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Rules of Engagement

I give considerable weight to the noble traditions that have sustained the church throughout the years.

– Tom Wright

N. T. Wright is justly famous for his historical scholarship, particularly with regard to Christian origins in the cultural milieu of Second Temple Judaism. Therefore, it is easy to forget that, in many of his writings, Wright is not positioning himself as simply a New Testament scholar. Rather, he draws from his substantial scholarship in order to posit his own doctrines concerning important points of Christian theology, justification not the least.

It has been noted that, for doctrinal intents and purposes, Wright is nothing so much as a biblicist. He often avows his intention of being as consistent as possible (more consistent than his Reformed critics) with the Protestant principle of sola scriptura. It is in this light that we must understand quotes such as the one at the beginning of this section. For Wright, the “weight” of the Church’s tradition is measured by his own interpretation of Sacred Scripture. Like every adherent to the principle of sola scriptura, Wright is his own ultimate interpretive authority.²

Wright does not merely offer the fruits of his prodigious scholarship to the Church as a service to her life and in submission to her authority. Rather, in keeping with his basic theological principles, he presumes that his scholarship can and has (on some points) trumped Church doctrine. That’s a bold posture, though far from unprecedented. At the very least it should not go unremarked. In fact, Wright himself often remarks on this aspect of his work, reminding his often indignant interlocutors that he, like Luther, will not bow to any tradition, not even the traditional Protestant doctrine of justification.

Three Perspectives on Paul

Wright’s unfolds his doctrine of justification by means of an extended reading (epitomized in this book) of the Epistles of Paul. Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision, is, in part, an effort to compare and contrast his own doctrine with other doctrines, particularly the Protestant doctrine, and, obliquely, the Catholic doctrine. To place Wright’s theological project in its proper context, it is therefore necessary to grasp the gist of the Catholic and (classical) Protestant doctrines of justification.

1. The Catholic Church’s doctrine of justification is presented in terms of the forgiveness, actual renewal, and progressive transformation of human beings, by God, whereby we are given to participate in the life of God (eternal life), thereby becoming what we cannot become by nature; that is, children of God. This participation is based upon the love of God the Father, which love is “humanized” in his only-begotten Son, in whom all kinds of people are made part of a new humanity (God’s family), constituted by divine love, which is “poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.” (Romans 5:5) In concise, theological terms, the Catholic Church teaches that regeneration, sanctification and incorporation into the Body of Christ are essential aspects of justification, such that the latter cannot be defined in legal, extrinsic and individualistic terms alone.

The rationale for this realist understanding of justification is as follows: God speaks only truth, his speech is not merely constitutive (in the legal sense), it is creative (in the ontological sense), and this particular speech-act, justification, considered as a categorical proposition (i.e., X is Y), has a biblically and theologically obvious and appropriate term in the one who has been justified. The fact of our regeneration in Christ makes it unnecessary to relegate the predicate “just” to something extrinsic to the justified (e.g., the alien righteousness of Christ). In the language of Sacred Scripture, we are justified by faith in Christ; in him, we become the righteousness of God.

2. Protestantism has traditionally denied that regeneration (the actual, spiritual renewal of the human being) is an essential aspect of justification. Rather, Protestantism has defined justification as a legal action, which, although referring to man, nevertheless does not correspond to anything in man, whereby God the Father declares that an unrighteous individual is righteous, and therefore acquits this individual of all charges of wrongdoing. This declaration is not considered to be unjust, however, precisely because Jesus Christ has become the sinner’s substitute, such that Jesus, an innocent and righteous man, was made the object of divine retribution, rather than the actually guilty party. God imputed our sins to his Son, and waged retribution against him, thereby discharging himself of the obligation to punish sinners. The actual righteousness of the Son, in turn, is imputed to sinners, whereby they are, in a legal and extrinsic sense, reconciled to God, who, in view of these arrangements, overlooks their sinful condition. The actual renewal of the sinner, whereby, through the Holy Spirit, he is given to participate in the divine life, having the love of God poured into his heart, is not denied by Protestantism. This real transformation is simply considered to be no part, whatsoever, of justification.

3. Wright’s new perspective on Paul’s doctrine of justification has been lauded, and chided, for its similarity to the Catholic doctrine. In fact, Wright’s teaching is, at critical points, much more akin to the classical Protestant version of justification. In any event, it really is a new perspective, even if, in terms of theological payoff, its differences from the old perspectives have been somewhat overblown. For Catholics, Wright’s teaching is suggestive of some things that are already near and dear, such as the centrality of the Church in the mystery of salvation. For the Protestant, Wright’s perspective on justification eliminates something that has been considered essential; i.e., imputation of Christ’s alien, moral righteousness. But Wright also denies something that the Catholic considers necessary to affirm; namely, that justification essentially involves an actual change in the justified, whereby the sinner is made righteous.

Wright’s over-arching thesis is the biblical-theological claim that the structure of justification is essentially “covenantal,” as attested by St. Paul’s writings, especially in Romans and Galatians. Thus, St. Paul invokes Abraham, not merely as an example of faith, but because the Abrahamic covenant is the indispensable context for understanding God’s plan of justification by faith in Christ. On this point, his main point, Wright is almost certainly correct. His brand of covenant theology, however, falls short of the “covenantal realism” that characterizes the Catholic Faith. In defining justification, Wright exchanges one purely extrinsic definition, “imputation of (moral) righteousness,” for another, i.e., “change of legal status.” Thus, his analysis of justification tends to be marked, every bit as much as the traditional Protestant analysis, by a legalistic extrinsicism, such that the dynamics of the courtroom dominate within the covenant. To be fair, Wright’s construal is not as open to the charge of legal fiction as is the traditional Protestant model of justification, since God is not, on Wright’s model, declaring anyone to be morally righteous.

The problem with Wright’s brand of extrinsicism is that it favors a naturalistic, political reading of covenant membership, over a supernatural, familial model. That is, when Wright comes to discuss incorporation into the people of God, i.e., justification, i.e., covenant membership, he shies away from speaking of spiritual rebirth into the divine family, despite the familial language and themes running through the relevant passages. The Catholic Church, on the other hand, by bringing regeneration under the rubric of justification, underscores the familial and supernatural aspects of the covenant. Justification does involve becoming a member of God’s covenant people, and this does have legal ramifications. But this “becoming a covenant member” is not merely a mundane, extrinsic change of status. By faith in Christ, we really become, and are therefore rightly regarded as, children of God (partakers of the divine nature), covenant members, righteous.

Following St. Paul’s lead in Romans 2, Wright interprets the eschatological judgment, rendered in view of good works, in terms of justification. On this point, which needs a lot of unpacking, many critics think that Wright sounds much more “Catholic” than is customary among his fellow Protestants. In fact, Wright’s advocacy of the demonstrative, as opposed to teleological, role of works in justification, in connection with the eschatological judgment, is par for the Protestant course (at least, the Calvinist course). The following quote, in which Wright reflects on Philippians 3:7-14, pretty well makes my point:

[Question:] [H]ow did Paul think about, or describe theologically, what here appears to be straightforward moral effort in the time between initial justification and final judgment?(152)

[Answer:] Paul sets out on a journey which, though its end is, in fact secure, always seems like something that has to be struggled for, namely the resurrection itself. (153)

Such prevarication is its own refutation.

Wright’s views on justification are, in this book, almost entirely unrelated to the sacrament of baptism, which is barely mentioned. The omission is significant, especially for the Catholic, who reads justification in light of the Church’s understanding of sacraments as effectual means of grace and supernatural bonds of kinship. The reader of Justification is implicitly encouraged to adopt a very different understanding, in the very different light of Wright’s doctrine of perseverance.

Justification by Faith

Regarding what is accomplished by God’s speech-act of justification, I want to make clear the significance of Wright’s substitution of “change of status” for the classical Protestant reading of “imputation of [alien, moral] righteousness.” For Wright, what is happening in justification is definitely courtroom stuff, but it is also covenant stuff; i.e., the decree of justification grants one the legal status of belonging to God’s covenant people. This (initial) decree doesn’t have anything to do with the moral virtue of an individual, whether that virtue be imputed or infused. Whereas the Protestant tradition reads “the righteousness of God” as that moral quality or property of God whereby he himself is righteous, and “justification” as the imputation of that divine righteousness to sinners, Wright reads these as, respectively, God’s faithfulness to his covenant (with Abraham), and the inclusion of whoever has faith in Jesus within God’s chosen, covenant people.

Wright’s exegesis of 2 Corinthians 5:21 suggests that human beings can actually participate in the “the righteousness of God,” at least in the historicized, covenantal sense of righteousness. Although Wright is here discussing the Apostolic ministry in particular, the principle of participation in God’s covenant faithfulness (righteousness) can easily be extended to the whole covenant people. However, Wright does not define the justification of sinners in terms of such participation. Rather, he defines justification as a change of status. The difference between the status “justified” and the status “not justified”, is something entirely extrinsic to the person: he can now be regarded in a new way. (206) If we were to ask, “Why can he be regarded in a new way?” it almost seems that Wright would be forced to answer: Because he has been granted a new status.

Almost. But there is something (closely connected with regeneration) that really, in a more than verbal, as well as a non-circular, way, distinguishes these two “statuses” (justified and non-justified): faith. Faith is reckoned as righteousness (Romans 4:5). Wright does not ignore this point. In fact, he explicitly raises the question, “Why then does human faith play the part it does within this scheme of thought?” (207) His bottom-line answer, however, doesn’t sit well with his insistence that justification is not about anyone’s moral righteousness: “faith … indicates the presence of genuine, humble, trusting and indeed we might say image-bearing humanity….” (209) Indeed. Given such predicates, we might even say “virtuous, regenerated” humanity. But if we are justified by this kind of faith, and if faith is that which is reckoned to us as righteousness, why the constant refrain that justification does not refer to moral righteousness, but merely to social status? In reality, the faith which Wright describes, together with the new birth, is what fleshes out the distinction between justified-status and non-justified status. But this faith is something inhering in the person. Such considerations seem to land us, not in the frying pan of classical Protestantism, but in the fire of Catholicism.

Wright seems to sense the danger, and he immediately explains that this faith is the gift of God. So it is, and so says the Catholic Church:

For, although no one can be just, but he to whom the merits of the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ are communicated, yet is this done in the said justification of the impious, when by the merit of that same most holy Passion, the charity of God is poured forth, by the Holy Spirit, in the hearts of those that are justified, and is inherent therein: whence, man, through Jesus Christ, in whom he is ingrafted, receives, in the said justification, together with the remission of sins, all these (gifts) infused at once, faith, hope, and charity. For faith, unless hope and charity be added thereto, neither unites man perfectly with Christ, nor makes him a living member of His body. For which reason it is most truly said, that Faith without works is dead and profitless; and, In Christ Jesus neither circumcision, availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but faith which worketh by charity. (Council of Trent, VI, VII.)

____________

1. N.T. Wright, Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision (Downer’s Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2009).
2. The implications of this sort of individualism, which turns out to be endemic to confessional as well as free church varieties of Protestantism, have been discussed by Bryan Cross and Neal Judisch in the article, Solo Scriptura, Sola Scriptura, and the Question of Interpretive Authority.

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

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

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

Contents:

I. The Canon Question
II. Diversity of Theories

A. Self-Attestation and the Testimony of the Holy Spirit
B. The Original Hebrew Old Testament
C. New Testament Apostolic Authorship
D. Widespread Acceptance by the Early Church
E. That Which Preaches Christ: A Canon Within a Canon

III. Authority to Answer the Question
IV. Conclusion

I. THE CANON QUESTION.

As Christians, how is it that we know we are saved by the death and resurrection of the incarnate Son of God? For those raised as Christians, the Sunday School sing-song answer “for the Bible tells me so” may come to mind, and this fairly well summarizes the Protestant teaching on the communication of saving truth. The Belgic Confession, an historical expression of the Reformed faith used widely in Dutch denominations, asserts that we know God by the beauty of creation, and “more openly by his holy and divine Word.” ¹ The Westminster Confession of Faith, widely adopted by Presbyterian denominations with traditionally Scottish origins, contains a comparable teaching: while the “light of nature, and the works of creation and providence do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God, as to leave men unexcusable,” we still need revealed truth to possess the “knowledge of God, and of His will, which is necessary unto salvation.” ² Regarding this revelation, the Westminster Confession holds that God chose “to commit the same wholly unto writing.” ³

But this answer, that we know saving truth from the Bible, pushes the question back. What is the Bible? Our previous two articles, Hermeneutics and the Authority of Scripture and Solo Scriptura, Sola Scriptura, and the Question of Interpretive Authority, explored aspects of this question, including what we believe about the Bible, and our notion of the Bible as inerrant truth. In this paper I intend to explore another aspect of the question “What is the Bible?,” and this I will refer to as the Canon Question: “By what criterion do we know which texts comprise the Bible?” This is an essential question all Christians should be able to answer, but, in my experience in discussing this with other believers, it is to many a foreign subject matter. Without understanding why we believe the Gospel of Mark, or the Epistle of James, or the book of Esther to be among those writings inspired by the Holy Spirit, we cannot give a principled reason why we believe these books to be Scripture. Without any principled reason why we believe these books to be Scripture, we have no principled reason or basis for knowing what is the deposit of faith, and thus cannot give an answer to ‘everyone who asks us to give a reason for the hope we have.’ ⁴

In this article, I argue that Reformed theology is intrinsically incapable of answering the Canon Question. The confessional and classical Reformed answer to the Canon Question, which will be considered in depth in section II.A., relies upon the inward testimony of the Holy Spirit in the heart of each believer to give assurance of a text’s canonicity. I will argue that since any two Spirit-filled Christians who are new to Scripture might not agree that any given text is canonical, this test is of dubious reliability, and thus cannot be our ultimate measure of Scripture. The inherent subjectivity of this classical Reformed basis for the canon has led to a variety of different answers to the Canon Question, each seeking a more objective basis for identifying God-breathed texts. These various efforts to articulate an objective test for the canon are not mutually exclusive. They can be summarized as follows: the Old Testament canon is that set of Hebrew texts that were canonized by Jewish leaders of Jerusalem around the time of Christ; the New Testament canon is defined as those books which are immediately or mediately of Apostolic authorship; and finally, the canon is defined as those books which received widespread acceptance in the early Church (until a certain point in time). I will explore these topics, as well as Martin Luther’s view that the canon properly consists of those Old and New Testament books which “preach Christ,” in the remainder of section II. There, I shall argue that, given the Reformed assumption that whatever authoritatively testifies to the canonicity of Scripture must be more authoritative than Scripture, each of them necessarily places extra-biblical evidence above Scripture in its effort to objectively identify the canon. This places something from outside of Scripture above Scripture, and thereby violates the Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura.

In Section III, I argue that the very process of answering the Canon Question violates sola scriptura. This is because answering the question must involve extra-Biblical human judgment. This judgment is placed over Scripture because it defines the canon. By placing this judgment above the sole permitted infallible authority, the process of answering the question violates sola scriptura. As I will conclude, the fundamental problem for the sola scriptura position is that it has no way of determining the canon that is faithful to its own concept of authority.

II. DIVERSITY OF THEORIES.

Over the centuries since the Protestant Reformation, a variety of theories have sprung up that attempt to articulate an objective test for determining a text’s canonicity. The answers to the Canon Question that I describe here are comprehensive of the Protestant positions, although not exhaustive. Outlying variants on these theories abound, but the principal theories in use by Reformed and evangelical scholars are included below.⁵ These principal theories share the characteristics of purporting to reach their conclusion objectively, and (although being different tests) of reaching the same 66-book conclusion. The late Covenant Seminary professor R. Laird Harris believed that there is room within Protestant scholarship for multiple, and perhaps even competing, principles for determining the same canon:

[S]everal differing views concerning the principle of determination of the canon–views not necessarily exclusive–have been held through the centuries, and there is room for some differences of opinion on this point. . . . It is freely acknowledged that the views on canonicity here expressed are not the only views held by conservative Biblical scholars.⁶

For Harris, having a variety of canon theories within the Protestant academy is tolerable, so long as they each yield the 66-book Protestant canon. But as Dr. Flesseman-van Leer has rightly observed, those who accept the traditional canon of Scripture today cannot legitimately defend it with arguments that played no part in its original formation. ⁷ Post hoc rationalization of such a critical point as the formation of the canon would be like painting a target around one’s arrow that is already embedded in the wall. If a rule which has led some to the 66-book canon proves false, or fails to be truly objective, the remedy is not to find a new rule allowing us to reach the same conclusion. Instead, to be intellectually honest, we must find the rule that is ultimately right and true, and accept where it leads us, wherever it leads us.

Besides those Protestant theologians who tolerate competing canon theories but themselves only advance one criterion of canonicity, other theologians are willing simultaneously to use a plurality of criteria to reach the same conclusion. For example, Harris determines the extent of the Old Testament canon by following “[t]wo lines of approach,” “one historical and the other an appeal to authority.” ⁸ He writes, “[b]y both methods it can be seen that these Apocryphal books cannot properly be included in the sacred canon.” ⁹ That is, Harris is willing to use a plurality of theories, ones which he views as complementary, to reach his conclusion about the canon of Scripture. ¹⁰ While using plural criteria to accumulate evidence in favor of a text’s inclusion in the canon would be proper to the extent that each criterion is valid and consistent with one’s overall scriptural paradigm, it would be improper to the extent that any one component criterion was not. That is, for the Protestant, a theory that proves incompatible with sola scriptura cannot be salvaged merely by tying it together with a more defensible theory. Bearing in mind that each Protestant theory must be internally consistent with sola scriptura, I will now take them up in turn.

A. SELF-ATTESTATION AND TESTIMONY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT:

The Classical Reformed View:

The classical and confessional Reformed answer to the Canon Question stresses that the Holy Spirit is our immediate assurance of the canon’s truth, and also notes that the reliability of Scripture appears from within Scripture itself. This answer varies somewhat from source to source in its particular emphasis, but the assurance of the Holy Spirit is a clear common theme. In the course of the Reformation, Calvin was an early advocate for this position, which later became solemnized by the Reformed confessional standards. ¹¹ He taught that for the reader enjoying the inward testimony of the Holy Spirit, Scripture is self-attesting (i.e., it says on its own to this reader that it is Scripture):

[T]hose whom the Holy Spirit has inwardly taught truly rest upon Scripture, and that Scripture indeed is self-authenticated; hence it is not right to subject it to proof and reasoning. And the certainty it deserves with us, it attains by the testimony of the Spirit. For even if it wins reverence for itself by its own majesty, it seriously affects us only when it is sealed upon our hearts through the Spirit. Therefore, illumined by his power, we believe neither by our own nor by anyone else’s judgment that Scripture is from God; but above human judgment we affirm with utter certainty (just as if we were gazing upon the majesty of God himself) that it has flowed to us from the very mouth of God by the ministry of men. We seek no proofs, no marks of genuineness upon which our judgment may lean; but we subject our judgment and wit to it as to a thing far beyond any guesswork! ¹²

Calvin also likens asking the Catholic’s question, “how can we be assured that [Scripture] has sprung from God without recourse to the decree of the church?,” to asking “whence will we learn to distinguish light from darkness, white from black, sweet from bitter?” ¹³ For John Calvin, it is as apparent as black is from white which books are to be included in the canon: “Indeed, Scripture exhibits fully as clear evidence of its own truth as white and black things do of their color, or sweet and bitter things do of their taste.” ¹⁴ His answer, then, is that we can be assured that Scripture is of God simply by looking at it, just as we can tell black from white simply by looking at it.

The traditional Reformed confessions also did not neglect to answer the Canon Question.¹⁵ According to the Belgic Confession, we are to receive the books of the Protestant canon, and all taught within them,

“not so much because the church

receives and approves them as such

but above all because the Holy Spirit

testifies in our hearts

that they are from God,

and also because they

prove themselves

to be from God.

For even the blind themselves are able to see

that the things predicted in them

do happen.”¹⁶

Similarly, in the words of the Westminster Confession,

[O]ur full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority [of Scripture], is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit bearing witness by and with the Word in our hearts.” ¹⁷

What makes this classical and confessional position attractive, from the Reformed perspective, is its immediate reliance on God to lead Christians to His revealed truth. We do not have to accept the canonical texts “so much because the church receives and approves” them, but because we are convinced immediately by the Holy Spirit. There are no middle men to muddy the waters. By doing this, the Reformed confessions mean to avoid subordinating infallible Scripture to a fallible mediate human authority. This is essential to the Reformed system because if Scripture were subordinate to fallible human authority, its contents could be erroneous, thus rendering Scripture unreliable. And if Scripture were unreliable, it could not act as our sole infallible authority over all matters of the faith.

However, since any two Christians might not agree that any given book is (or is not) canonical even where they reflect carefully on the testimony of the Holy Spirit as they approach it, this test lacks objectivity and reliability. We should be able to verify the reliability of this classical Reformed canon criterion in the following way. If the classical Reformed canon criterion were true and we set various candidate texts, like books or passages from the New Testament, apocryphal works, or revered writings from the early Church Fathers, in front of new Christians who have the Spirit but have never read the Bible, they would all pick out the same books or passages as canonical. If Calvin’s black-from-white claim is true, our hypothetical new Christians attempting to discern canonical books from non-canonical would come to one conclusion. If we could run this hypothetical test, and we obtained a result that was successful less than 100% of the time, or even less than the vast majority of the time, at identifying the one true canon, this would show that this test is not a reliable test for determining the canon of Scripture.

Something close to this hypothetical test has already been run. In the early centuries of Christian history, the many faithful Christians in close communion with the Holy Spirit, and who did not yet have a determined canon for their Bible, did not conclude that the Protestant 66-book canon is correct. We have evidence that many early Church figures, including St. Augustine himself, supported the inclusion of the deuterocanonical texts within the canon. Not one single source from this period articulates the Protestant canon. ¹⁸ Following the Reformation, before the first generation of Reformers had died, the alleged black-from-white clarity regarding which books belong in the canon also failed to produce universal agreement. ¹⁹ These cases from history are evidence that the Reformed answer to the Canon Question does not provide a reliable method for determining the canon. This is deeply problematic, since assurance in the canon is the foundation of the sola scriptura paradigm.

Part in parcel with Calvin’s view that the Holy Spirit testifies in our hearts to the veracity of the canon, Calvin rejects the essential role of the Church in identifying the canon. In his Institutes, he starts with the proposition that Scripture obtains its authority directly from God, and not from the Church:

But a most pernicious error widely prevails that Scripture has only so much weight as is conceded to it by the consent of the church. . . . For they mock the Holy Spirit when they ask: Who can convince us that these writings came from God? . . . . Who can persuade us to receive one book in reverence but to exclude another, unless the church prescribe a sure rule for all these matters?²⁰

As an initial matter, Calvin misstates the Catholic position by stating that, according to the Catholic Church, Scripture has its authoritative weight accorded to it by the Church. Rather, the Catholic position is that Scripture has divine authority because it is God-breathed, the Holy Spirit having inspired the texts’ authors. That is, Scripture has divine authority because of its divine author, not because of the role of God’s Church in producing it. As the Catholic Church decreed during the First Vatican Council:

These [73] books the Church holds to be sacred and canonical not because she subsequently approved them by her authority after they had been composed by unaided human skill, nor simply because they contain revelation without error, but because, being written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God as their author, and were as such committed to the Church.²¹

This belief is reflected also in the dogmatic work Dei Verbum, written by Pope Paul VI in 1965:

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 Testament 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.²²

These texts prove that the Catholic Church does not maintain that the Scriptures have only so much weight as is accorded to them by the Catholic Church. Rather, as the Catholic Church explains, the authority of the Scriptures derives from their being written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, with God as their author.

