sola and solo scriptura

an article about we shall argue below, there is no principled difference between sola scriptura and solo scriptura with respect to the locus of “ultimate interpretive authority:” sola scriptura, no less than solo scriptura, entails that the individual Christian is the ultimate arbiter of the right interpretation of Scripture. 

http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2009/11/solo-scriptura-sola-scriptura-and-the-question-of-interpretive-authority/

Also Protestants only teach sola scriptura for the post-apostolic age see here: http://catholicnick.blogspot.com/2011/02/array-of-reformed-tetimony-of.html#


from comment 330 http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2012/09/i-fought-the-church-and-the-church-won/#comment-38720
 The tradition found in the Church Fathers has no authority for Protestants, even if it has some influence, because in the case of disagreement, the Protestant’s own interpretation of Scripture always trumps the patristic tradition, even if all the Church Fathers are in agreement on a doctrine as being from the Apostles, as in the case of baptismal regeneration. Rather, the Protestant approach to the Church Fathers is one of cherry-picking – if they said something that fits with one’s own interpretation of Scripture, then you quote it (as you did with St. Clement and the Epistle to Diognetus) in order to suggest that the Fathers knew about it, or were on your side. But whenever they say something that does not fit with your interpretation of Scripture, you dismiss it as contrary to Scripture, as you have to do in the case of the universal patristic witness regarding baptismal regeneration. In this way, the patristic testimony has no functional authority for Protestants, because “when I submit only when I agree, the one to whom I submit is me.” (See the article Neal and I wrote, titled “Solo Scriptura, Sola Scriptura, and the Question of Interpretive Authority.”) So even if you outwardly deny ecclesial deism, your stance of distrust toward the Church Fathers is functionally equivalent to ecclesial deism.

The distrust is supported by the following mistaken line of reasoning: “we see in Scripture that certain Christians could and did distort the original message,” therefore the Church Fathers cannot be trusted. That conclusion does not follow from the premise. Individual Christians can fall into heresy, as can particular Churches. But the universal Church, and her magisterium (consisting of the pope and the bishops in communion with him), cannot fall into heresy, because that would constitute a prevailing of the gates of hell over the Church which is the pillar and ground of truth (1 Tim 3:15), to which Christ has promised to be with to the end of the age, and by His Spirit guide into all truth. See “The Indefectability of the Mystical Body.” Faith in Christ calls us to trust His Church, whom He authorized to teach and govern on His behalf until He returns. As Jesus said to His Apostles, “The one who listens to you listens to Me, and the one who rejects you rejects Me, and the one who rejects Me rejects Him who sent Me.” (Luke 10:16) This is the stance of faith of the believer toward the Apostles, and to their successors. To listen to them is to listen to Christ; to reject them is to reject Christ. In order for the Church Fathers to be counted as Church Fathers, they had to be recognized as orthodox by the Church. So the attitude of skepticism and distrust toward the Church Fathers, as rightful teachers of and witnesses to the Apostolic deposit, is based on a broader distrust of the whole Church that recognized and affirmed the authority and orthodoxy of these Fathers as faithful witnesses and expositors of the apostolic deposit. Again, that is functional ecclesial deism, which is functional solo scriptura-ism.

You trust that an institution preserves the right interpretation of the apostles. I don’t. Absolutely not. It is enough to see what happened to the Protestant churches in the 17th, 18th, 19th, or 20th century. Or today. You can see this as a proof for Catholicism, but it is not. The same things happened to the Roman church, the only difference is that you are not willing to acknowledge it. To me it is obvious. Yes, it is an assertion. We would have to spend too much time on proving (or refuting) this, and David Meyer will demand moderation in the meantime.

What happened to the Protestant denominations of the 17th, 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries is what has happened, and must happen, to all sects founded by mere men. They fade away. But the holy Catholic Church Christ founded will continue to grew into the mountain that will fill the whole world (Daniel 2:35), because Christ built it on the rock (Petros) He established and infallibly prayed for, that his faith would fail not, and because the Church is Christ’s Body, and is therefore immortal, because He is immortal. To appeal to those Protestant sects is only to make my point. They couldn’t survive a few centuries; the Catholic Church, by contrast, is still around after two millennia, now numbering 1.2 billion, and growing at a rate of 34,000 persons per day.

from comment 369 http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2012/09/i-fought-the-church-and-the-church-won/#comment-38804

Re: David #364

In the gospels and epistles there are many debates over the interpretation of scripture (Jesus vs. Pharisees, Sadducees; Paul vs. everyone). What is interesting is that everyone in the debates basically assumes sola scriptura, to put it somewhat anachronistically.

David, I would like to give one obvious example to the contrary and see what you think. Consider the Council of Jerusalem, in Acts 15. I can’t think of a more relevant or better documented example of how the Church worked, according to scripture.

Look at the conclusion – the decision that the apostles sent to the churches. What authority is claimed in this proclamation? the letter begins with “It seemed good to the Holy Spirit, and to us …”. They don’t claim sola scriptura. The authoritative appeal is to the authority of the Holy Spirit and to their own authority. Notice what is lacking from the letter – any scriptural support for the decision of the council.

But you say, what about James quoting from scripture in the minutes of the Council? How about you tell me, how James’s quote from the prophet Amos supports his conclusion in a way compatible with “sola scriptura”?

(Amos prophesies (a) that the Gentiles will bear the name of the Lord. James concludes (b) that in the New Covenant , the ritual works of the Mosaic law are no longer required. How does (b) follow from (a)? It doesn’t. This is not sola scriptura – it is anything but.

What’s the principled difference in James’ interpretation of scripture and what is done today when “progressive” Christians conclude that because God loves “the world”, that gay Christians shouldn’t be burdened with giving up their homosexual relations? James, likewise, refers to the “inclusiveness” of an obscure prophesy, and then uses that inclusiveness to support an unrelated conclusion that a critical ritual Jewish law is no longer required.

