The claim in the Westminster Confession of Faith that all controversies of religion ultimately are to be determined by the Holy Spirit speaking in Sacred Scripture contradicts the testimony of the Church Fathers, who repeatedly teach the necessity of judging such controversies by way of the Church and Sacred Scripture. The Westminster Confession of Faith is a classic restatement of Reformed theology born in the 17th century from an assembly of ‘Divines’ convened by the British Parliament. In its Chapter One, the Divines took up what is perhaps the clearest point of distinction between Protestant Reformers and Catholics, namely the locus of ecclesial authority to settle the doctrine of the faith.

The Westminster Confession addresses the matter this way:

The supreme judge by which all controversies of religion are to be determined, and all decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men, and private spirits, are to be examined, and in whose sentence we are to rest, can be no other but the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture.¹

Robert Shaw, in his Exposition of the Westminster Confession, expounds upon this point:

That the Supreme Judge, by which all controversies in religion are to be determined, is no other but the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture, is asserted in opposition to the Papists, who maintain that the Church is an infallible judge in religious controversies; though they do not agree among themselves whether this infallible authority resides in the Pope, or in a council, or in both together. Now, the Scripture never mentions such an infallible judge on earth. Neither Pope, nor councils, possess the properties requisite to constitute a supreme judge in controversies of religion; for they are fallible, and have often erred, and contradicted one another. Although the Church or her ministers are the official guardians of the Scriptures, and although it belongs to them to explain and enforce the doctrines and laws contained in the Word of God, yet their authority is only ministerial, and their interpretations and decisions are binding on the conscience only in so far as they accord with the mind of the Spirit in the Scriptures. By this test, the decisions of councils, the opinions of ancient writers, and the doctrines of men at the present time, are to be tried, and by this rule all controversies in religion must be determined.²

That is, for the Reformed subscriber to the Westminster Confession, every controversy of religion, and every theological decree, opinion, or doctrine, is to be put to one test: the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture. This is meant to avoid ultimate reliance upon human ecclesial authorities (specifically, the Catholic Magisterium) who, from the Reformed perspective, can, and have, erred on religious matters.

Given the finality with which the very Word of the Third Person of the Trinity must be taken, it might seem straightforward enough to rely on this Word to settle controversies. With this rule, the English Reformers were marking out a bright dividing line between the Church of England and those Churches in communion with Rome. The reformational church authorities were not over the Bible, could not declare contrary to it, and would not be taken as having a voice against the Holy Spirit. But how does this work practically, this putting a controversy of religion or theological doctrine to “the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture”?

Shaw explains that it works this way: a controversy may properly be put to the Church or her ministers, who, acting as ‘guardians’ of the Scriptures and enforcers of the law contained therein, yield ‘ministerial’ authority. However, he also cautions, their decisions on any given controversy are only binding on the believer’s conscience insofar as the decisions are in line with “the mind of the Spirit in the Scriptures.” The believer may, under this scheme, try the word of the ministerial authorities in an effort to ensure it is sound.

Because a believer-disputant can cross-check his ministerial authorities before being bound by their settlement of any given controversy, these authorities offer “final judgment” on nothing. The relationship is one of ‘guardianship,’ but the guardians are followed only to the extent that the guarded are in consent and agreement with the guardians’ interpretations. But the believer-disputant, too, is a fallible and often-erring authority, so fails the very test Shaw attempts to apply to Catholic authorities. This leaves the believer-disputant in no better position than his guardian to render “final judgment” on a controversy of religion. Given these deficiencies, what the ministerial authorities and believer-disputants cannot do individually, they cannot do in conjunction. As both authorities who could determine what the Holy Spirit has said have failed the test Shaw believes he has properly applied to the Catholic Church, there is no practical way in the Reformed scheme to settle a controversy of religion with certainty through “the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture.”

With that background, I would like to explore how the Church Fathers treat the question of whether the final judge of controversies of religion, or of theological decrees, opinions, or doctrines is Scripture or the Church, or whether there is a third way. I will also briefly identify what the Catholic Church itself officially teaches on this matter.

II. Church Fathers

A great deal of extant writings from the early Church Fathers have “controversies of religion” as their very topic or subject matter. The early Church Fathers penned these works, which were mailed and passed amongst the early Churches with great zeal, to combat a host of disputes, controversies, and heresies. From them we can glean an understanding of how the early Church resolved controversies, or measured theological decrees, opinions, or doctrines. This makes for a useful comparison to the conclusion on the same subject drawn by the Westminster Divines.

The works of St. Ignatius of Antioch provide a fine example. He lived from around the year AD 50 to approximately AD 107, and wrote on the subject of resolving controversies of religion on the way to his martyrdom, just a few years after the Apostle St. John died. He wrote that:

For, all who belong to God and Jesus Christ are with the bishop. And those, too, will belong to God who have returned, repentant, to the unity of the Church so as to live in accordance with Jesus Christ. Make no mistake, brethren. No one who follows another into schism inherits the kingdom of God. No one who follows heretical doctrine is on the side of the passion.³

For St. Ignatius, returning to one’s bishop is identical with returning to the unity of the Church. One lives in accordance with Jesus Christ by way of seeking unity with the Church. There is no apparent place for conflict between belief necessary for unity with the Church and belief in accordance with Jesus Christ.

Elsewhere, he writes:

Let all follow the bishop as Jesus Christ did the Father, and the priests, as you would the Apostles. Reverence the deacons as you would the command of God. Apart from the bishop, let no one perform any of the functions that pertain to the Church. Let that Eucharist be held valid which is offered by the bishop or by one to whom the bishop has committed this charge. Wherever the bishop appears, there let the people be; as wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church. It is not lawful to baptize or give communion without the consent of the bishop. On the other hand, whatever has his approval is pleasing to God. Thus, whatever is done will be safe and valid.⁴

From this text we see how inextricably intertwined are the authorities of the Church and the Word of God. Theirs is not a non-binding guardianship over Scripture. Rather, they have the shepherd’s authority to lead. Consider St. Ignatius’ claim that “whatever has [the bishop’s] approval is pleasing to God.” Of course St. Ignatius does not have in mind a bishop who invents novel doctrines that are contrary to the deposit of faith. But nor could he mean to say that whatever has the bishop’s approval is pleasing to God only insofar as the bishop is ruling in a way that is subordinate to and fully consistent with the Bible. Since one could say the same of the determinations of non-bishops (i.e., that their decisions are pleasing to God insofar as they conform to Scripture), this incorrect interpretation of St. Ignatius would leave the Bishop with no ruling authority at all.  A third way to view this question of final doctrinal decretal authority starts to emerge – the Church and revealed truth resolve controversies of religion together; they are the inseparable, final authority.

To take up just one other brief example, the works of St. Irenaeus provide a helpful perspective on this subject. St. Irenaeus, born in the early second century, speaks with great clarity in identifying what is a proper authority to settle controversies of religion. He does not teach that the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture is our final authority in controversies of religion, as the Westminster Confession claims. Rather, he says:

Since therefore we have such proofs, it is not necessary to seek the truth among others which it is easy to obtain from the Church; since the apostles, like a rich man depositing in a bank, lodged in her hands most copiously all things pertaining to the truth: so that every man, whosoever will, can draw from her the water of life. For she is the entrance to life; all others are thieves and robbers. On this account we are bound to avoid them, but to make choice of the things pertaining to the Church with the utmost diligence, and to lay hold of the tradition of the truth. For how stands the case? Suppose there arise a dispute relative to some important question among us, should we not have recourse to the most ancient Churches with which the apostles held constant intercourse, and learn from them what is certain and clear in regard to the present question? For how should it be if the apostles themselves had not left us writings? Would it not be necessary to follow the course of the tradition which they handed down to those to whom they did commit the Churches?⁵

For St. Irenaeus, “[t]he supreme judge by which all controversies of religion are to be determined” for the individual Christian is not the Holy Spirit speaking in Sacred Scripture. In cases of controversy of religion, we should “have recourse to the most ancient Churches with which the apostles held constant intercourse, and learn from them what is certain and clear in regard to the present question.” In helping to shed light on how to resolve a dispute about an important question among the Christians, St. Irenaeus argues from a hypothetical scenario wherein the Apostles had left us with no writings (that is, imagine if there was no New Testament by which to judge a matter). In that case, he argues, Christians would be left to turn to the traditions handed down by the Apostles to the most ancient Churches. Likewise, for disputes that persist even though all disputants have the Apostolic writings in hand, his argument concludes that we must “lay hold of the tradition of the truth,” which was passed on through the apostles.

These examples are from just two of the early Church Fathers, but each of them would support this recurring theme. These are not cherry-picked snippets from the early Church Fathers, but exemplary of early discourses on this question. And this question is one that came up routinely as the early Church struggled with settling the proper procedure necessary to address substantive theological debates in a binding fashion. We learn from the ancient Church that controversies of religion are resolved by ecclesial authorities expounding upon the Sacred Scriptures and Sacred Tradition together.