Furthermore, regarding Calvin’s view of the relationship between the Church and Scripture, he merely asserts, but does not demonstrate, that the Catholic Church’s position would mock the Holy Spirit. He claims to find such mocking in the belief that one cannot be persuaded to receive one book and exclude another without the Church prescribing a sure rule. Why would the Church’s prescribing a “sure rule” for knowing Scripture be a mockery of the Holy Spirit? Because for Calvin, our obtaining assurances from the Church would necessarily exclude obtaining assurances from the Holy Spirit. This is because, as shown in the quotation from Calvin cited above, he has created a false dichotomy between the Church and the Holy Spirit. For him, these two sources of assurance cannot work in a confluent way. For obvious reasons, once one accepts this dichotomy, one comes to favor the Holy Spirit option, making the option of seeing the Church as a source of assurance a mockery.

Calvin’s rhetorical question: “Who can persuade us to receive one book in reverence but to exclude another, unless the church prescribe a sure rule for all these matters?” also misstates the Catholic teaching. The Catholic Church does not claim that a person cannot be persuaded to receive or exclude a book without the Church prescribing a sure rule. One could accept or reject a book without the benefit of a “sure rule” from the Church, as occurred throughout the early Church. Rather, apart from Magisterial guidance concerning the canon, it would be exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, for all believers independently to come to complete agreement about the canon without each believer receiving miraculous enlightenment from the Holy Spirit. Christ has given authority to the Magisterium in such a way that grace builds on nature. That is, the visible government of the Church, being guided by the Holy Spirit, does not nullify, but fulfills, our natural need for visible government in the supernatural society that is the Church. But, the Church and the Holy Spirit do work together to assure us of the scriptural canon. As St. Augustine said, “I would not have believed the gospel, unless the authority of the Church had induced me.” ²³

Calvin next argues that the Church itself is grounded upon Scripture, and not the other way around:

But such wranglers are neatly refuted by just one word of the apostle. He testifies that the church is “built upon the foundation of the prophets and apostles.” If the teaching of the prophets and apostles is the foundation, this must have had authority before the church began to exist. ²⁴

Note the significance of Calvin’s addition of the word “teaching” to his restatement of Ephesians. But St. Paul actually says that the Church is built on the foundation of the prophets and the apostles themselves. For Calvin, a teaching has authority, not the teacher. He treats Paul’s statement that the Church is “built upon the foundation of the prophets and apostles” as referring to a set of teachings, not any persons.

Calvin’s whole doctrine of Scripture revolves around this insertion of the word “teaching” into St. Paul’s statement to the Ephesians, and upon seeing the teacher as having authority derived from the teaching only insofar as he holds to that teaching. But it is the prophets and apostles themselves who were given divine authority. Consider Matthew 7:29, in which we are told that Jesus “taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.” Jesus taught as one ‘with authority,’ not as one ‘with words with authority.’ Words of law do not have authority in isolation from their source, but are authoritative because of their relationship to their source. For example, the U.S. Constitution is not authoritative apart from its source, but represents the authority of the People who promulgated it. Likewise, the words of the Bible are authoritative because of their relation to their authors, especially their divine Author. The Church is not founded upon these words, the teachings of prophets and apostles, but upon the prophets and apostles themselves based on their divine authority. Because of the prophets’ and apostles’ divine authorization, we can know the teaching they transmitted to be divine in origin.

Further Refinement of Self-Attestation:

In his work, Redemptive History and the New Testament Scriptures, theologian Herman Ridderbos provides a modern Reformed articulation of the confessional view. In line with Calvin, he argues that canonical texts are self-attesting (or self-witnessing) to the reader who is aided through faith by the Holy Spirit to see Scripture for what it is. ²⁵ Ridderbos also issues a noteworthy critique of the various proposed Protestant criteria of canonicity other than the classical Reformed position. He sees these as little or no better than the Catholic view, which, he says, effectively places the Church over Scripture, because they too put something over Scripture. He explains:

For no New Testament writing is there a certificate issued either by Christ or by the apostles that guarantees its canonicity, and we know nothing of a special revelation or voice from heaven that gave divine approval to the collection of the twenty-seven books in question. Every attempt to find an a posteriori element to justify the canon, whether in the doctrinal authority or in the gradually developing consensus of the church, goes beyond the canon itself, posits a canon above the canon, and thereby comes into conflict with the order of redemptive history and the nature of the canon itself.²⁶

In this context, Ridderbos uses a priori to mean knowledge that has nothing but the canon as its starting point. His claim, then, is that if any part of a canon test depends on something outside of the canon (what he calls “a posteriori” elements)–for example, on the consensus of the Church–this explanation has placed some extra-Biblical authority “above” the canon. Within the framework of sola scriptura, this is a commendably logical observation. If Scripture is the sole infallible authority of the faith, and everything else is subordinate in authority to Scripture, then the basis for determining the canon cannot be any authority but Scripture. The working principle here is that an authority is only as authoritative as that on which it is founded. Each of the criteria listed below within the remainder of section II, most of which Ridderbos takes up with particularity, falls prey to this claim. Lessons of history, use by Hebrew-speaking Jews of the time of Christ, prophetic and apostolic authority, and the like–each of these involve criteria by which a text is judged to be canonical that is extra-canonical, so goes beyond the canon itself, and thus posits a canon above the canon.

Here is Ridderbos’s riddle then, which he believes Calvin’s view has solved: how can we determine the canon, which does not fall from Heaven, without relying on extra-canonical evidence? Riddberos sees the need to avoid the use of extra-canonical evidence, because doing so would, under the Calvinist assumption, place the confirming evidence over the canon, which would violate sola scriptura. Given Calvin’s assumption, Ridderbos needs to find evidence for the contents of the canon that is located in or derived from the canon itself. Ridderbos sees the Reformed answer to both the riddle he presents and the Canon Question this way:

Reformed theologians do not justify the acceptance of the canon by appealing to a “canon within the canon.” Nor do they appeal to its recognition by the church or to the experience of faith or to a recurring, actualistic understanding of the Word of God as canon. . . .

. . .

Calvin appealed not only to the witness of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of believers but above all to the self-attestation of the Scriptures. The divine character of the Bible itself gives it its authority This divine character is so evident that anyone who has eyes to see is directly convinced and does not need the mediation of the church. . . . [As] Karl Barth wrote, ‘The Bible makes itself to be canon.’

Corresponding to this objective principle of the self-attestation of Scripture, from its inception Reformed theology has expressly distinguished the subjective principle of the testimonium Spiritus Sancti. . . . He opens blind eyes to the divine light that shines in the Scriptures. Later Reformed theology has correctly emphasized the fact that the internal witness of the Spirit is not the basis for but the means by which the canon of Scripture is recognized and accepted as the indubitable Word of God.²⁷

From this we see that his view consists of two elements: (1) that Scripture is self-attesting, (2) via the Holy Spirit leading the reader to recognize it as canonical. ²⁸ The first element, if taken on its own, would certainly answer Ridderbos’s riddle. If some quality of Scripture allows it to attest to its own canonicity, then there is no need to resort to evidence that is external to Scripture in order to define Scripture. ²⁹ Thus, nothing is placed “above” the canon, leaving Scripture as our final authority. The second element also plays a vital role; it explains why it is not the case that the entire world recognizes Scripture’s own attestations, why the world does not see the black from the white. In Ridderbos’s own terms, the first element of the test of canonicity is objective and the second element is subjective.

But prior to Calvin, the Church never used this method to recognize a book as belonging to the canon. The Church recognized books as canonical on the basis of their having been inspired by the Holy Spirit. ³⁰ In its process of identifying which books possessed this quality, the Church never employed a private, individualistic means. Instead, it relied upon councils of the Church confirmed by the Bishop of Rome. ³¹ Again, as one cannot legitimately defend the canon with arguments which played no part in its original formation, Calvin’s novel elements cannot explain how Church reached its present canon. ³²

Also, the subjective aspect of Ridderbos’s theory renders the entire test too subjective to be reliable. This is because each text’s objective quality, self-attestation, is only evident to an observer to the extent that he subjectively experiences the inward testimony of the Holy Spirit. Just as a building cannot be more sturdy than its foundation, the Reformed answer to the Canon Question is no more objective than its most subjective part. Here, the objective quality is not merely supported or enhanced by the subjective, but is entirely dependent upon it. Using the Reformed frame, if two people disagree in their view of which texts are (objectively) self-attesting as Scripture, they can only settle their disagreement by calling into question the degree to which (subjectively) the Holy Spirit is testifying in their interlocutor’s heart. In this way the classical Reformed theory is too subjective to be a reliable basis for assuring believers which texts belong in the Bible.

That the Reformed test is too subjective to be reliable because new Christians considering candidate texts would not reach the same conclusion when applying it, has already been discussed above. This also appears from the views of Luther himself. Remember that according to Ridderbos, the objective element of the Bible’s “divine character [is] so evident that anyone who has eyes to see is directly convinced and does not need the mediation of the church.” ³³ But Luther’s subjective interpretation of the inward testimony of the Holy Spirit regarding Scripture led him, at least at times in his life, to some different conclusions than Calvin about certain of our New Testament books. ³⁴ Neither was Luther alone in his day in doubting the canonicity of certain New Testament works.

Calvin knew of and addressed conflicting conclusions about the canon in the introductions to his commentaries on Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, and Jude. In one instance Calvin called into question which spirit was working in the doubters’ heart. In his argument for the inclusion of the book of Hebrews in the canon, Calvin says, “I, indeed, without hesitation, class [Hebrews] among apostolical writings; nor do I doubt but that it has been through the craft of Satan that any have been led to dispute its authority.” ³⁵ Calvin is explaining that Satan undoubtedly is involved in a case where some are denying what he finds to be canonical. We see that under the classical Reformed view, in a case of dispute, a failed meetings of the minds on what is self-attesting is explained at the subjective level.

What of the reply that since all Protestants agree on the canon, this is evidence that these 66 books properly comprise the canon, objectively reached? First, the premise that all Protestants agree on the canon is false. The classical Lutheran position does not agree with the Reformed view of the canon, in that Lutheranism creates a canon-within-a-canon, relegating some books to a secondary place. This position distinguishes a homologouna from an antilegomena, i.e., never-disputed books from disputed books such as Jude and Revelation. Unlike the Reformed canon, which is a proper source for the formation of dogma in its entirety, only the never-disputed books may be used for the defintion of dogma within a classical Lutheran view. ³⁶ Further, to the extent that Protestants see themselves as lineal descendants of pre-Reformational proto-Protestants, it cannot be said that “Protestants” have agreed on the canon throughout the Church’s history. As I discuss elsewhere, many biblical texts have been rejected at one time or another by various Church Fathers. Finally, widespread agreement amongst today’s Protestants does not disprove the objective canonical quality of the deuterocanonical books since the vast majority of Protestants have never read them. Today’s average Protestant does not study why he has the Protestant 66-book canon, and does not independently decide if the Bible handed to him is correct. Rather, he accepts as an a priori of his Protestant faith that the 66-book canon is correct. Belief that the 66-book canon is right is part and parcel with the small cluster of unifying evangelical Protestant beliefs. Since it is a unifying principle for most Protestants, we would hardly expect to see anything but universal agreement; thus we can draw no lessons about the canon from this widespread agreement.

With Ridderbos’s answer to the Canon Question, we have no way of knowing whether the Holy Spirit is permitting a reader to recognize a text as canonical, or is simply permitting a reader falsely to perceive it as Scripture. We cannot tell since we would necessarily have to appeal to Ridderbos’s subjective element in order to know which of these actions the Holy Spirit is engaged in when, for example, He permits Catholics to recognize the deuterocanonical texts as Divine. If the Holy Spirit is simply permitting Catholics falsely to perceive them as Scripture, as Protestants must maintain, then Protestants have no objective criteria by which to distinguish this act of the Holy Spirit from cases in which He is permitting readers to recognize a text as canonical. And such a test is surely a kind of ad hoc opportunism in which it is claimed that the Holy Spirit is doing whatever I am doing, even if many others are doing many things contrary to what I am doing.

To resolve the disputes that lingered in spite of his supposedly objective test, Calvin employed a potpourri of fall-back arguments to shore up his teaching that the Holy Spirit allows a reader to perceive directly what belongs to the canon of Scripture. According to Ridderbos, Calvin distinguished Scripture from what did not belong to Scripture, “not simply by appealing to the witness of the Holy Spirit as some infallible, inward arbitrator, but he appealed to the fact that the authority of those books has been recognized from the church’s inception, that they contain nothing unworthy of an apostle of Christ, and that the majesty of the Spirit of Christ is everywhere apparent in them.” ³⁷ Thus he utilizes four different factors, culled from reason and not revelation, to settle the disputes in favor of his ‘objective’ conclusions. ³⁸ Calvin is not alone in finding the need for supplemental arguments to support the supposedly objective, self-attesting, black-from-white criterion for determining the canon. The renowned 20th-century Reformed theologian F. F. Bruce, in employing his own supplemental arguments, said that “[i]t is unlikely . . . that the Spirit’s witness would enable a reader to discern that Ecclesiastes is the word of God while Ecclesiasticus is not.”³⁹

This ‘appeal to external facts’ reveals something about Reformed thinkers’ discomfort with relying too heavily on the supposedly objective self-attestation method of discerning the canon. This ‘appeal to external facts’ also is in tension with Calvin’s and Ridderbos’s position that sees using evidence outside of Scripture to determine Scripture as effectively placing that evidence over Scripture, and Calvin’s potpourri use of fall-back argumentation. ⁴⁰ Calvin, in using reason and historical proof to determine the canon (for example, by appealing to “those books” that have “been recognized [as canonical] from the church’s inception”), is either contradicting his principle that no evidence outside of Scripture can determine the canon, or is refining his principle in an ad hoc fashion.

But without the external appeal, Calvin’s position is left only with the two elements mentioned above: self-attestation and the inward testimony of the Holy Spirit. However, as we have seen, the self-attestation element effectively collapses into the subjective element–the inward testimony of the Holy Spirit–when faced with disagreements about the canon. Because what then remains is too subjective a test to yield a single canon if put before a hypothetical test group of new faith-filled Christians, it cannot bind us to a single set of texts as certainly belonging in the Bible.

B. THE ORIGINAL HEBREW OLD TESTAMENT:

Another Protestant answer to the Canon Question, used either as an independent criterion of canonicity or as a supplement to other criteria, holds that the canon of the Old Testament is that which originally was in use by Hebrew-speaking Jews. The timeframe of this hypothetical ‘original’ canon will go back as far as the historical evidence will support the idea of a closed Hebrew canon. Dr. Harris, a noted Reformed Old Testament scholar, put forward this view in an extensive treatment of Old Testament history in his book Inspiration and Canonicity of the Scriptures.⁴¹

Starting with a discussion of the Hebrew manuscripts in use amongst modern biblical Scholars, Harris states: “Our English Old Testament depends largely on medieval Hebrew manuscripts from about A.D. 900 and following. These Hebrew manuscripts contain our familiar 39 Old Testaments books.” ⁴² He then attempts to proceed back through history, as early as can be traced, to determine the original Hebrew canon. The Babylonian Talmud lists the Hebrew books accepted in about A.D. 200, the time of its writing. These align with the 39 Protestant books of the Old Testament. ⁴³ Harris also presents a litany of early Christian writers who discussed Hebrew canons quite similar to the 39-book Protestant Old Testament. ⁴⁴

A test of canonicity that relies on such extra-Biblical evidence as what the Jews of A.D. 200 (or any other time) accepted as canonical falls subject to the critique of Ridderbos, noted above. ⁴⁵ Without biblical warrant to craft such a test, it remains extra-Biblical. Therefore, its application would be a canon above the canon and thus violate sola scriptura according to Ridderbos’s criteria. A major problem with this canon theory is that it grants to the Jewish leaders of Jesus’ day an authority which, it claims, if possessed by the Church, would undermine the authority of Scripture. But it would be ad hoc to allow a Jewish magisterial authority to determine the canon while claiming that a determination of the canon by way of Catholic magisterial authority would undermine the authority of Scripture.

The ‘Original Hebrew’ Canon:

Setting aside its extra-biblicality and focusing on its application, the ‘Original Hebrew Canon’ answer to the Canon Question leads to additional problems.

First, there is no historical basis to conclude that any one Jewish group had the authority to pronounce and close the canon for other Jewish groups, or that any one of them could conclude the canon for Christianity. While there was a body of Scribes sitting “in the chair of Moses” who may have had the authority to rule on the contents of, and eventually to close, the canon of the Old Testament, the fact remains that differing groups of Jews at the time of the founding of Christianity accepted different canons. ⁴⁶ Harris admits that the Essenes probably accepted for their canon, in addition to the generally accepted texts, “other books written by members of their own sect.” ⁴⁷ While Harris and Bruce reject claims from within academia that the Sadducees accepted only the Pentateuch as canonical,⁴⁸ Bruce goes on to explain that the Samaritans held exactly that belief: “As for the Samaritans, their Bible was restricted to the Pentateuch⁴⁹.”

The Diaspora Jews, on the other hand, used the Greek Septuagint, which included the deuterocanonical texts as well as some apocryphal texts. ⁵⁰ Harris dismisses this problem by denying that history can prove that the canon used by Jews of the Diaspora (what Harris calls the Alexandrian canon) included the deuterocanonical texts:

That our present Septuagint copies have a variant canon really proves nothing about the Alexandrian canon of A.D. 50 much less the Alexandrian canon of around 200 B.C., when the Septuagint was translated, for in those vital centuries there were three major factors which surely affected such questions.⁵¹

What follows is Harris’s explanation of how it might have come to pass that the modern Septuagint does not match the earlier Septuagintal canon, which presumably would have matched the ‘original Hebrew canon’ that Harris is pursuing. Firstly, says Harris, the temple was destroyed in A.D. 70, but until that time “the canon would naturally be defined at Jerusalem for all the Jewish world.” ⁵² In other words, while the views of dispersed Jews are not authoritative in determining the Old Testament canon because of their distance from the Jewish center of gravity, for Harris, the views of those Jews in the Holy City are binding. Harris does not expand his claim beyond opining that the canon “naturally” would have come from Jerusalem. Harris does not show that the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem decided anything regarding the deuterocanonical texts prior to AD 90. He does not show that they formally made a conclusion regarding the canon that was binding on all Jews.

No authority within Scripture, and no argument from reason, requires Christians to abide by the speculative conclusions of the first-century Pharisaic leaders from Jerusalem, some of the very ones who had Christ put to death. The definitive reason why the Septuagint was accepted by the Church is because it was accepted by the Apostles. Even if the non-Christian Jews of A.D. 40 had ruled against the Septuagint, that would not in any way change its acceptance by the Church. After all, the authority for the Church flows from Christ to His Apostles, not to the determinations of non-Christian Jewish leaders.

Secondly, Harris argues, early “Christians throughout the Roman Empire naturally used the Greek, as the New Testament language evidences. They therefore naturally appealed to the Greek Old Testament,” while the “Jews in self-defense argued that some of the Messianic passages were mistranslated.” ⁵³ The “Jews retreated into the Hebrew while the Christians took over the Septuagint.” ⁵⁴ Along these same lines, Bruce notes the Jewish disdain for the Christians’ thorough appropriation of the Septuagint: “the Jews became increasingly disenchanted with it. The time came when one rabbi compared ‘the accursed day on which the seventy elders wrote the Law in Greek for the king’ to the day on which Israel made the golden calf.” ⁵⁵

Why, then, as Harris implies, is the opinion of the non-converting Jews more reliable than the opinion of those who converted to Christ and widely used the Greek Septuagint? For Harris, the answer is because “the Christians did not have the regulative effect of ancient history to help them retain a proper view of the canon.” ⁵⁶ By this, he means that early Christians lost their grounding in Hebrew tradition, and thus lost the guiding benefits this tradition would have provided. Here we have a striking statement from Harris. He must believe that the “regulative effect of ancient history” (that is, tradition) could maintain the non-Christian Jews in truth about the canon, while the “regulative effect” of the Holy Spirit did not preserve the Church from the grave error of canonizing spurious texts. There are important presuppositions implicit in Harris’s position. He views the first century Church with the eye of an ecclesial deist, meaning he does not see God as actively protecting the Church from error. ⁵⁷ It is as if, for Harris, either the Apostles had no authority to determine for the Church what is her Old Testament Canon, or the Christians of the first century already had departed from what the Apostles had declared to be the authoritative Old Testament canon. For whatever reason, Harris believes that the early Christians were not guided by tradition, while the non-Christian Jews were.

The rapid and ubiquitous way in which Christians made use of the Septuagint is more reason, not less, to trust its contents. These Christians’ use of the Septuagint indicates their conviction that it was authentically divine, and therefore authoritative. Absent the doubts of ecclesial deism, the widespread use of the Septuagint by first-century Christians reveals not only that this was the Old Testament of the early Church, but also that it therefore remains authoritative today.

Harris’s third point about the Septuagintal canon is that, with the advent of the codex (i.e., bound book) replacing the scroll, early Christians found the need to fill up the scores of empty pages of valuable paper in their bound Bibles. To do this, Harris argues, they “[n]aturally” would “fill it with helpful devotional material.” ⁵⁸ This, he concludes, led to a conflation of helpful books with scared books. The extent of Harris’s historical evidence for his view is that it seems to him the only plausible explanation for these texts’ survival in spite of a lack of support from the early Church Fathers.

First, Harris is wrong about an absence of support from the early Church in favor of the Septuagint. He asserts that “from considerable testimony of the first four centuries,” the “Apocryphal books were not then received into the canon of the Christian church.” After repeating the views of Origen and Melito in favor of the Jewish rendering of the Old Testament canon, he goes so far as to say that “[t]he single voice of antiquity in favor of the Apocrypha is that of Augustine and the Councils of Hippo (A.D. 393) and Carthage (397).” ⁵⁹ But Harris had just stated that there were some uses of Baruch by the fathers, and some other exclusions of Esther. ⁶⁰ Further, Origen’s own canon was not the same as the Protestant canon, as Harris also admits. Origen argues at length against Africanus regarding the validity of Susanna, and he also confirms Tobit and Judith:

Where you get your “lost and won at play, and thrown out unburied on the streets,” I know not, unless it is from Tobias; and Tobias (as also Judith), we ought to notice, the Jews do not use. They are not even found in the Hebrew Apocrypha, as I learned from the Jews themselves. However, since the Churches use Tobias, you must know that even in the captivity some of the captives were rich and well to do. ⁶¹

We see from Origen’s support for Tobias, as well as from the fathers who supported the inclusion of Baruch, that Augustine and the Councils of Hippo and Carthage were not alone in antiquity in favoring the inclusion of deuterocanonical texts. It is also unlikely that two councils of the early church–Hippo and Carthage, A.D. 393 and 397 respectively–would draw within their list of sacred books what had to that point been universally rejected. If even a majority of the Church’s leaders had rejected those books, their inclusion in the canon by St. Augustine (b. 354) and the North African councils would have created an uproar. But history records no such reaction. For this reason, Harris’s claim that with “one voice,” “all the important witnesses in the early church to about A.D. 400 . . . insist that the strict Jewish canon is the only one to be received with full credence”⁶² is false, as Bruce agrees. Bruce sees that the Councils of Hippo and Carthage “did not impose any innovation on the churches; they simply endorsed what had become the general consensus of the churches of the west and of the greater part of the east.” ⁶³ So widely held was the belief in the deuterocanonical books, that Bruce writes, “[i]n 405 Pope Innocent I embodied a list of canonical books in a letter addressed to Exsuperius, bishop of Toulouse; it too included the Apocrypha.” ⁶⁴

Second, even if there was an absence of support from the early Church in favor of the Septuagintal texts, as Harris claims, Harris does not give any reason to rule out the possibility that the Holy Spirit preserved these texts and guided the Church to include them. Harris implicitly presumes that the Holy Spirit did not act this way in the early Church, and instead offers the speculation that these books exist because they were filling in empty pages. This speculation or hypothesis has no more support than the deisitic assumption of the Holy Spirit’s non-intervention upon which it is based. Rather, the Septuagintal texts’ early appearance in the Church, opposition-less acceptance, and widespread propagation by Christians lead to the conclusion that these very Jewish books had been in use by Alexandrian Jews. The evidence I have provided here indicates that, at the time of Christ, Samaritan, Essene, and Alexandrian Jews used a canon different from the 39-book Protestant canon. Even the rabbis at Jamnia, who famously debated in the year A.D. 90 about which books were prophetic, gave the opinion that Ezekial should be “withdrawn.” ⁶⁵

As I have shown, Harris’s claim that there was an absence of support from the early Church is based on a weak hypothesis, and fails to account for contrary evidence. His historical claim that there was nothing but a single voice from antiquity favoring the inclusion of the deuterocanonical texts is demonstrably incorrect. His arguments to explain the eventual inclusion of deuterocanonical texts in Christian use–that they filled empty space in Biblical scrolls; that the Greek Septuagint that supported them lacked the regulative effect of Jewish tradition; and that the original Septuagint from before the temple’s destruction would have matched what the first-century Pharisaic leaders from Jerusalem used–are based on unreliable speculation and give undue regard for Jewish tradition. It remains that a major problem for the ‘original Hebrew canon’ theory is the lack of historical basis to conclude that any one Jewish group had the authority to pronounce and close the canon for other Jewish groups, or that any one of them could close the canon for Christianity.

