argument I made in #516.
It’s a false dichotomy not just because nobody says that Scripture is per se “incomprehensible,” but also and primarily because saying so is not the only alternative to saying that Scripture is perspicuous. Any text is comprehensible at least to a degree, because texts are written in public, human languages that are thus intelligible to many, and the human authors’ specific words are addressed to a readership that has at least some idea of what they mean. Some texts, such as a math textbook, are indeed completely perspicuous per se, in that the axioms, formulas, proofs, problems, and answers can be fully understood by anybody who understands how the words and symbols are being used. But Scripture is not like that. It is a collection of texts of various literary genres written over a nearly-1,000-year period by people in different historical circumstances. Even at a purely human level, such a collection is not completely perspicuous. Although its contents are comprehensible to a large extent by people fully familiar with its original languages and historical contexts, few people have ever had that familiarity, and even they would not have said their understanding is complete. So it’s not as though Scripture is either fully perspicuous in se or incomprehensible per se. Its meaning is comprehensible in degrees that vary with the historical distance, scholarly knowledge, and literary sensitivity of the readers. And most of the audience to which it’s addressed–namely, the human race–is not in particularly good position by those criteria.
That’s just the human level. Then there’s the belief that God is actually the principal author of Scripture, who moves the secondary human authors by a means we call “inspiration.” But there’s no reason to believe that God intends, by any particular book or passage, only what the human author did–even assuming that we fully understand what the human author intended, which often we do not. What Jesus and, under his tutelage, the Apostles claimed God meant by “the Scriptures” was in some respects similar to, but in others different from, what most Jewish scholars of their time thought it meant. That sort of disagreement cannot be resolved by scholarship and logic. Any attempt to do so would leave things at the level of debatable opinion only. The only principled way to resolve the disagreement, which persists to this day, was and is to appeal to the personal authority of Jesus as divine. Similarly, if there’s going to be a principled way to resolve any of the manifold interpretive disagreements among Christians that persist and widen after centuries of scholarship and debate–yes, even on matters some deem “essential”–that will have to involve appeal to some personal authority embodying that of Jesus as divine. Otherwise we’re left with a cacophony of more-or-less plausible opinions that is irresolvable even in principle.
Of course, you think you’ve got that appeal ready-to-hand: “That which the Lord has spoken is not a matter of opinion.” As a Catholic, I affirm that too. But we disagree about how to recognize “that which the Lord has spoken” precisely as such. You don’t seem to appreciate the fact that, if all of us are fallible all the time, then the affirmation that Scripture inerrantly conveys “that which the Lord has spoken”–or even that Jesus is Lord, in that he has divine authority–might be wrong. We don’t even agree entirely about the content or determination of the biblical canon. So without some form of ecclesial and/or individual infallibility, all those matters remain ones of opinion; for we can’t plausibly claim that either the contours and inerrancy of the biblical canon are items of purely human factual knowledge that can be acquired by fallible human reason alone, like what one finds in a math or physics textbook. The contours and inerrancy of the canon are articles of faith, which are neither mere opinion nor human knowledge. As expressions of divine revelation, articles of faith can only be proposed and accepted on divine authority. But if all of us are fallible all the time, then such beliefs are not being held and taught on divine authority. There are simply human opinions–ones that it might be more-or-less reasonable to hold, but which cannot command the assent of faith.
You write:
Reformed Christians interpret Scripture; Catholics interpret magisterial documents and Scripture. Catholics trust the (sometimes infallible) correction mechanisms of newer magisterial documents that can shed light on older ones as well as exegesis of Scripture and the Fathers. Reformed Christians trust the correction mechanisms of the inward testimony of the Holy Spirit and exegetical debate. It would seem difficult to nail down which “principled means” is better apart from a discussion concerning God’s purposes in this world.
That’s another version of the epistemic tu quoque, and I applaud you for its fair-mindedness. But it too fails. You posit the “inward testimony of the Holy Spirit” as well as “exegetical debate” as necessary for resolving interpretive disagreements. Now all Christian parties engage in exegetical debate, and disagree with each other; if there were no disagreement, there would be no debate. That only shifts the burden of your argument to the question who’s interpreting by the inward testimony of the Spirit. But when the question is what God means by this-or-that passage of Scripture, all the debating parties who claim to have an answer appeal to the testimony of the Spirit for their view. Yet they still disagree. So already we know that most of them are wrong. And without some person or group’s being infallible at least some of the time, everybody’s claim to such testimony might be wrong.
Given as much, you still haven’t answered the argument I made in #516, which I’ve just restated. You have not offered a principled means, of the sort needed, for distinguishing between authentic expressions of divine revelation and human theological opinions.