III. Catholic Teaching

There are noteworthy similarities between the Reformed and Catholic doctrines on Sacred Scripture. Both would agree that Sacred Scripture is the word of God.⁶ God is its author.⁷ He chose human authors, and inspired them to write what He wanted, and nothing more.⁸ The inspired books that make up the canon teach truth, and are truth without error.⁹ The Church venerates Scripture as she does the Body of Christ itself.¹⁰ In Scripture, “the Father who is in heaven comes lovingly to meet his children and talks with them.”¹¹ The concept of personal communication from God to believer in Scripture is not antithetical nor even foreign to a Catholic understanding. The Catholic Church’s teaching and the Westminster teaching coalesce even insofar as they teach that the Holy Spirit is our interpreter of Scripture.¹²

But there is certainly a difference between Protestants and Catholics when it comes to belief about Sacred Scripture, and this difference relates to the section of the Westminster Confession I began by quoting. The Catholic Church teaches that Christianity is not a “religion of the book,” but rather a religion of the Eternal Word, a “Word which is incarnate and living.”¹³ While the Holy Spirit interprets Scripture, He does so for the Church and through the Church, not in a private-yet-authoritative fashion.

This contrast highlights an essential feature of the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church does not believe that the Holy Spirit ordinarily operates directly and immediately in the heart of the individual Christian to teach Scripture and illuminate its meaning. If the Holy Spirit ordinarily operated in this way, the individual would not have need for the Church as a teaching agent of God. This view denies that Christ established a visible organ through which the Holy Spirit ordinarily operates. Such is the view of the Montanists. The Catholic Church, against Montanism, believes that Christ did establish a visible organ through which the Holy Spirit operates, including the key operation of illuminating revealed truths for the Church’s benefit so that she can, in turn, reliably and authoritatively teach the faithful.

In regard to the roles of the Church and Sacred Scripture in resolving controversies of religion, the Reformers seemingly had to reach the conclusion articulated in the Westminster Confession because they subscribed to a false dichotomy between the Scripture and the Church as the final doctrinal authority. For the Westminster Divines, and for Calvinists today, the starting point for analysis is that either the Magisterium or the Bible can settle controversies of religion, or bind upon believers a theological decree, opinion, or doctrine. It could not be both together because, they believe, any human agent cooperating with Scripture qua Word of God would compete with or detract from its Divine character.  (And it goes without saying that, for Calvinists, it could not be the Magisterium.)

According to the Catholic Church, all interpretations of Scripture — and we could say all attempts at resolving controversies of religion — are “subject to the judgment of the Church which exercises the divinely conferred commission and ministry of watching over and interpreting the Word of God.”¹⁴ While believers can and should read Sacred Scripture with great devotion, listening for the voice and guidance of the Holy Spirit while they do so, their conclusions are always subject to the guidance and correction of the Church’s teaching authority. Without Her divinely given authority, there is no safeguard on the deposit of faith from dilution and admixture of human or sinful error.

There is no middle ground between this divinely given authority of the Church to guide scriptural interpretation, on the one hand, and complete individualism in interpretation which leads to unceasing division, on the other. This is because the method dependent upon individual interpretation cannot compensate for the admixture of sinful error without resort to the Montanist’s view of the Holy Spirit’s action in guiding each individual’s interpretation of Scripture — a view which experience with diverse interpretations of Scripture betwixt the faithful, if nothing else, has proven invalid. The early Church Fathers saw the need for having resort to the Church’s teaching authority in settling controversies of religion, and they addressed this need time and again. It is this the Catholic Church sees today while it stands firm on its own teaching authority while simultaneously yearning for reunion with the separated eastern churches and Protestant ecclesial communities.

IV. Conclusion

The Westminster Confession’s claim that every controversy of religion, and every theological decree, opinion or doctrine is to be taken to none other than the Holy Spirit speaking in Scripture is ahistoric. The primary subject of the extant writings of the early Church Fathers is precisely controversies of religion; this is far from an alien topic to them. And the recurring answer they give is that controversies of religion are settled ultimately from the Church and Scripture in inseparable unison. Only this position allows for binding answers to disputes within the faith. The Catholic Church has held this position steadfastly through two millennia.

1. WCF, ch. I, sec. 10.
2. Robert Shaw, Exposition of the Westminster Confession, ch. 1, available here.
3. Letter to the Philadelphians, ch. 3, MG 5, 700; FC I, 114.
4. Letter to the Smyrnaeans, ch. 8, MG 5, 713; FC I, 121.
5. Against Heresies, bk. 3, ch. 4, MG 7, 855; ANFI, I, 416.
6. Catechism of the Catholic Church, para. 104.
7. Id., para. 105.
8. Id., para. 106.
9. Id., para. 107.
10. Id., para. 103.
11. Id., para. 104.
12. Id., art. 3, sec. III.
13. Id., para. 108, quoting St. Bernard, S. missus est hom. 4, 11: PL 183, 86.
14. Dei Verbum 12, sec. 3.

Leonardo De Chirico is a Protestant lecturer in theology at IFED (Istituto di Formazione Evangelica e Documentazione) in Padova, Italy. He edits the theological journal Studi di teologia. He also worked in Italy for twelve years as a Reformed Baptist church planter. Over the past few months Leonardo has posted a series of articles called “The Vatican Files” on the well-known Reformed website Reformation21.org, interacting with twenty-first century Catholicism. Much of the content of these articles is explanatory, and I agree with a good deal of what he says. Here I focus on only a few of his criticisms of Catholic teaching, in his most recent article in the series.

In his most recent article, “The Vatican Files N.4,” Leonardo writes about Pope Benedict’s 2010 Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Verbum Domini. (All paragraph numbers from Verbum Domini are from this pdf document.)

Leonardo writes:

In this respect, Benedict XVI writes: “The Church lives in the certainty that her Lord, who spoke in the past, continues today to communicate his word in her living Tradition and in sacred Scripture. Indeed, the word of God given to us in sacred Scripture as an inspired testimony to revelation, together with the Church’s living Tradition, it constitutes the supreme rule of faith” (18). The Bible is upheld, but the Bible is always accompanied and surmounted by the wider, deeper, living tradition of the Church which is the present-day form of the Word. Amongst other things, this means that the Bible is not sufficient in itself to give access to the Word and is not the final norm for faith and practice. The Bible needs to be supplemented by the Catechism of the Catholic Church which is “a significant expression of the living Tradition of the Church and a sure norm for teaching the faith” (74).

Leonardo seems to think that according to the Catholic Church, the “living tradition” [rather than sacred Scripture] is “the present-day form” of the word of God. It is possible that I have misunderstood him here. But from the Catholic point of view, the present-day form of the word of God given to us through Christ is what it has been since the first century, namely, the word both preached and written, within the Church. In other words, the Catholic understanding is not that sacred Scripture was for the Church of some time past, whereas in the present-day we receive the word through “living tradition.” Rather, the Catholic understanding is that in the present day we receive the word of God as contained both in sacred Scripture and in the living tradition of the Church. The word of God revealed by Christ was first received by the early Christians as preached, and only later as preached and written. Sacred Scripture remains part of the “present-day form” of the word of God, but the full present-day form of the word of God is still contained in both Scripture and Tradition, preserved and handed down by the Church as the divinely appointed steward to which this word was entrusted.

A bit later in the article Leonardo writes:

According to VD [Verbum Domini], Scripture must never be read on one’s own. Reading must be always an “ecclesial experience”, i.e. something done in communion with the Church. The issue at stake is not only methodological, as if private readings were to be replaced by study groups at a parish level presided over by a priest, but also hermeneutical. “An authentic interpretation of the Bible must always be in harmony with the faith of the Catholic Church” (30). Reading the Bible needs to be an exercise done in accordance with the institutional church, both in its forms and outcomes. Apparently, there is much wisdom in these statements, especially considering the real risks of fancy, individualistic, awkward interpretations by isolated readers of the Bible.

Leonardo refers to the notion that “Scripture must never be read on one’s own.” There he is drawing from paragraph 30 of Verbum Domini, which reads:

Saint Jerome recalls that we can never read Scripture simply on our own. We come up against too many closed doors and we slip too easily into error. The Bible was written by the People of God for the People of God, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Only in this communion with the People of God can we truly enter as a “we” into the heart of the truth that God himself wishes to convey to us. Jerome, for whom “ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ”, states that the ecclesial dimension of biblical interpretation is not a requirement imposed from without: the Book is the very voice of the pilgrim People of God, and only within the faith of this People are we, so to speak, attuned to understand sacred Scripture. An authentic interpretation of the Bible must always be in harmony with the faith of the Catholic Church. He thus wrote to a priest: “Remain firmly attached to the traditional doctrine that you have been taught, so that you may exhort according to sound doctrine and confound those who contradict it”. (Verbum Domini, 30)

The notion that Scripture “must never be read on one’s own” is not forbidding private study or private meditation on Scripture, as though Scripture can rightly be read only in the physical or liturgical company of other Catholics. The idea is that even when we read the Bible in the privacy of our own home or in the solitude of a desert retreat, we should read it as informed by the Tradition handed down in the Church, so that we read it and meditate on it with the mind of Christ as it as been more deeply revealed in His Church by the Holy Spirit through the living Tradition. Otherwise, it would be very easy to misinterpret Scripture, and fall into heretical error.