The churches followed the conclusion of the council because “it seemed good to the Holy Spirit, and to us”. The early Church believed that the Holy Spirit was guiding and inspiring their teaching. The apostles believed they were guided and had the authority to reveal God’s promises and precepts to the world.

Yes, there are many examples in scripture where scripture is used as the essential argument to non-believers. And scripture is used many times in support of a key argument made by Paul or Peter. But I would challenge you to find any example claiming that an individual’s interpretation of scripture ismore authoritative than the teaching of the apostles or their successors (Timothy, Titus).

We do not find that Peter is the central interpretive authority, after all, Paul explicitly tells him off (Gal 2).

Paul criticized Peter’s hypocrisy, not his teaching. What Paul did is consistent with what the R.C. proposes – that popes are sinners just like the rest of us.

It is useless to discuss the infallibility of Peter without discussing the infallibility of the Church. What does the Church teach? Who is the Church? Does the Church teach the Truth?

What is essentially important to the Catholic faith is that the Holy Spirit has guided and is guiding the Church into all truth. The Church, when exercising its teaching authority, must be infallible. Why? Because ever since our Lord’s ascension, God has worked through the Church to pass on knowledge of His revelation and promises.

Even if I never knew another Christian, somehow stumbled upon a Bible, and believed what I read, then it is still through the Church that I came to know Jesus Christ. For how would a man lay his hands on the Bible if the Church did not pass it on (directly or indirectly)? If I don’t understand what the Bible says, who do I ask? (Who tells the gospel to the eunuch when he doesn’t understand?). Why should I believe this book and not that one? Should I believe the gospel of Thomas, the Koran, or what?

For if the Holy Spirit has not guided the Church in such a way as to protect God’s revelation, then what we believe is a mix of God’s revelation and human lies. If the letter to the Hebrews is not God-breathed, then it’s no good. If the letter of James is an “epistle of straw” (so claimed Luther), then we might as well throw it out. The possible lies could include the Bible’s table of contents, it could include the divinity of Christ. It could include the belief that Mary can be called “mother of God”. It could include a belief that Christ had two wills, one divine, and one human. It could include the belief that we cannot be saved without grace. It could include the belief that we are justified and regenerated in baptism. Every issue on which men have disagreed how to interpret scripture becomes simply man’s interpretation.

Jesus Christ is God’s word and revelation to the world. The disciples knew Jesus because of his visible incarnation. But now, the Church is the body of Christ. The Church is the incarnate instrument through which God visibly proclaims His Word to the world.

If you agree that the Church must be visible and infallible to proclaim a single true faith to the world, then we can talk about the pope. It’s no sense trash-talking the pope until until you believe that there is such a thing as a Church which visibly proclaims one true faith.

The reason the bishop of Rome must be infallible is – if any pope has failed to discern truth from error and bound the Church to believe this error, then the Church has succumbed to error. History tells us how a council of the Church was known to be ecumenical. It was ecumenical because the bishop of Rome agreed with and publicly authorized the decisions of that council. The bishop of Rome agreed with the council of Nicaea, he agreed with Chalcedon, he did not agree with the “robber council” of Ephesus. If the bishop of Rome authorized the wrong councils, if any pope failed to teach the Truth (when his teaching was imposed upon the whole Church), then what we believe has fallen into error. Tracing back through history, various bishops of Antioch, Constantinople, Jerusalem, and Alexandria were heretics at one time or another (even the Eastern Orthodox will agree to this). Only the pope never used his teaching authority to endorse heresy. More than one heretical man was elected to bishop of Rome and upon election immediately changed their position to a one now conisdered orthodox.

For the Church to be infallible, so must the pope. And the only way this can be true is if God has promised to Peter and his successors that their faith would never fail them in a way that would forever corrupt the Church.

Hope this helps,
Jonathan

from comment 438

 But the most reasonable conclusion from the realities of history and logic is that the canon itself does not suffice to rationally “demonstrate” what belongs in the canon–any more than it tells us how the parts and the whole of it are supposed to interpret each other–and that both Tradition and the teaching authority of the Church herself are also needed. That is how the Fathers generally proceeded. see also: http://catholicdefense.blogspot.com/2012/10/pitting-jesus-against-his-bride-pt-ii.html

from comment 458 at  http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2012/09/i-fought-the-church-and-the-church-won/#comment-39043

"A question: do you find this sort of argument in the ECFs? Do the ECFs ever raise the “circularity” problem with respect to the canon as an argument for their own authority in determining its shape?

"Of course not. That is because the ECF’s are not working with a determinate canon, For them there simply was not a “canon problem”, because there was not a determinate canon (one can only face the question as to how the scope of the canon is determined after a canon- on some basis – is said to have been determined). Moreover, they had no fundamental theological need to secure a precise canon because, while they highly valued those writings which had come down to them through the bishops and the liturgy as being of apostolic origin or authorization, they were not hamstrung with respect to theological controversies by the need to possess an exactly delimited codex of writings from which to draw up exegetical defenses against rising heresies – and that is because they were Catholics.

Over and over again, and precisely because the heretics themselves made ubiquitous use of proof text/exegetical arguments; they instead appealed to apostolic tradition passed down among the bishops of the Catholic Church, as the ultimate grounds upon which to refute the exegetical arguments which the heretics advanced. This is clear in St. Irenaeus against the Gnostics, in Athanasius against the Arians, Augustine against the Donatists, and so forth. The final appeal was to that which had been handed down and taught within the Catholic Churches by the bishops from the time of the apostles until “now”; and this appeal is often followed by, or linked with, a list of apostolic succession to show that such handing on is known to have occurred in space and time. IOW, since the ECF’s were not committed so sola scriptura (which they demonstrably were not), the intense need for a delimited canon – so crucial to a revelational epistemology built upon a precise codex of texts alone – there was no difficulty about the fact that no official canon had yet been determined, and so no occasion for a circularity problem with respect to a precise codex of inspired writings.

