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The Church gathered in 325 AD to settle the Arian controversy, but assuming that the Scriptures alone are infallible, it seems inconceivable that any council could reliably settle a doctrine of faith, especially one so critical, if she had not first settled the question of which books could be considered as an infallible basis for such a decision.

One might object that such a question is only a concern for those who believe in solo scriptura, but this is false because there is no principled distinction between solo and sola scriptura. Another objection might be that the Church, widely and by general consensus, knew the canon, at least of the New Testament. But the New Testament canon was still in question at the time as no authoritative council would consider the matter for two more generations. To use such an objection would be to base certainty on doubt, an inconsistency that simply won’t suffice.

The reality we are left to consider is that the Church gathered and under the full weight of her authority made a critical theological decision, and the question of the canon never came up. This is inconceivable if the Church had ever considered the Scriptures the sole source of infallibility.

In 2008, several of us who contribute here were involved in a Catholic Philosophy forum when Sean Patrick noted that most of us who were in the forum had previously been Reformed. Sean suggested that we start a group blog aimed at dialogue with a Reformed audience. Tom Brown, in the process of converting to the Catholic Church, about the same time, envisioned a site titled “Called to Communion” that would feature weighty articles published in careful sequence, as opposed to the sporadic nature of a blog. The goal was to encourage an in-depth consideration of these important theological issues. We married the two ideas, and the site as it stands now is the result.

Our early lead articles, such as this appreciation of Reformed Christianity, were well received and did not cause much debate. We wanted to focus initially on important issues where we felt we could establish some common ground. Our next set of articles were ecclesiological. Although they presented direct counter-claims to the Reformed position, there weren’t any notable refutations; none of the replies we received challenged the conclusions of the arguments. This was a bit discouraging, and as predicted, those same false assumptions which were refuted in the ecclesiological articles, mostly ecclesiological, continue to be the go-to arguments against our position for many of our regular interlocutors. e.g. We say, “You must read Scripture with the Church,” and they say, “We do,” but they continue to use “Church” in a different way, despite our earlier arguments against their concept of Church.

Certain readers have perceived some of us, particularly myself, as coming across cold and overly confident in our discussions. Part of this, no doubt, is due to personal shortcomings. But some of it, to be fair, is attributable to our culture of relativism. Though we do not speak for the Catholic Church, we represent her in a way. And the Catholic Church is a beacon heralding objective and knowable truth amid the stormy sea of relativism and skepticism in which we’re so accustomed to living, thinking, and unfortunately, worshiping.  To represent her faithfully is, on some level, to stand against the chaotic billows of society.   None of this is an excuse for poor tact (mea culpa), but as Dr. Liccione said in a recent discussion, the Catholic claim is extremely difficult to demonstrate to those caught in the grip of the ‘hermeneutic of suspicion.’ Moreover, one who truly believes in a visible Church established by Christ, when speaking of such, will always clash with another who has only a nominal conception of the same.

Our next set of articles focused on the authority of Scripture and was recently concluded by Tom Brown’s article on the Canon. Bryan Cross and Dr. Neal Judisch previously co-wrote a thorough refutation of Keith Mathison’s thesis regarding sola scriptura versus solo scriptura, which thesis has gained tremendous popularity in contemporary Reformed apologetics. Some readers attempted to contradict this article, but the rebuttals failed to show the arguments to be false. Taken as whole, the Protestant objectors didn’t quite know whether to agree with the argument and disagree with its implications, or to agree with its implications but disagree with the argument. Those in the second camp were the ones whose rebuttals were refuted in the lengthy combox.

We are preparing to close our first major round of lead articles with the next two: on holy orders and apostolic succession. These two will complete the general opening argument we have been making, that without an objective criteria for “Church” independent of personal interpretation of Scripture, an individual assumes for himself the full authority of the Christian magisterium. That is, the individual assumes the entirety of the authority which Catholics reserve to the successors of those appointed by Christ including the successor to St. Peter.

Regardless of how bad the situation in the Church gets, schism is never justified. Moving forward, we hope, against overwhelming odds, to heal that schism. These words I write are unwelcome to those who disagree, but I hope my readers can ask themselves a question that Bryan Cross once asked a denier of schism: “If Rome really were the Church, and you, as a Reformer, were actually in schism, how would you know it?” The Reformers have no answer except, “I would know it because Rome would be faithful to the Scriptures and I would be unfaithful.” But as Mathison stated, any appeal to Scripture is an appeal to private interpretation of Scripture. Therefore, the answer is really, “I would know it because Rome would agree with me.” This natural internalization of the faith is painfully difficult to avoid. “I know I’m a Christian” we reason with ourselves, “and I can’t have been deceived on the fundamentals of what it means to be Christian.” To honestly entertain the possibility that one, especially one advanced in age or ecclesial status, has inherited and acquiesced to an incomplete version of the faith, which is the center of their life, is something akin to fitting a camel through the eye of a needle.

With this difficult road ahead of us, that is, the road to unity, let us proceed in humility and with much prayer.

The Holy Family

“If one takes into account … that the sacred Scriptures came from God through a subject which lives continually — the pilgrim people of God — then it becomes clear rationally as well that this subject has something to say about the understanding of this book.”¹

– Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger

What I noticed as I studied the exchange is what I’ve noticed in many such discussions. Typically in answering the question “What still divides us?” Protestants and Catholics give lists of doctrines about which they disagree. The Protestant, for example, will say that justification is by forensic imputation, while the Catholic responds by saying that justification is by infusion. The Catholic will say that the bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ, while the Protestant responds by saying that they do not. The Catholic will affirm the authority of the Pope, while the Protestant denies this. And the list of theological disagreements goes on. They each defend their position according to the standards and methods intrinsic to their respective paradigms. Very rarely do the discussions focus on the underlying reasons for the first-order disagreements. And so the participants end up talking past each other, in a way, debating at the level of first-order questions while standing in very different paradigms at the second-order level. That makes the debate seem interminable, and inclines Christians to settle for the inevitability of schism, agreeing to disagree, and retreating to separate communities, or when by chance crossing paths, simply making polite conversation about other things. The seemingly interminable nature of the disagreement discourages many Christians from pressing forward toward reconciliation and the reunion that will put to an end this nearly five-hundred year schism.

To understand why the disagreement seems interminable, we have to direct our attention beyond the first-order disagreements, to the second-order disagreements that underlie them. Here in this post, I’ll address only one of the second-order disagreements; it concerns how we determine the meaning and interpretation of Scripture. When Catholics and Protestant approach Scripture, on the face of it we seem to be doing the same thing, in the same way. It is this superficial appearance of methodological common ground that sets us up with a false hope that this common ground is sufficient to resolve our disagreements. The futility of our subsequent respective appeals to Scripture  leaves us perplexed and frustrated. But the truth is that our respective approaches to Scripture are ultimately very different.