The second reason that the ‘original Hebrew canon’ theory fails to answer the Canon Question is that it simply pushes back the question. By what criterion was the original Hebrew canon determined? Unless the answer to this deeper question can objectively produce a complete list of books belonging to the Old Testament canon, the ‘original Hebrew canon’ theory cannot be our criterion for determining the Old Testament canon. One theory Harris considers is that the Jews accepted as canonical those texts which were written by Prophets.⁶⁶ However, as he notes, six books in the Old Testament are of unknown authorship: Judges, Ruth, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, and Job. He takes comfort that “[n]ot only is it true that it cannot be shown that these books were not written by prophets, there is some evidence that they were.” ⁶⁷ But if the test of canonicity that the Jews applied was ‘prophetic origin,’ then either these books were known to be prophetic, or were prematurely canonized, since their authorship was unknown. Harris later states that the “Books of Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah and Esther are more problematical [than Job]. . . . We cannot prove that Ezra, Nehemiah and the author of Esther (Mordecai?) were prophets.” ⁶⁸ Harris believes, and I think reasonably, that the books must have been known to be prophetic when treated as Scripture, even if the authors’ identities are not known to us today. But if this is our defense of the canon, we are left once again relying on Jewish tradition in the formation of canon. And if we are relying on Jewish tradition, then we have no reason not to accept the tradition of the Alexandrian Jews who accepted the deuterocanonical texts. Because looking for the ‘works written by Prophets’ does not objectively produce a list of Old Testament scriptures, it does not answer the Canon Question.

Concerning whether the deuterocanonical books meet the ‘written by Prophets’ test, Harris rejects them first on an historical ground: [t]hey were all composed after the period when prophecy was recognized to have departed from Israel. ⁶⁹ But he does not state by whom prophecy was “recognized to have departed from Israel.”

There is no non-Christian authority who can establish this claim for Christians and the Church. There are only competing claims from an uncertain and distant period in history. Even if it is possible that, as a matter of history, the Jews in Christ’s time believed that the canon was closed before the deuterocanonical texts were written, there is no evidence that the Jews had made any such determination prior to the time of Christ, or even prior to Jamnia. Neither the majority, the Pharisees, those in Jerusalem, or some other group had the authority to do so for Christians. Were they to have made a conclusion on the canon, it would have been no more binding on the Christian than is their belief that Jesus of Nazareth is not the Christ.

Finally, the ‘original Hebrew canon’ theory must be rejected because not one of the early Church Fathers who were in favor of using the extant Hebrew text certainly pointed to the 39-book Protestant Old Testament. Among the early Church Fathers used by Harris to support his theory that the early Church sought the ‘original Hebrew’ to determine the proper canon are Jerome and Origen. Jerome, as is well known, made certain observations in the prefaces to his translations of certain deuterocanonical texts indicating his opinion that the Jews rejected them as non-canonical. But even granting the widely recognized authority of St. Jerome, his concerns about the deuterocanonical books do not indicate that the Church of his day accepted only the 39 books of the Protestant Old Testament.

Ultimately, Jerome explicitly stated his acceptance of the Church’s Old Testament over and against the opinion of the Hebrew scholars under whom he had studied. For example, in his preface to Tobias, he says:

For the studies of the Hebrews rebuke us and find fault with us, to translate this for the ears of Latins contrary to their canon. But it is better to be judging the opinion of the Pharisees to displease and to be subject to the commands of bishops.⁷⁰

His clear conviction is to be subject to the ruling of a Catholic bishop as opposed to the conclusions of Jewish Hebrew scholars. This same conviction appears in Jerome’s prolouge to Judith. There he states:

Among the Hebrews the Book of Judith is found among the Hagiographa, the authority of which toward confirming those which have come into contention is judged less appropriate. Yet having been written in Chaldean words, it is counted among the histories. But because this book is found by the Nicene Council to have been counted among the number of the Sacred Scriptures, I have acquiesced to your request, indeed demand.⁷¹

Clearer still is Jerome’s work Against Rufinus. In it he writes:

What sin have I committed if I followed the judgment of the churches? But he who brings charges against me for relating the objections that the Hebrews are wont to raise against the story of Susanna, the Son of the Three Children, and the story of Bel and the Dragon, which are not found in the Hebrew volume, proves that he is just a foolish sycophant. For I was not relating my own personal views, but rather the remarks that they [the Jews] are wont to make against us.”⁷²

From this we see clearly that Jerome, for all his studies with Hebrew scholars, did not hold to a 39-book Old Testament canon that matches the Protestant canon. In each of the three instances I have given, we see what Jerome’s actual test of canonicity was: that which matched the Church’s determination of the canon. Harris’s heavy reliance upon Jerome to support the ‘original Hebrew canon’ theory, therefore, is badly misplaced.

Origen, upon whom Harris also relies, while apparently a proponent of the “true Hebrew” texts, did not teach what is now the Protestant Old Testament canon. ⁷³ Origen excludes the twelve minor prophets from his own listing. Harris explains this conflict with his canon theory by speculating that the omission was merely an oversight by Origen.⁷⁴ But even if it were a scholarly error to leave out the Minor Prophets while listing the Hebrews’ canon as Origen understood it, Origen included in his listing the Letter of Jeremiah, a text from the Septuagint that is not part of the Palestinian Hebrew canon. ⁷⁵ Bruce similarly explains this inconsistency with the Protestant Old Testament by speculating that Origen’s inclusion was by oversight. This use of one’s pre-existing conclusions to determine what must be “oversight” and what must be accurate scholarship is the kind of post hoc rationalization to which I referred earlier. Only by painting the target around one’s arrow, rather than making judgments in a principled way, can one use Jerome and Origen in defense of the Protestant Old Testament canon.

Harris next examines the works of Melito, a second-century Bishop who travelled to Palestine to record the Hebrew canon. ⁷⁶ However, he too does not record a Hebrew canon aligning with the 39-book Protestant canon. Specifically, Melito omits the book of Esther. ⁷⁷ In fact, concerning Harris’s strong claims of universal use by the early Church Fathers of the Hebrew-now-Protestant Old Testament, there is an abundance of contrary evidence. Athanasius includes Baruch and the deuterocanonical additions to Daniel. ⁷⁸ Cyril includes Baruch and the Letter of Jeremiah, and excludes Esther. ⁷⁹ Gregory of Nazianzus omits Esther. ⁸⁰ Amphilochies notes of his fellow scholars that only “some include Esther.” ⁸¹ Epiphanius includes the Wisdom of Solomon and Sirach. ⁸² Theodore of Mopsuestia denies the divine inspiration of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes,⁸³ as well as Job, Song of Songs, and Ezra⁸⁴. Tertullian, who accepted “the whole instrument of Jewish literature,” and who gives the impression that he knows exactly what it contains, uses an Old Testament that is “evidently co-extensive with the Septuagint (including the ‘Septuagintal plus’).” ⁸⁵ He accepted Wisdom, the Letter of Jeremiah, and the Greek ‘additions’ to Daniel as authentic. ⁸⁶

Esther is a particularly difficult case for the advocate of the ‘original Hebrew canon’ theory to make from history. Of all the Old Testament books that the Church Fathers variously excluded from the lists of Old Testament books, Esther is the book most commonly omitted. Further, all of the Old Testament books, or fragments from them, have been found in the Dead Sea scrolls except Esther. ⁸⁷ Full or fragmentary portions of Tobit, Jubilees, and Enoch have also been found amongst the Dead Sea scrolls. ⁸⁸

Harris’s theory, that the Hebrew canon both matched the Protestant 39-book Old Testament and was used by the Church until Augustine came around, does not fit with the historical evidence. In fact, while there was no universal consensus among the early Church Fathers about the complete list of divinely inspired Hebrew books, there was a consensus among them that certain deuterocanonical Septuagintal (Greek) texts must necessarily be included. So widely was this held, Bruce writes, that:

Jerome’s dependence on Jewish instructors increased the suspicion of some of his Christian critics who were put off in any case by such an innovation as a translation of the sacred writings from Hebrew (with its implied disparagement of the divinely-inspired Septuagint). ⁸⁹

The translation from ancient Hebrew biblical texts was mistrusted, while the Greek Septuagint was seen as divinely inspired. As we have already seen, the Septuagint contained deuterocanonical texts as well as the 39 books of the Protestant Old Testament. Therefore, Harris is not right on both points, namely, that the Hebrew canon around the time of Christ matched the Protestant Old Testament and that the Hebrew canon was the Old Testament canon used by the Church until Augustine’s time.

Accepted by the New Testament:

Finally, Harris says, we can use the New Testament itself as historical evidence of what texts should be in the Old Testament canon. ⁹⁰ He argues that the books of the Old Testament were referenced in the New by Christ and the Apostles, and thus we can be certain of their canonicity: “Christ and the apostles have authenticated for us the thirty-nine Old Testament books and strictly avoided the seven Apocrypha.” ⁹¹ Harris supports this claim by noting that the New Testament “cites almost all of the Old Testament books, often by name.” ⁹²

One problem with that claim is that the New Testament also cites “scripture” whose referent we cannot even identify. To give an example, “[w]e have no idea what ‘the scripture’ is which says, according to James 4:5, ‘He yearns jealously over the spirit which he has made to dwell in us.’” ⁹³ If the criterion of the Old Testament canon is ‘that which the New Testament treats as Scripture,’ then we have here a grave problem, for in that case our Old Testament canon is incomplete. Also, the New Testament is full of themes and even direct phraseology from the deuterocanon. While there are dozens of these uses, here are two short examples. ⁹⁴ The mention in Revelation 1:4 of the seven angels petitioning before the Throne in Heaven is a reference to Tobit 12:15: “I am Raphael, one of the seven angels who enter and serve before the Glory of the Lord.” Similarly, Jesus’s reference to the “gates of hell” in Matthew 16:18 may be a reference to Wisdom 16:13: “For you have dominion over life and death; you lead down to the gates of the nether world, and lead back.” Careful examination of the Septuagint shows that Christ and the Apostles did not “strictly avoid” the seven deuterocanonical books.

In addition to the New Testament citation of “scripture” that is now lost, and the many references from the New Testament to deuterocanonical texts, the ‘adopted by the New Testament’ canon criterion faces one other major flaw. Judges, Ruth, Esther, Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs are not cited in the New Testament, and so would fail to satisfy this criterion of canonicity and drop from our canon. Harris states that they are probably omitted from the New Testament “because of their brevity.” ⁹⁵ But this is no assurance of the propriety of including these five books, and no assurance of the propriety of excluding from the New Testament other brief texts circulated in Hebrew before or at the time of Christ.

If we develop from reason the canon rule that the New Testament’s use of Old Testament texts canonizes them, then we could similarly develop a rule canonizing these texts in the same form in which Christ and the Apostles used them. That is, if the New Testament’s acceptance of Old Testament texts instructs us about which texts we are to include in the Old Testament canon, then certainly its use of the Septuagint should be instructive regarding the authenticity and authority of the Septuagint, in the eyes of the early Church. According to Catholics United for the Faith, 86 percent of the New Testament quotes of the Old Testament are from the Greek Septuagint. ⁹⁶ If the Apostles had believed that the Septuagint contained uninspired texts, it seems that the Apostles would not have used it as their source of Scripture in composing the New Testament texts. But the Apostles did use the Septuagint in their teaching and writing. Therefore, the Apostles believed that the Septuaginal collection was the authoritative source of Scripture of the Old Covenant. It is ad hoc to acknowledge that Jesus and the Apostles treated the Septuagint as the written word of God, but then to deny tout court the canonicity of the books included in the Septuagint. We can imagine that if Christ lived in a time and place where the King James Bible was available, His use of it would be taken today by English Protestants as a divine seal on its canon. Bruce reaches an unsupported conclusion to get around this problem:

When we think of Jesus and his Palestinian apostles, then, we may be confident that they agreed with contemporary leaders in Israel about the contents of the canon. We cannot say confidently that they accepted Esther, Ecclesiastes or the Song of Songs as scripture, because evidence is not available. ⁹⁷

But there is no indication from history that the Jewish leaders in Israel at that time had rejected the deuterocanonical texts. As said above, we know that the New Testament authors–who, prior to the establishment of the New Covenant, would have been obedient to the Jewish leaders–widely used the Septuagint when they quoted the Old Testament. And, as also has been said, the Septuagint contained the deuterocanon as well as other texts beyond the the 39 books of the Protestant Old Testament. There is no evidence that there was an immediate change at the time of Christ’s death and resurrection among the Apostles in the use of the Septuagint. If they widely used it when quoting the Old Testament, then without such an immediate change, it seems to follow that they must have widely used it prior to Christ’s death and resurrection. So we have no reason to believe that the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem had, by the time of Christ, ruled against the Septuagint or the deuterocanonical texts. Otherwise, the deliberation of the rabbis at Jamnia in A.D. 90 about whether the deuterocanonical books were canonical would have been unnecessary. If Jesus and His apostles agreed with the contemporary Jewish leaders in Israel regarding the Jewish canon, then it is likely that these leaders either accepted deuterocanonanonical texts or had reached no conclusion concerning them.

In this section we have seen a number of reasons why the ‘original Hebrew canon’ theory fails to provide an objective listing of the Old Testament scriptures binding on Christians, and therefore fails to answer the Canon Question. There is no historical basis to conclude that any one Jewish group had the authority to pronounce and close the canon for other Jewish groups, or that any one of them could conclude the canon for Christianity. We find not one of the early Church Fathers adopting a 39-book Old Testament canon. In addition, the New Testament identification of the Old Testament cannot be the basis for the Protestant Old Testament canon because it proves too much and too little. The New Testament has many texts which quite probably are references to the deuterocanon, and also identifies as “scripture” a line of text the source of which is still completely unknown. The New Testament does not identify five books which Protestants do treat as canonical. The historical evidence also indicates that the deuterocanonical texts were still accepted at the time of Christ. We have no evidence that there was an ‘original Hebrew canon’ matching the 39-book Protestant canon.

C. NEW TESTAMENT APOSTOLIC AUTHORSHIP:

Another proposed canon test, this one tailored for the New Testament texts, maintains that the proper test for canonizing the New Testament is apostolic authorship, or at least apostolic origin. For example, William A. Sanderson and Carl Cassel have concluded that “the test of canonicity applied by the early church was apostolic authorship.” ⁹⁸ According to Ridderbos:

For the communication and transmission of what was seen and heard in the fullness of time, Christ established a formal authority structure to be the source and standard for all future preaching of the gospel. ⁹⁹

On this point the Catholic heartily will agree. And Ridderbos acknowledges that Jesus appointed an apostolate for this purpose. ¹⁰⁰ He goes on to make the claim:

we can establish that the apostles’ role in the history of redemption was unique and unrepeatable. Because they not only received revelation but were also the bearers and organs of revelation, their primary and most important task was to function as the foundation of the church. To that revelation Christ binds His church for all time; upon it He founds and builds his church.¹⁰¹

With some of this the Catholic will agree. The Apostles, in accord with their commission from Christ, were to be the foundation of the Church. So they were, in one sense, unique and unrepeatable. But for Ridderbos, the Apostles were only to “function as the foundation of the Church.” The Apostles themselves are not the foundation of the Church; they are mere receptacles of a message that is the foundation. This is similar to the error made by Calvin that I addressed above in Section II.A., in which he saw the “teaching” of the prophets and Apostles as the foundation of the Church. To Ridderbos, then, the divine message received by the Apostles is the only thing that they were to pass on to the Church. For Catholics and Orthodox, by contrast, Christ also gave to the Apostles an authority to preach and teach in His Name, and with His authority, as His representatives. And this missional and magisterial authority can be, and is, passed down through the laying on of hands by the Apostles or those whom they have ordained.

For Ridderbos, Christ founded His Church upon revelation, rather than upon the Apostles themselves. Ridderbos’ position implies that authority within the Church was restricted only to the divine message delivered by Christ, wherever that message was communicated. Relevant at present is the implication this view has on the test for canonicity. If the revelation qua revelation were our authority, and the Apostles were (historically) simply its “bearers and organs,” then authority within the Church passed with the communicated revelation, leaving no authority with the succesor bishops whom the Apostles put in place.

This suggests the following answer to the Canon Question: those books which contain the authoritative revelation given to the Apostles belong to the canon. Some have gone to extensive lengths to prove that the New Testament corpus is from the Apostles either directly or via an amanuensis. ¹⁰² But Ridderbos rejects this answer to the Canon Question, “because we can no longer establish with historical certainty what in a redemptive-historical sense is apostolic and what is not.” ¹⁰³ The nature of apostolicity was not limited to the twelve Apostles, and we are uncertain of the number or identity of persons who were in some way or other ‘apostolic.’ According to Ridderbos, as “historical judgments cannot be the final and sole ground for the church’s accepting the New Testament as canonical,” this method will not do. ¹⁰⁴

But Harris and Bruce both argue that Apostolic authorship is a necessary criterion of New Testament canonicity. ¹⁰⁵ Harris states, “The Lord Jesus did not, in prophecy, give us a list of twenty-seven New Testament books. He did, however, give us a list of the inspired authors. Upon them the church of Christ is founded, and by them the Word was written.” ¹⁰⁶ But this position faces two insurmountable problems.

First, its primary premise is incorrect. Christ did not give us a list of inspired authors, as Harris claims. Harris may have in mind the synoptic Gospels’ listings of “the twelve apostles,” but these listings do not, of course, include the Apostle Paul. Besides this, the synoptics do not identify the Apostles as “inspired authors.” ¹⁰⁷ If they did, or if we are to assume this attribute of apostolicity from reason, then it would seem that all of the Apostles’ writings were inspired, not just some of their writings. If that were the case, then we would have already lost some of Scripture, since we can be sure that there were other Apostolic writings besides those that have been canonized. For example, Paul wrote a letter to the Church at Laodicea which is no longer extant. ¹⁰⁸ Because there is no God-given list of “inspired authors” just as there is no God-given list of the New Testament books, the Protestant can only reach the conclusion that the twelve Apostles were inspired authors through the use of reason or extra-Biblical sources.

Second, this position, that Christ gave a list of inspired authors who wrote out the Word, must be able to prove Paul’s actual apostolicity in order to defend his epistles as having apostolic authorship. But Paul’s apostolicity cannot be settled without resort to Tradition. This position also must defend the ultimate apostolic origin of Mark, Luke, Acts, Hebrews, James, and Jude, books whose apostolic authorship is known only through Tradition. For the sake of brevity I will give an example of a Reformed defense of just one of these books. Harris notes that many scholars doubt the Petrine authorship of 2 Peter, which “has less external evidence in its favor than do any of the other books.” ¹⁰⁹ However, he notes, “there is no evidence that it is not by Peter, except debatable questions of style, and eventually the ancient church was convinced of its authorship.”¹¹⁰

But from the absence of evidence that 2 Peter was not written by Peter, we cannot reach the conclusion that 2 Peter was written by Peter, unless we resort to reliance upon Tradition. If Harris means to rely upon Tradition, as his words about the eventual conviction of the ancient Church imply, then without being ad hoc, he would also need to accept the deuterocanonical books. This is because the ancient Church eventually came to the conviction that the deuterocanonical books were canonical, as shown by the determinations of the Councils of Hippo and Carthage, already discussed above. Also, and of note, Origen, on whom Harris places great weight in concluding that the Protestant rendering of the Old Testament canon is correct, notes wide doubts in his day about 2 Peter’s Petrine authorship. ¹¹¹ Harris is being ad hoc by using Origen when it suits him, and rejecting Origen when it does not. This wide doubt abut 2 Peter’s authorship is itself “evidence that 2 Peter was not by Peter,” which evidence Harris denies exists (“there is no evidence that it is not by Peter, except debatable questions of style”). Also, because Origen wrote in the first half of the third century A.D., we can see how late in time the “eventual conviction” on which Harris relies was in coming.

It is striking that Harris would look to the eventual conviction of the ancient Church. If the ancient Church did not have a conviction about 2 Peter’s canonicity at the point in time closest to that epistle’s composition, then its later-reached conclusions would only become less reliable with the passage of time. Memories of actual authorship would have faded, and opportunities for the inclusion of ‘urban legend’ would have expanded exponentially. That is, the Church’s Traditions would have become less reliable unless the Holy Spirit gave a special grace to the Church to be preserved from error. But if this is Harris’s position, it is again a resort to the ad hoc, because as a Reformed theologian he would deny that the Holy Spirit preserved the Church from error in any other area.

As Ridderbos notes, the position that the early Church accepted what was of apostolic origin “fails to explain why the Epistle to the Hebrews was (again) finally accepted in the West, in spite of the fact that its Pauline authorship was most strongly doubted just by those who were most instrumental in gaining its acceptance, that is, by Jerome and Augustine.” ¹¹² That is, Ridderbos admits that during the original process of the formation of the New Testament canon, the criterion of Apostolic origin was not being applied. He also notes that this criterion cannot account for the rejection of the Didache, which was widely accepted in the early church and claimed apostolic origins for itself. ¹¹³ Finally, the spurious letter of Paul to the Laodiceans “had a place in many manuscripts in the West and apparently around A.D. 600 was still accepted as Pauline by Pope Gregory.” ¹¹⁴ For these reasons, this test of canonicity cannot be employed objectively without resort to “debatable” “historical judgments” as the “final and sole ground for the church’s accepting the New Testament as canonical.”¹¹⁵

As we have seen in this section, ‘Apostolic origin’ as a criterion of canonicity for the New Testament fails to provide an adequate answer to the Canon Question. It requires the use of extra-Biblical historical evidence in determining the canon, because Scripture does not list which ‘apostles’ wrote canonical books, does not list Paul with the listing of other Apostles, ad does not guarantee the apostolic authorship of a number of New Testament books. This answer to the Canon Question is not what Jerome and Augustine applies when they simultaneously accepted Hebrews’ canonicity and denied its Pauline authorship. The Apostles, and not merely the message deposited with them, were the foundation of the Church. But the ‘Apostolic origin’ canon criterion makes the assumption that the books containing the Apostolic message are the foundation of the Church and as such belong to the canon. Unless we rely upon tradition and fallible historical judgments to define the canon, we cannot prove with certainty which books are of apostolic origin, or which persons possessed the nature of apostolicity such that their writings would be canonized. For these reasons, this answer to the Canon Question is unreliable and, given the Reformed assumption that whatever authoritatively testifies to the canonicity of Scripture must be more authoritative than Scripture, places Scripture ‘under’ fallible extra-Biblical evidence.