that if (notice the “if”) the perspicuity thesis is false, your appeal to the noetic effect of sin to explain the extremely low schism-avoiding interpretive success rate (while exempting yourself from the radically self-doubting / self-deceiving implications of that same noetic effect present within yourself) prevents you from discovering that the perspicuity thesis is false. Empirically, there is no difference between a situation in which Scripture is not perspicuous (in the sense defined above), and Scripture is perspicuous except everyone else is deceived and misled by the noetic effect of sin except oneself and those who agree with oneself, just as there is no empirical difference between the case in which the Emperor is wearing no clothes, and the Emperor is wearing invisible clothes that only the tailors who made them can see. So while there is a theoretical possibility (in the sense of no internal contradiction) in your position, nevertheless, in its empirical consequences your position is exactly equivalent to the position in which the perspicuity thesis is false, the Catholic Church is the true Church Christ founded, and you are deeply self-deceived. In that case, it becomes meaningless to speak of the perspicuity of Scripture as having any empirical implications, because whether the thesis is true or false the empirical data is identical. In that way the term ‘perspicuous’ becomes vacuous, just as the “trombulation thesis” (which I just made up) is empirically meaningless if when that thesis is true all the empirical data is identical to all the cases when that thesis is false. (It is a bit like claiming that there is a visible catholic church, even when, if there were no such thing, all the empirical data would be exactly the same; it turns out to be merely semantic reification.)
At that point, however, perspicuity can no longer be appealed to as something to be expected if God wants us to know what He revealed, and if God did not provide an authoritative magisterium by which to resolve interpretive disagreements, just as in the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes the normativity of wearing clothing to cover one’s private parts can no longer be appealed to if clothes are visible only to the tiny few who ‘weave’ them. The notion that perspicuity is something to be expected if God wants to make His revelation accessible to the world and doesn’t provide an authoritative magisterium, is not satisfied by a situation in which on account of the noetic effect of sin (a) very few are able to understand this revelation rightly when they study it, and (b) each disagreeing group holding the perspicuity thesis thinks its own interpretation is correct, (c) the longer the perspicuity thesis is held, the greater the fragmentation occurs among the communities holding the perspicuity thesis, and (d) among those ever-fragmenting groups holding the perspicuity thesis, after five hundred years there is still no prospect of resolving these interpretive disagreements. In such a case the satisfaction of that expectation (that God would make Scripture perspicuous if He wants the whole world to know His revelation and did not provide an authoritative magisterium by which interpretive disagreements may be definitively resolved) is semantic only, not actual. That’s why your notion that you should expect to be in the tiny minority, on account of other such cases in OT redemptive history, is at odds with your claim that we should expect Scripture to be perspicuous if God wants to make His revelation accessible to the whole world and doesn’t provide an authoritative magisterium by which to resolve the interpretive disputes.

See also http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2009/06/calvin-on-self-authentication/#comment-1152  This traces the reformation concept of the perspicuity of Scripture and how it changed.

from comment 50
Protestant doctrines are not in Scripture. They contradict Scripture. Scripture does not say that everything will be shown from Scripture. Scripture says:
Ephesians 3:10
New American Standard Bible (NASB)
10 so that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places.
And again:
Hebrews 13:7
New American Standard Bible (NASB)
7 Remember those who led you, who spoke the word of God to you; and considering the [a]result of their conduct, imitate their faith.
Scripture continually points to the Church as the Teacher of the Word of God and to Tradition as the Word of God which must be upheld alongside the Scripture.
If Scripture does not insist on Scripture alone, why do you?