In general, Protestants think differently about how to go about interpreting Scripture than do Catholics. When trying to understand the meaning of a passage in Scripture, Catholics have always looked to the Tradition; we seek to determine how the Church has understood and explained the passage over the past two millennia. We look up what the Church Fathers and Church Doctors have said about the passage. By contrast, Protestants typically do not turn first to the Church Fathers when seeking to understand the meaning of a passage or term in Scripture that is unclear. Protestants generally turn to contemporary lexicons and commentaries written by contemporary biblical scholars whom they trust. Only rarely, and perhaps as a final step, do they turn to the Church Fathers. The common form of the Protestant mind is ready to believe that the Fathers often got Scripture wrong, and to use their own interpretation of Scripture to ‘correct’ or critically evaluate the Fathers. That kind of a stance toward the Fathers does not dispose Protestants to be guided by the Fathers in their interpretation of Scripture.² In short, the Catholic approach sees the Fathers and the councils as the primary guide to interpreting Scripture, while the Protestant approach sees the lexicon and contemporary academic commentaries [that one trusts] as the primary guide to interpreting Scripture, and that by which the Fathers’ theology and interpretation of Scripture are critically evaluated.

What explains this difference between the Catholic and Protestant approaches to Scripture? The explanation of the Catholic approach to Scripture lies in its ecclesiology, its understanding of the Church as a family extending through time back to Christ and the Apostles, and perpetually vivified by the Holy Spirit. And this understanding of the Church as a family spread out through many generations, has methodological implications with respect to interpreting Scripture. Here’s why. If you were to come into my home, you would understand many things said in my family, because you speak the same language that our broader society speaks (i.e. English). But you would not understand some things that we say to each other, because you would not have the inside-the-family point of view. You wouldn’t get the inside jokes, the allusions to past family events you hadn’t experienced. You would not have the internal lived experience of my family as the fuller context of our present communication with one another. To understand fully our intra-family communication, you would have to live with us for quite some time, learn our in-house catch words, the events and habits and stories that form the mutually understood background against which we expect our speech-acts to be understood when we communicate to each other.

The Catholic understanding of the Church as a family stretched out over two-thousand years entails likewise that there is within her an inside point-of-view, a context that is richer and fuller than the social context common to pagans and Christians alike. This fuller context is informed by every period of time in this family’s history, and includes the lived experience and testimony by those within the Church, even those who first spoke and taught the words of the New Testament, before those words were written down. This internal point of view, passed down within this family as a living memory, from those men who spent three years with Jesus, to those bishops, presbyters and laymen to whom these Apostles carefully explained the gospel in many late night discussions and daily teachings, and to each succeeding generation of the Church family, is what we call Tradition. It is the view from the inside, the living memory of the family in which the Scriptures were written, received, and explained. The memories of those who were members of this family when the Scriptures were being received from the Apostles, and in which the Scriptures were explained and understood, did not vanish; they became part of the internal life of this family, and have been continually handed down within this same family for almost two-thousand years.

What is presupposed by approaching Scripture through the lexicon rather than through the Fathers? From the Catholic perspective, interpreting Scripture apart from the view-from-the-inside, would be like trying to understand my family’s internally developed cliches and allusions, by turning to the dictionary. What is linguistically common between my family and the world, is not sufficient to understand what is linguistically unique to my family. The outsider who assumes that he can rightly interpret my family’s speech-acts, simply by way of dictionary, has failed to recognize the unique language community that my family is. He has mistakenly assumed that the most specific language community in this case is simply that set of persons who speak English. He has failed to recognize that the unique and intimately shared life of my family within the broader society, creates a language within a language.

Likewise, approaching Scripture through the lexicon, apart from the Fathers, presupposes that there is no inside-the-family point of view with respect to Scripture; it is an approach from the outside, outside the divine Life that animates the Mystical Body of Christ. It is somewhat like the reductionistic method of studying an animal by cutting it into pieces, and studying its parts. The method is useful, but only when conjoined to what is already known about the animal as a living being. Otherwise, the animal is explanatorily reduced to its parts, as though it is nothing but its parts.

The contemporary lexicon, quite similarly, has been worked out by contemporary academics who do not draw from the continuous lived memory of the Church in her liturgical and pedagogical tradition, but who collect and cite the ancient usage of various terms both by Christians, non-Christian Jews, and pagans living at the time the Scriptures were written. Understanding how these terms were used at that time can be very helpful. It can shed light on what we already know, and reveal various facts about these terms in relation to prior uses in Scripture and to uses in the pagan society. But the methodology by which lexicons are compiled does not include the internal point of view handed down by the Church family. For that reason, the lexical approach to Scripture (apart from the Fathers) methodologically presupposes that there is no Church extending down through the ages, no internal memory and life passed down through her many generations to the present. It is a Church-less approach to Scripture, as though either the Scripture was not given within the Church, to the Church, by the leaders of Church, as inspired by the Holy Spirit, or the lived memory of this family somehow died away and now must be archaeologically rediscovered, from the outside.

For this reason, approaching the Scriptures by means of the lexicon apart from the Fathers, is not ecclesiologically neutral. It presupposes either that there was no Church, or that ecclesial deism is true. In this way, the lexical approach is not a neutral presupposition with respect to the Catholic-Protestant divide; it is a question-begging presupposition, because it presumes the falsity of Catholicism. Thus this lexical approach to resolving interpretive interpretive disagreements between Protestants and Catholics begs the question against the Catholic, by methodologically requiring the Catholic to deny the Church and the Tradition.

Notice how as explained above, ecclesiology predetermines how Scripture is to be approached and interpreted. Given an ‘invisible church’ ecclesiology, or ecclesial deism, one can only turn to lexicographers studying the usages of terms in ancient texts, and concur with the probabilistic opinions they reach. But given that the Church is an unbroken family, indwelled and preserved by the Holy Spirit, it follows that the view from the inside (i.e. Tradition) takes precedence over the view from the outside (i.e. the lexical approach). And to approach Scripture from the inside, one must approach it within the lived Tradition of the family that received it, embodied it, and handed it down faithfully.

The Church has never believed that the way Christians are to discover the meaning of the words of Scripture is simply from their textual context. That’s because the Church has never seen herself as having received a book that must then [i.e. subsequently] be interpreted. The Church has always understood herself as already having received the deposit of faith, from Christ, and from the Apostles themselves (in person), before receiving the deposit of faith in its written form. Christ taught the meaning of the Old Testament to the Apostles, and they subsequently taught it to those whom they ordained to succeed them. They also taught the gospel (the entire deposit of the faith they had received from Christ) to their successors. The role of the Church’s magisterium was to preserve and explain what had already been entrusted to them and explained to them by the Apostles, not to figure out the meaning of a book that, as it were, simply fell from Heaven. For this reason, the [exclusively] lexical method to discovering the meaning of Scripture exemplifies a mindset that is foreign to the Church at every point in her history. It presupposes ecclesial deism insofar as it assumes that this original family understanding of the text as it was received by the Church from its human authors, vanished or decayed over time.