D. WIDESPREAD ACCEPTANCE BY THE EARLY CHURCH:

A fourth criterion used in Reformed and evangelical writings on the canon is that widespread reception of a text by the early Church infallibly establishes its canonicity. ¹¹⁶ This reception or acceptance, these scholars maintain, is evidence that the Holy Spirit specially and infallibly led the Church to accept a text as canonical. ¹¹⁷ According to Harris, Bruce would even have it that the canon of the New Testament was first settled by a general consent of the whole Church, and recognition of inspiration of the scriptural texts only came later as a “corrollary” of canonicity. ¹¹⁸ Ridderbos addresses the Church’s acceptance of the canon this way:

Within the history of Protestant dogma as well, certain utterances have been made that appear to imply ecclesiastical infallibility with respect to the acceptance of the canon. It has been argued . . . that the church received a special gift of the Holy Spirit to enable it to establish the canon by infallibly distinguishing inspired from noninspired writings.

. . . .

Another Protestant viewpoint is that the church’s consensus about the canon arose of itself and so is the clearest proof that in establishing the canon, the church was guided by special providence; history itself, so to speak, offers the evidence for the canonicity of the New Testament. That consensus of the church, or rather that absolute authority acquired by the writings of the New Testament everywhere and without dispute, is then thought to guarantee the canonicity of these [New Testament] writings. ¹¹⁹

It would be ad hoc to claim that the “church” infallibly established the canon through widespread acceptance while otherwise being unable to arrive at any infallible conclusions, without a principled basis for affirming infallibility in the one case and denying it in all others. If the Church was not infallibly preserved from error in its early teachings on ecclesiology, iconography, justification, etc., there is no reason to believe it was so preserved from error when its canon came into widespread acceptance. To maintain otherwise would be a textbook case of special pleading. Ridderbos himself rejects this answer to the Canon Question, writing:

From the standpoint of the Reformation . . . reference to the church’s infallibility clearly was never intended to be understood as a basis for the canonicity of the New Testament. The very fact that such infallibility or inspiration is accepted solely with respect to the establishment of the canon and is thus to be qualified as an ad hoc inspiration or infallibility proves that the real order here is just the opposite.¹²⁰

That is, according to Ridderbos, claiming that the “church” could infallibly establish the canon by widespread acceptance denies the traditional Reformation understanding that the canon is the basis for any infallibility enjoyed by the Church. If the traditional Reformed view that the Church is infallible only insofar as it teaches Scripture is true, then the Church cannot infallibly declare (by widespread acceptance or otherwise) what is Scripture. Either the Church has authority to reach binding doctrinal conclusions, such as the extent of the canon, or it lacks this authority across the board, and thus cannot make any binding determination on the canon.

Besides this logical error, there are other problems within a sola scriptura framework with claiming as a criterion for canonicity that we accept those texts that received widespread acceptance by the early Church. Even if wide acceptance and liturgical use by the early Church would indicate a text’s canonicity, according to Ridderbos, considerations of historical acceptance were not used in the original process of forming the canon. ¹²¹ He returns from this assertion to his premise that the books were accepted because the Church was certain that these “particular books had been received from the hand of the Lord himself.” ¹²² He says elsewhere:

Yet it is absolutely incorrect historically to imagine that the process of selecting certain writings and of rejecting others took place automatically without argument and debate and so bears visibly the mark of a divine work. It is an undeniable fact, for example, that James, Hebrews, and 2 Peter could not acquire general recognition until the fourth century, that until the sixth century the Syrian church rejected Revelation and of the Catholic Epistles accepted only James, 1 Peter and 1 John, at the same time giving an apocryphal third epistle to the Corinthians a fixed place in the ecclesiastical canon. [Et cetera.]¹²³

There simply was no single corpus of texts universally accepted by the Christians of the early Church. The famous Vincentian canon, “that which has been believed everywhere, always and by all,” cannot be of avail to Protestants in defining the canon, because before or after the Reformation there has never been universal acceptance of the Protestant canon.

Bruce, in his section “Tests in the Apostolic Age” from his chapter “Criteria of Canonicity,”¹²⁴ sums up what appears ultimately to be his answer to the Canon Question this way:

By an act of faith the Christian reader today may identify the New Testament, as it has been received, with the entire ‘tradition of Christ.’ But confidence in such an act of faith will be strengthened if the same faith proves to have been exercised by Christians in other places and at other times–if it is in line with the traditional ‘criteria of canonicity.’ And there is no reason to exclude the bearing of other lines of evidence on any position that is accepted by faith.¹²⁵

That is, like Ridderbos, Bruce believes that the Protestant canon as it stands should be accepted as an a priori. But he is also willing to make use of any other evidence that will support the act of faith by which one initially recognizes the Protestant books as belonging to the canon. The prerequisite to using a supplemental canon criterion, including that which has been believed by “Christians in other places and at other times,” seems to be that it yield the conclusion that the canon as it stands in the Protestant Bible is correct. The measure of universal (or at least widespread) acceptance does not tell us which Christians, and from what times, get a vote in this election which is used as “evidence” to prop up confidence in the Protestant canon. It cannot explain why the views of Jerome or Origen should count toward ‘widespread recognition,’ whereas the views of Augustine, or the councils of Hippo and Carthage should not. It cannot explain without resort to ad hoc stipulation why widespread acceptance by the fourth century (or some other early time) is authoritative while the consensus of today’s 1.5 billion Catholic and Orthodox Christians regarding the deuterocanon is not.

E. THAT WHICH PREACHES CHRIST: A CANON WITHIN A CANON:

Lastly I will consider Luther’s own answer to the Canon Question, as well as other early Lutheran permutations. Luther answers the Canon Question by looking internally at the teachings of candidate books themselves. “‘What preaches and urges Christ’ was for Luther the criterion of apostolicity and canonicity.” ¹²⁶ That is, Luther started with Christ, the heart of the Gospel (or his own understanding of Him) and then reflected upon various texts to determine whether or not they preached and urged Christ. If so, they were canonical.

But Luther’s canon criterion has problems too. Objectively applied, this test would seem to allow ancient Christian art to be “canonical,” so long as it urges Christ. However, to give a more familiar shape to the outcome of this test, Luther relies on the Holy Spirit’s movement in his heart to perceive what is ‘preaching Christ.’ In this way, Luther’s view is similar to the theory in section II.A. addressed above. But if Luther’s canonicity test is a version of the Reformed view presented in section II.A., Luther’s application of it, as I shall now show, should be especially disturbing to proponents of Calvin’s view.

Luther spoke boldly against the value and even reliability of certain books that all Protestants treat as canonical. Within the Old Testament, Luther found Christ preached with special clarity in Genesis, Psalms, and Isaiah. ¹²⁷ However, according to Bruce, when challenged by the passage in 2 Maccabees supporting prayers for the dead, “that they might be delivered from their sin,”¹²⁸ Luther “found a ready reply in Jerome’s ruling that 2 Maccabees did not belong to the books to be used ‘for establishing the authority of ecclesiastical dogmas”¹²⁹. Bruce goes on to quote Luther thus: “I hate Esther and 2 Maccabees so much that I wish they did not exist; they contain too much Judaism and no little heathen vice.” ¹³⁰ Notice Luther’s special animus toward Esther; if the Spirit’s movement in his heart to see Christ preached is the measure of canonicity, there would be no principled basis for accepting Esther and rejecting Second Maccabees. Notice also that Jerome, while excluding 2 Maccabees, did accept Esther as fit for establishing doctrine. So if Luther “found a ready reply” from Jerome, it was only in an ad hoc fashion. It is worth recalling here that Calvin believed that “Scripture exhibits fully as clear evidence of its own truth as white and black things do of their color, or sweet and bitter things do of their taste.”¹³¹ To explain Luther’s animus toward Esther, among other books, Calvin would either have to deny that the Holy Spirit was aiding Luther in seeing black from white, or would have to admit that the canonicity of at least some texts is not as plain as black is from white or sweet is from bitter.

If Luther’s perception of the internal witness of the Holy Spirit about some New Testament texts were the measure of canonicity, the New Testament too would have to be altered. He said of Revelation that it “lacks everything that I hold as apostolic or prophetic.” ¹³² Further, he said of Revelation, “For myself, I think it approximates the Fourth Book of Esdras; I can in no way detect that the Holy Spirit produced it.” Readers may be familiar with Luther’s description of James as a “right strawy epistle.”¹³³ Because at some point in his life Luther did not see the Divine character of several books included in the New Testament canon, if his perception of the internal witness of the Holy Spirit were the measure of canonicity, several books have been wrongly included in the New Testament.

His German New Testament prefaces also set off Hebrews and Jude as lesser books, for he “did not recognize in them the high quality of ‘the right certain capital books.’” ¹³⁴ This view of a collection that gets at the heart of the Gospel, and lesser books that do not, naturally results in a “canon within the canon.”¹³⁵ For Luther, as for Lutherans today, “the ‘inner canon’ is a Pauline canon,” along with the Gospels. ¹³⁶ This test, coupled with Luther’s opinion against certain books, raises a difficulty for the canon-within-a-canon position. There is no principled standard to determine when a dispute about a book’s getting at the heart of the Gospel, or doing so in a lesser or disputed way, puts a text outside of the inner canon. Even if there were such a standard, it would be extra-biblical and, from the perspective of sola scriptura, effectively superior to the canon. That is because this procedural mechanism has the power, through its narrowness or broadness, to control what will and what will not be in the canon.

The Lutheran theologian W. G. Kümmel follows Luther’s approach. To him, the New Testament books are canonical only to the extent that each is in accord with the norm of the Christian faith, which is the “central proclamation” of the New Testament. ¹³⁷ This position gives rise to a circularity problem: the canon is defined by what preaches Christ, and we know Christ through the canon of Scripture. For this theory to work, we first have to know Christ from some other source besides the Scriptures in order to determine the canon. Hence comes the need for special revelation of the Holy Spirit in the heart of the individual considering whether a given text preaches Christ. As Ridderbos says of the canon-within-a-canon view:

The final decision as to what the church deems to be holy and unimpeachable does not reside in the biblical canon itself. Human judgment about what is essential and central for Christian faith is the final court of appeal. ¹³⁸

That is, by basing the canon on a human determination of what is “holy and unimpeachable,” the human determination is placed above the Bible. Scripture is relegated to a position secondary to human judgment. This characteristic of Luther’s answer to the Canon Question is indistinguishable from the supposed position of the Catholic Church, which depends on the judgments of the Church to determine the canon. For this reason, ‘that which preaches Christ’ as a criterion of canonicity also fails to provide an objective answer to the Canon Question.

III. AUTHORITY TO ANSWER THE QUESTION.

In our quest to determine how we know which texts are divinely revealed, we have found no answer to the Canon Question that does not itself violate sola scriptura by using some criterion external to Scripture to establish which books belong to Scripture. But even if one of the considered criteria could objectively yield a canon without resorting to extra-biblical evidence, the Protestant position suffers a deeper deficiency. As I shall argue, the advocate of sola scriptura, by the terms of his own doctrine, lacks the authority even to give an answer the Canon Question.

The doctrine of sola scriptura maintains that the Bible is to be the Christian’s sole infallible authority. The sine qua non (‘that without which’) of the Reformation is that no Church or other human judgment can be placed over Scripture. Power over the canon is power over Scripture itself because it is the power to eradicate a necessary part of the canon or to add a spurious part to Scripture. So the Reformed position is not any more compatible with the Church or other human judgment being placed over the canon than it is compatible with their placement over Scripture itself.

But the very act of answering the Canon Question inherently involves an extra-Biblical fallible human judgment, unless one is preserved from error by the Holy Spirit. This fallible human judgment, by defining the criterion of canon, exercises power over the canon itself. And as I just noted, power over the canon is power over Scripture. Therefore, absent the Holy Spirit’s preserving one from error, to answer the Canon Question is to exercise power over Scripture, and to place one’s judgment over Scripture. So to answer the Canon Question is to violate the doctrine of sola scriptura by placing something over the Christian’s sole infallible authority. If Protestants see the Catholic Church as placing herself ‘over’ Scripture simply by articulating the canon of Scripture, so too they should see answers to the Canon Question culled from human reason or extra-Biblical evidence as being ‘over’ Scripture. Since Protestants see the former as violating sola scriptura, there is no principled reason not to see the latter as a violation of sola scriptura.

If I propose a test for determining the canon of Scripture, I must have some basis for the claim that my test is objectively true. Analogously, first-century Christians could not address the question “Is Jesus the Messiah?” without first knowing how, or by what measure, the Messiah would be recognized. And that measure had to have some foundation before it could be accepted. Indeed, this foundation for measuring whether a person was actually the Messiah was established through the revelation of prophets, who themselves had to be tested for reliability and accuracy.¹³⁹ Likewise, the test that a given Christian community uses to define its canon of Scripture must have a reliable basis. The Catholic or Orthodox Christian will point to the work of the Holy Spirit in the visible Church as the basis for his articulation of the canon, which work is seen in sacred tradition. ¹⁴⁰ But because the Protestant system rejects basing the canon of Scripture on tradition or any other authority, and rejects that the Holy Spirit works infallibly through the visible Church, it must find some other basis for whatever test or criterion leads to the 66-book canon. If the basis for the Protestant articulation of a canon test is man’s reasoning, then the canon produced is no more reliable than the fallible reasoning that is at its base.

R. C. Sproul has recognized this rationale. He famously has stated that the classical Protestant position does not see the Church as having infallibly defined the canon. According to Sproul, unlike the Catholic position, which maintains that we have an infallible collection of infallible books, and unlike the modern critical scholars’ position, which maintains that we have a fallible collection of fallible books, we actually have “a fallible collection of infallible books.” ¹⁴¹ He reasons that because the Church is fallible, “it’s possible that wrong books could have been selected,” but he doesn’t “believe for a minute that that’s the case.” ¹⁴²

Sproul’s own personal confidence, the source of which he does not articulate, does not solve the fundamental problem his understanding of the “historic Protestant position” presents to spiritual descendants of the Protestant Reformation. If it is possible that wrong books were included in the canon, then it is also possible that right books could have been omitted. In this theological environment, our confidence in and obligation to submit to any scriptural text extends only as far as our confidence in the propriety of the text’s inclusion in the canon in the first place. In other words, we can have no more confidence in the infallibility of the content included than we have in the process by which it was included. But in the Protestant scheme, because the process which yielded the canon is fallible, Protestantism cannot have complete confidence in the content of its canon.

A fallible collection of infallible books cannot function as a binding authority, for “what can be more absurd than a probable infallibility, or a certainty resting on doubt?” ¹⁴³ I am reminded of my recent purchase of a “1080″ pixel television. I learned that my old DVD player sends out something like 480 pixels. Just as my 480 pixel DVD player cannot yield a 1080 pixel image on my TV, so too my fallible collection of Bible books cannot yield infallible assurance. Again, the text of Scripture can be no more binding than is our conclusion of which texts are to be included. The irony is that the Protestant Reformation was originally premised on Scripture’s ultimate demand for submission, which submission was supposed to lead to certainty and orthodoxy.¹⁴⁴

Like Sproul, Ridderbos rejects the Catholic view that the Church has the authority to define the canon. He attempts to maintain the fallibility of the Church without admitting to the fallibility of the canon as Sproul did. First, Ridderbos admits that “Catholic theology explicitly distinguishes the authority of the canon quoad se (“as to itself”) and quoad nos (“as to ourselves”), that is, the authority of Scripture in itself is not dependent on that of the church; only our acceptance of that authority, including recognition of the canon, is.” ¹⁴⁵ The Catholic Church does not take merely pious texts and convert them to authoritative, divine texts, but rather it determines, in a way that is binding on the faithful, what is already of divine origin, and as such, authoritative. By recognizing the quoad se/quoad nos distinction early on, Ridderbos means fairly to avoid the false claim that the Catholic Church believes Scripture’s authority to be dependent on, and subsidiary to, the authority of the Church.

But what he admits with the one hand, he seems to take away with the other. His objection to Catholic theology is that “the church exceeds its competence by placing itself beside, if not above, the canon.” ¹⁴⁶ He tells us that if we take Augustine’s famous quote, “I would not have believed the gospel, unless the authority of the Church had induced me,” to mean “that the recognition of the canon by believers rests on the authority of the church, then the church, in fact, usurps the place that properly belongs to the canon alone, thus, at the very least, equating its authority with that of the canon.” ¹⁴⁷ But a believer’s confidence in the canon resting on the authority of the Church does not place the Church beside or above the canon any more than a believer’s confidence resting on his subjective reflection upon the inward testimony of the Holy Spirit in his heart places his heart beside, if not above, the canon. Therefore, if Ridderbos’s critique of the Catholic Church’s relationship to scripture is accurate, then his own view of canonics would be subject to the same critique.¹⁴⁸

The Church does, with its authority, lead believers to accept the Bible, and this in no way places the Church’s authority ‘above’ the canon’s authority. If a mother explains to a child that he is to obey his father as head of the household, the mother has not thereby usurped her husband. If a captain of soldiers instructs his men to obey a particular order of their General, he has not thereby equated his own authority to the General’s authority. Likewise, if we believe the authority of Scripture on the basis of the Church’s authority, the Church has not thereby equated its authority to the Bible’s divine authority.

Returning now to the solution the Protestant must seek out, he must put forward an objective canon criterion having an authority above man as its foundation. The problem for Reformed theology with accepting that recognition of the canon rests on the authority of the Church flows from its preceding rejection of apostolic succession. As Ridderbos puts it:

The Roman Catholic idea is really that apostolic authority has been transmitted to the church and that the church is empowered by its head to make pronouncements about the canon, as well as tradition, that are themselves apostolic and canonical pronouncements. This notion we hold to be again in direct opposition to the history of redemption, in which apostolic power is entirely unique in character and is not capable of repetition or succession. ¹⁴⁹

But this claim that apostolic power is incapable of repetition is unsubstantiated. The original Apostles shared the characteristics of having been instructed by Christ personally, and having been sent, or commissioned, by Christ. It is true that the group of people who personally were instructed by Christ cannot increase in size today. In that sense, the original Apostles were a unique group, not capable of succession as ‘original Apostles.’ But if this explains Ridderbos’s conclusion, that “apostolic power is entirely unique in character and not capable of repetition or succession,” then he has glossed the distinction between being an ‘original Apostle’ and possessing ‘apostolic power.’ The authority that flows from being sent by Christ is an authority capable of repetition or succession, and can be bestowed on those who were not immediate disciples of Christ. That this distinct apostolic power can be handed down is thoroughly supported by Scripture and the writings of the early Church Fathers, as shall be discussed here in great detail in subsequent articles.

The canon did not fall from the sky as one collection, of course. As I argued in section II, under sola scriptura, the canon could not be the product of criteria that rely upon evidence external to Scripture, for such evidence would thereby be placed over the canon. And even if the Reformed system could articulate a canon criterion that did not rely upon extra-Biblical evidence, the very process of articulating a canon criterion would violate sola scriptura by subordinating Scripture to an extra-Biblical criterion. The fundamental problem, then, for the sola scriptura position is that it is left without any way of determining the canon that is faithful to its own paradigm of authority.

IV. CONCLUSION

Before Christians can ask the world to accept the Bible as God’s perfect revelation of truth, we must be able to answer the Canon Question: “By what criterion do we know what comprises the Bible?” But, as I have argued, Reformed theology is intrinsically incapable of answering this question. In spite of partially relying on a supposedly objective element–the self-attesting quality of true Scripture–the classical Reformed answer to the Canon Question ultimately depends upon the inward testimony of the Holy Spirit in the heart of each believer to resolve disputes where the objective measure does not produce agreement. For this reason, given the classical Reformed answer to the Canon Question, it is the subjective inward testimony of the Holy Spirit that must ultimately give assurance of a text’s canonicity. But since any two Christians who enjoy the inward testimony of the Holy Spirit, and who are new to Scripture, might not agree that a given text is canonical, this test is too subjective to be reliable. And because the inner-testimony criterion of Scripture is not reliable, it cannot be our final guide to determining the canon of Scripture.

In this article, I have considered a variety of proposals for reformulating the classical Reformed position to be more objective. But whether measuring Scripture by the ‘original’ Hebrew canon, by the books which are of Apostolic origin, or by those books which received widespread acceptance in the early Church, the criterion would necessarily rely upon extra-Scriptural evidence. I have also here examined Luther’s view that Scripture can be identified as that which preaches Christ; this criterion too necessarily relies upon extra-Scriptural evidence, namely, the individual determination of what preaches Christ. The Protestant critique of the Catholic Church’s view of its relationship to Scripture is that the Catholic Church effectively places itself ‘over’ Scripture by having the power to define the canon. But this critique would apply with equal force to any criterion that measures Scripture by extra-Biblical means. The means would be placed ‘over’ Scripture, and thus violate the doctrine of sola scriptura, which allows no other infallible authority besides Scripture itself.

Finally, the very process of answering the Canon Question violates sola scriptura. That doctrine permits no infallible authority in the Christian’s life save Scripture. But a person answering the Canon Question must employ fallible human judgment to craft the rule by which Scripture’s contents are to be selected. This judgment is extra-Biblical, and is placed over Scripture because it defines the canon. By placing this judgment above the sole permitted infallible authority, the process of answering the question violates sola scriptura.

A canon criterion that judges the canon based on Scripture’s internal attributes will always be of dubious reliability because it depends on subjective human judgment. A canon criterion that judges the canon based on evidence external to Scripture violates sola scriptura, or the Reformed assumption that necessarily accompanies sola scriptura that whatever authoritatively testifies to the canonicity of Scripture must be more authoritative than Scripture, by placing extra-Biblical evidence effectively above the Bible, which is to be the believer’s sole infallible authority. Therefore, every criterion available to Reformed theology to answer the Canon Question will either be of dubious reliability or in violation of sola scriptura (and hence not available to Reformed theology). The fundamental problem, then, for the sola scriptura position is that it is left without any way of determining the canon that is faithful to its own paradigm of authority.

I finish with a challenge, and one I offer with a heart longing for Christian unity. Approach your pastor, or the most knowledgeable Reformed teacher or theologian you know, and ask him how he is certain that the Protestant canon is correct. Ask him which answer to the Canon Question he follows, and why he chose that theory over the others. Wrestle together with him until you have found an answer that both yields the 66-book Protestant canon, and does not rely on subjective bosom-burning or extra-Biblical canon criteria. Let us pray to the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit from the depth of our hearts for Christian unity.