The eventual Magisterial determination of those writings which are truly inspired, and therefore rightly to be included within the canon, was a Magisterial act intended to benefit the faithful pragmatically with respect to functional liturgical usage and personal reading, by clarifying which works were spurious/uninspired and which were apostolic/inspired. Promulgations of canon-lists were not made to meet some theological-cum-epistemic, need as if the faithful were stuck in the mud with respect to definitive answers to crucial questions of Christology, etc in the face of heretical challenges until a canon-determination was promulgated by the Magisterium in council. From a Catholic perspective, the Church, not the scriptures alone (though these belong to the Church), is the pillar and foundation of the truth..........................

To explain what I mean, I quote you as follows:

Second, you mention the classic Protestant formulation of the “testimony of the Spirit.” It should be observed that this doctrine was not developed in opposition to the reception of the Scriptures by the church. The early Protestants were hardly the individualists that their modern descendants are. See for example the Belgic Confession: it is both because the Scriptures were received by the church and because of the internal witness of the Holy Spirit that Christians accept them as from God. I agree that my position, which places stress on the canon’s assertion of itself, is somewhat different than these, but it is not incompatible with them.

The early Reformers were simply not as openly individualist as their modern descendents. When one probes beneath the surface to explore the function of the two methods for canon determination that you refer to here; one discovers that in principle the two solutions, in fact, reduce to probability rescued by an act of fideism. The problem is not that they are propositionally or functionally incompatible. The problem is that no form of their combination resolves the canon problem in a satisfactory way. Here is how it works. From the beginning, and in the heat of Catholic challenges, none of the early Reformers wanted to advance the notion that their positions were radical or new or merely constructed on subjectivism. Quite the contrary, what was needed to counter the common thought that history defaulted to the Catholic side, was to find some grounding in the history and/or writings of the early centuries by which the new Protestant proposals could be given some traditional “street-cred” as it were. As a result, the appeal was often made to select passages from the ECF’s which highlight their very high view of the (then recognized) apostolic writings (I might add, to the almost complete absence of all of the references those same ECF’s made to the Magisterial prerogatives of the bishops and councils of the Catholic Church).

In this way, the particular books which Protestants eventually held up as canonical were shown to have some basis (greater or lesser as you say) in Judeo-Christian history. That is what you have shown so far. But, when Catholic theologians then pressed as to how the Reformers could be certain that these books alone were divinely inspired (a new necessity given the new Protestant doctrine of Sola Scriptura as pitted against the Magisterium), they were faced with exactly the fallibility/probability problems with respect to both tradition and human determination that I have drawn out above. Hence, at other times and in response to such pressure, the early Reformers (both Calvin and Luther did this) would make an additional appeal to a direct illumination or witness of the Spirit to the inspired quality of the books of the Protestant canon. At one time the canon determination method is said to be rooted in documentary history and some kind of communal consensus; at another, it is said to have roots in Spirit-illumination. Never was there presented a systematic treatment concerning how these two methodologies might work together to achieve an inspired 66 book canon without falling prey to either:

1.) an “ad hoc” account of Church history (assuming everything related to the arrival at a 66 book canon was guided by God while repudiating so much else as mere human tradition), or

2.) a probabilistic result for the inspiration of the 66 books (instinctively understood as undermining the theological foundation of Sola Scriptura), or

3.) a flight to fideism (sic the notion of Spirit illumination)

What is going on here? I would propose that what is going on is this: the tact of explaining the recognition of the Protestant canon in terms of history/tradition/internal evidence, when pressed, is shown to entail a fundamental dependence upon fallible human content-transmission, assessment, and decision making, leading to – at best – a type of probabalism (sic RC Sproul) which undermines the essential certainty and confidence which Protestantism needs in order to ground all theological positions in the textual corpus of the “66 Books”. To patch or bridge this probabilistic deficit, the notion of direct/internal Spirit-illumination is added or mixed in to protect the believer from facing a critical fissure in his theological foundation (no one really wants to read scripture publicly and conclude with “thus says the Lord – I think”). The doctrine of Spirit-illumined “self-attestation” amounts to a fideistic patch on an historical-cum-academic canon-recognition methodology which simply does not get the Protestant theologian where he needs to be in terms of a known inspired canon of just these 66 books. The reason it is often so difficult to see the problem with all of this is precisely because the two methodologies are usually offered at different times and in different ways and mixes so that the layman cannot easily see that a systematic appraisal of the joint work they do together still fails to meet the needs of the Protestant theological paradigm.

Pax Christi,

Ray''

from comment 460 also by Ray:

The canon then is

a.) a determinate set of writings
b.) all of which are divinely inspired
c.) all of which (and only these) are to be received as the divinely inspired Word of God by all Christians in a binding fashion.

The Catholic position is that such a thing as the “canon” so defined, can only be “known” in a way which is free from the error-prone probabilities, if the scope of the “canon” (so defined) is determined by an infallible decision maker – of which the Magisterium of the Catholic Church is the only one we (Catholics) know.

I grant that you have not here been explicitly defending the second facet of what I have been calling the Protestant theological paradigm, namely sola scriptura. But I have added it to my arguments by way of anticipation because if that facet of the Protestant theological paradigm which you have been defending (namely that the “canon of 66 divinely inspired books can be known without an infallible determiner) is false (as I have been arguing), then sola scriptura suffers in tow. Conversely (and more pertinent to the reason I added it to the discussion), if it were not for the theological stipulation of sola scriptura, the very need or drive to show that the 66 book divinely inspired canon can be known without an infallible determiner (the primary thing being discussed) would be a non-issue. It hovers in the background of the discussion and has bearing on the very reason for the discussion.