Without that internal, living memory of the eyewitnesses who received these texts, the best the lexical approach can do is look to the usages of terms found in the New Testament by pagans and Jews. But for this reason the lexical approach to Scripture implicitly presupposes that the mind of Christ contained in the Scriptures is determined by matching it to the minds of those pagans contemporary to the writing of Scripture, as they used those same terms. Methodologically implicit in that approach to Scripture is the notion that the supernatural quality of the deposit of faith does not extend to the concepts associated with the terms, such that the concepts are elevated or broadened or nuanced by divine revelation. It allows the deposit of faith to consist only of new combinations of existing concepts. In other words, it allows the deposit of faith to be new only in the sense that pre-existing terms are arranged in new ways, not also in the sense that pre-existing terms are expanded or deepened, unless that expansion or deepening is spelled out explicitly in Scripture.

For example, if pagans used the term ‘dikaiow’ (‘justify’) to refer to a change in legal status not on account of any change internal to the accused, the lexical approach would methodologically assume that this is what this term must mean when St. Paul uses it to refer to what God does to us, when we believe the gospel. But that is not a good assumption. Simply by an assumption implicit in the methodology, it limits what God can do when He justifies to what a human judge can do when he justifies. Why should God’s justification of men be limited in its nature only to what pagans can do in declaring a person legally righteous without actually making that person internally righteous? God is greater than man. Hence, even from this example alone, we can see that the lexical approach carries with it not just anti-ecclesial presuppositions, but potentially even anti-theistic presuppositions.

For Catholics, the interpretation of the deposit of faith belongs to those whom Christ authorized and entrusted with it, i.e. the Apostles and their successors, referred to as the Church’s Magisterium. The meaning of Scripture is not merely a matter for the outsider to determine by lexical analysis, but first and foremost involves coming to Sacred Scripture within the living Tradition of the Church, as unveiled and unfolded to us by those to whom the deposit of faith was entrusted, and to whom interpretive authority was given. The lexical approach is fine when used under the guidance and auspices of the Church’s Magisterium, because then its insights can be interpreted and understood within the context of the Tradition. Understanding the contemporary sense of terms as used by the human authors of Scripture can help us deepen our understanding of Scripture and its meaning. But when the lexical method is used as though there is no  Church, or as though ecclesial deism is true, or as though the concepts of the deposit of faith must be limited to concepts found in pagan speech and culture, or even to concepts found in ancient Hebrew speech and culture, the method implicitly denies that Christ founded a Church against which the gates of hell shall not prevail even to the end of the age, and deposited within her a divine revelation that surpassed all previous revelation. In this way, the lexical approach to Scripture fails to apprehend its true context, which is the life and liturgy of the Church.

The context of Scripture is not merely within its pages, but is the living organism which is the Body of Christ, i.e. the Church. Since the gospel teaches us that Christ founded a Church against which the gates of hell shall not prevail, we should expect to approach Scripture through the view-from-within of that Church. Insofar as the lexical approach methodologically denies the Church, the lexical approach implicitly denies the gospel. To find and follow the gospel, we should come to Scripture through the Tradition of the Church. This is why Sacred Scripture can be rightly understood only in the bosom of holy Mother Church. Both Protestants and Catholics need to understand this fundamental difference in their respective approach to Scripture, in order to make progress in resolving their long-standing schism.

“In the Church, Sacred Scripture, the understanding of which increases under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and the ministry of its authentic interpretation that was conferred upon the Apostles, are indissoluably bound. Whenever Sacred Scripture is separated from the living voice of the Church, it falls prey to disputes among experts. Of course what they have to tell us is important and invaluable; …. Yet science alone cannot provide us with a definitive and binding interpretation; it is unable to offer us, in its interpretation, that certainty with which we can live and for which we can even die. A greater mandate is necessary for this, which cannot derive from human abilities alone. The voice of the living Church is essential for this, of the Church entrusted until the end of time to Peter and to the College of the Apostles.”³

– Pope Benedict XVI

1. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, “Relationship between Magisterium and Exegetes.” Address to the Pontifical Biblical Commission. In L’Osservatore Romano Weekly Edition in English. July 23, 2003. As quoted in Covenant and Communion, Scott Hahn (Brazos Press, 2009), p. 46.
2. That disposition has shifted significantly among a small but significant minority of Protestants toward a respect for the teachings of the Fathers.  Think of the late Robert Webber’s ancient-future movement. See, for example, this article in Christianity Today.
3. Pope Benedict XVI, Homily, Mass of Possession of the Chair of the Bishop of Rome (May 7, 2005, in L’Osservatore Romano, Weekly Edition in English (May 11, 2005), as quoted in Covenant and Communion, Scott Hahn (Brazos Press, 2009), p. 21.

In the very least, it shows that Augustine was not a “religion of the book” sort of a Christian. Scripture instructs in the faith, but it is not the object of our faith. Here’s the full quote:

And thus a man who is resting upon faith, hope and love, and who keeps a firm hold upon these, does not need the Scriptures except for the purpose of instructing others. Accordingly, many live without copies of the Scriptures, even in solitude, on the strength of these three graces [here Augustine seems to refer to hermits like St Antony of Egypt] . So that in their case, I think, the saying is already fulfilled: “Whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.” 1 Corinthians 13:8 Yet by means of these instruments (as they may be called), so great an edifice of faith and love has been built up in them, that, holding to what is perfect, they do not seek for what is only in part perfect— of course, I mean, so far as is possible in this life; for, in comparison with the future life, the life of no just and holy man is perfect here. Therefore the apostle says: “Now abides faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity:” 1 Corinthians 13:13 because, when a man shall have reached the eternal world, while the other two graces will fail, love will remain greater and more assured.

Now when I was at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, we were taught that 1 Cor 13 taught “cessationism” – the doctrine that prophecy and tongues ceased with the arrival of “the perfect” which was assumed to be the canonized text of Scripture. Saint Augustine turns this on its head. Augustine lumps “Scripture” under “prophecies” and thus concludes that when the perfect comes (that is, faith, hope and charity), then Scripture is no longer needed.

Wow. The assumption is that you believe and act perfectly, you don’t need a Bible…

Just for the record, I’m far from giving away my Bible, since I’m a rather poor exemplar of faith, hope, and charity. But still, I’m rather blown away by these words of Augustine.

Any comments?

This article intends to show that, though Protestants agree with the Catholic Church on the basic truths about Scripture and its authority, the Reformed view of Scripture errs in three respects: in its assumption about the canon of Scripture, in its view of the authority of Scripture, and in its view of the role of Sacred Scripture in the life of the Church. These errors are harmful to the faith, and the truth proclaimed by the Catholic Church about its Sacred books is the perfect corrective. I will begin this examination of the authority of Sacred Scripture with our points of agreement.

Contents:

I. Points of Agreement
II. Errors of the Reformed View
III. Correctives Provided by the Catholic View

I. Points of Agreement

The Catechism of the Catholic Church declares that God is the author of Scripture, that the Scriptures are inspired by the Holy Spirit and without error¹, that Scripture cannot be rightly interpreted without the aid of the Holy Spirit, that the Old and New Testaments are both the word of God, both binding on men for all time, that the Old and New Testaments are one unity of revelation, and that, consequently, one cannot be rightly understood without the other.