1. Belgic Confession of Faith, art. 2, available here.
2. Westminster Confession of Faith [hereinafter WCF], ch. I, sec. 1.
3. Id.
4. See 1 Peter 3:15.
5. Examples of some other variants are given in Ridderbos, p. 1. E.g., Johann Salomo Semler, author of Abhandlung von freier Untersuchung des Kanons (1771-1775), determined from his studies that what is canonical is “the list of books that might be read [by the early church] in public worship, the books that the bishops thought were the most suitable and in the best interests of good order.” Hermann Diem taught that the test of canonicity is that which “permits itself to be preached.” Ridderbos, p. 6. Ernst Käsemann sees the New Testament texts as contradictory and not the Word of God until such time as the Holy Spirit uses them to lead believers, “in an always new and contemporaneous way,” to gospel truth. Id. quoting Käsemann, Begründet der neutestamentliche Kanon die Einheit der Kirche? (1951-1952), p. 21.
6. Harris, pref.
7. Cited in F. F. Bruce, The Canon of Scripture (1988) [hereinafter Bruce], p. 275.
8. Harris, p. 178.
9. Id.
10. As another example of using a plurality of criteria of canonicity, Bruce uses the “subsidiary criteria” of antiquity and orthodoxy to measure what he views as the original criterion of canonicity–apostolicity. Bruce, p. 255-256, 259. Since apostolicity as a criterion of canonicity is not testable in the present day, because we cannot decisively conclude of which texts the apostles approved, Bruce needs both “subsidiary criteria” to identify the canon. This leaves Bruce in the same place as Harris, i.e., determining the canon by following ‘two lines of approach.’
11. Belgic Confession, art. 5; WCF ch. I, sec. 5.
12. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion [hereiafter Institutes], book I, ch. 7, sec. 5.
13. Institutes, book I, ch. 7, sec. 2.
14. Id.
15. However, the question is infrequently taken up elsewhere. As Harris noted, “It is rather strange that more attention has not been given in theological studies to questions of canonicity.” R. Laird Harris, Inspiration and Canonicity of the Scriptures (A Press, 1995) [hereinafter Harris], p. 123.
16. Belgic Confession of Faith, art. 5.
17. Westminster Confession, I.V.
18. See Section III.D. below.
19. See Section III.D (discussing the lack of universal agreement in the early church), and III.E (noting Martin Luther’s inability to detect the influence of the Holy Spirit in the book of Revelation).
20. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, book I, ch. 7, sec. 1.
21. First Vatican Council, Sess. 3, Ch. 2, Para. 7.
22. Dei Verbum, ch. 3, para. 11.
23. St. Augustine, Contra Ep. Fund., V, 6.
24. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, book I, ch. 7, sec. 2, quoting Ephesians 2:20 (emphasis added).
25. Herman N. Ridderbos, Redemptive History and the New Testament Scriptures (Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing, 1988), intro ix.
26. Ridderbos, p. 35, emphasis added.
27. Ridderbos, p. 9.
28. Cf. Belgic Confession, art. 5.
29. Although, were it so simple, this position would seem strikingly similar to the canon falling from Heaven.
30. See Dei Verbum, art. 11; St. Clement of Rome, Letter to the Corinthians, ch. 45; St. Irenaeus, Adv. Her., bk. 2, ch. 28; St. Ambrose, On the Holy Spirit, bk. 3, ch. 16.
31. Fr. Henry G. Graham, Where We Got the Bible? Our Debt to the Catholic Church (Tan, 2004), p. 38-39.
32. See Ellen Flesseman-van Leer, cited in F. F. Bruce, The Canon of Scripture, p. 275.
33. Ridderbos, p. 9.
34. See section III.D. below for more on Luther’s view.
35. John Calvin, The Epistle to the Hebrews, the Argument.
36. See Christian Cyclopedia, Canon, Bible (Concordia Publishing House, 2000), available here.
37. Ridderbos, p. 10.
38. Ridderbos here admits that “Calvin’s reasoning may be open to criticism.” Id.
39. Bruce, pp. 281-282.
40. Ridderbos, p. 35.
41. (A Press, 1995.)
42. Harris, p. 130.
43. Id.
44. Harris, pp. 130-133.
45. See supra, part III.A.
46. For a discussion of the Jewish authority that likely existed to rule on the canon in the early days of Christianity, see the Catholic Encyclopedia article, Canon of the Old Testament, available here.
47. Harris, p. 182, quoting William H. Green, General Introduction to the Old Testament, the Canon (New York, Scribner, 1899), p. 124.
48. Harris, p. 182; Bruce, p. 40.
49. Bruce, p. 41.
50. The deuterocanon is that collection of canonical Old Testament writings in the Catholic Bible which Protestant writers commonly refer to as the “apocrypha.” By “apocryphal” here, I mean texts which both Protestants and Catholics would agree are outside the canon. As no original manuscript of the Septuagint exists, scholars have the burden of reconstructing its original contents through later manuscripts, most importantly the Codex Vaticanus (See here), Codex Alexandrinus (See here), and Codex Sinaiticus (See here).
51. Harris, p. 182-183.
52. Harris, p. 183.
53. Id.
54. Id.
55. Bruce, p. 50.
56. Harris, p. 183.
57. Cf. Bryan Cross, Ecclesial Deism, Called to Communion. “Ecclesial deism is the notion that Christ founded His Church, but then withdrew, not protecting His Church’s Magisterium (i.e., the Apostles and/or their successors) from falling into heresy or apostasy. Ecclesial deism is not the belief that individual members of the Magisterium could fall into heresy or apostasy. It is the belief that the Magisterium of the Church could lose or corrupt some essential of the deposit of faith, or add something to the deposit of faith.”
58. Harris, p. 184.
59. Harris, p. 186.
60. Harris, p. 185.
61. Origen, Letter to Africanus, available here.
62. Harris, p. 187.
63. Bruce, p. 97.
64. Id.
65. Bruce, p. 35. That is, “withdrawn, probably, from the synagogue calendar of public readings,” which could not be done to true divine prophecy. Id.
66. Harris, p. 154, ff.
67. Harris, p. 171.
68. Harris, p. 173.
69. Harris, p. 178.
70. The Vulgate prologues are available here.
71. Id.
72. Against Rufinus II.33 [A.D. 402].
73. Cf. Harris, p. 131.
74. Id.
75. Bruce, p. 75.
76. Id.
77. Bruce, p. 71.
78. Bruce, p. 79.
79. Bruce, p. 81.
80. Id.
81. Id.
82. Id. Peculiarly, he includes these with his New Testament books!
83. Id.
84. Theodore of Mosuestia, Catholic Encyclopedia.
85. Bruce, p.84. This ‘Septuagintal plus’ is Bruce’s term for the Greek writings that are not part of the Palestinians’ Hebrew text.
86. Id.
87. Harris, p. 139; Bruce, p. 39.
88. Bruce, p. 39.
89. Bruce, p. 89.
90. Harris, p. 136.
91. Harris, p. 288.
92. Harris, p. 136.
93. Bruce, p. 52.
94. Further examples are available here.
95. Harris, p. 136.
96. Available; here.
97. Bruce, p. 41. His preceding paragraphs discuss the views of the Essenes and Samaritans on the Jewish canon, so the “then” seems misplaced.
98. Harris, pref.
99. Ridderbos, p. 13.
100. Id.
101. Id., emphasis added.
102. E.g., Harris, p. 260, ff.
103. Ridderbos, p. 31.
104. Ridderbos, p. 32-33.
105. Harris, p. 233, ff.; Bruce, p. 256, ff.
106. Harris, p. 247.
107. Matthew 10:1-4; Mark 3:13-19; Luke 6:12-16.
108. Colossians 4:16.
109. Harris, p. 240.
110. Id.
111. Harris, p. 270.
112. Ridderbos, p. 45.
113. Id.
114. Id.
115. See Ridderbos, p. 32-33.
116. E.g., Keith Mathison, The Shape of Sola Scriptura (Canon Press, 2001), p. 319.
117. Id.
118. Harris, p. 124.
119. Ridderbos, p. 34, emphasis added.
120. Ridderbos, p. 34.
121. Ridderbos, p. 43.
122. Id.
123. Ridderbos, p. 35.
124. Bruce, p. 255. Note the plurality of tests in these titles.
125. Bruce, p. 283.
126. Ridderbos, p. 3. See also Bruce, p. 102; Paul Althaus, The Theology of Martin Luther (Fortress Press, 1966), p. 83.
127. Bruce, p. 102.
128. 2 Maccabees 12:45 ff.
129. Bruce, p. 101, citations omitted.
130. Id.
131. Institutes, book I, ch. 7, sec. 2.
132. Quoted in Bruce, p. 244.
133. R. Laird Harris, pp. 57-58. This was said in the preface to his 1522 edition of the New Testament. Luther, comparing James to the ‘main’ books of the New Testament, said it was “really an espistle of straw, for it has nothing of the nature of the gospel in it.” Ridderbos, p. 3.
134. Bruce, p. 243. Here Luther shows a favor for the what-preaches-Christ criterion of canonicity over the ‘widespread acceptance’ criterion, since he does not set off 2 Peter or 2 and 3 John in the same way. Bruce, p. 244.
135. See Ridderbos, p. 4.
136. Bruce, p. 244.
137. Ridderbos, p. 5, quoting W. G. Kümmel, Notwendigkeit und Grenze des neutestamentlichen Kanons (ZTK, 1950), p. 312.
138. Ridderbos, p. 7.
139. Cf. Deuteronomy 18:21-22: “If you say to yourselves, ‘How can we recognize an oracle which the Lord has spoken?,’ know that, even though a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if his oracle is not fulfilled or verified, it is an oracle which the Lord did not speak. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously, and you shall have no fear of him.”
140. Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, para. 1117.
141. R. C. Sproul, Now That’s a Good Question! (Nelson, 1996), p. 81-82.
142. Id.
143. John Henry Cardinal Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (U. of Notre Dame Press, 1989), p. 80. As if responding directly to R. C. Sproul’s qualifying statement that he doesn’t “believe for a minute that” wrong books were selected, Cardinal Newman went on rhetorically: “I believe, because I am sure; and I am sure, because I think.”
144. Here the words of Catholic convert Peter Burnett, California’s first governor, are worth noting:

     But it did seem to me that those who reject Tradition, under the idea of attaining greater certainty, did, indeed, increase the uncertainty; not only by destroying a part of the law itself, but by attacking the credibility of the only proper and reliable witness to the inspiration and authenticity of the entire canon of Scripture. Peter Hardeman Burnett, The Path Which Led a Protestant Lawyer to the Catholic Church, p. 36.

145. Ridderbos, p. 33.
146. Id.
147. Id.
148. See also Neal Judisch, Calvin on ‘Self-Authentification’ , Called to Communion.
149. Ridderbos, p. 33-34, internal citations omitted.

With difficult questions like these, it is helpful to look at other examples, and I find, though many people are not comfortable with this method, it is helpful to begin with an extreme example. First, what does it mean to have a principled difference between two things? It means that the two things are actually distinct and we can know for certain, how and why they are different. But to lack a principled distinction means one of three things: a) There is no actual difference between the two things b) There is no principled distinction because the two things, by definition, would not have a principled distinction or c) There is an actual distinction, but we cannot know it. In the latter two cases, it is possible for us to treat the things as though they were different even though cannot know how they are different, but in the first case, it is false to treat the two things differently because there is no actual difference between them.

A child is distinct from an adult, but how? What is the principled difference? We could decide on a precise age as the principle of distinction, but it would be arbitrary. If we chose 13 as the exact age, there isn’t as much difference in 13 and 12 as there is between what we mean by “adult” and “child” so it wouldn’t suffice as an actual principle of distinction for the concepts that we are trying to differentiate. Why is this different from the solo/sola question? As we can affirm an agnosticism regarding the principled distinction between an adult and a child, why can’t we do the same for solo and sola scriptura while still treating them differently? Perhaps a Christian gradually grows from a belief in solo scriptura to the mature belief of sola scriptura as a child grows to be an adult, and while there isn’t any principled difference per se, or we cannot be certain of it, we can still treat the two differently. That is, there might not be an identifiable principle of distinction between the two, but there could still be a practical difference.

Is this sufficient? Before we answer that question, let’s pause to make an observation. While I was a Presbyterian, I did acknowledge a practical difference between my approach to Church authority and certain other Protestants, namely those who explicitly affirm solo scriptura. And while I eventually became convinced of a need to affirm a principle of distinction between us, I counted the difference no less real. That is, I did notice a difference in how the Reformed, and some others, approached the issue of Church authority and its relation to the scriptures, and how certain others did. But could it be that this perceived difference was illusionary in that it was either non existent, i.e. I was deceived, or that it was actual in one sense but only because it was contingent upon something else such that if that thing were altered, the perceived difference would be made transparent and I would realize that there was no real difference at all. Suppose that I saw a practical difference in attitude towards church authority between myself and certain others, but then when my particular church taught something which I strongly believed to be in contradiction with the Scriptures, I realized that I was only a member of that church so long as they didn’t contradict Scripture. Now that they have, I will leave, because I consider that church to have less authority than Scripture. As shown in the article and by Mathison himself, all appeals to Scripture are appeals to private judgments thereof, and because of this, my previous statement reduces to “I consider that church to have less authority than myself to interpret scripture.” In reality, there was no principled distinction between myself and those who believed in solo scriptura. That practical difference that I saw previously, though real in certain limited respects, was ultimately an illusion.

Let us return to the previous question of how this issue is different than the distinction between the adult and child example. Is a perceived practical difference between the two things enough to justify one in holding a position that cannot be differentiated in principle from the other position which is known to be false? The answer is no for at least two reasons.

1. The child/adult example is an example of a thing which is known, by its nature, to exist in gradual stages, and the two positions or concepts in question are, by their own definition, vague referents to the early and latter stages of its particular development. It is possible to treat two ideas as distinct without knowing an exact principle of distinction when the distinction between the two things is, in its definition, not definable in precise terms. e.g. We may not be able to identify the principled difference between a big ball and a small ball without referring one to the other; even so, we may treat these things differently without contradiction because, by definition, the question is inherently relative. This is clearly not the case with the solo vs sola question. The distinction between these two, if real, would be identifiable because the question of authority, is, by definition, one of principle.

2. Bryan and Neal’s article did not merely show that Protestants don’t know the distinction between solo and sola scriptura, or that it is in its nature unknowable; the article actually demonstrated that there is not a principled distinction. It is one thing to say that we cannot know the principle of distinction between two things and quite another to demonstrate that there is, in fact, no principled difference between the two things. Take an example where we have a reason to believe that a principled distinction actually does exist (at least in particular cases): drinking one drop of beer and being sinfully drunk. There is a point in each particular case, though we cannot know it, where one passes from an acceptable amount of alcohol consumption to an unacceptable amount. It is one thing to say: There is a principle of distinction between these two, and we can’t know it, but we can treat the two things different for all practical purposes. It is something entirely different to say: There is no principled difference between these two things. If one could actually demonstrate that there is no principled difference in these two things, then it would be impossible to drink any alcohol whatsoever without being drunk and in sin. This isn’t a stretch; some people believe this, usually the same ones who preach solo scriptura.

Logically then, since Bryan and Neal actually demonstrated there to be no principled difference between solo and sola scriptura, an appeal to a practical difference is insufficient.

R.C. Sproul Jr.

Sproul begins his essay with the following paragraph:

No, and yes. The Bible does not have specific text that suggests that the Bible alone is our final authority in all matters of faith and practice. Those who delight to point this out, however, typically Roman Catholics and the eastern Orthodox, typically miss the point. First, their energies more often than not are aimed at the Anabaptist error that we call solo Scriptura. Here the person affirms that all he needs is himself and his Bible. The wisdom of the church in history, the community of believers, are all deemed irrelevant to understanding the things of God. Solo scriptura is reprehensible and ignorant and a-historical.

Here Sproul first acknowledges that the Bible does not have a text that suggests that it alone is our final authority. Then he claims that Catholics and Orthodox who point this out are missing the point, because they are aiming their energies at solo scriptura. However, if the point of the Catholics and Orthodox who state this is straightforwardly to point out that the Bible does not have a text that suggests that it alone is our final authority, then these Catholics and Orthodox are not “missing the point,” but in fact making a true claim, one that Sproul himself acknowledges. We agree with Sproul that solo scriptura is “reprehensible.” But if, as Neal Judisch and I have recently argued here, there is no principled difference between solo scriptura and sola scriptura, then the fact that the Bible does not have a passage that suggests that the Bible alone is our final authority, is deeply problematic for those who claim that the Bible alone is our final authority.

Sproul continues:

Sola Scriptura, like the Scriptures themselves, recognizes that God has gifted the church with teachers and pastors. It recognizes that the church has progressed and reached consensus on critical issues in and through the ancient ecumenical creeds. It affirms with vigor that we are all standing on the shoulders of giants. But it also affirms that even these giants have feet of clay. And there is where the Bible does in the end teach sola Scriptura.

If by “feet of clay” Sproul means that every mere human, during this present life, is capable of sin and error, then the Catholic Church agrees, in which case the fact that men have “feet of clay” does not entail sola scriptura. But if by “feet of clay” Sproul means that there was no oral Apostolic Tradition, and/or that the Holy Spirit failed to preserve this oral Apostolic Tradition, and/or that the Holy Spirit fails to protect the Church’s Magisterium from error when it definitively determines doctrine on matters of faith and morals, then Sproul needs to demonstrate that these results are entailed by the fact that men have “feet of clay.” Merely pointing out that men have “feet of clay” does not by itself set limitations on what the Holy Spirit is able to do through men.

Sproul then writes:

Sola Scriptura is a biblical doctrine not because the Bible says so. That would be a tautology- the kind of argument we find in that collection of lies the Book of Mormon. Instead the Bible is our alone final authority because it alone is the Word of God. It has been attested, authenticated, by God Himself. Miracles serve as the divine imprimatur, the proof that this is a message of God. This is how Nicodemus reasoned when he said, “Rabbi, we know that You are a teacher come from God; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him” (John 3:2). This is also how Jesus Himself reasoned when He first forgave the sins of the paralytic lowered through the roof. In response to the unspoken charge that He had blasphemed, Jesus told the man, “Arise, take up your bed, and go to your house” (Matthew 9:1-8).

Sproul claims that “the Bible is our alone final authority because it alone is the Word of God.” Nothing he says here actually demonstrates that only the Bible is the Word of God. In other words, nothing Sproul says here shows that the oral teaching of the Apostles was not the Word of God, or that this oral Apostolic Tradition, as it was passed down orally in the Church, was not the Word of God. The Catholic Church agrees that the Bible is the Word of God written. That’s not the point of disagreement. The point of disagreement (between Protestants and the Catholic Church) regarding sola scriptura is twofold: First, whether the Word of God written is the entirety of the Word of God given to the Church from the Apostles, or whether the Word of God spoken, and orally transmitted and handed down by the succession of bishops, is also the Word of God given to the Church from the Apostles. Second, whether or not Christ established a unique interpretive authority by way of apostolic succession from one Apostle to whom Christ gave the keys of the Kingdom. Sproul’s prooftexts do not substantiate the Protestant position regarding either of those two points of disagreement.

Sproul continues:

I would be quite content to add as a second infallible and inerrant authority the ancient creeds of the church under the following conditions. First, those who gathered to formulate these creeds would need to have their message authenticated by miraculous works. Let them raise men from the dead. Second, we must add those creeds to our Bibles. If both sources are equally authoritative, why do we separate them? In like manner, I’d be content to add as a second infallible and inerrant authority the statements of the Pope when He speaks ex cathedra. First, however, let him raise men from the dead. Second, let us add his words, assuming he would even tell us what they were, to our canon.

Here Sproul says that he would be content to add the ancient creeds as a second infallible and inerrant authority [along with the Bible] if those who formulated the creeds performed miracles, and those creeds were added to the Bible. In reply, Sproul’s being content to recognize the ancient creeds as inerrant and “infallible” on the basis of miracles performed by those who wrote them does not show whether or not the Holy Spirit protected the Church from error when formulating them. Sproul’s statement is a statement about himself. No statement about Sproul himself (or what would make him content) should determine what all Christians should believe about sola scriptura or about the authority of the Church’s creeds. Sproul’s claim presumes (without any substantiation) that only if the bishops in an ecumenical council performed miracles, and raised men from the dead, could we know that the Holy Spirit protected that council from error in its definitive determination of doctrine regarding faith and morals. Does Sproul know that every author of Scripture performed miracles and raised men from the dead? Did the author of Hebrews perform miracles? Did the author of Jude? Did Luke perform miracles? Sproul has just mutilated his own Bible in Marcion-style, being required by his own criterion to excise from it every book whose author was not recorded as performing some miracle. If he wishes then to appeal to the decisions of the Church regarding which books were canonical to avoid this problem, he will need to know which men in the Church made these decisions and that each of them performed miracles. But that is something he does not know, and cannot know. So his position commits the fallacy of special pleading — requiring that his interlocutor’s position be subject to a criterion he does not apply to his own position. Moreover, he does not show that the way the Catholic and Orthodox know ecumenical councils’ definitive statements on faith and morals to be divinely protected from error is insufficient.

Sproul likewise presumes (without substantiation) that there is no possible distinction between inspiration and infallibility. In other words, he [falsely] assumes that whatever is uttered infallibly is divinely inspired. A council’s being divinely protected from error in its decisions regarding faith and morals does not entail that its rulings are divinely inspired. Hence they need not be included in the Bible.

He adds:

But wait, there’s more. I want an authoritative list, in both instances of what these messages are. Ask someone Orthodox to show you exactly where you can read their infallible tradition and you will receive slippery ooze. Ask someone Roman Catholic for a list of infallible papal or consiliar [sic] statements, and you will receive the same.

Apparently Sproul is unaware of Ott’s Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma. But even if Ott hadn’t published this book, whether or not such a list is published does not show that there is no principled way for the Catholic Church to draw up such a list. The non-existence of a published list of infallible Church dogmas would not demonstrate that no Church teaching is infallible. Nor would it demonstrate that we cannot know whether there are any infallible dogmas, or that the Church does not know which of her teachings are infallible. So Sproul’s insistence on an “authoritative list” is a red herring.

Sproul then writes:

Finally, there is this problem. In both instances, Rome and Orthodoxy, you run headlong into the problem of the infinite regress. That is, those who are less strident in their views on tradition, who deny that tradition carries additional content to the Scripture, instead argue that tradition gives an infallible and inerrant interpretation of Scripture. Okay. Where then can we find an infallible and inerrant interpretation of the interpretation? Assuming we could succeed there, of course, we would need an inerrant interpretation of the interpretation of the interpretation. Ad nauseum.

Neal Judisch and I respond to that objection in section V of our article, “Solo Scriptura, Sola Scriptura, and the Question of Interpretive Authority.”

Sproul continues:

No, the Bible is God’s Word. It is perspicuous, understandable. It says what it means and means what it says. It is attested by the miraculous power of God. And it is all these things, alone. It alone, all by itself, equips us for every good work. Flee anyone who tells you that more is required to understand, or more is required to obey.

Catholics agree, of course, that the Bible is God’s Word written. But Sproul has not demonstrated that the unwritten Apostolic Tradition is not God’s Word. The [oral] preaching of the Apostles was in fact attested by miracles. So was the authority of the Apostles themselves, the authority that Christ had given to them to preach and teach in His Name (i.e. as His authorized representatives), and the authority that they gave to their successors. The miracles done by the Apostles attest to the enduring authority and binding requirement on the Church of their practice of authorizing episcopal successors no less than it does to the authority of their written words. Sproul arbitrarily picks from the Apostles’ actions only one subset (i.e. their act of writing) as authoritative for the Church, and in that respect his position is ad hoc.

Lastly, Sproul concludes:

If you’d like to learn more, I’d encourage you to get and read my friend Keith Mathison’s outstanding book The Shape of Sola Scriptura.

For a Catholic response to Mathison’s book, see the article mentioned above, by Neal Judisch and myself, titled, “Solo scriptura, Sola Scriptura, and the Question of Interpretive Authority.”

Christus Pantocrator in the apsis of the cathedral of Cefalù

Solo scriptura is, according to Mathison, an unbiblical position; proponents of sola scriptura should uphold the claim that Scripture is the only infallible authority, but should repudiate any position according to which individual Christians are the ultimate arbiters of Scriptural truth. In this article we argue that there is no principled difference between sola scriptura and solo scriptura with respect to the holder of ultimate interpretive authority, and that a return to apostolic succession is the only way to avoid the untoward consequences to which both solo scriptura and sola scriptura lead.