Leonardo then writes:

Yet, there is something missing here. For a Church that has forbidden for centuries the reading of the Bible in vernacular languages, it is at least unfortunate that not a single word of repentance is offered. For a Church that has prevented the people from having access to the Bible until fifty years ago, it is at least puzzling that not a single word is spent to underline the Church’s need for self-correction and vigilance.

Leonardo expects an apology for something that did not happen. See chapter 11 of Henry Graham’s Where We Got the Bible: Our Debt to the Catholic Church.

Leonardo continues:

Moreover, if reading the Bible must always be done under the rule of the institution, what happens if the institution itself is caught in error, heresy or apostasy? How does the Spirit correct a sinful church if not by the biblical Word? In the history of the Church, the teaching of the Bible had to sometimes be played against the institutional church and against its consensus. Only a self-proclaimed indefectible Church can ask total submission to “the watchful eye of the sacred magisterium” (45) without having a final, ultimate bar. Here at stake is the question: Who has the final word? The Bible or the RC Church? Since the Church is “the home of the word” (52), VD responds: the latter!

The first thing to say is that Leonardo’s criticism of the Catholic doctrine concerning interpreting Scripture in the Church presupposes the Protestant theological paradigm. It presupposes some form of ecclesial deism according to which the Church could formally fall into false doctrine, and need correction from some prophetic person’s re-discovery of the right interpretation of Scripture. But if the Church is indefectible, then this criticism begs the question, i.e. presupposes precisely what is in question between Catholics and Protestants. If the Church could define as dogmas what are actually heresies, and it belonged to each individual interpreter to judge for himself between the orthodox dogmas and the heretical dogmas, there would be no reason to submit to the Catholic Magisterium, because in that case each individual interpreter of Scripture would have more interpretive authority than does the Magisterium. There is no point in criticizing one paradigm by way of some presupposition intrinsic to (and specific to) another paradigm. To do so is equivalent to asserting the truth of one’s own paradigm. To compare paradigms, one must use criteria common to both paradigms, viewing the available evidence from the perspectives of both paradigms.

The second thing to say is that Leonardo’s criticism here raises a dilemma for Protestantism. On the one hand, Protestants like Keith Mathison claim that Scripture should be interpreted according to the tradition which provides the rule of faith. (See “Keith Mathison’s Reply.”) But on the other hand, Protestants like Leonardo De Chirico claim that Scripture must be allowed to correct tradition and the Church. On the one hand, if the elements of tradition are to be accepted or rejected according to their agreement or disagreement with the individual’s interpretation of Scripture, then tradition cannot function as that normative interpretive context through which Scripture is to be rightly interpreted, because that would reduce ‘tradition’ to whatever conforms to the individual’s interpretation of Scripture. But on the other hand, if the elements of tradition have normative authority and provide the necessary interpretive context in which and according to which Scripture is to be interpreted rightly, then the elements of tradition are not subject to acceptance or rejection by each individual interpreter of Scripture. Either tradition and the Church are authoritative, in which case they ought to govern the individual’s determination of which interpretations of Scripture are orthodox and which are heretical, or, if individuals have the authority to judge tradition and the Church according to the standard of their own interpretation of Scripture, then tradition and the Church are not authoritative, and Protestantism’s sola scriptura reduces to solo scriptura, for reasons Neal and I explained in “Solo Scriptura, Sola Scriptura, and the Question of Interpretive Authority.”

Next, Leonardo writes:

Fourthly and finally, the liturgical context of a proper approach to Scripture. Reading the Bible as an ecclesial experience means that it needs to occur in a liturgical context set forth by the RC Church. “The privileged place for the prayerful reading of sacred Scripture is the liturgy, and particularly the Eucharist, in which, as we celebrate the Body and Blood of Christ in the sacrament, the word itself is present and at work in our midst” (86). The hearing of God’s Word is fruitful when certain conditions are present: the administration of the Eucharist (54) and other sacraments (61), the Liturgy of the Hours (62), the practice of gaining indulgences (87), and recital of the Holy Rosary (88). According to VD, the Bible can never be alone, but must always be surrounded by ecclesiastical paraphernalia which inform, direct and govern Biblical reading and interpretation. In so doing, the Bible is never free to guide the Church, but always conditioned by some extra-biblical practices of the Church.

When Protestants are confronted with the problems of biblicism and “solo scriptura,” they tend to respond like Keith Mathison does by appealing to the authority of tradition and the Church. (See “Solo Scriptura, Sola Scriptura, and the Question of Interpretive Authority.” See also Scot McKnight’s discussion of Christian Smith’s recent book The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism is not a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture, [Brazos Press, 2011].) But at the same time, when confronted with the authority of tradition and the Church, they respond like Leonardo does here by claiming that such authority prevents the Bible from being “free” to guide the Church or correct tradition. And this shows that Protestantism is trying to stand in an impossible middle position. It wants the primacy of the authority of the individual’s interpretation of Scripture so that individuals may correct both tradition and the Church according to the standard of their own interpretation of Scripture. At the same time, it wants to avoid the individualistic and fragmentary implications of biblicism and solo scriptura, and submit to the authority of the Church and tradition. The problem, however, is that these two positions are logically incompatible, and so Protestantism cannot have it both ways. As Protestants realize this, they either move toward the individualism of emergentism and do-it-yourself-religion, or they turn toward “paleo-orthodoxy” and become Catholic or Orthodox.

In his closing paragraph, Leonardo writes:

The papal pronouncement encourages the reading of the Bible and this is good news. The fundamental question remains: Whose word is the Verbum Domini? The Bible’s and/or the Church’s?

From a Catholic point of view, there is no either/or, but a both/and. If, as Verbum Domini teaches, Scripture is rightly understood only within the divinely established community to whom it was entrusted, then the word of God is located both in Scripture and in the Church, not as two separate sources of the word of God, but as two principles that function together, along with sacred Tradition, that we may hear and rightly understand God’s word. For this reason, the Catechism teaches:

“It is clear therefore that, in the supremely wise arrangement of God, sacred Tradition, Sacred Scripture and the Magisterium of the Church are so connected and associated that one of them cannot stand without the others. Working together, each in its own way, under the action of the one Holy Spirit, they all contribute effectively to the salvation of souls. (CCC 95)

According to the Catholic paradigm, Scripture, Tradition and the Magisterium are like a three-legged stool; none functions rightly without the others. By contrast, the “or” in Leonardo’s “and/or” question refers to a paradigm in which Scripture and the Church function independently, not as one. Only if Scripture functions rightly independently of the Church can the individual justifiably appeal to his own interpretation of Scripture to judge the Church and the tradition. Only if Scripture functions rightly independently of the Church does a question like “The Bible’s or the Church’s?” make sense. These two paradigms explain the two conceptions of the act of faith, as described by the late Fr. Neuhaus in an article titled “That They May Be One:”

[T]here are two kinds of Christians: those whom I would call ecclesiological Christians, and those for whom being a Christian is primarily, if not exclusively, a matter of individual decision. There are those for whom the act of faith in Christ and the act of faith in the Church is one act of faith. And those for whom the act of faith in Christ is the act of faith, and the act of faith in the Church, if there is one, is secondary, or tertiary, or somewhere down the line.

The Council of Trent

That the Catholic Church did such a thing only confirmed my predilection for the Reformed tradition. The latter seemed more concerned with understanding the Bible rightly in its insistence on the importance of studying both Hebrew and Greek. This desire to understand with precision what the Bible meant was ordered to the further goal of teaching people about Christ. In employing the historico-grammatical methodology of early Humanism to critically determine and interpret the text, the Reformed offered simultaneously both a measure of clarity and realism about what the Scriptures communicate and also a check against foisting human speculation, no matter how pious-sounding, onto the Christian faithful. One needed only to crank the canon of Scripture, which is primarily known to the individual by the immediate testimony of the Holy Spirit rather than through the mediate testimony of the Church,² through human reason’s ability to grasp the truth as repaired and guided by the same Holy Spirit. The prospect of learning the original languages of Hebrew and Greek also whetted my longing for intellectually challenging ways to help others and also, unfortunately, my prideful desire to appear smart and authoritative to others.³

In contrast, the Catholic Church seemed to me very stupid and ignorant. She was an ostrich thinking it could fly who nevertheless kept plunging her head into the dirt in order to avoid any talk that might upset her fantasies. The abuses in the Church that preceded the Protestant movement indicated, to me and the tradition I was growing to love, a lack of contact with God through special revelation. Instead of turning to the source of renewal, the Word of God, the Catholics inoculated their communion against the cure. Everyone knew that the Vulgate had acquired errors that provided purportedly divine authorization for the Catholic view of justification, Purgatory, the penitential system, the veneration of Mary and the saints, and spurious sacraments such as confirmation and marriage.⁴ Trent made it the official version in an astounding act of arrogance, locking her faithful up in the prison of ignorance about the Scriptures and thus about Christ. I believed this story as did several of my friends.