To quote from the Catechism:

In order to reveal himself to men, in the condescension of his goodness God speaks to them in human words: “Indeed the words of God, expressed in the words of men, are in every way like human language, just as the Word of the eternal Father, when he took on himself the flesh of human weakness, became like men.”²

In Sacred Scripture, the Church constantly finds her nourishment and her strength, for she welcomes it not as a human word, “but as what it really is, the word of God.” In the sacred books, the Father who is in heaven comes lovingly to meet his children, and talks with them.³

I know our Reformed brothers will approve of each and every one of these points, as the
Westminster Confession of Faith states the following:

Therefore it pleased the Lord, at sundry times, and in divers manners, to reveal Himself, and to declare that His will unto His Church; and afterwards for the better preserving and propagating of the truth, and for the more sure establishment and comfort of the Church against the corruption of the flesh, and the malice of Satan and of the world, to commit the same wholly unto writing; which makes the Holy Scripture to be most necessary; those former ways of God’s revealing His will unto His people being now cease.  ⁴

Here we stand as Reformed Christians and Catholics together claiming Sacred Scripture to be the word of God given for the salvation of the world. Together we deny that Sacred Scripture is merely a collection of historical books or the wise words of human authors.

We agree further that the Word of God recorded in Sacred Scripture has a special place in the life of the Church: as its guide, as its greatest earthly treasure, and as its greatest source of wisdom and guidance. This has been the case in the Catholic Church from her inception down to the present, as a few quotations from the Fathers and councils of the Catholic Church suffice to show:

These books are the fountains of salvation, so that he who thirsts may be satisfied with the oracles contained in them: in these alone the school of piety preaches the Gospel; let no man add to or take away from them. (St. Athanasius, Festal Letters, 39.)

[H]e will find there in much greater abundance things that are to be found nowhere else, but can be learnt only in the wonderful sublimity and wonderful simplicity of the Scriptures. (St. Augustine, De Doctr. Christ., 2,42,63.)

‘As a trusty door, Scripture shuts out heretics, securing us from error…’ (St. John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople, Joann. 58.)

Therefore, like the Christian religion itself, all the preaching of the Church must be nourished and regulated by Sacred Scripture. For in the sacred books, the Father who is in heaven meets His children with great love and speaks with them; and the force and power in the word of God is so great that it stands as the support and energy of the Church, the strength of faith for her sons, the food of the soul, the pure and everlasting source of spiritual life. Consequently these words are perfectly applicable to Sacred Scripture: “For the word of God is living and active” and “it has power to build you up and give you your heritage among all those who are sanctified.” (Dei Verbum, 21, quoting Hebrews 4:12, Acts 20:32, and citing 1 Thessolonians 2:13.)

When we examine the very earliest days of the Church, through the time of the Fathers, even through the divisions of the Reformation, down to the Second Vatican Council, we see that Catholics and Reformed Christians have significant common ground in our understanding of Sacred Scripture.

Before advancing to our points of disagreement, let us pause for a moment and thank the consubstantial Trinity for preserving in us all a love and reverence for Sacred Scripture, which will surely be integral to the reunion for which we all pray.

II. Errors of the Reformed View

But advance we must, for there remain divisions between us on the nature and number of the books of Sacred Scripture, as well as the nature of its authority. Protestants view the books of Sacred Scripture as the complete revelation of God and sole arbiter of all theological disputes whereas the Catholic Church has always taught that Sacred Scripture is a part of the Deposit of faith, along with Sacred Tradition and the living Magisterium of the Church. These are some of the most fundamental issues that have divided us for centuries and will continue to do so until we can come to a common understanding.

I intend to address three of the errors in the Reformed doctrine of Sacred Scripture, and then proceed to consider how the Catholic doctrine of Scripture provides a corrective for these errors and a proper understanding of the authority of the Scriptures. The first Reformed error I will address is the deficiency of its standards for determining which books are a part of the canon of Sacred Scripture. Among the different Protestant communities there are numerous views of the way in which the canon of Sacred Scripture was established, and space does not allow for all of them to be addressed.⁵  I will therefore address the Reformed views which seem to be the most widely held.

How Do We Know?
The first problem is one of epistemology. For all the many attempts to prove otherwise, two of which I examine below, Protestants simply have no way to verify a canon apart from a subjective internal witness. R.C. Sproul claims that we have a “fallible collection of infallible books,”⁶ but on what basis can he know that each of these books is infallible? It has never been the view of the Church that the books of Sacred Scripture are anything less than an infallible and trustworthy standard.

Sproul argues that Scripture claims infallibility for itself, but that there are other fallible authorities in the world, such as the Church, that are nonetheless authoritative in spite of their fallibility. According to Sproul, on the basis of the Church as an institution founded by God acting with His authority, we can trust that the Scriptures were rightly identified by the Church.

But the claim that we have a fallible collection of infallible books does not solve the problem of how we know which books are inspired and which are not; in fact it creates more problems. His argument points to the Scriptures as evidence supporting the claim that the Scriptures are infallible. But the evidence supporting the claim that the Scriptures are infallible is unavailable unless we already know which books belong to the canon. Even beyond that problem, there is an additional question: if we can trust God to guide the Church to establish a canon of infallible books, why can we not trust her when she explains to us what these books mean? The Protestant answer is, of course, to compare the later teachings of the Church to the teachings of Scripture. But this brings us right back to square zero. If the Church can err, for example, in proclaiming that icons ought to be venerated, she can err just as easily in compiling a canon, and it would be ad hoc to allow ecclesial infallibility in establishing the canon but deny infallibility in every other ecclesial activity.

The fallibility of the canon, of course, presents its own problems. The fallible list could be excluding divinely inspired books that commend us to offer prayers for the dead, that could lead  (and have led) many into the grievous error of not praying for the souls of the faithful departed or a host of other doctrines. Furthermore, there would be no way for the Protestant Christian to know if that was the case.

Those taking Sproul’s argument will often cite the “self-authenticating” nature of the books of Sacred Scripture. John Calvin is one of the defenders of this view. In his Institutes, Calvin writes:

Nor is there any room for the cavil, that though the Church derives her first beginning from [the foundation of the writings of the Apostles and prophets], it still remains doubtful what writings are to be attributed to the Apostles and prophets, until her judgement is interposed. For if the Christian Church was founded at first on the writings of the prophets, and the preaching of the Apostles, that doctrine, wheresoever it may be found, was certainly ascertained and sanctioned antecedently to the Church, since, but for this, the Church herself never could have existed.⁷

First of all, Calvin states that “that doctrine, wheresoever it may be found, was certainly ascertained and sanctioned antecedently to the Church.” But the fact that people in the Church can distinguish true and false (nonapostolic) doctrine, does not entail that there was no doubt about “what writings are to be attributed to the Apostles,” nor that the interposition of the Church’s judgment was unnecessary. Certainly the Apostles’ doctrine was clearly known by the early Church, but that alone did not make it perfectly clear to later generations receiving Christian teaching amidst any number of false teachers which books contained the actual Apostolic teaching or even which had an actual connection to Christ and the Apostles.