Contents:

I. Introduction
II. Description of Solo Scriptura and What is Wrong with It, According to Mathison
III. Mathison on Sola Scriptura, and How It Differs from Solo Scriptura
IV. Why There Is No Principled Difference Between Sola Scriptura and Solo Scriptura

A. Direct and Indirect Ultimate Interpretive Authority
B. The Contradiction Internal to the Sola Scriptura Position
C. The Delusion of Derivative Authority

V. Objections and Replies

A. Tu Quoque: “The Catholic Position Does Not Avoid Solo Scriptura
B. Sola Ecclesia: The Church is Autonomous, a Law unto Itself, and Unaccountable

VI. Implications

I. Introduction

Sola scriptura is arguably the most foundational point of disagreement underlying the nearly five-hundred year rift between Catholic and Protestant Christians.  The Catholic Encyclopedia identifies sola scriptura, alongside sola fide and the ministerial priesthood of all believers, as one of the three fundamental principles of Protestantism; and nineteenth century Church historian Philip Schaff, in agreement with many Protestant thinkers, describes sola scriptura as the “formal principle” of Protestant theology.¹ The doctrine may be viewed as a “dangerous idea” by some, or as an exhilarating and liberating one by others.² But there can be little doubt that sola scriptura is an essential component of historic Protestant theology, and that it is crucial to the justifiability of the sixteenth-century schism and the perpetuation of this schism today.

Catholic critics of sola scriptura have argued that sola scriptura is essentially a denial of ecclesial authority, and hence that sola scriptura necessarily leads to a fragmentation in which each person interprets Scripture as seems right in his own eyes. In this way, they argue, sola scriptura is largely responsible not only for the separation of Protestants from the Catholic Church, but also for the vast number of schisms between Protestants. But a relatively recent book has given Protestants a way of replying to these criticisms, by seeking to accommodate the Catholic critics’ legitimate concerns while simultaneously repudiating their vision of the relation between Scripture and Tradition. That book is titled The Shape of Sola Scriptura, by Keith A. Mathison, the associate editor of Tabletalk.

In his book, Mathison distinguishes between sola scriptura, which he claims to have been the belief of the early confessional Protestants, and what he calls solo scriptura, which Mathison believes is a deviation of the last one hundred and fifty years from the belief and teaching of the early confessional Protestants. As a result of Mathison’s book, in our experience, Protestants now more commonly respond to Catholic arguments against sola scriptura by claiming that these are arguments against solo scriptura, not against sola scriptura. In other words, the common Protestant response to the Catholic critique of sola scriptura is that the Catholic argument aimed at sola scriptura criticizes a straw man, critiquing solo scriptura instead of sola scriptura.

We understand and appreciate the prima facie significance of the distinction Mathison wishes to draw between solo and sola scriptura.  However, as we shall argue below, there is no principled difference between sola scriptura and solo scriptura with respect to the locus of “ultimate interpretive authority:” sola scriptura, no less than solo scriptura, entails that the individual Christian is the ultimate arbiter of the right interpretation of Scripture. This implies that what Mathison calls ‘solo scriptura‘ is in fact a more clearly distilled manifestation over time of the true nature of sola scriptura. Moreover, we shall show that the only way to avoid the solo/sola position (and the unbiblical consequences to which it leads) is by way of apostolic succession.

The overall structure of our article is as follows. In the second section we present an overview of Mathison’s account of solo scriptura, explaining exactly what he believes to be wrong with solo scriptura. In the third section we present Mathison’s explanation of sola scriptura, and describe the putative contrast between solo scriptura and sola scriptura. In section four we show why there is no principled distinction between sola scriptura and solo scriptura. In section five we consider some objections to our argument, and show why they do not refute our argument. Finally, in section six we lay out a few noteworthy implications of our argument, including the implication that all the criticisms Mathison levels at solo scriptura apply equally to sola scriptura.

II. Description of Solo Scriptura and What Is Wrong with It, According to Mathison

In his book and his related article, Keith Mathison criticizes the position he calls ‘solo scriptura,‘ namely, the position that “Scripture [is] not merely the only infallible authority but that it [is] the only authority altogether.”³ He describes the solo scriptura position as rejecting altogether even “the true but subordinate authority of the church and the regula fidei“ (i.e., the “rule of faith”).⁴ Mathison admirably demonstrates various significant problems with solo scriptura, including a hermeneutical problem, a set of historical problems, and a Scriptural problem. Because we agree substantially with Mathison’s critique of solo scriptura, we shall present his criticisms with scant commentary before turning our attention to his account of sola scriptura.

Hermeneutical Problem with Solo Scriptura

Mathison begins his criticism of solo scriptura by pointing his readers to the widespread “hermeneutical chaos and anarchy” caused by the existence of conflicting interpretations of Scripture. Why is this “hermeneuetical chaos” a problem? One primary reason, according to Mathison, is that the divisions and disagreements between Christians undermine the credibility of Christians and the gospel. He writes:

One of the most obvious facts facing any intelligent person who has been a Christian for more than a few days is the reality of multitudes of conflicting interpretations of Scripture. . . .

Is there any way to ever resolve the hermeneutical chaos and anarchy that exists within the Protestant church largely as a result of its adoption of radical individualism? Most Protestants do not seem to have taken this question seriously enough if they have considered it at all. If we proclaim to the unbelieving world that we have the one true and final revelation from God, why should they listen to us if we cannot agree about what that revelation actually says? Jesus prayed for the disciples that they would be one (John 17:21a). And why did He pray for this unity? He tells us the reason, “that the world may believe that You sent me” (17:21b). The world is supposed to be hearing the Church preach the gospel of Christ, but the world is instead hearing an endless cacophony of conflicting and contradictory assertions by those who claim to be the Church of Christ. This is the heart of the hermeneutical problem we face in the Church today.⁵

The fact of so many different conflicting interpretations dims the light of the gospel to the world.⁶ This “cacophony of conflicting and contradictory assertions” leaves even the Christian bewildered and uncertain, groping about to find the way, the truth and the life of Christ and His gospel. Mathison writes:

Almost every Christian who has wrestled with theological questions has encountered the problem of competing interpretations of Scripture. . . . Each man will claim that the other is in error, but by what ultimate authority do they typically make such a judgment? Each man will claim that he bases his judgment on the authority of the Bible, but since each man’s interpretation is mutually exclusive of the other’s, both interpretations cannot be correct. How then do we discern which interpretation is correct?⁷

The cause of this hermeneutical chaos, according to Mathison, is solo scriptura. Solo scriptura creates this hermeneutical chaos because it leaves no interpretive authority by which interpretive disputes may be definitively resolved. He writes:

The typical modern Evangelical solution to this problem is to tell the inquirer to examine the arguments on both sides and decide which of them is closest to the teaching of Scripture. He is told that this is what sola scriptura means-–to individually evaluate all doctrines according to the only authority, the Scripture. Yet in reality, all that occurs is that one Christian measures the scriptural interpretations of other Christians against the standard of his own scriptural interpretation. Rather than placing the final authority in Scripture as it intends to do, this concept of Scripture places the final authority in the reason and judgment of each individual believer. The result is the relativism, subjectivism, and theological chaos that we see in modern Evangelicalism today.⁸

According to Mathison, then, when each person is deciding for himself what is the correct interpretation of Scripture, Scripture is no longer functioning as the final authority. Rather, each individual’s own reason and judgment becomes, as it were, the highest authority, supplanting in effect Scripture’s unique and rightful place. Can we avoid this result simply by letting Scripture interpret itself? According to Mathison, the answer is no:

All appeals to Scripture are appeals to interpretations of Scripture. The only real question is: whose interpretation? People with differing interpretations of Scripture cannot set a Bible on a table and ask it to resolve their differences. In order for the Scripture to function as an authority, it must be read and interpreted by someone. According to “solo” Scriptura, that someone is each individual, so ultimately, there are as many final authorities as there are human interpreters.⁹

This is a fundamental insight. All appeals to Scripture are appeals to interpretations of Scripture. But, according to Mathison, adherents of solo scriptura have not realized that all appeals to Scripture are in fact appeals to interpretations of Scripture. Because they fail to appreciate this fact, Mathison charges that:

Ultimately the interpretation of Scripture becomes individualistic with no possibility for the resolution of differences. This occurs because adherents of solo scriptura rip the Scripture out of its ecclesiastical and traditional hermeneutical context, leaving it in a relativistic vacuum. The problem is that there are differing interpretations of Scripture, and Christians are told that these can be resolved by a simple appeal to Scripture. . . . The problem that adherents of solo scriptura haven’t noticed is that any appeal to Scripture is an appeal to an interpretation of Scripture. The only question is: whose interpretation? When we are faced with conflicting interpretations of Scripture, we cannot set a Bible on a table and ask it to resolve our difference of opinion as if it were a Ouija board. In order for Scripture to serve as an authority at all, it must be read, exegeted, and interpreted by somebody.¹⁰

Because Scripture must be interpreted, and because Scripture cannot interpret itself by itself, it follows that some person or persons must interpret Scripture if Scripture is to function as an authority. Otherwise, irreconcilable hermeneutical disputes can only end in division, as each faction has no recourse but to separate. And these divisions are contrary to the will of Christ who prays in John 17 that all His followers would be one, so that the world would see that the Father sent the Son. These divisions are also contrary to the command of the Apostle Paul, who exhorts us that there be no divisions among us.¹¹ According to Mathison, the false assumption among advocates of solo scriptura is that the individual Christian can somehow bypass the interpretive process, resolving these hermeneutical disputes by a “simple appeal to Scripture.” But that does not resolve the dispute, as Mathison rightly notes, precisely because each disagreeing party is in actuality appealing to his own interpretation of Scripture. And hermeneutical disputes cannot be resolved so long as the disputing parties deny that hermeneutics is involved. So the necessity of interpretation leads us to the obvious question: “Whose interpretation should be given the final say?”

To this question Mathison responds forthrightly, “the Church.”  And naturally, our dispute with Mathison on this point does not center upon his answer (“the Church”), so much as the referent he assigns to that term, and the basis for its being the referent of that term, as we shall discuss below. First, however, we explain why Mathison contends that solo scriptura is not only false, inasmuch as it fails to align with the Biblical pattern and example, but is also pernicious.

According to Mathison, when Christians do not follow the authoritative guidance of the Church in their interpretation of Scripture, not only do they fall into various kinds of errors, but Scripture itself, as he shows by various examples, necessarily ceases to function as their authority. In one example, he refers to Reformed theologian Robert Reymond’s call for “an abandonment of the Nicene Trinitarian concept in favor of a different Trinitarian concept,” referring to Reymond’s rejection of the Nicene Creed’s teaching that Christ is eternally begotten.¹² According to Mathison, this shows that for proponents of solo scriptura the Nicene Creed has no real authority.¹³

Mathison also refers to Edward Fudge, who defends annihilationism, as another example of someone operating according to solo scriptura. Fudge claims that Scripture “is the only unquestionable or binding source of doctrine on this or any subject.”¹⁴ The fact that annihilationism is heterodox does not deter him; he believes that his own interpretation of Scripture is correct on this matter, and that here the Church has been wrong. In addition to these examples, Mathison identifies Ed Stevens, who defends hyperpreterism, as another proponent of solo scriptura. Mathison quotes Stevens as writing:

Even if the creeds were to clearly and definitively stand against the preterist view (which they don’t), it would not be an overwhelming problem since they have no real authority anyway. They are no more authoritative than our best opinions today, but they are valued because of their antiquity. . . . We must not take the creeds any more seriously than we do the writings and opinions of men like Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, the Westminster Assembly, Campbell, Rushdoony, or C.S. Lewis.¹⁵

Referring to this quotation, Mathison writes:

Here we see the clear rejection of scripturally based structures of authority. The authority of those who rule in the Church is rejected by placing the decisions of an ecumenical council of ministers on the same level as the words of any individual. This is certainly the democratic way of doing things, and it is as American as apple pie, but it is not Christian. . . . If this doctrine of solo scriptura and all that it entails is true, then the Church has no more right or authority to declare Arianism a heresy than Cornelius Van Til would have to authoritatively declare classical apologetics a heresy. Orthodoxy and heresy would necessarily be an individualistic and subjective determination.¹⁶

The fundamental problem in each of these three examples, according to Mathison, is that the individual is failing to recognize the secondary authority of the Church and of the creeds. The result of making the individual the final interpretive authority, and not recognizing the interpretive authority of the Church, argues Mathison, is that the authority of Scripture is destroyed:

The adherents of solo scriptura dismiss all of this claiming that the reason and conscience of the individual believer is the supreme interpreter. Yet this results in nothing more than hermeneutical solipsism. It renders the universal and objective truth of Scripture virtually useless because instead of the Church proclaiming with one voice to the world what the Scripture teaches, every individual interprets Scripture as seems right in his own eyes. The unbelieving world is left hearing a cacophony of conflicting voices rather than the Word of the living God.¹⁷

Mathison’s point is that when individuals take Scripture out of its ecclesial context, and treat themselves as the ultimate or highest interpretive authorities, the practical authority of Scripture is effectively destroyed. Scripture can function as an objective authority only when interpreted in and by the Church.¹⁸

When each individual acts as his own ultimate interpretive authority, the result, argues Mathison, is a kind of de facto relativism. One person thinks a passage means one thing; another person claims that the same passage means something else. But without a divinely established interpretive authority to adjudicate the dispute, the practical result is that the meaning of Scripture is reduced to “what it means to me.” There is no one with interpretive authority to say, “That’s not what it means.” Rather, without interpretive authority the objector’s disagreement with another’s interpretation amounts to, “That’s not what it means to me.” To this the first person understandably replies, “I understand that that’s not what it means to you, but that’s what it means to me.” And this situation is a form of practical relativism. In this way, argues Mathison, solo scriptura “destroys” the authority of Scripture.¹⁹

Historical Problems with Solo Scriptura

According to Mathison, not only is there a hermeneutical problem with solo scriptura, there are also historical problems. The primary historical problem is that solo scriptura was not the position of the early Church or the medieval Church.²⁰ The early Christians, not only layman but even presbyters and bishops, did not resolve theological disputes by taking to themselves ultimate interpretive authority.²¹ The historical position, according to Mathison, is for a synod of bishops to address the matter with an authoritative decision. On this point Mathison quotes John Calvin, who wrote:

We indeed willingly concede, if any discussion arises over doctrine, that the best and surest remedy is for a synod of true bishops to be convened, where the doctrine at issue may be examined.²²

Mathison defends this position by pointing out that the Apostles provide an example of meeting in council (Acts 15:6-29) to resolve a question or dispute.

Another historical problem entailed by solo scriptura, according to Mathison, is that if the Church had no authority, then we would not have any certainty regarding the canon of Scripture.²³ According to Mathison, solo scriptura thus leads to a “fundamental self-contradiction” in the solo scriptura position.²⁴ The contradiction is that proponents of solo scriptura appeal to Scripture as their only authority, yet without the authority of the Church they would not know with certainty which books belong to the canon of Scripture. In this way, argues Mathison, supporters of solo scriptura could not adequately respond to a modern-day Marcion who challenged the canon of Scripture, because they could not appeal to any authority to establish or confirm the canon.²⁵

A third historical problem is the multiplication of schisms, which Mathison largely attributes to solo scriptura. He writes:

The Christian Church today is split into literally tens of thousands of denominations with hundreds of new divisions arising daily. Much of the responsibility for this divisiveness rests with the doctrine of solo scriptura. When each individual’s conscience becomes the final authority for that individual, differences of opinion will occur. When men feel strongly enough about their individual interpretations, they separate from those they believe to be in error. In the world today, we have millions of believers and churches convinced of thousands of mutually contradictory doctrines, and all of them claim to base their beliefs on the authority of Scripture alone.

Not only has solo scriptura contributed heavily to this division and sectarianism, it can offer no possible solution. Solo scriptura is the ecclesiastical equivalent of a nation with a constitution but no court of law to interpret that constitution. Both can lead to chaos. . . . But using Scripture alone, it cannot tell us what “Scripture” is or what it means. It simply cannot resolve differences of interpretation, and the result is more and more division and schism. The resolution of theological differences requires the possibility of authoritatively defining the propositional doctrinal content of Christianity, and it requires the possibility of an authoritative ecclesiastical “Supreme Court.” Since neither of those possibilities are allowed within the framework of solo scriptura, there can be no possibility of resolution.²⁶

As Catholics, we do not believe that Christ’s Church is split, because we believe that unity is one of the four essential marks of the Church specified by the Nicene Creed, and that since Christ cannot be divided, therefore Christ’s Body, the Church, cannot be divided. Any persistent schism therefore involves schism from the Church. ²⁷ But, we do agree with Mathison that non-Catholic Christians are split into thousands of denominations, and that these divisions are primarily the result of each individual treating himself as his own final interpretive authority.

A fourth historical problem resulting from solo scriptura, according to Mathison, is that it destroys the historic Christian faith by denying the ecclesial authority by which certain doctrines were definitively determined at particular times in the history of the Church to be orthodox and essential, and other doctrines definitively determined to be heretical. By rejecting the authority of the Church, solo scriptura reduces the authority of the ecumenical councils and creeds to that of the opinion of any individual Christian, and thus eliminates the possibility of an objective Christianity handed down to us through history.²⁸

In that respect, rejecting the authority of the Church, according to Mathison, has devastating consequences for Christianity, because it eliminates the creeds, and thereby eliminates the historic Christian faith as an objective reality.

If the ecumenical creeds have no real authority, then it cannot be of any major consequence if a person decides to reject some or all of the doctrines of these creeds-–including the Trinity and the deity of Christ. If the individual judges the Trinity to be an unbiblical doctrine, then for him it is false. No other authority exists to correct him outside of his own interpretation of Scripture. This is precisely why solo scriptura inevitably results in radical relativism and subjectivity. Each man decides for himself what the essential doctrines of Christianity are, each man creates his own creed from scratch, and concepts such as orthodoxy and heresy become completely obsolete. The concept of Christianity itself becomes obsolete because it no longer has any meaningful objective definition. Since solo scriptura has no means by which Scripture’s propositional doctrinal content may be authoritatively defined (such definition necessarily entails the unacceptable creation of an authoritative ecumenical creed), its propositional content can only be subjectively defined by each individual. One individual may consider the Trinity essential, another may consider it a pagan idea imported into Christianity. Without an authoritatively defined statement of Christianity’s propositional doctrinal content, neither individual can definitively and finally be declared wrong. Solo scriptura destroys this possibility, and thereby destroys the possibility of Christianity being a meaningful concept. Instead, by reducing Christianity to relativism and subjectivity, it reduces Christianity to irrationalism and ultimately nonsense.²⁹

Here again, Mathison is quite right. Denying the authority of the Church, by treating oneself as having greater interpretive authority than the Church, destroys the Christian faith for the very reasons Mathison so aptly explains. The content of the deposit of faith then becomes like a silver dollar hidden among a sea of silver dollars; there is no principled way of distinguishing it from the myriad of contending theological opinions. This is not the situation that Christ the Good Shepherd would have handed on to His sheep. But the problem here is not merely that the deposit of faith becomes murky and inscrutable. According to Mathison,

Solo scriptura results in the autonomy of the individual believer who becomes a law unto himself. Scripture is interpreted according to the conscience and reason of the individual. Everything is evaluated according to the final standard of the individual’s opinion of what is and is not scriptural. The individual, not Scripture, is the real final authority according to solo scriptura. This is rebellious autonomy, and it is a usurpation of the prerogatives of God.

Adherents of solo scriptura have not understood that “Scripture alone” doesn’t mean “me alone.” The Bible nowhere gives any hint of wanting every individual believer to decide for himself and by himself what is and is not the true meaning of Scripture.³⁰

By rejecting the interpretive authority of the Church, the individual makes himself autonomous. He might not think of himself as being autonomous or rebellious; he most likely thinks of himself as following God, by following [his own interpretation of] God’s Word as contained in Sacred Scripture. But by disregarding the divinely established interpretive authority of the Church, the individual usurps to himself an authority that Christ entrusted to the Church. This is why, according to Mathison, taking final interpretive authority to oneself makes the individual guilty of “rebellious autonomy.”³¹

Solo Scriptura is Unbiblical

Mathison argues that the solo scriptura position is unbiblical. He writes:

The Bible itself simply does not teach “solo” Scriptura. Christ established his church with a structure of authority and gives to his church those who are specially appointed to the ministry of the word (Acts 6:2-4). When disputes arose, the apostles did not instruct each individual believer to go home and decide by himself and for himself who was right. They met in a council (Acts 15:6-29).³²

Scripture itself indicates that the Scriptures are the possession of the Church and that the interpretation of the Scriptures belongs to the Church as a whole, as a community. In particular it has been entrusted to specially gifted men. … The fundamental point is that Christ established His Church with a structure of authority that is to be obeyed (Heb. 13:7). … The modern Evangelical doctrine of Scripture essentially destroys the real authority of ministers of the Word and the Church as a whole.³³

According to Mathison, Scripture itself teaches that Scripture belongs to the Church and is to be interpreted in and by the Church. Importantly, he is not here speaking of an invisible Church. He is saying that Scripture teaches that Christ founded a visible Church, with a visible authority structure composed of ordained men entrusted with the responsibility of expositing and interpreting the Scriptures. Scripture itself, according to Mathison, teaches that these men are to be obeyed.³⁴ Because solo scriptura denies the interpretive authority of the Church, claims Mathison, therefore solo scriptura is contrary to Scripture.

III. Mathison on Sola Scriptura, and How It Differs from Solo Scriptura

In contrast to the ‘solo scriptura‘ position, Mathison defends what he calls ‘sola scriptura,’ namely, the position that “Scripture [is] the sole source of revelation; that it [is] the final authoritative norm of doctrine and practice; that it [is] to be interpreted in and by the church, and that it [is] to be interpreted according to the regula fidei.”³⁵ Notice that for Mathison these four claims together constitute sola scriptura. Mathison is emphatic that sola scriptura is not the notion that Scripture is the only ecclesial authority. In this respect sola scriptura differs from solo scriptura. He writes:

It is important to notice that sola scriptura, properly understood, is not a claim that Scripture is the only authority altogether. … There are other real authorities which are subordinate and derivative in nature. Scripture, however, is the only inspired and inherently infallible norm, and therefore Scripture is the only final authoritative norm.³⁶

As mentioned above, he approvingly quotes Calvin proposing that doctrinal disputes be resolved by recourse to synods and councils.³⁷ And Mathison defends this position by pointing out that the Apostles provide an example of meeting in council (Acts 15:6-29) to resolve a question.