When my wife and I began the process of learning more about the Catholic Church, I found that several friends also had concerns about the implications of this story. Having studied Hebrew and Greek for several years, I was worried that my training would be useless in the Church. Perhaps the Church was only holding its nose at the use of the original languages. Would we not be joining a group that had rejected Scripture, if not in name, then in method by arrogantly raising up a Latin translation over the very sources of that translation? The Vulgate’s status as the “authentic version” of the Catholic Church revealed that the recent renaissance of Catholic biblical scholarship was something borrowed from genuine Protestantism, picking up some elements of liberal Protestantism as well. Many of the books I used to learn Hebrew and Greek grammar in fact were written by Catholics and published by the Vatican.⁵ Yet I thought I could say that they were really “one of us Calvinists” because it seemed that they were inconsistently studying the original languages and not following their Church’s discipline regarding the Vulgate.

The problem is that this story is a myth. It is a myth like the myth that the Catholic Church officially opposed the translation of Sacred Scripture into other vernacular languages in itself. When I was seeking Protestant sources and arguments to keep me from converting to Catholicism, I found that this misinterpretation came down to me from the very pen of John Calvin.⁶ In reading Calvin’s Antidote (1547) to the Council of Trent, I found him accusing the Council of exalting the Latin Vulgate with the intention of shutting the mouth of the true reformers such as himself. So the Frenchman writes:

John Calvin

But as the Hebrew or Greek original often serves to expose their ignorance in quoting Scripture, to check their presumption, and so keep down their thrasonic boasting, they ingeniously meet this difficulty also by determining that the Vulgate translation only is to be held authentic. Farewell, then, to those who have spent much time and labor in the study of languages, that they might search for the genuine sense of Scripture at the fountainhead! [...]

In condemning all translations except the Vulgate, as the error is more gross, so the edict is more barbarous. The sacred oracles of God were delivered by Moses and the Prophets in Hebrew, and by the Apostles in Greek. That no corner of the world might be left destitute of so great a treasure, the gift of interpretation was added. It came to pass–I know not by what means, but certainly neither by judgment nor right selection–that of the different versions, one became the favorite of the unlearned, or those at least who, not possessing any knowledge of languages, desired some kind of help to their ignorance. Those, on the other hand, who are acquainted with the languages perceive that this version teems with innumerable errors; and this they make manifest by the clearest evidence. On the other hand, the Fathers of Trent contend, that although the learned thus draw the pure liquor from the very fountain, and convict the infallible Vulgate of falsehood, they are not to be listened to. No man possessed of common sense ever presumed to deprive the Church of God of the benefit of learning. The ancients, though unacquainted with the languages, especially Hebrew, always candidly acknowledge that nothing is better than to consult the original, in order to obtain the true and genuine meaning. I will go no further. There is no man of ordinary talent who, on comparing the Vulgate version with some others, does not easily see that many things which were improperly rendered by it are in these happily restored. The Council, however, insists that we shall shut our eyes against the light that we may spontaneously go astray.

Who could have imagined they would be so senseless as thus boldly to despise the judgments of good men, and hesitate not to make themselves odious and detestable to all? Those who were aware that they had nothing useful in view, were yet persuaded that they would make some show of it to the world, and assign to some of their sworn adherents the task of executing a new version. In this instance, however, they use no deceit. They not only order us to be contented with a most defective translation, but insist on our worshipping it, just as if it had come down from heaven; and while the blemishes are conspicuous to all, they prohibit us from desiring any improvement. Behold the men on whose judgment the renovation of the Church depends!⁷

For Calvin, the Tridentine decree is a sure sign of the Catholic Church’s ignorance, imprudence, insecurity, and malice. According to Calvin, Trent swept away the need for studying Greek and Hebrew in marking the Vulgate as the authentic text of the Church. Yet Calvin has read more into the decree than the decree says. Calvin, a man with a great talent for sober and elegant writing and interpretation, here gave way to impassioned “eisegesis” of what Trent really said. Trent nowhere forbids the use of the original languages, as if St. Jerome had not used them to revise the Old Latin texts or make his own translations. One may add here that certain Reformers were perhaps overly optimistic about their Hebrew text or even about the manuscripts of the New Testament which they currently had in their possession. Modern biblical scholarship, especially after the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, has deemed various Greek translations of the Old Testament to more accurately preserve the Hebrew Vorlage than the Masoretic text in some books. Further, the New Testament text used by early Protestant translators as the basis for the Geneva and the King James Bibles, the so-called textus receptus, no longer has priority in critical editions of the New Testament, such as Nestle-Aland’s Novum Testamentum Graece. Modern vernacular Bibles therefore no longer use the textus receptus as their base text. What a benefit it is to the Church to have the faith passed down both by a written mode and by the mode of Tradition, such that the faith does not depend on the vicissitudes of textual discovery! The manuscript discoveries misused by the Reformers in articulating their principle of sola scriptura do not give God’s people the faith. Rather, the valid critical study of manuscripts supports the faith but does not establish it.

The truth was surprising for me, someone who had come to share in this misinterpretation of the fourth session of Trent. The Catholic Church made the Vulgate the official version of the Church without prejudice to Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek manuscripts. The Reformers were not the only problem on the Council’s agenda but were merely one symptom of an underlying need for reform. Trent set out to reform the Church, and all its decisions against Protestant formulations or preferences must be kept within that context. If one were to make Trent a narrow reaction against Lutherans, Calvinists, and Anabaptists, one would fail to appreciate the intent of the Fathers of the council and their enduring success in reorganizing and focusing the Catholic reform, which had started before Luther ever thought to instigate a revolt against the Church. Trent was concerned with strengthening the Church through clerical and liturgical reform in addition to clarifying the doctrine of the faith over against Protestant errors.

I learned that I had accepted a myth only after I did two important things toward learning what the Catholic Church actually teaches: 1) I talked to a faithful Catholic priest and 2) I read Trent and some other Catholic sources with an ear that was at least open to being corrected. One does not want to look in the mirror and see an ostrich, after all.

Francisco Cardinal Ximenes de Cisneros

I had met my priest at a conference on economics and Christian social teaching. He was of Latin American provenance and had a wonderful combination of pastoral zeal and theological vigor. I asked him about the decree of Trent on the Vulgate. He told me that the decree was above all aimed at standardizing the Latin text of the Bible for the Church, especially the Latin Rite. The problem was not the use of Greek and Hebrew by the Reformers, as embarrassing as that was for some Catholic polemical authors. After all, scholars who remained within the Catholic Church had begun to use the original languages before Protestants started openly defying the Church’s leadership and traditions. One need look no further than the Complutensian Polyglot (1516), completed in Alcala, Spain, under Cardinal Ximenes, who dedicated the work to Pope Leo X,⁸ or the Greek edition of the New Testament edited by Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536). Such scholars desired to see greater familiarity with Sacred Scripture and were no less ardent in calling for the reform of abuses than were Protestants. For example, Cardinal Ximenes wrote that one reason for printing the Complutensian Polyglot is the following.

[W]herever there is diversity in the Latin manuscripts or the suspicion of a corrupted reading (we know how frequently this occurs because of the ignorance and negligence of copyists), it is necessary to go back to the original source of Scripture, as St. Jerome and St. Augustine and other ecclesiastical writers advise us to do [...] And so that every student of Holy Scripture might have at hand the original texts themselves and be able to quench his thirst at the very fountainhead of the water that flows unto life everlasting and not have to content himself with rivulets alone, we ordered the original languages of Holy Scripture with their translations adjoined to be printed and dedicated to your Holiness.⁹

One might have expected such Humanistic words from the pen of John Calvin, aside from addressing Leo X as “your Holiness” or calling Jerome and Augustine saints. Later in the preface the Cardinal defends the usefulness of an accurate understanding of the literal sense as the foundation for spiritual exegesis, which is a point of departure with Calvin due to the latter’s rejection of spiritual exegesis.¹⁰ The spiritual sense of Scripture contains that of which “the realities and events” of the literal sense are signs. This sense emerges from the unity of God’s redemptive plan for mankind as revealed in the writings of which he is the primary author.¹¹ Recently, Pope Benedict XVI expressed himself in similar terms to Cardinal Ximenes and St. Jerome, writing:

Throughout the history of the Church, numerous saints have spoken of the need for knowledge of Scripture in order to grow in love for Christ. This is evident particularly in the Fathers of the Church. Saint Jerome, in his great love for the word of God, often wondered: “How could one live without the knowledge of Scripture, by which we come to know Christ himself, who is the life of believers?”. He knew well that the Bible is the means “by which God speaks daily to believers”. [...] Let us follow the example of this great saint who devoted his life to the study of the Bible and who gave the Church its Latin translation, the Vulgate, as well as the example of all those saints who made an encounter with Christ the center of their spiritual lives. Let us renew our efforts to understand deeply the word which God has given to his Church: thus we can aim for that “high standard of ordinary Christian living” proposed by Pope John Paul II at the beginning of the third Christian millennium, which finds constant nourishment in attentively hearing the word of God.¹²

The Holy Father here reaffirms the need to know Sacred Scripture in order to know Christ, an essentially Catholic idea.