In Mat. 4:4 Jesus states, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”
Is Jesus referring to:
A) The written word of God that came through Moses?
B) The oral traditions that many rabbis back then, and today, also accepted as the word of God?
Imagine that you answer that question “only A,” but your best friend answers “both A and B.” The answers are mutually exclusive: you negate B, while your best friend affirms B. This distinction is not merely academic; it has serious implications for where you each land on central matters of the faith. What do you do next, given Christ’s expectation that His followers be “perfectly one” (Matt. 17:23), which Paul defined to mean that we all agree, being of the same mind a judgment (1 Cor. 1:10)?
You could point to Bible verses supporting your view (“only A”), but what if your best friend points to persuasive Bible verses as well? You could stand on the shoulders of a giant, enlisting the knowledge and exegetical rigor of a scholar who shares your belief, but what if your best friend stands upon the shoulders of an equally capable scholar? You could earnestly and sincerely pray for the Holy Spirit’s guidance, and if you do not feel moved by the Spirit to recant, you could cite your prayer and lack of perceived correction as evidence that your position is right. But what if your best friend replies that he has done the same? You could propose simply agreeing to disagree, to “major on the majors” so long as you both hold to “Mere Christianity.” But what if you disagree about what the Bible teaches to be a “major” that forms a necessary component of “Mere Christianity?” You could claim that your best friend simply doesn’t get it and separate, but that option is foreclosed by the directions of Christ and Paul above.
I have been in the situation above, with deep disagreement about fundamental issues regarding salvation. My childhood church went through two splits before I left for college. I had great frustration and grew skeptical that anyone could reach certainty. There has to be a second-order test to distinguish between rigorous-yet-mutually-exclusive interpretations of Scripture. In seeking both orthodoxy and unity with my friends, I remembered some promises directly from Christ: He did not leave “you” as orphans (John 14:18), He had much to say to “you” that He reserved for the Holy Spirit (John 16:12-13), who would teach “you” all things, bring to “your” remembrance all of Christ’s teachings, and lead “you” into all truth (John 14:26; 16:13).
You may find the second-order test that distinguishes between rigorous-yet-mutually-exclusive interpretations of Scripture by answering these questions: To whom were the above-referenced promises issued? Who did Jesus instruct not to leave Jerusalem until the Holy Spirit came (Acts 1:2), and who was present in the upper room at Pentacost (Acts 2)? If you feel that I’m focusing too much on the apostles, and too little on “the church,” consider that Christ only used the word ekklesia twice: once to identify on what/whom it is built (Matt. 16:18), and once to instruct on conflict resolution (how applicable) by referencing a singlular entity (“the church”) that one could find and communicate with (Matt. 18:17).
Which church defines itself as both perfectly one and apostolic?




he gives quotes and then addresses them:

Asking fallen man to judge divine revelation is like asking a tribesmen from Papua New Guinea to work the potato factory conveyer belts in Maine, keeping the good ones and tossing the bad ones. He is unable to do that since he doesn’t have a basis to distinguish between good potatos and bad potatos. … Fallen man is by nature is a revelation suppressor – …He actively sins when confronted with divine revelation in both the natural and super-natural realm.
Except, by your practice you presuppose that this fallenness does not nullify your capacity to judge rightly between false interpretations of Scripture and the true interpretation of Scripture. In your view, your interpretation of Scripture, arrived at through your fallen, corrupted, depraved, truth-hating, truth-hiding, truth-perverting, truth-damning faculties, is the one we should all accept. You make this broad sweeping claim about not trusting reason, and then make a giant exception for yourself. And that’s what all cult leaders do. No one else is to be trusted, except themselves.
Being by nature a truth suppressor, human reason always in need of repentance and divine rescue, something the “let’s compare paradigms” doesn’t take into account (or actively suppresses). As sinners, it is always our desire to hold revelation in the place of submission to our understanding of it – to treat is as a paradigm, as Bryan suggests. As if we are better than Nicodemus and actually have the power to judge divine revelation as divine enough.
You haven’t ruled out the possibility that it is on account of your sinful, fallen, selfish, distorting and unreliable cognitive faculties that you’ve adopted your biblicist position that makes you unwilling to submit to the rightful ecclesial authorities in succession from the Apostles. Once again, you’re trying to use the “reason is fallen” premise against my claim that we should compare paradigms, while making an exception for yourself (regarding the unreliability of your own reason) with respect to the process by which you reasoned to the biblicist paradigm, and reasoned to the wrongfulness of comparing paradigms.
That’s why adopting your “paradigm comparing” strategy is to presupposes that the pattern of Christ and his ministry, especially vis-a-vis his confrontation of rabbinic tradition, is likewise to be held at a mental distance and scrutinized as one possible paradigm. It is defection from Christ as Lord.
Again, the claim that “it is [a] defection from Christ as Lord” presupposes the truth of the biblicist paradigm, and thus begs the question, i.e. presupposes precisely what is in question between us, and is thus futile with respect to resolving the disagreement between us.
Further, it is Thomistic in that it presupposes Adam in the garden did not fall in the use of his reason. In Thomistic anthropology created man prior to the Fall was still not “good enough” and required a moment-by-moment “donum superadditum” (“a superadded grace”) to be able to maintain his innocence. Adam’s reason then survived the Fall intact.
If you’d like to discuss the condition of man before the fall, please do so under the thread titled “Protestant Objections to the Catholic Doctrines of Original Justice and Original Sin.”
As an aside, this is why Thomas went to incredible lengths to prove the reasonableness of Christianity to the Mohammedans using reason, not revelation, as his chosen tool of conversion. Did it work? His work on the proofs was uber-brilliant, but left the Mohammedan in the place of judging whether Christ was God-enough for him. You judge that for yourself as Thomas’ success.
Presumably your use here of the pragmatist conception of truth (i.e. if it ‘works’ it is true, if it doesn’t ‘work’ it is not true) is due only to the fallenness of your reason into the darkness of sin-spawned confusion and irrationality.
Back to the point, the insistence to compare paradigms presupposes an agreement with Thomistic hamartiology, that we are all able to compare paradigms – you Scripture and me Scripture and Tradition.
According to you we can’t compare paradigms, but you can interpret Scripture reliably. And for you, we can interpret Scripture reliably too, so long as we arrive at your interpretation. That same truth-hating, truth-twisting, truth-perverting cognitive faculty that is incapable of comparing paradigms becomes perfectly reliable when you use it to arrive at your interpretation (but is unreliable when anyone uses it to arrive at a different interpretation). “Heads you win, tails I lose” is a convenient set up.
But was Thomas correct? This just pushes the ball back up the field another 10 yards. On this one matter I see divine revelation squarely set against him, as in, Rom. 1:18 above, and Rom. 3:10-12. Further, God says we are all dead spiritually by nature, and children of wrath (Eph. 2).
Of course your truth-hating faculty ‘sees’ divine revelation squarely set against St. Thomas’s conclusion. What else do you expect from a perverted, depraved, unreliable, truth-twisting cognitive faculty such as your own? That’s precisely why it doesn’t bother you when you contradict yourself by using your reason to arrive at and publicly declare the unreliability of reason. Reaching the conclusion that St. Thomas was wrong is precisely what you should expect, given the truth-distorting, truth-perverting character of your fallen, debauchery-loving intellectual faculty, if, in fact, he were right. And justifying and rationalizing the ad hoc character of your position is precisely what you would expect from a truth-distorting, truth-hating corrupted intellect such as yours.
Therefore, if i believe you and Bryan to be spiritually dead, why would i take my paradigm of “Scripture alone” and your paradigm of “Scripture plus tradition” and treat them as if they were equal?
No one suggested that you should treat them as equal. The question is discovering which is true.
You see, I view your insistence on Tradition as a prime example of an unwillingness to accept Scriptures own judgment on you as a 24/7 truth suppressor with completely corrupted mental faculties, desperately in need of repentance as you submit to what Scripture says about your reason.
Two can play that game. I could say that your insistence on denying Tradition’s authority is an example of your unwillingness to accept the Apostles’ teaching, on account of your fallen nature’s completely corrupted mental faculties desperately in need of repentance …. Once again, as I’ve pointed out above, ad hominems simply cancel each other out. That’s why we should avoid them, because they prevent us from discussing the basis for our underlying disagreement.
Hence, for me to adopt as “let’s compare paradigms” approach is for me to regard what Scripture teaches about man, and how man comes to know the truth as untruthful.
Unless your paradigm is false, and Scripture doesn’t actually teach that. So once again you’re presupposing your own paradigm in order to justify not even considering any other paradigm. And that position makes it impossible for you to engage in ecumenical dialogue, because a precondition for ecumenical dialogue is learning the other person’s paradigm. But for you, even considering the other persons’ paradigm is disallowed by your own, because although you believe your reason is fallen and untrustworthy, you believe that its judgment concerning the interpretation of Scripture is so reliable as to be infallible, such that you are not even allowed to consider the possibility that it might be mistaken. (Irony of ironies, that such a sin-smitten intellect can make infallible judgments that must not be questioned!) Perhaps the best you can do, given that limitation, is attempt to point out perceived contradictions or incoherencies in other people’s paradigms (as judged by the standards of your own paradigm). That’s about all you will be capable of doing here.