Also in comment 112     here http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2013/01/holy-church-finding-jesus-as-a-reverted-catholic-a-testimonial-response-to-chris-castaldo/

 Plenty of spirit-filled, humble, holy Christian people with immense knowledge of Scripture, of Greek, and of Hebrew disagree with one another. This is, in a sense, God making matters plain to us: Independent interpretation as a means of knowing the truth is not His will for the Church. God could have adoptedSola Scriptura; but as a matter of history, He clearly chose not to.

Independent Scripture-reading is good for the soul and has long been recommended in the Church by all the popes and other bishops. Lectio divina is long-standing “best practice” for saint-making. I am not saying otherwise. But I am saying that God has not made it our core epistemology for knowing what is or is not orthodox Christianity. If He had intended it that way, it would work. It does not work; so, He clearly did not intend it that way.

Returning to my story, I faced a problem: How could I discern what real Christianity really was? Was it Methodism? Presbyterianism? Congregationalism? What? If I knew what it was, I could teach it to my kids. Without knowing that, I could not.

I could, of course, repeat my earlier research pattern on every disputed doctrine, and try to suss out the truth of each, but I realized that the very need to do such an exhausting thing demonstrated that something was wrong. God clearly could not require that every man go through that process!

I’m reasonably smart, analytical by disposition, educated, well-read, familiar with Scripture, working on knowing Greek, and at the time, I had some time to kill because of a lull in my business. But some folks aren’t some or any of those things, and yet God wants them, also, to know the truth, that the truth might set them free. Every plumber and public school teacher and investment banker and factory worker needs to find the right church to attend, where they can learn the truth. How can they get there? Must every living soul take up being a scripture scholar, so as to suss it out on their own, doctrine by doctrine? Will there be no Christian painters, doctors, actors…? Because all must attack this vitally-important matter with their whole attention, and take up hermeneutics?

.................

How then could I lead my family? How could I know the correct interpretation of Scripture?

The historical approach was the only tool I had, and although I knew God could not possibly expect everyone to follow that path, I chose to keep using it for as long as it remained available to me. So, I began researching the early Christians: What did they believe, on today’s disputed doctrines?

And that was when I discovered that, on doctrine after doctrine, as far back as you go, as soon as you hear a Christian talking about a doctrine, they sound Catholic.

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In the history of the Early Church, you can — with a lot of work — find people who sound Protestant on a particular topic or two (e.g. Helvedius re: Mary). But you can count on them sounding either Catholic, or heretical-to-everyone, on every other topic.

Which is an important point: To assert that there were Presbyterians or Baptists in the year 150, or the year 300, or the year 775, requires either adopting as Baptist folks who sound Baptist on point X but Catholic on point Y and heretical-to-everyone on point Z. You can’t find any honest-to-goodness Southern Baptists.

What did exist, from the evidence we have, is: A bunch of Catholic/Orthodox sounding folks, and a few other folks who sometimes differed from the Catholic folks by sounding proto-Protestant on one point while being either Catholic or wildly non-Christian on all others, and a few whom modern Catholics and Protestants alike would deem heretical.

That’s the ancient landscape, from the time of the apostles until the Middle Ages. If Protestantism (any flavor) is true, then…where were the Protestants? Why weren’t they most of the Christians…ever, or even now? What was the Holy Spirit doing all that time? Taking a nap? Why wasn’t He out leading His people into truth, like Jesus promised?

I had to ask myself, “How can I know the truth according to the means of knowing the truth and thesource of authority that Jesus put in place from the very start?” I had to use a method of “finding Christianity” that worked in A.D.75, A.D. 125, A.D. 350, A.D. 425, and so on.

........

In my journey, I discovered that the early Christians sounded Catholic.

But just as importantly, I discovered that their means of accessing Christian truth also sounds Catholic: When there is a dispute about doctrine, their first reaction is to prove truth from Scripture. If that settles the matter, they let it drop. But when there is a dispute about Scripture, their next reaction is to choose between competing interpretations on the basis of continuity of Tradition: “I heard this from X, who heard it from Y, who heard it from Z, who heard it from Peter, who heard it from Christ.”

And, whenever there is a dispute about which tradition is correct, their habit is best summed up by Irenaeus who, around 180 A.D., wrote the following:

“For it is a matter of necessity that every Church should agree with [the very ancient and universally known Church founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul...which comes down to our time by means of the successions of the bishops], on account of its preeminent authority.”

That is the pattern of the Christians of the early years, with the words of the apostles and the apostles’ immediate successors ringing in their ears. That is their epistemology of the faith, so to speak. That’s what they thought was the normal Christian avenue to reliable doctrine.

And, of course, that approach was integral to how the canon of Scripture was authoritatively set forth for the Christian faithful. Indeed, it could not have been set forth any other way, save by the authority of the bishops. If just any old guy tells you, “Here’s your Holy Writ,” you look at him suspiciously. And if your bishop does it, but you hear that every other bishop is calling him a heretic for including Book X and excluding Book Y, and if his inclusions and exclusions look like deviations from the tradition of his predecessor in that bishopric, then you’re still suspicious. But if your bishop tells you the same thing his predecessor, and all the other bishops, and most especially the Bishop of Rome are saying about the matter, Well…! You can take that to the bank. “Roma locuta, causa finita est!”

For there had already been heretics (e.g. Marcion) who tried to derail Christianity by offering a spurious canon — which goes to show you that you need a church-wide authority to proclaim such things in a way that the matter is settled for all time. It was only in response to this that the Church was forced to bother with determining what the real canon was. Until then, the matter was of secondary import, for it was expected that the faithful would heed the bishop and the bishop would remain in communion with the successor of Peter, full stop.

......................

Jesus is the Son of David, the heir to the Davidic Throne. In establishing His Messianic Kingdom, He knows that after His resurrection He will ascend, and like a Ruler who is away traveling in another country, He leaves behind stewards to manage His affairs in His name. Some are faithful, some are not: For all there will be an accounting. But Jesus longs for unity among His people, in the Household of God, the Church. He desires that we should “be one” as He and the Father are one. He knows that a gathering-point, a point-of-unity, is needed. What does He do?