A sample page from
the Complutensian Polyglot

Neither the Cardinal nor Erasmus confused the agenda of reform with the rejection of essential elements of the faith. They thus remained in the Church while many around them were beginning to entertain Protestant positions, to despair, or to leave.¹³ To see that Catholic biblical scholarship did not cease with the hardening of the Protestant schism but that it could attain linguistic and theological heights on the other side of Trent, one need only read the work of Cornelius à Lapide (1567-1637), the great Jesuit commentator, priest, and professor of Hebrew.

In this way, the Catholic priest I met at the conference prepared me to see that the first decree of Trent’s fourth session was clarified by the second decree. The second decree shows that the primary intention of Trent was to identify one standard Latin edition of the Bible for the Latin-speaking Church to use in the liturgy and in scholastic disputation. The reluctance of the Council to ban translations of the Bible into vernacular languages opened the door for translations such as the Reims New Testament (1582) and the entire Douai-Reims Bible (1609-1610). More to the point, in the second decree of its fourth session, the Council, which otherwise had no difficulty signaling an intention to correct Protestant errors in its other decrees and canons, explained the promotion of the Vulgate in the following way.

Moreover, the same holy council considers that noticeable benefit can accrue to the church of God if, from all the Latin editions of the sacred books which are in circulation, it establishes which is to be regarded as authentic. It decides and declares that the old well known Latin Vulgate edition [ipsa vetus et vulgata editio] which has been tested in the church by long use over so many centuries should be kept as the authentic text in public readings, debates, sermons and explanations; and no one is to dare or presume on any pretext to reject it. [...T]he council decrees and determines that hereafter the sacred scriptures, particularly in this ancient Vulgate edition, shall be printed after a thorough revision [...]¹⁴

We should see three things in this decree. First, we see that the primary intention of the council was to standardize the Latin text of the Church. Remember that the context of Trent is overall reform, not merely smashing Protestantism. In this light, we see a Council eager to correct the problem of the multiplication of Latin translations and editions in Medieval Europe. The proliferation was caused by the sloppy transmission of the Latin manuscripts of Sacred Scripture as well as isolated attempts by scholars and bishops to revise the Latin texts they received, whether of the Old Latin, Jerome’s Vulgate, or some eclectic amalgamation.¹⁵

St. Jerome

Second, the council approved the Latin because Latin was the common language of the educated classes, both ecclesiastical and lay, in Europe for centuries. It was thus the “common” [vulgatus] language of the Western Church. This is the reason why St. Jerome’s translation was initially called the Vulgate, because it was in the “vulgar” tongue, much like koine Greek was the “common” or “vulgar” language of the Mediterranean world at the time of the Gospel. Due to the Church’s use of the Vulgate over the centuries in liturgy, theology, and devotion, she was eager to preserve that translation tradition. She did not want to dump the Latin altogether while she was open to using the original languages to maintain continuity with the past. Most Protestant theologians did not do away with Latin either but continued to write their theological treatises in that language for centuries, presumably for the same reasons of a common language allowing for communication both across national or ethnic lines and for keeping touch with the Latin Fathers of the Church.

Third, the council provides a way to achieve this reform in decreeing that a “thorough revision” of the Latin Bible is to be made. The council does not deny what everyone already knew, namely, that the text of the Vulgate had been corrupted in places by transmission errors. Enshrining the Vulgate as the “authentic” edition does not mean that the Vulgate cannot be revised in light of the best Latin manuscripts or that one may never correct the Latin text using the Hebrew or Greek manuscript traditions. In this openness to humanistic textual criticism, the Tridentine Fathers order that the Vulgate be corrected after the Council such that one version attaining as closely as possible to Jerome’s original translation would find universal use. The employment of Greek and Hebrew to correct the Latin was not forbidden in any way. The revision of the Vulgate was completed under popes Sixtus V and Clement the VIII and published in 1598. The Church has again endorsed a revision of the Vulgate as the authentic version for the Latin rite in liturgical and theological use. The letter in which John Paul the Great promulgated this Nova Vulgata (“New Vulgate”) edition in 1979 can be found here. The history of these revisions are interesting but too complicated to rehearse here.¹⁶

The Magisterium of the Catholic Church has understood the Tridentine reform in precisely this way. Pius XII explained in his famous encyclical on Sacred Scripture and biblical studies, Divino afflante Spiritu (1943), that:

And if the Tridentine Synod wished “that all should use as authentic” the Vulgate Latin version, this, as all know, applies only to the Latin Church¹⁷ and to the public use of the same Scriptures; nor does it, doubtless, in any way diminish the authority and value of the original texts. For there was no question then of these texts, but of the Latin versions, which were in circulation at that time, and of these the same Council rightly declared to be preferable that which “had been approved by its long-continued use for so many centuries in the Church.” Hence this special authority or as they say, authenticity of the Vulgate was not affirmed by the Council particularly for critical reasons, but rather because of its legitimate use in the Churches throughout so many centuries; by which use indeed the same is shown, in the sense in which the Church has understood and understands it, to be free from any error whatsoever in matters of faith and morals; so that, as the Church herself testifies and affirms, it may be quoted safely and without fear of error in disputations, in lectures and in preaching; and so its authenticity is not specified primarily as critical, but rather as juridical.¹⁸

Pius is therefore teaching that the Vulgate was established as the authentic version of the Church because it is the Latin Church’s family heirloom, the text which when read puts one not only into contact with Christ but also with all the Latin-speaking theologians and spiritual writers of the Church’s theological tradition. Yet Pius does not hold that the absence of dogmatic and moral errors disallows the study of Hebrew and Greek or the direct translations of vernacular Bibles from the original languages.¹⁹ He writes,

Wherefore this authority of the Vulgate in matters of doctrine by no means prevents – nay rather today it almost demands – either the corroboration and confirmation of this same doctrine by the original texts or the having recourse on any and every occasion to the aid of these same texts, by which the correct meaning of the Sacred Letters is everywhere daily made more clear and evident. Nor is it forbidden by the decree of the Council of Trent to make translations into the vulgar tongue, even directly from the original texts themselves, for the use and benefit of the faithful and for the better understanding of the divine word, as We know to have been already done in a laudable manner in many countries with the approval of the Ecclesiastical authority.²⁰

The myth of what Trent really did persists among many Protestants, as other myths about Protestants persist among Catholics. In this little post, I hope that I have done enough to show that the Church was not opposed to the use of the Greek and Hebrew languages in the fourth session of Trent, contrary to Calvin’s misinterpretation. The more myths of this nature are dispelled, the closer Protestants and Catholics come to reconciliation and to the healing of long-held suspicions.

Almighty God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the Word and the Revelation of your Love, we ask that you bring all into the full unity of the Church in order that we may tell of your mighty works, recorded for us in the Sacred Scriptures. Teach us your truth, that we may all attain eternal life. You sent the Holy Spirit upon the Church at Pentecost to empower her as she reads, contemplates, and teaches the Sacred Scriptures. Confirm us in this sure knowledge of salvation, for your glory and our good. Amen.

St. Jerome, pray for us!