But St. Paul seems to indicate there is more than meets the eye in this foundation of the Apostles and prophets when he calls the Church, not the Scriptures, the very pillar and ground of truth.⁸ The Church certainly contains the teachings of the Apostles, but the Church is not only the teachings of the Apostles. The Church’s foundation also contains the living magisterium and deposit of faith we see working already in the time of the Apostles in Acts 15. Without this foundation, we could not know the teachings of the Apostles and Prophets. We see after St. Paul’s death the importance of the divinely ordained authority of the Magisterium when multiple written works bearing the names of the Apostles and containing diverse and sometimes contradictory messages would appear. St. Paul was, at Our Lord’s command, setting up the Church as the judge and protector of doctrinal orthodoxy. Further, as I will explore below, this is not a function a book is even capable of performing, as a book cannot explain its own meaning when questions about that meaning arise.

It is interesting to note that St. Paul says that the Church is founded on “the Apostles and Prophets,”⁹ but Calvin renders it “the teachings of the Apostles and Prophets.” He does not allow the passage say what St. Paul actually says: the men themselves and the authority given to them by God are the foundation of the Church. This divinely appointed authority is what gives weight to their teaching and gives authority to their interpretation, and is thus more foundational to the Church  than the teaching itself. This is why St. Paul exhorts the Thessalonians to hold to both the written and unwritten traditions of the Apostles¹⁰. Nowhere in Sacred Scripture do we find the common Protestant assumption that all the essential information concerning Christ and the Apostles’ teaching would be codified in written form.

It should be noted, however, that although the authority of the Church’s Magisterium is foundational and binding, the Church still holds the Scripture in the highest place of honor and authority. The Magisterium is the servant of the Scripture, and, as the Catechism says, “with the help of the Holy Spirit, it listens to this devotedly, guards it with dedication and expounds it faithfully.”¹¹

Next Calvin offers his understanding of the Catholic Church’s view of her own position in relation to the Scriptures which, as we will see, is directly contrary to the Church’s stated self-understanding:

Nothing therefore can be more absurd than the fiction, that the power of judging Scripture is in the Church, and that on her nod its certainty depends. When the Church receives it, and gives it the stamp of her authority, she does not make that authentic which was otherwise doubtful or controverted but, acknowledging it as the truth of God, she, as in duty bounds shows her reverence by an unhesitating assent.¹²

This section sets up a straw man of the Catholic position. The Catholic Church did not teach in Calvin’s time, nor has she ever taught, that her stamp of approval on a book makes it God’s Word. It is almost as if Calvin believed that the Church thought, by declaring a text to belong to the Word of God, that she makes it into the the Word of God, or that she could turn around tomorrow and declare that St. Matthew’s gospel is no longer the Word of God. The Council of Trent refers to the books the council had “received,” and Dei Verbum¹³ uses precisely the same language of receiving. To imply that the Church ever taught that her fiat makes the word of God authentic is misleading and incorrect. The Church’s position has always been one of recognizing the authenticity of the great treasure that has been handed down to her.

When the Church tells her members what books are Scripture, she operates in exactly the same way she does in all other matters of faith and morals. Tobit is inspired not because the Church says so; the Church says so because Tobit is inspired.  Abortion is wrong not because the Church says so; the Church says so because abortion is wrong.  We can trust her authority on these matters far more than we can trust our own intuition or reason.

Now Calvin gets to the meat of the argument, that is, that the Scriptures are so self-evidently what they are that it is plain to anyone with a conscience which books are in and which are out:

As to the question, How shall we be persuaded that it came from God without recurring to a decree of the Church? it is just the same as if it were asked, How shall we learn to distinguish light from darkness, white from black, sweet from bitter? Scripture bears upon the face of it as clear evidence of its truth, as white and black do of their colour, sweet and bitter of their taste.¹⁴

The claim that the Scriptures identify themselves is a falsifiable proposition but it is being treated as unfalsifiable by those who hold it. In his preface to the book of Revelation, Martin Luther wrote, “I can in no way detect that the Holy Spirit produced it.”  How could a person argue with Luther about what he could or could not “detect” in the text? If Calvin claims his sixty-six books identify themselves, we should be able to conduct blind “divinely-inspired-test” experiments to confirm his hypothesis. It also raises the question of why there were such disputes in the early Church about what was and was not Scripture. If it is as easy as telling black from white, then there should have been no disagreement in the early Church about the identity of canonical books. But there was manifestly such debate, and for no small period of time.

To look back centuries later and claim that the canon is self-evidently what it is denies history and falls prey to the very same mentality according to which the King James Bible fell out of Heaven whole and complete. Many of our brothers in some of the anti-intellectual forms of fundamentalism give no thought at all to the historical origin of Scripture. They have their Bible, the Spirit testifies unto their spirit that it is the Word of God, and that’s good enough for them. This claim that the identity of the canon is self-evident is in this respect exactly like the claim of the fundamentalist who ignores the historical development of the canon.

The Protestant is in agreement with the Catholic Church in the belief that the books of the canon of Scripture are the very words of God, but the Catholic has a better reason for believing so. The proposed ground of the Protestant’s epistemic certainty of the infallibility of the canon lies precisely in the books he is seeking to prove are infallible; and that certainty is primarily based on a handful of citations from St. Paul’s epistles. By contrast, the Catholic’s certainty rests in a hierarchy established by Jesus Himself that claims a call from God the Father, promises from Jesus, and the protection of the Holy Spirit over the Church in establishing and preserving true doctrine. Assuming the truth of our shared premise that God exists in a Trinity of divine Persons, the Catholic Church’s claim has a sound Trinitarian bedrock, while the Protestant claim of self-authentication trusts neither the Trinity nor the Church, but rather relies on the intellectual prowess of a handful of 16th century intellectuals, the Reformers, and their ability to discern true Scripture from false. In the worst case scenario, the Protestant claim relies on every man doing what is right in his own eyes, depending on which books the Holy Spirit testifies to his spirit are the Word of God.

In light of this, it hardly seems surprising that when the Westminster Confession of Faith lists its canon, it does so completely without commentary or substantive proof texts. This is a striking difference from the form of the rest of the Confession which goes into such incredible detail in defending from Scripture and other sources the things it claims. Not so with the canon. The Protestant canon is apparently to be accepted on its own self-evidence. But it is not in keeping with the doctrine of sola scriptura to take a doctrine as essential as this on the basis of a supposed self-authentication that is not taught in Sacred Scripture.

So we see that one problem with the Reformed view of Scripture is its inability to account for the determination of the canon of Scripture, and thus for the authority of Scripture. For if we cannot determine with certainty which books are and are not God-breathed, we have no means for discerning which teachings are true and binding on Christians and which are not.