below a quote from Newman found in comment 25 here http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2014/03/the-quest-for-the-historical-church-a-protestant-assessment/http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2014/03/the-quest-for-the-historical-church-a-protestant-assessment/

“For myself, I would simply confess that no doctrine of the Church can be rigorously proved by historical evidence: but at the same time that no doctrine can be simply disproved by it. Historical evidence reaches a certain way, more or less, towards a proof of the Catholic doctrines; often nearly the whole way; sometimes it goes only as far as to point in their direction; sometimes there is only an absence of evidence for a conclusion contrary to them; nay, sometimes there is an apparent leaning of the evidence to a contrary conclusion, which has to be explained;—in all cases there is a margin left for the exercise of faith in the word of the Church. He who believes the dogmas of the Church only because he has reasoned them out of History, is scarcely a Catholic. It is the Church’s dogmatic use of History in which the Catholic believes; and she uses other informants also, Scripture, tradition, the ecclesiastical sense … and a subtle ratiocinative power, which in its origin is a divine gift. There is nothing of bondage or “renunciation of mental freedom” in this view, any more than in the converts of the Apostles believing what the Apostles might preach to them or teach them out of Scripture.”

 from 185 http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2012/06/podcast-ep-17-jason-cindy-stewart-recount-their-conversion/
What’s the alternative to a Church that claims apostolic prerogative in interpreting the Scriptures? Is it not precisely what has been witnessed for the last 492 years? Every man asserts his own interpretation (or the group with which he agrees) over against any other interpretation. Only the claim is not “I am right because I have authority to interpret” but “The Bible teaches x, y, or z because that’s what the clearly Bible teaches.” And every group maintains its biblical teaching over against every other group’s biblical teaching.

God has given us the apostles and their successors so that we might continue to hear the voice of Jesus speaking through them (Luke 10:16). That is why the authentic interpretation of the Scriptures belongs to the Magisterium

end of quote

An interesting comment about history and philosophy in modern times:


Before I converted to Catholicism, I was having enormous trouble believing in God and Christianity. You see, most professional philosophers today are atheists, and few if any academic historians consider “plenary inspiration of the Bible” a tenable thesis in light of contemporary scholarship. Moreover, their arguments *against* both positions seemed to me entirely reasonable, and followed from their respective modus operandi quite well. In philosophy, the best arguments of William Lane Craig seemed little more than decent. In historiography, scholarship unhindered by prior doctrine interpreted literary oddities between and in the Gospels much more convincingly than traditional Protestant, Orthodox, and Catholic scholarship. This bothered the heck out of me, until I dug deeper and looked into both the *history* of philosophy and the *history* of historiography: That “modus operandi” I formerly thought was reasonable I found historically contingent and irrational.
In philosophy, there is the delusion that “accurate, scientific thought” began with Descartes, and that earlier thinkers are best kept in dusty bookshelves until we see a need to “reinterpret” them to avoid some modern dilemma. This would be excusable if our academic philosophers *understood* classical and medieval philosophy, but these experts often have *absolutely no idea what they are talking about*, and rarely get to the “Engage with pre-modern thinkers” stage. I do not deny that these experts are actually experts. They are. They are experts at understanding, clarifying, and debating a philosophical tradition dating to the early sixteenth century. They are (generally) not experts at defending that tradition, because they often have not been taught any other, or if they have, what they “know” is (generally) rife with errors. When I learned this, and studied philosophy prior to Descartes seriously, I was shocked to find that what preceded the Enlightenment was (imho) far, far more reasonable than what the Enlightenment created.
But my disagreement with an overwhelming philosophical consensus is not “me vs. experts”. The generic academic philosopher I speak of is indeed an expert on post-15th-century-thought; he is *not* an expert on non-post-15th-century-thought or comparing post-15th-century-thought and non-post-15th-century-thought.
As for historiography, the Enlightenment-esque principles of “responsible historical practice”, based on flawed philosophical theses as they were, made me look at contemporary historical scholarship more critically (not just history of religion!). I found that the generic academic historian is an expert at doing historiography within a certain philosophical outlook that is imbibed from the surrounding intellectual culture, and not something deduced from actual historiography. As a historian, then, he is indeed an expert. His conclusions seem to this non-expert to follow from his premises and modus operandi. Those last two, however, are philosophical and not within the expertise of a historian. When I disagree with this historian, I am not attacking his expertise in historiography, which is far greater than mine. I am merely pointing out the rickety philosophical edifice upon which he *places* his expertise.
Also here 