1. Translation taken from Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. Norman Tanner, SJ, 2 vol. (Georgetown University Press, 1990), 2:664.
2. E.g., WCF I.v.
3. Later, I began to see the limitations of relying solely on the historico-critical method without also submitting to the Church’s reception of the canon of Scripture. I had relied on Sacred Tradition without knowing it in assuming the Protestant canon at the beginning of my criticism. I could not acknowledge this dependence without conceding the importance of Tradition, and so had to ultimately assert the canon on faith. This does not discount having good historical reasons for preferring the four Gospels and much of the Pauline corpus, but many have come to doubt the authenticity of certain Pauline writings. There was also plenty of debate about other books in the formation of the New Testament. I cannot here even begin to broach the problem of the Old Testament canon for Protestantism. For more on the deficiencies of the Reformed approach to determining the canon, see Tom Brown’s excellent article, The Canon Question. For the Reformed then, humanistic and critical study of Scripture can only happen after a fideistic determination of which books constitute the canon. So-called liberal Protestants have simply taken the critical method and set it over against the fideistic element.
4. Jaroslav Pelikan, Reformation of Church and Dogma (1300-1700), vol. 4 of The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine (University of Chicago Press: 1984), 306-310. Cf. John Calvin, Antidote, in Tracts and Treatises in Defense of the Reformed Faith, trans. Henry Beveridge, vol. 3 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1958), 68-69.
5. E.g., Paul Joüon & T. Muraoka, A Grammar of Biblical Hebrew, 2nd ed. (Rome: Editrice Pontificio Istituto Biblico, 2006); Maximilian Zerwick, SJ, Biblical Greek, 4th ed. adapted by Joseph Smith, SJ (Rome: Editrice Pontificio Istituto Biblico, 2009); ibid., A Grammatical Analysis of the Greek New Testament (Rome: Editrice Pontificio Istituto Biblico, 1996).
6. Apparently Philip Melanchthon also misinterpreted Trent in the same way, but I have not found the source for this assertion.
7. John Calvin, Tracts and Treatises in Defense of the Reformed Faith, trans. Henry Beveridge, vol. 3 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1958), 68, 71-72. One should note that I do not intend to take up Calvin’s other complaints against the Council, for example, his protest against the Council reserving the right of arbitrating competing interpretations of unclear passages. Notice also that Calvin arrogates to himself the “gift of interpretation” and thus presents himself as a competing Magisterium. Scholars such as Bruce Gordon have shown how Calvin saw himself as a prophet of God, called to reform the Church by his authority and scholarship. The problem for Calvin is not the need for a final ecclesiastical court of interpretation. The problem is that Trent did not recognize Calvin, and the learned divines whom Calvin recognized, as that court. Calvinists are just as committed as Catholics to retaining an interpretive class constituted by official pastors. For our purposes here we need only see that Calvin has misinterpreted the fourth session of Trent. One might also see how Calvin is perpetually dependent on having accurate manuscripts for his knowledge of the deposit of faith, as if he were not also dependent on Sacred Tradition.
8. The cardinal’s preface to the Polyglot is worth reading. A translation can be found in John C. Olin, Catholic Reform: From Cardinal Ximenes to the Council of Trent, 1495-1563. An Essay with Illustrative Documents and a Brief Study of St. Ignatius Loyola (Fordham University Press, 1990), 61-64.
9. Ibid., 62-63.
10. Preceding Ximenes by two and half centuries, St. Thomas Aquinas also insisted that spiritual exegesis proceed from a firm foundation in the literal sense. Cf. Summa theologiae I, q. 1, a. 10 ad 1.
11. Catechism of the Catholic Church, §§ 115-117.
12. Verbum Domini, § 72.
13. Cardinal Ximenes died in 1517, just as the Protestant movement was beginning, so it may be unfair to say what he would have done. Given the Cardinal’s loyalty to the Church and that the biblical scholarship which he oversaw had confirmed his confidence in the Church’s teaching, one doubts that he would have become a Protestant.
14. Trans. from Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 2:664.
15. For more information, see The New Catholic Encyclopedia, 2nd ed., s.v. “Vulgate.”
16. Again, I refer readers to The New Catholic Encyclopedia, 2nd ed., s.v. “Vulgate.”
17. I assume the Holy Father means in distinction from the Eastern Catholic Churches.
18. DAS, § 21.
19. A reader might wonder how the Church could determine whether the text lacked errors pertaining to faith and morals. The Church determined this in the same way that she partially confirmed that she was receiving the correct books from God in the canon: by comparing the contents of those books to that which had been received by the other mode of revelation’s transmission, namely, Sacred Tradition. In this way, Tradition and Scripture purify and clarify each other’s transmission of the deposit of faith. The Vulgate, even with the scribal errors, said nothing which contradicted the faith. It was an adequate translation of Scripture even if its reading of this or that verse needed updating. This is a great benefit of the Catholic teaching concerning the unity of Scripture and Tradition, such that even if one part of Scripture is unclear due to manuscript variants, we will not lose anything essential to the Faith because of the transmission of the same Faith through Tradition.
20. DAS, §22.

What does a Catholic say to that? A Catholic can affirm that scripture is materially sufficient but cannot affirm that scripture is formally sufficient.

So what is the difference between material and formal sufficiency? For scripture to be materially sufficient, it would have to contain (explicitly or implicitly) all that is needed for salvation. Many Catholic theologians, including Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict 16th) and Blessed John Henry Newman agree that scripture is materially sufficient.

On the other hand, for scripture to be formally sufficient, it would not only have to contain all that is needed for salvation, but it would have to be so clear that it does not need any outside information to interpret it (e.g. the church is not needed to interpret scripture.)

When one encounters a Protestant apologist asserting that a father taught the formal sufficiency of scripture it is very important to remember what that father taught about the relation of the church to scripture. It is simply a fact that if we are talking about the sufficiency of scripture for any given church father, not taking into account that father’s teaching on the church is a fatal error because what formal sufficiency claims is that there is no need for the church to interpret scripture.

The following is a brief survey of several fathers speaking explicitly about the relation of the church to scripture. Note: These are some of the same fathers who are being quoted by some Protestant apologists in an effort to prove that they taught the formal sufficiency of scripture:

Athanasius

“Let us note that the very tradition, teaching, and faith of the Catholic Church from the beginning, which the Lord gave, was preached by the Apostles, and was preserved by the Fathers On this was the Church founded; and if anyone departs from this, he neither is nor any longer ought to be called a Christian.” – Letter to Serapion of Thmuis, 359 A.D..

Hilary of Poitiers

“They who are placed without the Church, cannot attain to any understanding of the divine word. For the ship exhibits a type of Church, the word of life placed and preached within which, they who are without, and lie near like barren and useless sands, cannot understand.” – On Matthew, Homily 13:1 (A.D. 355)

Vincent of Lerins

“Here perhaps, someone may ask: Since the canon of the Scripture is complete and more than sufficient in itself, why is it necessary to add to it the authority of ecclesiastical interpretation? As a matter of fact, we must answer Holy Scripture, because of its depth, is not universally accepted in one and the same sense. The same text is interpreted different by different people, so that one may almost gain the impression that it can yield as many different meanings as there are men. Novatian, for example, expounds a passage in one way; Sabellius, in another; Donatus, in another. Arius, and Eunomius, and Macedonius read it differently; so do Photinus, Apollinaris, and Priscillian; in another way, Jovian, Pelagius, and Caelestius; finally still another way, Nestorius. Thus, because of the great distortions caused by various errors, it is, indeed, necessary that the trend of the interpretation of the prophetic and apostolic writings be directed in accordance with the rule of the ecclesiastical and Catholic meaning.” – Commonitory for the Antiquity and Universality of the Catholic Faith 2 (A.D. 434).

For a more detailed account of the Catholic Church and Her relation to Holy Scripture please read our article Solo Scriptura, Sola Scriptura and the Question of Interpretive Authority.

The Inspiration of Saint Matthew
Caravaggio (1602)
San Luigi dei Francesi, Rome

The Claim
In the October 2010 issue of Ordained Servant Online, an organ of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, an article by Danny E. Olinger titled “A Primer on Vatican II” presented the Orthodox Presbyterian understanding of the four constitutions promulgated by the Second Vatican Council: Sacrosanctum Concilium, Dei Verbum, Lumen Gentium, and Gaudium et Spes.

Olinger begins his article by calling attention to an article written by the late Fr. Richard John Neuhaus in First Things two years earlier in which Fr. Neuhaus reviewed two books offering competing viewpoints on the Council: What Happened at Vatican II by John O’Malley, and Vatican II: Renewal Within Tradition by Matthew Lamb and Matthew Levering. O’Malley’s argument — which Neuhaus summarized as proposing that Vatican II constituted “a radical break from tradition” and “proposed … a different Catholicism” — is the one accepted by Olinger; he ends his article by stating that “Rather than bringing Rome closer to a biblically-based Christianity, Vatican II has moved it further away.” If this is true, then communion with the Catholic Church is less desirable than ever for Evangelical and Reformed Protestants.

The most distressing change, according to Olinger, is not in the Catholic Church’s liturgy (Sacrosanctum Concilium) nor her ecclesiology (Lumen Gentium) nor her relation to the world (Gaudium et Spes). Instead, it is the perceived change in the doctrine of the inerrancy of the Bible. Olinger begins his commentary on Dei Verbum, the constitution on divine revelation, by stating matter-of-factly that “Dei Verbum represented a break with Catholic past regarding the doctrine of revelation.” By his interpretation of the constitution, the Catholic Church no longer believes that revelation is “propositional truth” — that is, “information about God” — but is rather “an inspired testimony to the living Word of God (Jesus).” This change means that the Church “no longer need[s] to protect the Bible from accusations of historical and scientific error.”¹ Olinger claims that paragraph 11 of Dei Verbum declares that the inerrancy of inspired Scripture “only concerns the religious message and not the historical information conveyed by its human authors.” (emphasis added)

The Traditional Doctrine
Olinger’s claim, that the Catholic Church has abandoned the traditional doctrine of the total inerrancy of Scripture, is not based on the Council’s documents, but on a faulty interpretation of them. This interpretation belongs to the “hermeneutic of discontinuity,” a way of reading the Second Vatican Council as a break from tradition and a rupture with the Church’s history.² This faulty interpretation, based on a selective reading of the Council’s documents out of the context of the Church’s Tradition, is countered by the “hermeneutic of reform,” of renewal in continuity with Sacred Tradition.³

Before we consider the text of the Council which Olinger believes deviates from the traditional doctrine of inerrancy, we should briefly survey previous documents from the Church Fathers and Magisterium. These quotations clearly and plainly state the traditional and constant teaching of the Church: the entirety of the Sacred Scriptures, as written by their original authors, is inspired by God (thus making Him its primary author) and completely inerrant.