An Unbiblical View of the Authority of Scripture

A second problem with the Reformed view is that it attributes to Sacred Scripture a functional capacity that Sacred Scripture does not claim for itself. The Protestant view attempts to ascribe to Sacred Scripture the role of final court of appeal in matters of faith and morals, citing the theory that clear passages will elucidate those that are unclear. But such notions are simply not found in Sacred Scripture.

The Westminster Confession makes this claim:

The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for His own glory, man’s salvation, faith and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture: unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit, or traditions of men.¹⁵

But in attempting to substantiate the claim, it only produces the following proof texts:

And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.¹⁶

These verses are wonderful and true, but they claim that all Scripture is useful for doctrine, reproof, etc.; not that only Scripture is useful for these purposes, or that Scripture can accomplish them in a vacuum, that is, apart from the divinely appointed teaching and interpretive authority of the Church. Scripture interpreted correctly is good for all the things St. Paul mentions. Scripture interpreted incorrectly leads to heresy, division, and the destruction of souls. What this passage fails to prove is that Sacred Scripture by itself is able to do all the things St. Paul mentions.

In interpreting these verses, we must also consider the state of the New Testament canon. Since most of the New Testament was unwritten at the time St. Paul was writing, he could only have been referring here to the Old Testament. So the Scriptures that will equip the man of God for every good work cannot be the Scriptures St. Paul is writing as he writes this, much less the ones that will be written after. And even if the written books will equip, this passage does not tell us whether or not they do so in the context of the Church’s interpretive authority. Thus, these verses do not show that Sacred Scripture is sufficient to lead the Church on its own without an interpretive authority.

The confession’s next citation is from II Thessalonians:

That ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand.¹⁷

This verse does not show the sufficiency of Sacred Scripture as a supreme rule, especially since Sacred Scripture is not mentioned in it. St. Paul argues that the Thessalonians ought not to be shaken from the message delivered to them. This in no way implies that this message is fully contained in the sixty-six books of the Protestant canon.

So we see that the WCF’s citations do not back up its claims, but we might still wonder whether Church history would help the Protestant position. After all, the quotations at the beginning of this article made it clear that the Church Fathers had a very lofty view of Sacred Scripture. But it must be noted that the same Church Fathers whom we saw above speaking in such elevated prose about the virtues and supremacy of Sacred Scripture believed doctrines not taught explicitly or by good and necessary consequence in Sacred Scripture.

Take as an example the following quotations from each of the Fathers mentioned above, on the Catholic Church’s teachings on Mary, Jesus’ mother:

The self-same who was born of the Virgin is, in truth, King and the Lord God. And on His account, she who gave Him birth is properly and truly proclaimed Queen, Lady and Mother of God. . . . And standing now as Queen at the right hand of her Son the King of all, she is celebrated in Sacred Writ as clad around with the gilded clothing of incorruption and immortality, and surrounded with variety. . . . Let us say then again and again as we look up to Our King, Our Lord and God, and to Our Queen, Our Lady and Mother of God: The Queen stood at thy right hand, in gilded clothing, surrounded with variety. (St. Athanasius, Epist. ad Marcellin. in Interpret. Psalm, sec. 1.)

We must except the Holy Virgin Mary, concerning whom I wish to raise no question when it touches the subject of sins, out of honor to the Lord; for from Him we know what abundance of grace for overcoming sin in every particular was conferred upon her who had the merit to conceive and bear Him who undoubtedly had no sin. (St. Augustine, Nature and Grace, 36:42.)

It is truly right to bless you, O Theotokos, ever blessed and most pure, and the Mother of our God. More honorable than the Cherubim, and beyond compare more glorious than the Seraphim, without defilement you gave birth to God the Word. True Theotokos we magnify you.  (St. John Chrysostom, Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom.)

We see here the same men who above reveled in the glory of Sacred Scripture espousing doctrines found in Sacred Scripture only in type or shadow. These doctrines certainly are not presented in Scripture in any sense that would satisfy the Westminster Divines.

So whatever these Fathers meant in speaking of the primacy of Scripture, it did not rule out believing doctrines not found explicitly in Scripture. These and all the other Fathers of the Church who held Scripture in incredibly high esteem also believed in the bodily presence of Christ in the Eucharist and its sacrificial character, the succession of Christ’s authority in the Church through the episcopacy, the ministerial priesthood, and the Catholic understanding of the communion of the Saints, to name a few examples. St. Cyril of Jerusalem’s Catechetical Lectures¹⁸ are an excellent resource for seeing all of these doctrines taught as common knowledge in the early Church.

In the Fathers we find that Scripture was used in the context of what the Church already knew to be true, that is, the deposit of faith handed down both in Sacred Scripture and the unwritten traditions of the Apostles cited above by St. Paul. Even though these doctrines concerning Our Lady are found explicitly only in Sacred Tradition, the Fathers quoted above clearly valued them just as highly as those doctrines explicitly taught in Sacred Scripture. Scripture took ultimate pride of place in the early Church, to be sure, but it did not take that place in a vacuum.

Since this was the understanding of the place of Sacred Scripture in the Church from the earliest times, the burden of proof rests on the Westminster Confession and its defenders to prove from Scripture that their view is correct. The small smattering of proof texts offered fails to meet that burden because these texts do not display the Westminster Confession’s actual position from the Scriptures, and that position is clearly not the standard held by the early Church or any stage of the Church prior to the Reformation.

What Can A Book Do?

Finally, the Reformed view also ascribes to Sacred Scripture a capacity that, on a purely practical level, a book simply cannot bear.

A book provides words that must be interpreted to be understood. A person speaking to us in person, like the Apostles speaking to the early Churches, can explain the meaning of his speech. A book cannot elucidate problem passages for us. Given the fallibility of human understanding and the diversity of perspectives regarding interpretation, especially over the span of 2,000 years of Church history, it is simply not possible that a book by its very nature could be the supreme rule of faith and doctrine. At least it cannot do this if we expect there to be a consistent understanding of this book that would work itself out into consistent faith and practice. A human, or set of humans, must make the final decision about the meaning of written texts.

The Protestant response, of course, is an appeal to perspicuity. The doctrine of the perspicuity of the Scriptures refers to the claim that the Scriptures are able, with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, to make the truths essential to salvation known to any reader. The WCF states:

All things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all: yet 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.¹⁹

The citation given to support this claim is from the Psalmist:

The entrance of thy words giveth light; it giveth understanding unto the simple.²⁰

Certainly the Law of the Lord brings understanding to the simple, but the Confession’s interpretation mistakenly identifies “the Law of the Lord” with the modern Protestant canon of Scripture. This verse in no way entails that the simple can “obtain a sufficient understanding” of the Scriptures without any aid or guidance.

But even if there were a case to be made from the Scriptures for the perspicuity of the Scriptures, reality tells a different story. Learned Scripture scholars and even the revered figures of various modern Reformed communities cannot agree on what “the gospel” is, much less on the meaning of the Sacraments or any number of other topics of great doctrinal importance. The Federal Vision controversy is a striking testament to this discord. This, of course, is why we see such disparate faiths and practices among our Protestant brothers, even among our Reformed brothers who hold to a common set of confessions. The Reformed have 21 denominations in Switzerland, 14 in the UK and 44 in the US, all divided because of some irreconcilable doctrinal difference.