Being Reformed, he defines ‘Church’ as wherever the gospel is found, because the early Protestants defined the marks of the Church as including “the gospel,” where the gospel was determined by their own private interpretation of Scripture. So he claims that it is in the Church that the gospel is found, but he defines the Church in terms of the gospel. This is what we call a tautology. It is a form of circular reasoning that allows anyone to claim to be the Church and have the gospel. One can read the Bible and formulate one’s own understanding of the gospel, then make this “gospel” a necessary mark of the Church, and then say that it is in the Church that the gospel is found. Because one has defined the Church in terms of the gospel [as arrived at by one's own interpretation of Scripture], telling us that the gospel is found “in the Church” tells us nothing other than “people who share my own interpretation of Scripture about what is the gospel are referred to by me as ‘the Church.’” This kind of circular reasoning allows falsehood to remain hidden.

see also article here  where there is a section on the topic http://nannykim-catholicconsiderations.blogspot.com/2011/09/augustines-beliefs.html

 FROM COMMENT 93
 http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2014/09/scripture-and-tradition/#comment-122214
I would like to propose an argument which compels me to believe the claims of the (Roman) Catholic Church with regards to Sacred Tradition and the Magisterium of the Church.
1. God loves the world, and wants His revelation in Jesus Christ to be known by the world, so that we will be led into all truth. (John 3:16, Matthew 28:18-20, John 16:13)
2. God knows the limitations of human language, and foresaw that humans would misunderstand the written word. (for instance, 2 Peter 3:16, and the evidence of the modern fracturing of Protestant Christianity)
3. So that His truth would continue to be understood as He revealed, He therefore instituted a supernatural way by which all can come to know His revelation despite human misunderstandings. (John 16:13, 1 Tim 3:15)
4. In order that this supernatural authority might correct misunderstandings in every age, it is necessary that this authority be a living voice which can infallibly speak against misunderstandings of His revelation.
5. This supernatural authority must possess conscience-binding authority over the entire Church.
6. This supernatural authority must possess conscience-binding authority over all ages of the Church.
There are two obvious candidates for a supernatural authority which can correct misunderstandings of God’s revelation in Jesus Christ – the Holy Spirit (Johh 16:13), and the Church (1 Tim 3:15)
The Holy Spirit does speak to individuals to correct misunderstandings of God’s revelations (as evidenced in Acts 15 and in the life of Paul). In addition, the Holy Spirit is a living authority and speaks with divine authority, because the Holy Spirit is God.
However, when the Holy Spirit speaks to a first individual, how does a second individual know the truth of what is communicated to the first individual? One possibility is that the Holy Spirit must speak the whole Truth to all the faithful simultaneously and continuously (in order to satisfy #5 and #6).
However, given that the faithful in the Church at times do misunderstand the Truths of the faith, we can know that the Holy Spirit does not speak simultaneously and continuously to all the faithful.
The second possibility is that the Holy Spirit must speak _through_ someone (or some persons) who have recognized, permanent, supernatural authority over the whole Church.
But, if the Holy Spirit speaks through a human authority (individual or group) who has recognized supernatural authority, then that authority must possess certain supernatural gifts:
* authority recognized by the Church as divine / supernatural
* authority recognized as infallible
* authority recognized as binding on the conscience
* authority recognized by the whole Church
* authority recognized by the all ages of the Church
* the ability to speak with one voice
If someone accepts premises #1, #2, and #3, then what these premises necessitate is that the Church possess something identical to what we find in the Magisterium of the Catholic Church. And the words of this Church are preserved as part of Sacred Tradition.

See also http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2015/07/feyerabend-on-empiricism-and-sola.html

But what does this have to do with sola scriptura?  The idea is this.  Summarizing an early Jesuit critique of the Protestant doctrine, Feyerabend notes that (a) scripture alone can never tell you whatcounts as scripture, (b) scripture alone cannot tell you how tointerpret scripture, and (c) scripture alone cannot give us a procedure for deriving consequences from scripture, applying it to new circumstances, and the like.  Let’s elaborate on each and note the parallels with modern empiricism.

Go to the above link to continue reading
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