St. Augustine, c. 400

It is also frequently asked what our belief must be about the form and shape of heaven according to Sacred Scripture. […] But the credibility of Scripture is at stake, and as I have indicated more than once, there is danger that a man uninstructed in divine revelation, discovering something in Scripture or hearing from it something that seems to be at variance with the knowledge he has acquired, may resolutely withhold his assent in other matters where Scripture presents useful admonitions, narratives, or declarations. Hence I must say briefly that in the matter of the shape of heaven the sacred writers knew the truth, but that the Spirit of God, who spoke through them, did not wish to teach men these facts that would be of no avail for their salvation. (De Genesi ad Litteram II, 9, 20)

From this first quotation we can draw two important conclusions: first, according to St. Augustine the Holy Spirit did not wish to teach things that “would be of no avail for [our] salvation” such as the “form and shape of heaven,” and second, that whatever the Holy Spirit teaches (through the sacred writers, for example) is taught for our salvation. Elsewhere he writes:

For I confess to your Charity that I have learned to yield this respect and honour only to the canonical books of Scripture: of these alone do I most firmly believe that the authors were completely free from error. (Letter 82 [to St. Jerome], 3)

St. Thomas Aquinas, 1256-1259

We believe the prophets only in so far as they are inspired by the spirit of prophecy. But we have to give belief to those things written in the books of the prophets even though they treat of conclusions of scientific knowledge, as in Psalms (135:6): “Who established the earth above the waters,” and whatever else there is of this sort. Therefore, the spirit of prophecy inspires the prophets even about conclusions of the sciences. (Quaestiones disputatae de veritate, A. 2, C)

Pope Clement VI, 1351

In the fourteenth place, if you have believed and now believe that the New and Old Testaments in all their books, which the authority of the Roman Church has given to us, contain undoubted truth in all things [veritatem indubiam per omnia]. (Super quibusdam: Denz. 570q [English], 1065 [Latin])

Pope Leo XIII, 1893

[I]t is absolutely wrong and forbidden, either to narrow inspiration to certain parts only of Holy Scripture, or to admit that the sacred writer has erred. For the system of those who, in order to rid themselves of these difficulties, do not hesitate to concede that divine inspiration regards the things of faith and morals, and nothing beyond, because (as they wrongly think) in a question of the truth or falsehood of a passage, we should consider not so much what God has said as the reason and purpose which He had in mind in saying it — this system cannot be tolerated. For all the books which the Church receives as sacred and canonical, are written wholly and entirely, with all their parts, at the dictation of the Holy Ghost; and so far is it from being possible that any error can co-exist with inspiration, that inspiration not only is essentially incompatible with error, but excludes and rejects it as absolutely and necessarily as it is impossible that God Himself, the supreme Truth, can utter that which is not true. […] Hence, because the Holy Ghost employed men as His instruments, we cannot therefore say that it was these inspired instruments who, perchance, have fallen into error, and not the primary author. For, by supernatural power, He so moved and impelled them to write — He was so present to them — that the things which He ordered, and those only, they, first, rightly understood, then willed faithfully to write down, and finally expressed in apt words and with infallible truth. Otherwise, it could not be said that He was the Author of the entire Scripture. […] It follows that those who maintain that an error is possible in any genuine passage of the sacred writings, either pervert the Catholic notion of inspiration, or make God the author of such error. (Providentissimus Deus 20-21)

Pope Benedict XV, 1920

[Pope Leo XIII taught] that Divine inspiration extends to every part of the Bible without the slightest exception, and that no error can occur in the inspired text: “It would be wholly impious to limit inspiration to certain portions only of Scripture or to concede that the sacred authors themselves could have erred.” Those, too, who hold that the historical portions of Scripture do not rest on the absolute truth of the facts but merely upon what they are pleased to term their relative truth, namely, what people then commonly thought, are — no less than are the aforementioned critics — out of harmony with the Church’s teaching, which is endorsed by the testimony of Jerome and other Fathers. (Spiritus Paraclitus 21-22)

Ven. Pope Pius XII, 1943

[When] some Catholic writers, in spite of this solemn definition of Catholic doctrine, by which such divine authority is claimed for the “entire books with all their parts” as to secure freedom from any error whatsoever, ventured to restrict the truth of Sacred Scripture solely to matters of faith and morals, and to regard other matters, whether in the domain of physical science or history, as “obiter dicta” and — as they contended — in no wise connected with faith, Our Predecessor of immortal memory, Leo XIII in the Encyclical Letter Providentissimus Deus, published on November 18 in the year 1893, justly and rightly condemned these errors and safe-guarded the studies of the Divine Books by most wise precepts and rules. (Divino Afflante Spiritu 1)

Ven. Pope Pius XII, 1950

[A] number of things are proposed or suggested by some even against the divine authorship of Sacred Scripture. For some go so far as to pervert the sense of the Vatican Council’s definition that God is the author of Holy Scripture, and they put forward again the opinion, already often condemned, which asserts that immunity from error extends only to those parts of the Bible that treat of God or of moral and religious matters. (Humani Generis 22)

The Paragraph in Question: Dei Verbum 11
So then, what did the Second Vatican Council pronounce that has led Olinger to claim that the Catholic Church has changed her doctrine on the inerrancy of Scripture? You will not find it quoted or directly referred to in his article, nor even relegated to a footnote. The paragraph in question, Dei Verbum 11, reads as follows in the most widely available English translation, found on the Vatican web site (emphasis added):

Those divinely revealed realities which are contained and presented in Sacred Scripture have been committed to writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. For holy mother Church, relying on the belief of the Apostles (see John 20:31; 2 Tim. 3:16; 2 Peter 1:19-20, 3:15-16), holds that the books of both the Old and New Testaments in their entirety, with all their parts, are sacred and canonical because written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God as their author and have been handed on as such to the Church herself. In composing the sacred books, God chose men and while employed by Him they made use of their powers and abilities, so that with Him acting in them and through them, they, as true authors, consigned to writing everything and only those things which He wanted.

Therefore, since everything asserted by the inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit, it follows that the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation. Therefore “all Scripture is divinely inspired and has its use for teaching the truth and refuting error, for reformation of manners and discipline in right living, so that the man who belongs to God may be efficient and equipped for good work of every kind” (2 Tim. 3:16-17, Greek text).

The footnotes for paragraph 11 direct the reader to St. Augustine’s De Genesi ad litteram and his Letter 82 to St. Jerome, and to St. Thomas’s Quaestiones disputatae de veritate, and to the encyclicals of Leo XIII and Ven. Pius XII; all of these sources, which are quoted above, affirm the complete inerrancy of Sacred Scripture. Why, then, would Olinger claim the Council has abandoned this traditional doctrine?

The reason is that numerous Catholic theologians and biblical scholars came to the same erroneous conclusion based on an impartial and incorrect interpretation of paragraph 11 of Dei Verbum. Exemplifying the “hermeneutic of discontinuity,” they read the paragraph in isolation from the nineteen hundred years of tradition preceding it (as well as the rest of the document itself), and interpreted it to mean that “the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and without error only that truth pertaining to salvation which God wanted put into sacred writings.” The false interpretation — which can be described as “limited inerrancy” — is that there are parts of Scripture that do not pertain to our salvation, and that there could be errors in those parts in matters of history and science. Only the doctrinal and moral truths in the Scriptures are taught “solidly, faithfully and without error.”

This problem of misinterpretation is not exclusive to laity and priests. The instrumentum laboris (“working document”) of the recent XII Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops on “The Word of God in the Life and Mission of the Church” included the following troubling excerpt:

In summary, the following can be said with certainty: […] with regards to what might be inspired in the many parts of Sacred Scripture, inerrancy applies only to “that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation.” (15c)

While the “working document” is not an official teaching document, and thus carries no magisterial weight whatsoever, it is distressing to see such a misconception of the Church’s doctrine on inerrancy in a document related to a Synod on the Word of God.⁴ However, even when individual members of the Church call into question a certain doctrine, we as Catholics can know that the Church will perpetually and faithfully maintain and hand on the faith in its fullness. The doubt of St. Thomas did not negate the veracity of the Apostles’ testimony of the risen Christ.

The Potential Repercussions
If limited inerrancy were true, it would have a disastrous implication: that God inspired all of Scripture but only kept part of it free from error, that part which pertains to salvation. This would require an (infallible) arbiter who could determine which parts of Scripture pertain to salvation and which parts do not. Logically, any part of the Bible determined to contain an error could not pertain to salvation, so if some “experts” determined that the Apostles did not actually see the risen Christ with a resurrected, glorified body — a body capable of passing through walls and also of eating fish! — those passages of Scripture would be deemed errant and thus not pertinent to salvation. That would result in a radical redefinition of our doctrine on the Resurrection; such a redefinition has already been advanced by certain theologians who consider the Resurrection a “shared experience” rather than an historical and transcendent event as the Catechism of the Catholic Church defines it.⁵

Scripture is hard enough to understand as it is. (cf. Acts 8:30ff; 2 Peter 3:16) But limited inerrancy would also mean that God made it deliberately hard for us to believe in His Word as recorded in Scripture. People would wonder if the doctrinal content of Scripture (that is, that which pertains to salvation) is really inspired and inerrant if the non-doctrinal content is inspired but errant. This would inevitably lead to a continually changing faith (decreasing in content, no doubt) over time.