Well, He incorporates into the Messianic Kingdom the old pattern of the Kingdom of David: There are not only stewards, but there is one chief steward: The al-beit, or “head of household.” His role, to paraphrase from Isaiah 22′s description of the chief steward’s office, is to “be a father” to those who live in the New Jerusalem, and to the people of God. Jesus places on the chief steward’s shoulder “the keys of the Kingdom.” What he opens no one can lock shut, and what he locks shut no one can open…and this unlocking and locking, or binding and loosing, is ratified by Heaven in such a way that what he binds on earth is bound in heaven, and what he looses on earth is loosed in heaven. Jesus sets this office up to be a unifying force for His household, as Isaiah 22:23 says, “I will drive him like a peg into a firm place.” For every tent needs that main-peg that holds the whole thing up.

That’s the Petrine office. It’s not out-of-the-blue. It’s not even out of Matthew 16 and Isaiah 22, although its assignment to Peter is described in the former and its Old Testament antecedent is described in the latter. No: It’s an assumed thing: Every first century Jew knows about the Davidic kingdom and the stewards and the chief stewards. If the Messiah is to be heir to the throne of David, He will naturally appoint stewards in His kingdom.

If we had no guarantee that the stewards spoke with Jesus’ voice, of course, we’d be in trouble. Without that, we get no Bible, no reliable teaching. In 2,000 years’ time the word “Christianity” would refer to something that people used to know what it meant, but that original meaning would have been lost in the mists of time, replaced by endless innovations disguised as “rediscovering Christianity” in so many permutations that the original was irretrievably obscured.

And that is what Christianity is, apart from the tent-peg of Magisterial authority which continually calls us back to communion.

..........................................

Now look at the Catholic church on the permanence of marriage, on contraceptives, on the inerrancy of Scripture, on the Trinity, on the two natures of Christ, on the title Theotokos for Mary, on the communion of saints. My friend, what you have there is continuity, and stability. It’s almost like Jesus founded His Church on a Rock.

So I conclude by saying: Yes, God could have done it some other way. But experiments in using alternative forms of authority for the Church (e.g. sola scriptura) have obviously led to divisions, to an ever-increasing centrifugal rending-assunder of the Body of Christ. Without that central tent-peg to hold the tent up, the whole house falls apart. God could have maintained unity around the truths of faith and morals in some other way, but He clearly did not.

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How then, are we to know the truth? I submit that if the Catholic Magisterium isn’t the correct Christian method, then there is no correct Christian method because all the other methods have been tried and failed. And it follows that if Catholic Christianity is not the fullest expression of the faith Christ wished us to practice, then it has been irretrievably lost in the mists of time, and we moderns are doomed to unresolvable doubts and unconfirmable guesses.

end of quote

see also http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2009/09/hermeneutics-and-the-authority-of-scripture/#

and from comment 41 http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2010/08/episode-14-from-presuppositional-pca-to-rome/  :

4) Dr. White said (I think) that I am attacking the “sufficiency” of Scripture (as do apparently all converts, as seen by Dr. White). I understand why Dr. White says this, but I would disagree, of course. Scripture is fully sufficient to do what it was intended to do in its proper and intended place. The books and letters of the New Testament were written by the Church, for the Church, usually in response to specific issues arising within the already-existent Church. The real question is whether the doctrines of the Church are self-evident from Scripture. I particularly appreciate Dr. White’s criticism here, because it really touches on what I see as the core issue.

That core issue is, in my view, the one raised by a faithful following of the presuppositional method: What is necessary, as a precondition of intelligibility, in order to know, defend and define the Christian Faith with certainty, unity and authority throughout the ages? I maintain that what is needed is some identifiable, authoritative body that could speak and answer issues throughout the centuries – non-self-evident, highly controversial, and much debated issues like “What is Holy Writ?” and “Who is Jesus?” and “What is the Gospel?” and “How is salvation attained?” as well modern issues like “Is artificial contraception immoral?” I need to be able to point to that body (before I know anything of who is holding the offices within it) and say that I know a priori that the Holy Spirit is going to lead that body as the “Pillar and Bulwark of the Truth.” Otherwise, it is just me trying to make a decision about these eternal matters, perhaps with other individuals also trying to make decisions. If I choose to bind myself to a larger group just because they happen to hold to what I believe, I am still the final arbiter and the group has no real authority. When that group takes a position with which I disagree, I will either leave to find a different group or start my own group. It is inevitable.

Presuppositionalists often defend their position by asserting the impossibility of the contrary, and I do that here. Without such an identifiable, authoritative body, how does one with any certainty, unity and authority know, defend and define the Faith? I maintain that that is impossible.

Dr. White maintains, as he must, that these core doctrines of the Faith (and, apparently, which books should be considered “Scripture”) are self-evident. Respectfully, that is simply not the case, as history has demonstrated. Often times we will say things like “That conflicts with the Gospel/Scripture/Truth, etc.” But “the Gospel” or “the Bible” or “the Truth” or “Scripture” are simply not self-evident. People who were (or thought they were) sincere believers disagreed (and continue to disagree about): (1) the nature of Jesus, (2) what books should be in the “Bible,” (3) the Gospel and its meaning, (4) what is necessary to be saved, and on and on and on. We say these things reflexively because we all stand on the unchallenged authority that solidified these matters over the first 1500 years of Christian history. Had no authoritative “Body” existed from the beginning, there is no telling what “Christianity” would look like today, or if it would even exist.

comment 13 

http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2009/12/justification-catholic-church-and-the-judaizers/

Assuming that simply going by ‘the most natural way’ of reading the Bible correctly guides you to the proper understanding of the Apostolic deposit of faith is your underlying hermeneutical mistake. To understand the Bible, we need to read it in and with the persons to whom it was entrusted. In the history of the Church, we see that in many cases, the heretic’s most natural way of interpreting Scripture is to see his own heresy in it.