This is also the source of continual splitting that the history of the Reformed denominations has borne out. When each individual, or even each presbytery or each denomination decides where the boundaries of orthodoxy are on the basis of its own understanding of Sacred Scripture, even with the guide of the Reformed confessions, division at least every fifty years or so is practically a design feature.²¹

Unless there is an arbiter of these interpretive disagreements, there will necessarily be division and disagreement about basic tenets of the Christian faith. This division is contrary to Christ’s prayer in John 17 and unacceptable for the witness of the Church to the outside world.

From these historical facts, we see that a book simply does not have the capacity in and of itself to function in the way the Westminster Confession claims it must function. A book cannot resolve an interpretive dispute about itself, decide who is right in a doctrinal controversy, or address any areas that it does not address. If Scripture were intended to do this, as Protestants claim, we would not see the history of division and infighting that we see. Indeed, the entirety of the Protestant experiment hinges on the truth of the idea that the Scriptures were intended to function as described by the Westminster Confession. The Scripture’s inability to perform the ecclesial function expected of it by the Confession is one of the more common factors provoking Protestants to consider the claims of the Catholic Church, and eventually leave their communities to seek full communion with the body that Christ founded to give us the true interpretation of Sacred Scripture.

III. Correctives Provided by the Catholic View

God be praised, the view of Scripture handed down from Christ to the Apostles and through the unbroken succession of Bishops in union with the Pope answers and corrects each of these errors in the Protestant position. In this section we will examine how each of the errors in the Reformed view is corrected by the teaching of the Catholic Church about Sacred Scripture.

The Epistemology Problem

The Catholic Church’s teaching on Scripture avoids the epistemological problems laid out above concerning the origin and authority of Scripture. An important key to understanding authority in the Church, and thus the Scripture, is the Council of Jerusalem, recorded in Acts 15. This first Ecumenical Council gives us a model of the way the Apostles understood authority in the Church.

The Council was convened to answer the following question: do Gentiles have to be circumcised to become Christians? The Scriptures extant at the time did not answer the question, otherwise there would have been no need for the Council. What did the Apostles do? They called a council consisting of themselves and the presbyters they had ordained.

At this Council the Apostles and their successors debated this question, using what the Jewish Scriptures taught and what Christ had taught them in His earthly ministry. They issued a decree that was binding on all Christians. It is important to note that this was not merely a council of the Apostles, but also of the presbyters they had ordained, who took full part in the Council.  As we see in Acts 15:4-6:

When they arrived in Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church, as well as by the apostles and the presbyters, and they reported what God had done with them. But some from the party of the Pharisees who had become believers stood up and said, “It is necessary to circumcise them and direct them to observe the Mosaic law.” The apostles and the presbyters met together to see about this matter.

The assumption of the continuity of authority between the Apostles and their successors is apparent at this council. The presbyters ordained by the Apostles were present and it was these very same men, and those ordained by them that ruled over the further ecumenical councils of the Church. It is precisely the pattern of the Council of Jerusalem–of bishops gathering and proclaiming their decisions to be binding with the authority of the Holy Spirit–that the Church has followed throughout her history, from Jerusalem to Vatican II.

The same authority by which the Apostles and the presbyters whom they ordained declared that Gentiles did not have to be circumcised is the authority by which Trent declared the canon of Scripture. The pattern of the councils of the Church, clearly visible from the earliest councils, made clear that the Bishops at those councils perceived themselves to be citing the same episcopal and apostolic authority and calling on the same Holy Spirit for the same kind of binding decree.

The extent of the authority of the council is the same as well, that is to say, it was binding on every Christian. If we can reject Trent’s authority on the canon, we can reject the findings of Jerusalem, Nicea, Chalcedon, and any other finding of any Church council we please. Otherwise we need a principled reason to accept some and reject others. Again, an arbiter of some sort over the entire process is clearly needed, which is exactly how conciliar and papal authority have functioned in the Church for two thousand years. There is no other Scriptural pattern on which to base Church polity and the resolution of doctrinal disputes.

The example of the Bereans, a passage oft cited by Protestants to warrant holding the written text as the supreme interpretive authority, fails to produce that kind of pattern for two reasons. First, the Bereans were individual people exercising their consciences, no different from someone outside the Church checking the Church’s message against itself before believing. In no sense are the Bereans an example of Church polity or how the Church handles in-house disputes. The Bereans were a group of individual Jews deciding whether or not they would join the early Christians. Second, the appeal to the Bereans as a pattern falls flat for the Protestant because the Bereans checked the Apostles’ teachings against the Old Testament. Those who accepted the testimony of the Apostles held the Apostles’ teaching as a new source of revelatory truth, as all other Christians did. The example of the Bereans does nothing if not prove the superiority of oral testimony. Further, the example of the Bereans proves too much for the Protestant. Acts tells us that some of the Bereans believed the Apostles, which implies that some did not. So the example of the Bereans makes clear that individuals searching the Scriptures and determining for themselves which sources of revelation and authority to accept leaves the door wide open to error and self-deception.

Since the Catholic Church has from its inception followed this pattern of accepting the authority of the Apostles and their successors to lead her into all truth, no such epistemological quandary as we find in Protestantism is produced by Catholic doctrine. Catholic doctrine is not restricted to a “fallible collections of infallible books,” nor is there any need for temporary and unbiblical ad hoc infallibility to be attributed to the Church in determining the canon, nor any need for question-begging self-authentication. All that is needed is what Christ left for us, the sound foundation of the Church passed down from Christ to the Apostles to their successors.

The Problem of the Nature of Books

The Catholic Church’s doctrine also solves the problem of trying to use a book for a purpose a book cannot serve. The authority of Christ, given to His Apostles to call upon the Holy Spirit to lead them into truth (John 16:13) was given to the Bishops who succeeded them. (II Timothy 1:6) As we see in 2 Tim 1:6, St. Paul refers to the gift of the Spirit given to Timothy by him. Through the succession of bishops, this same authority guides how we understand the Scriptures today, and guides it perfectly. The Catholic Church does not rely on Sacred Scripture alone to make herself clear, anymore than the Apostles relied on the Hebrew Scriptures alone to make clear the full content of the gospel. They relied on the oral teachings they had received from Christ and on the power and authority of the Holy Spirit working in their midst to make the truth clear. The Catholic Church has followed this pattern for all of its history and, furthermore, no conception of perspicuity such as that proposed by Reformed theology can be found anywhere in Church history prior to the Reformation.

With confidence in the protection from error in the Church’s infallible teachings on issues of faith and morals given to the Church by the Holy Spirit through Christ’s promise (John 16:13), we can value and venerate Sacred Scripture. At the same time we are not forced to require that it interpret itself for us. Likewise, we do not have to force the Scriptures to produce a clear passage to interpret every difficult passage. This is a particularly baffling requirement of the Westminster Confession, because it leaves us once more with no arbiter to decide which passage is difficult and which corresponding clear passage explains it.