Dei Verbum 11 states that the human authors of Scripture wrote “everything and only those things which [God] wanted,” and that “everything asserted by [them] must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit.” If limited inerrancy were true, that would mean that God deliberately willed the human authors to write things that are not true: it “make[s] God the author of […] error,” a scenario explicitly condemned by Pope Leo XIII in Providentissimus Deus 21. It would mean that, in the writing of Scripture, God’s word is not necessarily truth, and that the Holy Spirit asserts untruths through the human authors of Scripture. On the contrary, Jesus says that His Father’s words “are truth” (John 17:17) and that the Holy Spirit — the “Spirit of Truth” (John 14:17) — would “guide [the Apostles] into all the truth” (John 16:13). The Catholic Church does not believe that God teaches and instructs His people with untruths and lies.

Restoring Context
The “limited inerrancy” interpretation is produced by isolating the words “that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation.” This error can be corrected simply by restoring these words to their context, taking into account these statements in the very same paragraph:

In composing the sacred books, God chose men [so that] they, as true authors, consigned to writing everything and only those things which He wanted.

Therefore, since everything asserted by the inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit […]

“[A]ll Scripture is divinely inspired and has its use for teaching the truth and refuting error […]”

When all four statements are read together, it is clear that the Council is saying that the sacred authors wrote only what God wanted them to write, that everything they wrote was inspired by the Holy Spirit and thus attributed to God, and that everything they wrote was written for the sake of salvation. The phrase “for the sake of our salvation” is not a restrictive clause which separates the “truth” in Scripture from the rest of its contents. On the contrary, it affirms for us that what is taught in Scripture is the truth, and it is taught for our salvation.

In a 1998 doctrinal commentary on the Oath of Fidelity (Professio Fidei), the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) included the belief in “the absence of error in the inspired sacred texts” — without qualification — as belonging to the divinely and formally revealed articles of the Catholic faith. Since the whole of Scripture is inspired (as taught by Vatican II), the absence of error “in the inspired sacred texts” means that the whole of Scripture is without error. The CDF commentary cites Dei Verbum 11 in support of this belief in the absence of error in Scripture. This is the most clear post-conciliar indicator that Dei Verbum teaches the traditional doctrine of inerrancy, and it is a magisterial affirmation of the “hermeneutic of continuity,” rather than the “hermeneutic of discontinuity,” as the proper approach to the Second Vatican Council.

Lost in Translation
There is another way to refute the misinterpretation of Dei Verbum 11, as demonstrated by Fr. Brian Harrison, O.P., in his masterful defense of the document and the traditional doctrine of inerrancy. His article “Does Vatican Council II Allow for Errors in Sacred Scripture?” from a 2009 issue of the Roman theological journal Divinitas⁶ calls into question the English translation of the original Latin text of the constitution; the latter reads:

Cum ergo omne id, quod auctores inspirati seu hagiographi asserunt, retineri debeat assertum a Spiritu Sancto, inde Scripturæ libri veritatem, quam Deus nostræ salutis causa Litteris Sacris consignari voluit, firmiter, fideliter et sine errore docere profitendi sunt.

Fr. Harrison notes that the word veritatem (‘truth’) is mistranslated as “that truth,” which would only be a proper rendering of “eam veritatem” or “illam veritatem.” Instead, the word ‘veritatem’ should be translated with the definitive article: “the truth.” He argues that

Gratuitously adding this demonstrative adjective [‘that’] reinforces the false impression that the Council is singling out a certain restricted species of biblical truth — a certain subset of the set of all biblical truths — as the “only” one guaranteed to be free from any admixture of error.

One can see from the Latin text that the popular English translation does not respect the punctuation of the Latin either: “veritatem, quam Deus” should be translated as “the truth, which God” rather than “that truth which God.”⁷ Fr. Harrison provides a more accurate translation of the entire sentence which removes any ambiguity:

Since, therefore, all that the inspired authors or hagiographers affirm must be held as affirmed by the Holy Spirit, we must in consequence acknowledge that, by means of the books of Scripture, the truth that God, for the sake of our salvation, wanted recorded in the form of the Sacred Writings is taught firmly, faithfully, and without error.

Abbot Denis Farkasfalvy, O. Cist., a contributor to Lamb and Levering’s Vatican II: Renewal Within Tradition, voiced the same concern as Fr. Harrison in his essay “Inspiration and Interpretation” (pp. 77-99), that “in some ambiguous translations and intepretations, Dei Verbum misleadingly appears to teach that inerrancy covers only those statements that regard our salvation.” (p. 87)⁸

Setting the Record Straight
The “Jesus of history” is not different from the “Jesus of faith,” as Pope Benedict XVI argues in the introduction of his non-magisterial book Jesus of Nazareth. Given the analogy between the enfleshed Word of God and the written Word of God, it follows that the history set forth in the Bible is not a “history of faith” to be distinguished from some “actual” history. For the perfection of the written Word can be argued from the perfection of the incarnate Word. This argument was, in fact, put forward by the Second Vatican Council:

For the words of God, expressed in human language, have been made like human discourse, just as the word of the eternal Father, when He took to Himself the flesh of human weakness, was in every way made like men. (Dei Verbum 13)

We know from Scripture that the Word “had to be made like his brethren in every respect.” (Hebrews 2:17) But the same sacred author then clarifies himself, that Jesus, throughout His temptations, remained “without sin.” (Hebrews 4:15) So too the Word of God in written form is without flaw. In fact, Dei Verbum was only paraphrasing Ven. Pope Pius XII:

For as the substantial Word of God became like to men in all things, “except sin,” so the words of God, expressed in human language, are made like to human speech in every respect, except error. (Divino Afflante Spiritu, 37)

Since the Council Fathers could not possibly be suggesting that the Word-made-flesh was not without sin, we should believe that they were simply echoing — regrettably without a reference to Hebrews 4 or Divino Afflante Spiritu, but echoing nonetheless — a previous magisterial statement, not changing it.

One of the aims of the Second Vatican Council was “to foster whatever can promote union among all who believe in Christ.” (Sacrosanctum Concilium 1) To have deviated from the traditional doctrine of the inerrancy of Scripture, and so lose such precious common ground between Reformed and Catholic Christians, would have been contrary to the Council’s intentions. It should now be clear that the Second Vatican Council did not deviate from the traditional teaching of the Church on the inerrancy of the whole of Sacred Scripture. We should adopt for ourselves the rule of St. Augustine, that Scripture is inerrant, although how it is so may not always be readily apparent to us. As he says in one place,

“[I]f in these writings I am perplexed by anything which appears to me opposed to truth, I do not hesitate to suppose that either the manuscript⁹ is faulty, or the translator has not caught the meaning of what was said, or I myself have failed to understand it.” (Letter 82, 3)

1. Olinger’s footnote for this claim: “The whole Bible is without error — but with an eye to salvation, not with an eye to historical or scientific accuracy.” (Edward Hahnenberg, A Concise Guide to the Documents of Vatican II (Cincinnati: St. Anthony’s Press), 32-33)
2. See Pope Benedict XVI’s 2005 Christmas address to the Roman Curia.
3. The “hermeneutic of reform” has also been explicitly called a “hermeneutic of continuity.” See Pope Benedict XVI’s 2007 Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis, footnote 6.
4. The final product of the Synod is the list of “propositions” for the Holy Father to consider and address in another Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation. Proposition 12 reads: “The Synod proposes that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith clarify the concepts of inspiration and truth of the Bible, as well as their reciprocal relationship, in order to understand better the teaching of Dei Verbum 11. In particular, it is necessary to highlight the originality of the Catholic biblical hermeneutics in this field.” This proposition does not take any stand on the doctrine of inerrancy, unlike the “working document.”
5. cf. nn. 639-647
6. Year LII, No. 3, pp. 279-304, reproduced at http://www.rtforum.org/lt/lt145-6.html
7. The Catechism of the Catholic Church uses the same popular English translation of Dei Verbum in paragraph 107. The normative text of the Catechism is the Latin, which matches the Latin text of ‘Dei Verbum.’
8. It should be noted that, contrary to Olinger’s claim that the history of the formulation of Dei Verbum points to a victory for the progressivists in the Church, Farkasfalvy comes to the opposite conclusion, that the final wording “saved the document from ambiguity and possibly error as well. [...] Moreover, since the phrase ‘sine errore’ was eventually reinserted into the text, ‘inerrancy’ in its traditional sense also returned.” (p. 87)
9. That is, the copy, not the original.

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Download the MP3 here.

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.