from comment  28 http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2013/08/review-of-robert-louis-wilkens-the-first-thousand-years-a-global-history-of-christianity/

, I might propose that the Holy Spirit was given by Christ to safeguard the church from doctrinal error (Matthew 16:18-19), and this was then demonstrated by the Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15 and Paul’s statement in 1 Tim 3:15 that the Church, not the canon, is the “pillar and foundation of the truth.” Or, I could propose that Christ intended for extra-scriptural traditions to also be held as normative and binding on the conscience, when he told his disciples that the Holy Spirit would remind them of of everything he said to them (John 16:13), given that it’s unlikely the New Testament records “everything” Jesus said to them (see John 21:25). This would then be validated by Paul’s statement in 2 Thessalonians 2:15 that his readers “hold to the traditions” taught by Paul and his companions. 

http://www.catholic.com/blog/tim-staples/the-protestant-achilles-heelhttp://www.catholic.com/blog/tim-staples/the-protestant-achilles-heel

from comment 81 here http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2014/03/world-vision-and-the-quest-for-protestant-unity/

As a Catholic, I also begin with “belief in Christ,” but then I try to unpack that by asking what Jesus taught about the transmission of the faith. I see that Christ entrusted that transmission to authorized interpreters, did not limit the deposit of faith to written words, promised his divine assistance in the maintenance and transmission of the faith, instituted a liturgical order, and wrapped the whole thing up with a promise to St. Peter. I see nowhere in the data of history and revelation where Christ tied the transmission of the faith to the text of the New Testament Canon. So, I conclude, any attempt to construe the faith from that text alone – apart from the means Christ did indicate – is to depart from the teaching of Jesus.

from comment 43 here http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2012/06/podcast-ep-17-jason-cindy-stewart-recount-their-conversion/#comment-79627

Catholics generally take the view that Holy Scripture, because it is written both by human authors and by the Holy Spirit, is intended by its author and Its Author to convey multiple “senses”: The literal sense, and also other senses in which the literal understanding is a “sign” or “type” or “prefiguration” of further meanings: allegorical, moral, and anagogical. Catholics take this approach to Scripture because it comes to us from the New Testament authors (e.g. the author of Hebrews) and their disciples, the Early Church Fathers.

The Literal Sense
Now, in most cases, to understand the literal sense, one needs only a “few things”: One need only know the language in all its idioms and able to put oneself “in the moccasins” of its original audience, knowing all their cultural references and attitudes.

That, by itself, will grant pretty-accurate comprehension of the literal sense.

But it is difficult for a 21st century person in the post-Christian West, divided culturally and technologically from the authors of Scripture by such a wide gulf, to achieve those “few things.” As a consequence, a lot of passages will be subject to misinterpretation. Not such obvious things as “Jesus wept,” of course: But most of the letters of Paul contain passages on which denominations have built whole volumes of Systematic Theology, unaware that they were profoundly misinterpreting Paul. Likewise the other New Testament authors.

You may ask, “How can you, R.C., know that they (rather than you) are misinterpreting Paul?” I answer: I can think of, at minimum, 3 very different approaches to Paul’s soteriology in Romans and Galatians, which are held by serious scholars who are holy and devout men, seeking the guidance of the Holy Spirit. I bet you can, too. Yet (at least) two of these approaches must be wrong, and yet “whole volumes of Systematic Theology” have been based on them.

So the truth of my assertion cannot really be doubted: The literal sense of Scripture is easy for some passages, but for others, it is not, because we are not their intended audience, and what might have been obvious to them is non-obvious to us. (And remember: Peter warns us that there are some passages in Paul which were non-obvious even to first century readers!)

So it turns out that on disputed questions, understanding the literal sense of Scripture has great challenges.

The Other Senses
To understand the other senses of which the literal sense is a “sign” requires imagination and sensitivity and insight and such gifts as the Holy Spirit brings, some to one person, some to another. A full understanding of these senses will probably never come naturally to a single person, but must be cross-communicated in the community of faith over generations. But for this reason, these senses are subject to a different kind of error: A person’s imagination can wander far afield and yet be mistaken for an insight from the Holy Spirit.

So, even supposing that the literal sense could be understood with guaranteed accuracy, the other senses which proceed from the literal sense are going to be quite a challenge. We can expect a wide number of fanciful errors — and looking at history, we can see that there have been. Again, you and I need not know what is actually correct to make that assertion! …we need only note that devout, scholarly persons have disagreed wildly with one another in many ways, and that (at least) one of them was wrong.

Useful Versus Sufficient
Pat, I offer the above in response to your statement that, “RC’s like to think that the Scriptures cannot be understood without some kind of infallible interpreter.”

For Scripture to be Useful and Informative, one need not have an infallible interpreter. A man with a good seminary education and a good heart, who is seeking the Lord’s guidance in all ways, who comes to the Scripture already holding orthodox beliefs, will not go far wrong. Oh, he almost certainly will go wrong in a few ways! …but in most ways, he won’t. Thus, overall, we can be fairly certain that his reading of Scripture will be a net positive. It will have been Useful and Informative, producing far more enlightenment than error.

But “Useful and Informative” is very different from “Sufficient To Distinguish Orthodoxy From Error.”

For that, I am sorry to say, Scripture is NOT Sufficient. Nor was it ever. No, not in the time of Jesus and the Apostles, nor among the Exiles, nor among the North and South Kingdoms, nor in the period of the Undivided Kingdom, nor during the time of the Judges, nor during the Exodus and Conquest.

And it obviously isn’t, now.

If it were, there’d be only one visible communion of Christians on earth.

Is there only one visible communion of Christians on earth? Only one, even in the Protestant tradition? No?

Then Scripture, despite its inspiration and inerrancy, is shown by history to be insufficient to produce doctrinal agreement, even merely on the meaning of Scripture. (Let alone on topics which are critical to the Christian faith but cannot be found in Scripture; e.g., which books should be in the canon.)