According to Mathison, Scripture must be interpreted in and by the Church:

Scripture does not exist in a vacuum. It was and is given to the Church within the doctrinal context of the apostolic gospel. Scripture alone is the only final standard, but it is a final standard that must be utilized, interpreted, and preached by the Church within its Christian context. If Scripture is not interpreted correctly within its proper context, it ceases to function properly as a standard.³⁸

It is therefore to the Church that we must turn for the true interpretation of the Scripture, for it is in the Church that the gospel is found. … Although individuals can and must read and study Scripture in order that their conscience may ultimately be bound by the Word of God, final ecclesiastical authority does not and cannot rest in the judgment of each individual member of the Church. … Individual private judgment, however, does not replace the corporate judgment of the covenant community. The creeds of the Church are the authoritative confessions of the communion of saints as the covenantal body of Christ. Excommunication is an authoritative judgment of the communion of saints as the covenantal body of Christ.³⁹

But sola scriptura does not mean only that Scripture must be interpreted in and by the Church. According to Mathison sola scriptura also means that Scripture is the final authoritative standard. He writes:

Scripture alone, therefore, can function as the “canon,” the rule, the final authoritative standard of truth against which all else is measured. Yes, it is the Church which does the measuring, and yes the rule of faith provides the basic parameters of measurement, but it is the Scripture and Scripture alone that is the standard norm.⁴⁰

An essential aspect of sola scriptura is that it affirms the infallibility of Scripture, and denies the infallibility of the Church. For this reason, according to Mathison, the Church, being fallible, is corrected by Scripture and subordinate to Scripture. He writes:

Because of the Church’s propensity to wander from the true path, she needs a standard of truth that remains constant and sure, and that standard cannot be herself. It can only be the inspired and infallible Scripture.⁴¹

For Mathison, then, sola scriptura ascribes the highest ecclesial authority to Scripture, and ascribes subordinate ecclesial authority to the Church and the creeds. The individual believer is to be subject both to the primary authority of Scripture and to the secondary authority of the Church and creeds. The primacy of the Scripture’s authority, according to Mathison, does not nullify the genuine secondary authority of the Church.⁴²

But this does raise a difficult question. If the Church has higher interpretive authority than does the individual, what is the individual to do when he or she disagrees with the Church’s decision regarding what Scripture teaches? In other words, what is the relationship between private judgment and the Church’s interpretive authority? Mathison answers this question by appealing to Francis Turretin.

As Turretin explains, although the corporate doctrinal judgment of the Church is not infallible and does not have an authority equal to that of Scripture, it does have true authority over those who are members of the visible communion of the Church. What then is the relationship between private judgment and this corporate judgment? What is an individual Christian to do if he believes the corporate judgment found in the creeds and confessions to be in error? Turretin explains,

“Hence if they think they observe anything in them worthy of correction, they ought to undertake nothing rashly or disorderly and unseasonably, so as to violently rend the body of their mother (which schismatics do), but to refer the difficulties they feel to their church and either to prefer her public opinion to their own private judgment or to secede from her communion, if the conscience cannot acquiesce in her judgment. Thus they cannot bind in the inner court of conscience, except inasmuch as they are found to agree with the word of God (which alone has the power to bind the conscience).”⁴³

According to Turretin, the individual Christian should submit to the Church’s teaching and interpretation, except when his conscience, ultimately informed by his own interpretation of Scripture, cannot accept what the Church says. Mathison adds,

There is a difference then between the external ecclesiastical court and the internal court of conscience. The inward court of the individual conscience cannot be bound by anything other than the Word of God, but the Church does have doctrinal authority in the external ecclesiastical court. This authority is given to preserve unity in the Church’s faith and to reject the errors of heretics.⁴⁴

Mathison maintains that the only authority that can bind the conscience is the Word of God. So when the Church teaches something that is incompatible with one’s conscience, as informed by one’s own interpretation of Scripture, one should reject the Church’s teaching and follow  one’s own conscience. We can summarize Mathison’s explanation of the distinction between solo scriptura and sola scriptura as follows. Whereas solo scriptura rejects the interpretive authority of the Church and the derivative authority of the creeds, sola scriptura affirms the interpretive authority of the Church and the derivative authority of the creeds, except when they teach something contrary to one’s conscience, as informed by one’s own interpretation of Scripture.

IV. Why There Is No Principled Difference Between Sola Scriptura and Solo Scriptura

A. Direct and Indirect Ultimate Interpretive Authority

What makes the solo scriptura position problematic, according to Mathison, is not its high view of Scripture, but its presumption that the individual has higher interpretive authority than does the Church. Solo scriptura treats the individual as having the ultimate or final interpretive authority regarding whatever matters he or she considers to be theologically essential or important. That is precisely why solo scriptura leads to the situations Mathison describes in his book. Robert Reymond can reject one line of the Creed because he sees himself as having at least equal interpretive and magisterial (i.e. teaching) authority to the bishops who gathered at Nicea in AD 325 to formulate the Creed. If Reymond believed that those bishops had greater interpretive and magisterial authority than himself, he would treat the Creed as a corrective to his own interpretation and position, in whatever areas his interpretation and position were at odds with that of the Creed.

But there are two ways to make oneself one’s own ultimate interpretive and magisterial authority. One is a direct way and the other is an indirect way. The direct way is to subject all theological questions directly to the final verdict of one’s own interpretation of Scripture. That is the solo scriptura position. Because it is direct, the nature of the position is quite transparent; we can see clearly in such a case that the individual is acting as his own ultimate interpretive authority.

The indirect way of making oneself one’s own ultimate interpretive and magisterial authority is more complicated and subtle. In this case the individual, based upon his own interpretation of Scripture, either establishes or chooses an ecclesial community that conforms to his own interpretation in matters he considers to be essential or important. Then, he ‘submits’ to this institution so long as it continues to speak and act in accordance with his own interpretation of Scripture. If it deviates from his own interpretation of Scripture in matters he deems important, he repeats the process of either establishing or choosing an institution or congregation that conforms to his own interpretation in matters he considers to be essential or important.

In both the direct and indirect ways, the individual is acting as his own ultimate interpretive and magisterial authority. But his doing so is more difficult to see in the indirect case because he appears to be submitting to the interpretive authority of a body of persons other than himself. Yet, because he has established or selected this body of persons on the basis of their conformity to his own interpretation of Scripture, and because he ‘submits’ to them only so long as they agree with his interpretation on matters he considers to be essential or important, therefore in actuality his ‘submission’ to this body is in fact ‘submission’ to himself. To submit to others only when one agrees with them, is to submit to oneself. But submission to oneself is an oxymoron, because it is indistinguishable from not submitting at all, from doing whatever one wants. Yet because this indirect way of being one’s own ultimate interpretive and magisterial authority maintains the appearance of being in submission to another body of persons, it allows those who practice it to believe falsely that they are genuinely submitting to another body of persons, and not acting as their own ultimate interpretive and magisterial authority. Accumulating for themselves this body of persons to whom they ‘submit’ allows them to remain under a delusion that they are submitting to the Church.⁴⁵

Solo scriptura is the direct way of acting as one’s own ultimate interpretive and magisterial authority. But as we show below, the indirect way of acting as one’s own ultimate interpretive and magisterial authority is precisely the methodology entailed by sola scriptura. Here’s why. In Mathison’s account of sola scriptura, Scripture must be interpreted “in and by the church.” He even says that we must turn to the Church for the true interpretation of Scripture, “for it is in the Church that the gospel is found.”⁴⁶ Notice that Mathison claims that it is in the Church that the gospel is found.

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

The Catholic position does not suffer from this circularity, because ‘Church’ is not defined in terms of “gospel,” but in terms of apostolic succession, involving an unbroken line of authorizations extending down from the Apostles. Just as Christ authorized and sent the Apostles to preach and teach in His Name, and govern His Church, so the Apostles, by the laying on of their hands, appointed bishops as their successors, and by this mystery handed on to them the divine authority to preach and teach and govern the Church. And these men also, in the same way authorized other men to succeed them to preach and teach the gospel and govern Christ’s Church. Only those having the succession from the Apostles are divinely authorized to preach and teach and govern Christ’s Church. For that reason, the Church is defined not by the gospel (as determined by one’s own interpretation of Scripture). Rather, the content of the gospel is specified by the Church, and the Church is located by the succession from the Apostles. This is why apostolicity is one of the four marks of the Church taught in the Creed: “we believe one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.” But given Mathison’s account, what counts as ‘church’ is always and ultimately up to each individual to decide on the basis of his or her own determination of the gospel, on the basis of his or her own interpretation of Scripture. So on Mathison’s account, no one has any more authority than anyone else to say definitively what is the Church and where is the Church, and what is her doctrine and what is not her doctrine.

That can be seen in the very events of the Protestant Reformation. The first Protestants did not submit their interpretations of Scripture to the judgment of the Catholic Church in which they had each been baptized and raised. Rather, the first Protestants appealed to their own interpretation of Scripture to judge the Church to be apostate, and thus justify separating from her. They did this by redefining the marks of the Church. The first generation of Protestants, without any authorization from their bishops, appealed to their own interpretation of Scripture to determine three (or two) new “marks of the Church,” beyond the four marks given twelve hundred years earlier in the Nicene Creed. These new marks consisted of: (1) the preaching of the gospel (or ‘sound doctrine’), where what counts as ‘gospel’ and ‘sound doctrine’ was determined according to their own interpretation of Scripture, (2) the proper administration of the sacraments, where what counts as a sacrament and what is its proper administration were determined again by their own interpretation of Scripture, and (3) the right exercise of church discipline, again, as determined by their own interpretation of Scripture.⁴⁷ By these new marks derived from their own interpretation of Scripture, they determined that the Catholic Church governed by the successor of the Apostle Peter had become apostate, and thus that the Catholic bishops under whose authority they lived, had no ecclesial authority, and that they themselves [i.e. these first Protestants] were the continuation of the Church.

In this way they could seem to affirm devoutly the prohibition against spurning the authority of the Church, as Calvin did when he wrote:

However it may be, where the preaching of the gospel is reverently heard and the sacraments are not neglected, there for the time being no deceitful or ambiguous form of the church is seen; and no one is permitted to spurn its authority, flout its warnings, resist its counsels, or make light of its chastisements — much less to desert it and break its unity. For the Lord esteems the communion of his church so highly that he counts as a traitor and apostate from Christianity anyone who arrogantly leaves any Christian society, provided it cherishes the true meaning of Word and sacraments.⁴⁸

How did Calvin, who was baptized in the Catholic Church as an infant, and yet lived the last thirty or so years of his life in separation from the Catholic Church, avoid believing that he was spurning the authority of the Church? Simply by redefining the Church as “wherever the preaching of the gospel [as determined by Calvin's own interpretation of Scripture] is heard and the sacraments [as determined by Calvin's own interpretation of Scripture] are not neglected.”

The early Protestants appealed to their own interpretation of Scripture to make sola fide the sine qua non of the gospel, and appealed to their own interpretation of Scripture to make “the gospel” a new mark of the Church. In thus stipulating that sola fide was a now a mark of the Church, based on their own interpretation of Scripture and without any authorization from their bishops, the Reformers ‘avoided rebelling’ against their Catholic bishops simply by redefining ‘Church’ to match their own interpretation of Scripture, so that, by this redefinition of the ‘Church,’ their Catholic bishops were no longer even members of the Church. In doing so, these first Protestants placed their own interpretive authority above that of their bishops. For this reason, the assumption that final interpretive and teaching authority belongs to oneself is intrinsic to Protestantism, because to subordinate the individual’s interpretive and teaching authority to that of the Church would undermine the act by which the first Protestants separated from the Catholic Church in the sixteenth century, and thus undermine the very legitimacy of Protestantism as such.

Our point here is not to show which side was right and which side was wrong in the sixteenth century schism. Our point is to show that implicit within the claim by proponents of sola scriptura to be submitting to the Church, is always a prior judgment concerning which body of persons count as the Church, and a theological assumption about how that judgment is to be made. Mathison cannot say, “All Christians should submit to the Church’s determination of the marks of the Church,” because such a claim would beg the question, i.e. presume the very thing in question, by presuming the identity of the Church in determining the identity of the Church. At most he can say that all Christians should accept the three Protestant marks of the Church, on the ground that according to his [Mathison's] own interpretation of Scripture, these three are the marks of the Church. Mathison’s position does not allow the Church to have the definitive and authoritative interpretation and teaching of Scripture regarding the marks of the Church. Mathison’s position entails that the authoritative determination of the marks of the Church ultimately and perpetually rests with the individual.

No Middle Ground: Solo Scriptura or Apostolic Succession

This implication follows from Protestantism’s rejection of apostolic succession. Without apostolic succession, there is within Protestantism no group of persons already having divine authorization to provide the definitive decision regarding matters of doctrine and interpretation, including the marks of the Church. By granting a position in which each individual has the highest interpretive authority in determining the marks of the Church, Mathison leaves himself without a principled distinction between solo scriptura and sola scriptura, and thus his position is likewise open to the individualism and fragmentation that he rightly recognizes result from solo scriptura. Hence for this reason as well, sola scriptura reduces to solo scriptura.

The same point applies to determining which tradition is authoritative. Protestant theologian R. Scott Clark, in his book Covenant, Justification and Pastoral Ministry, claims that Christians should read Scripture through the eyes of the Reformed and Presbyterian standards, such as the Westminster Confession of Faith.⁴⁹ The only available basis by which he can argue for this is that the Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF) matches his own interpretation of Scripture, and that of those who share his interpretation. Clark has no a priori ecclesial authority to which all Christians should submit. Nor can the individual Christian use the WCF as the standard by which to evaluate the WCF. Nor can he use the WCF in order to evaluate the other Protestant confessions, without begging the question. Thus, if one denies apostolic succession, then in order to determine whether Scripture should be interpreted according to the doctrinal framework specified by the WCF, the individual Christian must evaluate the WCF by comparing it to his own interpretation of Scripture. For this reason, without apostolic succession, the secondary ‘authority’ of a tradition or ‘standard’ by which to interpret Scripture ultimately remains subordinate to the judgment of the individual, and thus retains only the illusory appearance of authority, not any actual authority.⁵⁰

For the proponent of sola scriptura, if his interpretation of Scripture changes concerning what doctrines or practices constitute ‘sound doctrine,’ or if the body of persons presently satisfying his determination of what counts as ‘Church’ makes a decision that is contrary to his own determination from Scripture of what is essential or important, then there is no reason for him to submit to them. By that very fact (i.e. change of this sort) they no longer satisfy his criteria for what is essential to the Church, just as the Catholic bishops were simply defined out of authority by the first Protestants. When that happens, the proponent of sola scriptura then establishes or chooses another body of persons that matches his current interpretation of Scripture, and ‘submits’ to them, until he and this new body of persons sufficiently diverge in their determination of what counts as ‘sound doctrine,’ proper administration of the sacraments, and right discipline. So the reason why there is no principled difference between solo scriptura and sola scriptura is that in both cases the individual is his own ultimate interpretive and magisterial authority: solo scriptura in a direct way, sola scriptura in an indirect way.

We can see then that there is no principled difference between sola scriptura and solo scriptura because given sola scriptura and the denial of apostolic succession, and thus given the equality in interpretive authority between the individual and the Magisterium, no Church council or promulgation of a dogma can bind the conscience of any individual. For any line in any creed or Church pronouncement, the individual may stand in judgment over it, just as the early Protestants stood in judgment of the decrees and canons of the Council of Trent (and other earlier ecumenical councils), based on their own interpretation of Scripture. As we saw above, Calvin seems to recognize the authority of Church councils, as when he wrote:

We indeed willingly concede, if any discussion arises over doctrine, that the best and surest remedy is for a synod of true bishops to be convened, where the doctrine at issue may be examined.⁵¹

But notice the term ‘true bishops.’ Without apostolic succession, what counts as a “true bishop” can only be “one who agrees with my interpretation of Scripture.” In other words, Calvin’s statement amounts to being willing to submit to a synod composed of bishops who agree with his own interpretation of Scripture. And there is no principled difference between this and solo scriptura; the former is solo scriptura masking itself from itself. ‘Submitting’ only to those with whom I agree, is merely a species of “submitting only when I agree,” which is itself an indirect form of “submitting only to me,” which is submitting only in semblance.

Calvin and the early Protestants rejected the decree of the Council of Trent regarding sola fide. They did so based on their prior determination, according to their own interpretation of Scripture, that sola fide was a mark of the Church. Because the Council of Trent denied justification by faith alone,⁵² the Council had not satisfied one of the Protestants’ own stipulated marks, and was therefore ipso facto not constituted of “true bishops,” and was ipso facto an invalid council.⁵³

Since apart from apostolic succession the determination of ‘the gospel’ and ‘sound doctrine’ rests ultimately and irrevocably on the individual’s own interpretation of Scripture in order to identify the Church, it follows that any particular line of any creed or Church decree becomes ‘authoritative’ only if the individual approves it as being sufficiently in agreement with his own interpretation of Scripture. If he judges it to be sufficiently contrary to his own interpretation of Scripture, and of sufficient import, then it ipso facto has no ‘authority’ over him. His disagreement with “the Church’s” interpretation of Scripture does not make his position heretical. It may very well be (according to his line of thought) that ‘the Church’ is heretical, and his own position is orthodox (and hence that he himself is the continuation of the actual Church, the rest being heretics). We may never know for sure this side of heaven. Thus ‘orthodoxy’ and ‘heresy’ are relativized by the rejection of apostolic succession. Because sola scriptura rejects apostolic succession no less than does solo scriptura, and because the rejection of apostolic succession entails the relativization of heresy and orthodoxy, there is also for this reason no principled difference between solo scriptura and sola scriptura.

That is because given sola scriptura and a denial of apostolic succession, the individual has final interpretive and teaching authority in determining what is the ‘gospel’ and what is ‘sound doctrine,’ in order to determine who and what is the Church. If, however, apostolic succession is true, and the Church has final interpretive and teaching authority in determining what counts as the ‘gospel’ and ‘sound doctrine,’ then the first Protestants were not justified in separating from the Catholic Church. They could attempt to justify separating from the Catholic Church only by appealing to their own interpretation of Scripture regarding the marks, and thus only by rejecting apostolic succession and presuming that they themselves had equal or greater interpretive authority than did those Catholic bishops under whose authority they had been placed at their baptism. For this reason sola scriptura can never grant final interpretive authority to the Church, without refuting itself. So even though sola scriptura creates the appearance of submitting to Church authority, with regard to ultimate interpretive authority there is no principled difference between sola scriptura and solo scriptura. In both solo scriptura and sola scriptura, the individual is and remains his own final interpretive and teaching authority.

In sum, Mathison thinks he is defending a position that is fundamentally distinct from solo scriptura, but in fact it is in essence the same position, only hidden within a personally selected practice and a personally selected people such that its true essence is concealed. This can be seen in Mathison’s description of sola scriptura. On the one hand, he rejects the notion that the individual has final interpretive and teaching authority; according to Mathison the idea that each individual has final interpretive and teaching authority is precisely what is wrong with the solo scriptura position. On the other hand, Mathison grants that each individual may appeal to Scripture to correct the Church, disobey the Church and leave the Church, so long as he is following his conscience.⁵⁴ According to Mathison, the individual’s conscience is bound only by his own interpretation of Scripture. That notion reduces every other so-called ecclesial authority (e.g. creed, confession, magisterium) to mere advice. Here’s why.  Without apostolic succession no one’s teaching and interpretation is divinely authorized, and therefore one’s conscience is not bound by any interpretive or teaching authority other than that of one’s self. And that is exactly the essence of solo scriptura. In order for the individual to stand in judgment of the interpretation of the Church, he must have equal or greater interpretive and teaching authority than does the Church. Otherwise, if the Church’s interpretation differed from that of the individual, the Church’s teaching and interpretation would serve as the standard to which the individual should make his own interpretation conform.⁵⁵

The Argument

1. According to solo scriptura, Scripture is the only ecclesial authority. [def]

2. If solo scriptura is true, then each individual is his own final interpretive authority concerning what he considers to be essential. [1]

3. According to sola scriptura, Scripture is the only infallible ecclesial authority. [def]

4. If sola scriptura entails that each individual is his own final interpretive authority concerning what he considers to be essential, then in this respect there is no principled difference between solo scriptura and sola scriptura.

5. If apostolic succession is false, then no one’s determination of the marks of the Church is any more authoritative than anyone else’s.

6. If no one’s determination of the marks of the Church is any more authoritative than anyone else’s, then each individual is his own final interpretive authority concerning what he considers to be essential.

7. If apostolic succession is false, then each individual is his own final interpretive authority concerning what he considers to be essential. [(5),(6)]

8. The doctrine of apostolic succession is false. [A]

9. If sola scriptura is true, then each individual is his own final interpretive authority concerning what he considers to be essential. [(7),(8)]

10. There is no principled difference between sola scriptura and solo scriptura. [(4),(9)]

B. The Contradiction Internal to the Sola Scriptura Position

Mathison’s account of the sola scriptura position contains an internal contradiction. On the one hand, he claims that all appeals to Scripture are appeals to interpretations of Scripture:

All appeals to Scripture are appeals to interpretations of Scripture. The only real question is: whose interpretation? People with differing interpretations of Scripture cannot set a Bible on a table and ask it to resolve their differences. In order for the Scripture to function as an authority, it must be read and interpreted by someone.⁵⁶

On the other hand, he claims that Scripture is the final authority:

Of significant importance to the doctrine of sola scriptura is the insistence that Scripture is the one final and authoritative norm of doctrine and practice.⁵⁷

Each of these newer concepts of tradition [Catholic and Evangelical] confuses the locus of final authority, ultimately placing it in either the mind of the Church or the mind of the individual. This always results in autonomy and rebellion against the authority of God and His Word.⁵⁸

But, if all appeals to Scripture are appeals to interpretations of Scripture, then it follows necessarily that either someone’s interpretation of Scripture is the final and authoritative norm of doctrine and practice, or Scripture itself cannot be the final and authoritative norm of doctrine and practice. The latter option is not open to Mathison as a Protestant, because to deny that Scripture is the final and authoritative norm of doctrine and practice is to deny sola scriptura, the very foundation of Protestantism. But neither is the former option open to Mathison, because without apostolic succession, Protestantism has no sacramental basis for anyone’s interpretation being the final and authoritative norm of doctrine and practice. Mathison’s position thus creates a dilemma for himself that cannot be resolved without ceasing to be Protestant.

There is no middle position between the Church having final interpretive authority and the individual having final interpretive authority. Mathison recognizes that all appeals to Scripture are appeals to interpretations of Scripture, and denies that the individual has final interpretive authority. But at the same time, as a Protestant, Mathison maintains that the individual can appeal to his or her own interpretation of Scripture to hold the Church accountable to Scripture, even to walk away from the Church (and thus treat himself as the continuation of the Church), otherwise Mathison would undermine the very basis for Protestants separating from the Catholic Church in the sixteenth century. So Mathison’s position essentially reduces to this: the Church has final interpretive authority, except when the Church’s interpretation disagrees with the individual’s interpretation. But that exception belies the charade, because “when I submit (so long as I agree), the one to whom I submit is me.” For this reason, in sola scriptura it is the individual who ultimately has and always retains final interpretive authority. Sola scriptura is a more sophisticated version of solo scriptura, but this added sophistication makes the position more deceptive, by allowing the individual to believe that he is not one of those me-and-my-Bible individualists.

C. The Delusion of Derivative Authority

Mathison claims that the creeds, the tradition, the ecumenical councils, and the fathers are authentic secondary authorities having derivative authority. Recognition of their genuine, though secondary authority, is one of the primary ways in which Mathison seeks to distinguish sola scriptura from solo scriptura. What does he mean by “secondary” and “derived”? He writes:

[T]he traditions, the fathers, and the Church are all inherently fallible standards. What this means is that these fallible traditions, these fallible fathers, and this fallible Church must be measured against the one infallible perfect standard.⁵⁹

And he writes that the Church’s authority:

consists in the fact that the Church has been entrusted with the Scriptures (Rom 3:2); in the fact that she is the proclaimer and defender of Scripture (1 Tim 3:15); and in the fact that she must make doctrinal judgments for the sake of the communion (Acts 15:6-35). These judgments usually find their public expression in the creeds and confessions of the Church. But these authoritative judgments are not to be confused with the final authority of Scripture. Their authority derives from and depends upon their conformity with the inherently authoritative Word of God.”⁶⁰

We showed above how Mathison argued that the proponents of solo scriptura do not recognize the secondary (or derived) authority of the Church and of the creeds. But here we want to show that Mathison’s own position is essentially equivalent to the denial of secondary authority. Mathison claims here that the authority of the creeds and other judgments of the Church “derives from and depends upon their conformity with the inherently authoritative Word of God.” But recall that according to Mathison, all appeals to Scripture are appeals to interpretations of Scripture.⁶¹ Therefore, the notion that the authority of the creeds and other judgments of the Church “derives from and depends upon their conformity with the inherently authoritative Word of God” entails that the authority of creeds and other judgments of the Church depends upon their sufficient conformity to the individual’s interpretation of Scripture. In other words, Mathison’s position entails that the creeds and other judgments of the Church are ‘authoritative’ only insofar as they agree with the individual’s interpretation of Scripture. But that conception of derivative authority is no different from that of Reymond, Fudge or Stevens, the very exemplars of solo scriptura that Mathison rejects.