The Catholic position provides a remedy for division and disagreement, as the sure word of the Church is the dividing line between orthodoxy and heresy. Each person need not look for a burning in his bosom to distinguish truth from error. Rather, by looking at the Scriptures through the interpretive lens of the teaching of the Church, he will be led into the truth and unity Christ promised that the Spirit would bring.

The Problem of the Nature of Scripture As A Book

The Catholic understanding allows the Scriptures to exist in the role and with the authority that the Scriptures accord themselves. In the Catholic understanding, the Scriptures are the Church’s great treasure and to be highly valued, but not as a mere rule book or exhaustive source of truth. Again, going back to Acts 15, the Apostles themselves did not believe this. They cited the Scriptures in their deliberations at the Council of Jerusalem, but while they took counsel from the Scriptures, their decision was ultimately guided by the Holy Spirit. They did not come to their decision because the answer was “either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence [could] be deduced from Scripture.”²² Rather, they debated, prayed, and asked for guidance from the Holy Spirit. This guidance they received as promised and their decision was binding on all the faithful.

Over the course of the history of the Church there arose a plethora of pressing questions that the Scriptures do not address directly. With respect to such questions, the authority Christ gave to His Church, through the guidance of the Holy Spirit, protects the Scriptures from being twisted to address a controversy they do not directly or indirectly address.

Hermeneutics

Having addressed our differences regarding the determination of the canon and authority and role of Sacred Scripture, I will also address our differences in the area of hermeneutics.

As with the authority issue, we have significant points of agreement on the principles we ought to employ in interpreting Sacred Scripture. We agree that Scripture cannot be rightly interpreted without the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Its depths cannot be mined if we treat it merely as a historical text. We agree that cultural context, authorial intent, literary mode, and other similar factors must be taken into account, unlike certain anti-intellectual segments of ‘just-me-and-my-Bible’ Christianity. We also agree, to a certain extent, that Scripture must be read in light of those who came before us and interpreted Scripture before us. But in Dei Verbum, Pope Paul VI makes clear the pivotal role played by Sacred Tradition and the teaching authority of the Church:

This tradition which comes from the Apostles develop in the Church with the help of the Holy Spirit. For there is a growth in the understanding of the realities and the words which have been handed down. This happens through the contemplation and study made by believers, who treasure these things in their hearts (see Luke, 2:19, 51) through a penetrating understanding of the spiritual realities which they experience, and through the preaching of those who have received through Episcopal succession the sure gift of truth. For as the centuries succeed one another, the Church constantly moves forward toward the fullness of divine truth until the words of God reach their complete fulfillment in her.

The words of the holy fathers witness to the presence of this living tradition, whose wealth is poured into the practice and life of the believing and praying Church. Through the same tradition the Church’s full canon of the sacred books is known, and the sacred writings themselves are more profoundly understood and unceasingly made active in her; and thus God, who spoke of old, uninterruptedly converses with the bride of His beloved Son; and the Holy Spirit, through whom the living voice of the Gospel resounds in the Church, and through her, in the world, leads unto all truth those who believe and makes the word of Christ dwell abundantly in them (see Col. 3:16).²³

But I believe the real point of disagreement is how we understand the Church’s authority in regard to how we read the Scriptures. The Catholic Church understands the Scripture’s primary place to be in the Church and interpreted by the Church, informed by her deepened understanding of Scripture throughout her history. Reformed Christians claim that they take the Church’s historical understanding of Scripture as an important factor in their reading of Sacred Scripture. Their respect for the early councils provides a basis for unity on certain fundamentals, especially on Trinitarian theology and Christology.

But if Protestants truly discerned the visible body of Christ, the Church, they would accept the later councils as well. As we have seen, the later councils were acting with the very same authority the Apostles and their brother presbyters and bishops acted with at the Council of Jerusalem, and those actions are the actions of the body of Christ. To love them is to embrace them and to seek to understand them, not to criticize them and act as their judge. Furthermore, to act as their judge is simply to draw a bullseye around the arrow one has already shot in the wall. If the councils agree with the Reformed understanding of Scripture, then they are accepted, but if not, they are deemed not to hold any authority whatsoever.

As Catholics, we accept these councils, and all subsequent Ecumenical Councils, as authoritative fundamentally because they are the words of our Holy Mother the Church to us. Our Reformed brethren generally accept the first four councils and some teachings of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, but they accept them only because they have found them “biblical” according to their own interpretation of Scripture.

To be sure, all the dogmas of Mother Church are Biblical in the fullest sense of the word–there is no contradiction between any of the Councils and any teaching of Sacred Scripture. But we believe them not because we deem them Biblical according to our own interpretation of Scripture, but rather because we believe Jesus, whose Mystical Body the Church is. We believe the words of the Church because the words of the Mystical Body cannot come from anywhere but Christ the Head.

I am glad our Reformed brethren recognize the value and authority of the Fathers and the Church’s tradition in approaching Scripture; it gives us a significant basis for discussion and dialogue as we seek for unity. But for Reformed Christians, the words of Councils and Popes are not the reliable and trustworthy words of their Mother the Church and of Our Lord. Rather, they are a potentially helpful grab-bag whose contents must be treated with skepticism until one has determined whether or not they are in agreement with one’s own interpretation of Scripture.

This issue of hermeneutics is perhaps the most important epistemological obstacle between Protestants and Catholics, and the way to unity is blocked until we can find our way over it. If there is not one true Church to settle disputes and be the authoritative arbiter between heresy and orthodoxy, there can be nothing but the division and in-fighting that have plagued the last five hundred years of Christianity and which are not what our Lord and His Apostles intended when they implored Christians to unity. May we all come to love and humbly accept the words of Christ in the words of His Holy Church that we might all be one–not selectively, but completely.

1. Providentissimus Deus, sec. 20-21
2. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 101.
3. Id., 104.
4. Westminster Confession of Faith, I.1.
5. A future article on Called to Communion will address “the Canon Question” in greater depth.
6. R.C. Sproul, Essential Truths of the Christian Faith, 22-23.
7. Institutes of the Christian Religion, I.7.
8. I Timothy 3:14-15.
9. Ephesians 2:20.
10. 2 Thess. 2:15
11. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 86.
12. Institutes of the Christian Religion, I.7.
13. Dei Verbum, 8.
14. Institutes of the Christian Religion, I.7.
15. Westminster Confession of Faith, I.4.
16. II Timothy 3:15-17.
17. II Thessalonians 2:2.
18. Available here: http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3101.htm.
19. Westminster Confession of Faith, I.7.
20. Psalm 119:130.
21. A very helpful timeline charting the divisions within Presbyterianism can be found here: http://www.pragmatism.org/american/presbyterian_churches.jpg.
22. Westminster Confession of Faith, I.4.
23. Dei Verbum, Ch. 2