Thus, if we are to have such agreement, it could only come through Christ providing us with a Church (or at least with something) able to correct faulty interpretations of Scripture, with divine authority). And we can reasonably expect that same authority to help us with the topics that aren’t even in the Scriptures, like the canon.

from comment 176 here   http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2014/03/world-vision-and-the-quest-for-protestant-unity/

So, it may be that the conversation should pause long enough to ensure mutual comprehension, and then proceed.

Ιn particular the issue of Scripture and its role in the Church (in EVERY era) needs to be clearly understood before anything else happens.

Will you please agree, specifically, to the following eighteen items?

On a point-by-point basis, you need to either affirm or deny that….

1. The Jews didn’t have a fixed canon in Christ’s time;

2. Some Jews regarded only the 5 books of Moses as authoritative;

3. Other Jews regarded something similar to, though not always identical to, the Protestant OT canon to be authoritative;

4. Still other Jews regarded something similar to, though not always identical to, the Catholic OT canon to be authoritative;

5. The “OT canon” question cannot thus be settled by appeals to pre-Christian Jewish authorities settling the issue, since they hadn’t;

6. By the time Jewish sages formed a consensus which included (for example) Esther but excluded (for example) 1 & 2 Maccabees, Christ had already come; Christ had already died; Christ had already risen; Christ had already ascended; the Holy Spirit had already come at Pentecost; the Proto-Council of Jerusalem had already exerted authority over the Christian faithful (Acts 15); the Apostles had already taught their message “by word of mouth, or by letter” as being “what it really is, the Word of God”; and all the original Twelve apostles had died;

7. There is therefore no just cause for a Christian to appeal to anti-Christian Jewish sages of the early 2nd century (over and against the authority of the early Christian bishops!) to get an authoritative OT canon;

8. When the Jewish sages started excluding the Deuterocanonical books (e.g., Wisdom), it was partly to undermine Christian apologists (since Wisdom contains a detailed prophecy of Christ’s suffering which was being used by Christian apologists to persuade many Jews that Jesus was the Messiah);

9. The New Testament books used by Protestants today, when quoting the Old Testament, mostly quote the Septuagint word-for-word…and either quotes or alludes to various OT books which are in the Catholic OT, but excluded from the Protestant;

10. Before 370 A.D. we have no record of any Christian authority using the same 27 NT books which Catholics and Protestants agree upon today, but after 370 A.D. everyone agreed for 1,100 years until Luther tried unsuccessfully to exclude James, Jude, Hebrews, and Revelation in the 1500′s;

11. Before 370 A.D. we have varying OT canons from Christian witnesses but they invariably at least one of the books which Catholics regard canonical (Judith, Tobit, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees) is included, and usually all but one or two are included (and the one or two vary);

12. After 370 A.D. authorities agreed upon an OT canon of 46 books identical to the Catholic OT canon, and this continued until Luther and Calvin’s day;

13. After the death of the last of the Twelve (John) there was no way Christians could appeal to the Twelve to get a New Testament canon or an Old Testament canon (neither of which was yet known to the faithful), so, wherever Christians got their canon of Scripture, it wasn’t from the Twelve;

14. Until the Church had set the canon to show what was and wasn’t “Scripture”, it was impossible to take “Sola Scriptura” as a valid methodology for discerning whether a given doctrine was heretical or orthodox…and in historical fact, the Christian faithful did not do so;

15. The Christian faithful, instead, found out what was orthodox from “The Church” in the following way: They accepted what was said by their bishop (provided he had Apostolic Succession and could trace his authority and his teachings on the disputed matter back through his predecessor to the Apostles); and when there were disputes between bishops they appealed either to the bishop of Rome, or to a council called-and-conducted with the consent/agreement of the bishop of Rome, to resolve the dispute;

16. The reason that the Christian faithful accepted the 27-book NT canon and the 46-book (Catholic) OT canon when, after 370, these were finally standardized was because their bishop, and especially the bishop of Rome, had said so;

17. You cannot get a canon of Scripture from Scripture itself inasmuch as (a.) Scripture never says what the canon should be or gives any standard for determining it; (b.) even if it did, you wouldn’t know whether it was trustworthy because the book including the canon might not, itself, be canonical; and,

18. Consequently, any Christian claiming to have an infallible knowledge of which books should be in the Bible is ABSOLUTELY forced to admit that he’s relying, for that knowledge, on an infallible authority OTHER THAN the authority of Scripture itself.

From comment 10 here  http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2014/04/ancient-marian-devotion/

It must be frustrating trying to bring this argument to what is in Sacred Scripture while us Catholics seem to be avoiding the issue like professional contortionists.

I don’t know if this would help, but I’ll try to explain why we are doing this.

We acknowledge that revelation came in the person of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and that the Truth He conveyed “Sets us free”. We all agree on this.

Where we disagree is how that revelation is transmitted to us. You acknowledge only method “S”, Scripture. We acknowledge “S”–Scripture, “T”–Tradition, and “M”–the Magisterium, which is the Holy Spirit guiding the Church to all Truth in its interpretation and understanding of “S” and “T”.

You are trying to argue against devotion to Mary based on “S” alone, but we don’t rely on “S” alone, but also acknowledge “T” and “M”. For us to engage in discussing with only “S” as an authority would be to presume your rejection of “T” and “M”, and we could not present the full Catholic understanding, which would cripple the discussion.

It would be legitimate to discuss whether the Catholic understanding of “T” contradicts “S”. Therefore we ask you not to demand where we justify something in “S” alone, because we don’t acknowledge “S” alone. Rather, on the subject of “S”, you would need to show that the (accurate) Catholic Teaching on devotion to Mary contradicts Scripture, and not just demand that we justify it, especially since our reading of Mary’s place in Scripture is heavily influenced by “T” and “M”.

Why Fred keeps driving the point of the canon and our fallible intellects is because, as we argue, you cannot have “S” without “T” and “M”, which gets to the root of the disagreement, for if without “T” and “M”, we cannot have “S”, then, since we all agree that “S” is the inerrant word of God, you will need to acknowledge the need for “T” and “M”. But if we just sling Bible verses back and forth, from within different ways of understanding the role of the Bible and how we are to go about interpreting it, we will quite literally get nowhere.

Finally, I wanted to point out the irony of you quoting 2 Peter 2:1. We to acknowledge that; however, we also acknowledge that God intervenes and gave the Body of Christ an “Immune System”. We acknowledge that such false teachers have come: Arius, Marcion, Nestorius, … Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, etc. However, thanks be to God, the Magisterium of the Church defended the Faith given to us by the Apostles and condemned these false teachers.

Fred is pointing out that, yes, false teachers will arise, but how do we know we aren’t being false teachers? If from the 200′s to the 1500′s no one had a problem with devotion to Mary and the saints, by what right can we say they got it wrong, but we got it right! And in such an obvious way that it would fall into the “Essentials” (I presume you believe that devotion to Mary and the Saints is a violation of the “essential doctrines).

from    http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2009/07/ecclesial-deism/#comment-108493                                                comment 433

I disagree. It is not biblicism that leads to interpretive disagreements, but human sin and frailty. The Book is holy, but we are filled with sin and error.

The Bible is holy, but biblicism is an erroneous human philosophy produced by human sin and ignorance, through a rejection of the authoritative Tradition and a rejection of the authority of the Church. Even holy people who in invincible ignorance adopted biblicism from others before them will, because of their biblicism, reach many different intractable interpretations. In such a case it is not the sinfulness of these biblicists that leads to the multiplication of incompatible interpretations of Scripture but the hermeneutically underdetermined character of the biblical data itself approached by itself, apart from Tradition and apart from the doctrinal guardrails laid down by the Magisterium of the Church.

It is convenient for a biblicist to say that everyone who disagrees with his own interpretation of Scripture is blinded by sin, and in that way explain away that disagreement and justify his own interpretation. But that explanation works to an intellectually honest person only insofar as he lives in a hermeneutical bubble without knowing he is living in a hermeneutical bubble, sealed away from the thousands of other biblicists whom, upon encountering personally, he would recognize to be holier than himself, but who also hold interpretations altogether different from and contrary to his own. Insofar as he knows that the very nature of sin involves an attempt to justify itself, and thus hide its sinfulness from the one sinning, he has to acknowledge to himself that this same pervasive sinfulness he attributes to all others who hold interpretations contrary to his own, could be at the root of his own idiosyncratic interpretation. So the more he is exposed to persons holier than himself, who hold interpretations incompatible with his own, the more he realizes that his explanation for the interpretative disagreements between himself and other biblicists is a case of special pleading of precisely the sort the noetic effect of sin would lead him to commit in order to prop up and hide from himself the erroneous nature of his sin-produced position, as I have described in the last paragraph ofcomment #256 of “Why Protestantism has no visible catholic Church.” As Christian Smith says in The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism Is Not a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture, (Brazos Press, 2011), “The very same Bible – which biblicists insist is perspicuous and harmonious – gives rise to divergent understandings among intelligent, sincere, committed readers about what it says about most topics of interest.” (p. 17).

You wrote:

You and I have differing foundations and hence differing paradigms. My foundation is positively identified by the apostle Paul as the teachings of the apostles and prophets (Eph. 2:20-21) which are given to us on in the New Testament. John 16:13 is the promise from Jesus Christ that makes that foundation, alone, worthy of my soul’s trust. My faith rests in Jesus Christ’s actual words, not a recasting of them.

The Catholic position does not “recast” Jesus words; it understands them according to the fullness of the Apostolic deposit, what in the “Pontificator’s Third Law” is summed up nicely as reading Scripture “through the Fathers.” Leaving the Fathers out of one’s interpretation of Scripture presupposes that what they received orally from the Apostles was already lost, and thus in this way the “solo scriptura” of biblicism presupposes ecclesial deism.

The problem with biblicism is that it leaves the biblicist with only part of the Apostolic deposit, not only in lacking the rest of the Canon of Scripture, but also in lacking the oral part of the Apostolic Tradition handed down in the Church Fathers. So the biblicist, no matter how holy and upright and intelligent he or she is, is hermeneutically flying blind.

You wrote:

Your foundation for your Roman Catholic faith is a belief that men who livedafter the apostles are the foundation of the Church.

That’s a straw man of the Catholic position. Our foundation is not the Church Fathers per se, but Christ and the Apostles as illumined by the Church Fathers who were (mostly) the successors of the Apostles, precisely because we don’t presume ecclesial deism, as biblicism does. I’ve laid out the Catholic understanding of the relation of Scripture and Tradition in VIII. Scripture and Tradition” in my reply to Michael Horton’s final response in our Modern Reformation interview. Moreover, a person constructing or criticizing straw men of his interlocutor’s position is not yet in a position to criticize that position, because he does not yet understand what he is criticizing.

You wrote:

As I’ve argued here, beginning in #344, your paradigm is contrary to that found in the words of Jesus Christ and the writings of His apostles.

And as I’ve shown in each case, your argument begs the question precisely by presupposing the biblicism that is in question. So in each case your argument engages in circular reasoning, which is futile as a way of resolving a disagreement. I don’t see how you infallibly determine that it cannot be because of your own sinfulness that you are unwilling to examine the truth of the biblicist paradigm, and must therefore always presuppose it. If, however, you are willing to examine the truth of the biblicist paradigm without presupposing it, I have not seen from you any indication of that willingness. Again, as I said before, until you’re willing to compare paradigms, rather than engage in circular reasoning through presupposing the biblicist paradigm, there is no point continuing the exchange.