The only relevant difference between Mathison’s position on the one hand, and that of Reymond, Fudge and Stevens on the other hand, is a merely accidental difference. According to Mathison’s interpretation of Scripture, the traditional positions of the Church on the eternal generation of the Son, annihilationism, and hyperpreterism, happen to be correct, meaning, they conform to Mathison’s own interpretation of Scripture. According to the Reymond, Fudge and Stevens’ interpretations of Scripture, respectively, the traditional positions of the Church are incorrect. Mathison himself rejects the teachings of the Council of Trent, because they do not conform to his interpretation of Scripture. So Mathison’s criticism’s of Reymond, Fudge and Stevens amount to “you are not conforming to my interpretation of Scripture.” And the proper response from Reymond, Fudge, and Stevens is, “So what? You have no more authority than do we, that we should conform our interpretations to yours. Moreover, you too pick and choose among the councils, according to your own interpretation of Scripture. So there is no principled difference between your practice and ours.”⁶²

Mathison addresses the heart of the issue when explaining how solo scriptura undermines ecclesial authority by treating the individual as having final interpretive authority. He writes:

Solo scriptura also undermines the legitimate ecclesiastical authority established by Christ. It negates the duty to submit to those who rule over you, because it removes the possibility of an authoritative teaching office in the Church. To place any kind of real hermeneutical authority in an elder or teacher undermines the doctrine of solo scriptura. Those adherents of solo scriptura who do have pastors and teachers to whom they look for leadership do so under the stipulation that the individual is to evaluate the leader’s teaching by Scripture first. What this means in practice is that the individual is to measure his teacher’s interpretation of Scripture against his own interpretation of Scripture. The playing field is leveled when neither the ecumenical creeds nor the Church has any more authority than the individual believer, but Christ did not establish a level playing field. He did not establish a democracy. He established a Church in which men and women are given different gifts, some of which involve a special gift of teaching and leading. These elders have responsibility for the flock and a certain authority over it. Scripture would not call us to submit to those who had no real authority over us (Heb 13:17; Acts 20:28).⁶³

Here Mathison is arguing that solo scriptura undermines legitimate ecclesial authority established by Christ. It does so by denying the “authoritative teaching office” in the Church, and the “hermeneutical authority” of those holding that office. How does it do that? Mathison is explicit: “the individual measures his teacher’s interpretation of Scripture against his own interpretation of Scripture.” For Mathison, God did not establish the Church as a democracy; rather, He gave specific gifts to men to teach and govern His Church.

The problem, however, is that the very basis for the existence of Protestantism as such, the very basis for the separating of Protestants from the Catholic Church, is this very act. The individual measured his teacher’s interpretation of Scripture against his own interpretation of Scripture, and in doing so performatively denied the authority of the teaching office of the Catholic Church. Mathison wants to affirm genuine ecclesial authority as a secondary authority to which individuals should submit, but his position is contravened in two ways. First, the existence of Protestantism as such is based on the legitimacy of the individual rejecting the established ecclesial authority on the basis of his own interpretation.⁶⁴ So Mathison is trying to propose a system incompatible with Protestantism’s historic foundation, and thus intrinsically incompatible with Protestantism as such.

Second, given Mathison’s denial of apostolic succession, he cannot make a principled appeal to any ecclesial authority as that to which every individual ought to submit. Nothing can give what it does not have. But Mathison’s foundational starting point does not include apostolic succession, and hence de facto it begins with each individual as his own highest interpretive and teaching authority. Therefore no qualitatively greater ecclesial authority than the teaching and interpretive authority derived from the “permission of those who sufficiently agree with me” is available to Mathison. Every secondary authority, given Mathison’s starting point, can be nothing more than a permission extended from the individual to the ‘secondary authority’ to function as an authority for the individual at that present time.

Mathison is right about the implications of denying creedal authority. He writes:

The modern Evangelical denial of creedal authority necessarily results in the impossibility of authoritatively and objectively defining the propositional content of Scripture. The very act of authoritatively defining the propositional doctrinal content of Scripture would be the creation of a creed — that which is deemed unacceptable within the framework of solo scriptura. This leaves the responsibility for defining Scripture’s doctrinal content to each individual. In other words, the modern Evangelical denial of genuine creedal authority reduces the doctrinal content of Christianity to mere subjectivism.⁶⁵

The modern Evangelical church must come to the realization that if the ecumenical creeds have no authority, then there are no essential or necessary doctrines of the Christian faith. There would be only subjective individual opinions of what the “essential truths” of the Christian faith are.⁶⁶

He is correct that solo scriptura undermines the possibility of authoritatively defining the propositional doctrinal content of Scripture. He is correct that undermining the authority of the creeds practically entails that “there are no essential or necessary doctrines of the Christian faith.” But Mathison’s position does exactly the same thing, because by denying apostolic succession, he undermines the possibility of a creed having any more authority than anyone’s subjective opinion. Apart from apostolic succession, the only ultimate basis for a creed’s ‘authority’ is (1) it agrees with one’s own interpretation of Scripture and/or (2) it was formulated by persons who sufficiently shared one’s own interpretation of Scripture. But both of those reasons reduce to “when I submit (so long as I agree), the one to whom I submit is me,” the very essence of the solo scriptura position Mathison rightly rejects.

How does Mathison attempt to defend his position from this sort of critique? He claims that the authority of the ecumenical creeds follows from the perspicuity of Scripture.

It is interesting to observe that the authority of these ecumenical creeds necessarily follows from one of the fundamental qualities of Scripture itself — its perspicuity. Scripture itself indicates it’s [sic] essential perspicuity or clarity on basic and essential matters.⁶⁷

If we confess the perspicuity of Scripture, then a confession of the ecumenical creeds inevitably follows. The ecumenical creeds are simply the written form of the confession of the faith of the universal Church. They are a confession of what the Church as a whole has read in the Scriptures.⁶⁸

[A] denial of this consensus of faith is not only a denial of the perspicuity of Scripture, it is in effect a denial of Scripture itself. Why? If the essential teachings of Scripture are clear (perspicuous); if the Holy Spirit has been promised to guide the Church into the knowledge of the truth of Scripture; if the entire Church for thousands of years confesses to being taught by the Spirit the same essential truths in Scripture, then it follows that those truths are what Scripture says.⁶⁹

This only compounds the problems with Mathison’s position. If the authority of the ecumenical creeds only followed from the perspicuity of Scripture, there would be no need for the creeds in the first place, since the creeds would have restated only what was already plainly explicit in Scripture. This would entail that all those who opposed the creeds were blind, deaf, and stupid. But history does not support that notion. The Arians, for example, were not unintelligent. They argued from the Scriptures that Christ was the first of God’s creation, a lesser deity, and the  highest of all created things. The Macedonians and Nestorians and Sabellians, etc. all argued from Scripture for their respective heresies. Resolving these disputes was precisely the primary purpose of the ecumenical councils. So the purpose of the ecumenical councils shows that Scripture alone was not sufficient to resolve the theological disputes. And this shows that the ecumenical creeds are neither restatements of Scripture (which would simply leave the dispute unresolved) nor are they limited to statements simply and obviously deducible from Scripture by all persons of at least ordinary intelligence. The ecumenical creeds address doctrinal questions not clearly and explicitly stated in Scripture. Hence the authority of the ecumenical creeds cannot come from the perspicuity of Scripture. Mathison’s position is stuck between a rock and a hard place. He wants the creeds and the Church to have secondary authority so as to avoid solo scriptura, but his rejection of apostolic succession leaves any secondary authority with no possible basis except agreement with one’s own interpretation of Scripture.⁷⁰

His position also faces similar problem consisting of the following dilemma. He claims that it is “to the Church that we must turn for the true interpretation of the Scripture, for it is in the Church that the gospel is found.”⁷¹ But at the same time he claims that “Because of the Church’s propensity to wander from the true path, she needs a standard of truth that remains constant and sure, and that standard cannot be herself. It can only be the inspired and infallible Scripture.”⁷² So, since for Mathison all appeals to Scripture are appeals to interpretations of Scripture, then when, as Mathison claims, the Church wanders from the true path, whose interpretation of Scripture will correct her? If it is the individual’s, then it is false that we must turn to the Church for the true interpretation of Scripture. The individual has no more reason to believe a priori that the Church’s present interpretation of Scripture is correct than he has to believe that the Church now stands in dire need of correction from his own lips on the basis of his own personal interpretation of Scripture. On the other hand, if it does not belong to the individual to correct the Church when she “wanders from the true path,” then it can belong to none other than the Church to correct herself when she wanders from the true path.” So the errant Church is then supposed to be corrected by her own erronious interpretation of Scripture. Not only does that seem implausible, if Protestants truly believed that to be the case, they would simply have remained in the Catholic Church, waiting for the ‘erring’ Church to be corrected back to the truth on the basis of her own erroneous interpretation of Scripture. But Protestants did not remain in the Catholic Church; and this indicates that Protestants did not and do not in fact believe that Scripture corrects the Church when she “wanders from the true path.” The problematic assumption in Mathison’s position entailing this dilemma is his notion that the Church “wanders from the true path,” something he has to hold in order to justify being a Protestant.⁷³

V. Objections and Replies

A. Tu Quoque: “The Catholic Position Does not Avoid Solo Scriptura“

One objection to our argument that there is no principled difference between sola scriptura and solo scriptura is that the Catholic position likewise ultimately reduces to solo scriptura. This is so, according to the objection, because the individual who becomes Catholic must start in the same epistemic position as the person who becomes Protestant. In choosing to become Catholic, he has simply chosen the denomination that best conforms to his own interpretation of Scripture. He places himself under the authority of the Catholic bishops in the same way that a Lutheran places himself under the authority of a Lutheran pastor, that a Baptist places himself under the authority of a Baptist pastor, or that a Presbyterian places himself under a Presbyterian pastor. Hence if the person who becomes Protestant retains final interpretive authority, then so does the person who becomes Catholic.

The objection is understandable, but it can be made only by those who do not see the principled difference between the discovery of the Catholic Church, and joining a Protestant denomination or congregation. Of course a person during the process of becoming Catholic is not under the authority of the Church. At that stage, he or she is like the Protestant in that respect. But the Catholic finds something principally different, and properly finds it by way of qualitatively different criteria. The Protestant is seeking a group of persons who believe, teach and practice what his interpretation of Scripture indicates was the belief, teaching and practice of the Apostles. He retains his final interpretive authority so long as he remains Protestant. No Protestant denomination has the authority to bind his conscience, because [in his mind] the Church must always remains subject to Scripture, which really means that the Church must always remains subject to [his interpretation of] Scripture, or at least that he is not ultimately subject to anyone’s interpretation but his own.

The person becoming Catholic, by contrast, is seeking out the Church that Christ founded. He does this not by finding that group of persons who share his interpretation of Scripture. Rather, he locates in history those whom the Apostles appointed and authorized, observes what they say and do viz-a-viz the transmission of teaching and interpretive authority, traces that line of successive authorizations down through history to the present day to a living Magisterium, and then submits to what this present-day Magisterium is teaching. By finding the Magisterium, he finds something that has the divine authority to bind the conscience.

Here we should say something about what it means to bind the conscience. It is of the very nature of law to bind the conscience. Law does not coerce the will, but law binds the conscience precisely insofar as reason grasps it as the standard or rule to which our beliefs, words and actions ought to conform. God’s law, written on our hearts in the form of the natural law, informs the conscience of every man. Once one knows the law, then one knows acting against the law to be unlawful. Likewise, once one knows the Church’s magisterial authority, and her divinely revealed laws and dogmas concerning faith and morals, then one’s conscience is bound to believe and obey them. One knows that to disbelieve the Church’s dogmas is heresy and sinful, because one knows that what the Church has definitively determined, the Holy Spirit has ipso facto spoken. When the Church, with the authority she has received from Christ through the Apostles, definitively declares dogma, she ipso facto binds the conscience insofar as the hearer knows both the content of these dogmas and the divine authority by which they have been determined.

So for the person becoming Catholic, when he recognizes the authority of the Magisterium, he recognizes that his beliefs and interpretation of Scripture must conform to the authoritative teachings of the Church’s Magisterium. “When the Magisterium of the Church makes an infallible pronouncement that a teaching is found in Revelation,” he assents to it by an act of faith, believing this pronouncement to be the teaching of Christ, on account of the divine authority given to the Magisterium through apostolic succession to teach in Christ’s name and with His authority.⁷⁴ In this way, his faith in Christ is expressed as an act of faith in the infallible pronouncement of the Church’s Magisterium. In those teachings which are not infallible, he also, as an act of faith in Christ, gives religious submission of intellect and will, even while recognizing the fallibility of those teaching.⁷⁵

The Protestant, by contrast, in joining a Protestant community does not find the Magisterium. That is because he does not find something that can bind his conscience regarding the canon of Scripture, the interpretation of Scripture, and the identity of orthodoxy and heresy. This is why in his Protestant community he perpetually retains final interpretive authority, because no decision of that community has the authority to bind his conscience. This is why Mathison, drawing from Turretin, claims that “the individual conscience cannot be bound by anything other than the Word of God.”⁷⁶ And since, for Mathison, “All appeals to Scripture are appeals to interpretations of Scripture,”⁷⁷ it follows that the individual conscience cannot be bound by anything other than his own interpretation of Scripture.

Here we see precisely why the tu quoque fails against the Catholic. The person who becomes Catholic finds something that binds his conscience viz-a-viz the canon of Scripture and the interpretation of Scripture; he finds the Magisterium that the incarnate Christ established and authorized. By contrast, the person who becomes Protestant, finds nothing outside himself that binds his conscience viz-a-viz the canon of Scripture and the interpretation of Scripture. For this reason, until a person finds the Magisterium, he remains his own final interpretive authority, because he knows of nothing that can bind his conscience regarding the interpretation of Scripture. But when a person finds the Magisterium, and recognizes it for what it is, he immediately ceases to be his own final interpretive authority. He recognizes that his interpretation of Scripture ought to be conformed to the teaching and interpretation of the Magisterium, and that to reject the teaching of the Magisterium would be to reject Christ, just as Jesus said to the Apostles:

The one who listens to you listens to Me, and the one who rejects you rejects Me; and he who rejects Me rejects the One who sent Me. (Luke 10:16)

The Protestant epistemological stance, by contrast, is exemplified in the words of Martin Luther at the Diet of Worms:

Unless I am convicted by Scripture and plain reason — I do not accept the authority of popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other — my conscience is captive to the Word of God.⁷⁸

Luther’s statement captures the very essence of Protestant religious epistemology. All Protestants who followed Luther’s example took this very same stance, subjecting the Church’s teaching, councils, and interpretive tradition to the standard of their own interpretation of Scripture, picking and choosing from them as though they were mere advice. Since according to Mathison “all appeals to Scripture are appeals to interpretations of Scripture,” Luther’s claim that his conscience was “captive to the Word of God” means in actuality that his conscience was ultimately bound by his own interpretation of Scripture. That very claim, namely, that our conscience is bound ultimately by our own interpretation of Scripture, is contrary to the perpetual teaching of the Church, because that claim denies that Christ established a perpetual teaching authority in His Church, a magisterial authority through which the Holy Spirit works to determine definitively matters of faith and morals, and to which all Christians are to be subject. If the Church has the authority from Christ to give the definitive decision regarding some question of faith or morals, then she has the authority to bind the conscience ultimately regarding such matters. If the Church did not have the authority to bind the conscience, she could do nothing more than offer advice, because in that case no decision she made regarding faith or morals would be definitive.

The follow-up objection to our argument takes the form of a dilemma. The dilemma runs like this. Either the individual needs the guidance of an interpretive authority when interpreting Scripture, or not. If the individual needs the guidance of an interpretive authority when interpreting Scripture, then he will need the guidance of another interpretive authority when interpreting the first interpretive authority. And he will need the guidance of third interpretive authority when interpreting the second interpretive authority. That would lead to an infinite regress. But there cannot be an infinite regress, hence the individual does not need the guidance of an interpretive authority when interpreting Scripture.

The problem with this dilemma is that it ignores the qualitative ontological distinction between persons and books, and so it falsely assumes that if a book needs an authoritative interpreter in order to function as an ecclesial authority, so must a living person. A book contains a monologue with respect to the reader. An author can often anticipate the thoughts and questions that might arise in the mind of the reader. But a book cannot hear the reader’s questions here and now, and answer them. A living person, however, can do so. A living person can engage in genuine dialogue with the reader, whereas a book cannot. Fr. Kimel talks about that here when he quotes Chesterton as saying that though we can put a living person in the dock, we cannot put a book in the dock. In this respect, a person can do what a book cannot; a person can correct global misunderstandings and answer comprehensive interpretive questions. A book by its very nature has a limited intrinsic potency for interpretive self-clarification; a person, on the other hand, by his very nature has, in principle, an unlimited intrinsic potency with respect to interpretive self-clarification. This unlimited potency with respect to interpretive self-clarification ensures that the hermeneutical spiral may reach its end. A book cannot speak more about itself than it does at the moment at which it is completed. A person, by contrast, remains perpetually capable of clarifying further any of his previous speech-acts.

This objection can also take the following form. Even if the Church possesses final interpretive authority, yet because the individual must nevertheless interpret the Church’s dogmatic pronouncements, therefore, the individual must be the final interpretive authority of the Church’s dogmatic pronouncements. This objection conflates two senses of the term ‘final.’ ‘Final’ can mean the terminus of a movement or of a series of movements, as an airplane has a final destination, the terminus of a series of flights for the day. ‘Final’ can also mean the terminus in an order or hierarchy, as the Commander in Chief is for the military.⁷⁹ In a communication, the individual receiving that communication is, by definition, the terminus of the movement whereby knowledge is transmitted. He is, in that sense, the final interpreter. But he is not thereby the final interpretive authority in the sense of a terminus in an order or hierarchy. He may be the terminus of the motion of the communication, while remaining subordinate in the order of interpretive authority. The exercise of interpretive authority by the Magisterium, say, at an ecumenical council, does not prevent believers from interpreting Scripture or any other communication. Nor does it withhold from them the skill by which to interpret Sacred Scripture. On the contrary, the exercise of this teaching and interpretive authority provides a supernatural light by which the believer ought to interpret Scripture. We ignore or disregard that interpretive authority at our peril, because it is God-given authority, for our good.⁸⁰

A related objection takes the following form. Civil government leaders have genuine authority, yet they are neither infallible nor can they bind the conscience nor do they require some kind of analog to apostolic succession. Therefore neither infallibility nor the power to bind the conscience nor apostolic succession is necessary for genuine Magisterial authority in the Church. In response, it is true that civil government leaders have genuine civil authority, which they have received from God. And it is true that they are not infallible. But it is not true that they cannot bind the conscience. Civil laws bind the conscience in that we are obligated to obey them, so long as they do not conflict with a higher law, whether that be the natural law, or the law of God as revealed through the Church. Hence the nature of genuine civil authority does not show that the Magisterium cannot bind the conscience of the faithful.

In addition, the nature of the Church’s Magisterial authority is not rightly determined by determining what nature of authority is sufficient for civil government. Such a method would presuppose both that the Church is equivalent in nature to a civil society and that there is no existing ecclesial authority that provides the definitive answer to questions about the nature of the Church’s authority. Hence the fallibility of civil authority does not show that the Church’s Magisterial authority is always likewise fallible. Most importantly, Magisterial authority differs from civil authority in that the Magisterium of the Church provides the authoritative interpretation both of natural law and divine law supernaturally-revealed. For this reason, while the civil authority cannot bind the conscience with respect to natural and divine law, the Magisterium of the Church does bind the conscience with respect to natural and divine law. Those who know this can never, in good conscience, oppose the definitive teaching of the Magisterium in matters of faith and morals, by claiming that they must obey God rather than men. The definitive teaching of the Magisterium is the voice of God to the Catholic, just as conscience is the voice of God to the pagan. This is why the Catholic must seek to conform his conscience according to the definitive teaching of the Church in matters of faith and morals, because the Church’s Magisterium is a higher authority than his conscience (i.e. than reason alone).

Regarding whether civil authorities acquire their authority through some kind of analog to apostolic succession, the answer is both yes and no, though in different respects. The rightful ruler in a civil society is the one who has been selected according to the process specified by the law. A usurper, no matter how popular, is not the rightful ruler. In this respect, the way in which a civil authority acquires his civil authority is similar to the way a person holding ecclesial authority acquires that ecclesial authority, because an ecclesial authority rightly acquires such authority by a process already laid down in Church law and tradition. And we know that the civil authority has been given his authority by God’s providence, as Jesus indicates in John 19:11 in speaking to Pilate. And St. Paul teaches the same in Romans 13:1.

Magisterial authority in the Church, however, cannot be acquired only through providence. If there were no essential difference between these two authorities, the Church would be nothing more than a civil society, and this would contradict Christ’s statement, “My kingdom is not of this world.” (John 18:36). When Jesus says that His Kingdom is not of this world, He is not saying that His Kingdom is located in some other world; He is saying that His Kingdom, which is in this world, does not have its authority from the world, i.e. from the natural order. What makes the Church a supernatural society, and not merely a natural society, is precisely that the authority by which she is governed is a supernatural authority. That supernatural authority is Christ’s own authority. His authority is supernatural because He is God. And He gave His supernatural authority sacramentally to His Apostles, and they in turn handed it on to their successors.⁸¹ For this reason, without apostolic succession, the Church would be a natural society providentially governed by God, another nation among the nations. Only by apostolic succession is she a divine society that does not compete with natural societies, because grace builds on nature. In short, civil authorities acquire their natural civic authority by God’s providence through lawful processes. Since the Church is a supernatural society, ecclesial authorities cannot acquire their authority naturally under providential guidance. Ecclesial authority is not natural authority, but supernatural authority, and therefore requires succession from a supernatural source.

B. Sola Ecclesia: The Church Is Autonomous, a Law unto Itself, and Unaccountable

A second type of objection follows directly from the preceding paragraph. According to this objection, if the Church’s Magisterium has final interpretive authority, then the Church is placing itself above Scripture, making itself autonomous, and entirely unaccountable. Mathison himself makes this sort of objection against the Catholic Church. Recall that for Mathison the problem with solo scriptura is that it “results in the autonomy of the individual believer.”⁸² He claims that Catholic doctrine makes the Church similarly autonomous. He writes:

The fundamental problem with “solo” Scriptura is that it results in autonomy. It results in final authority being placed somewhere other than the Word of God. It shares this problem with the Roman Catholic doctrine. The only difference is that the Roman Catholic doctrine places final authority in the church while “solo” Scriptura places final authority in each individual believer. Every doctrine and practice is measured against a final standard, and that final standard is the individual’s personal judgment of what is and is not biblical.⁸³

One difficulty for Mathison is that if, as he argues, “the church” has greater interpretive authority than the individual, then Mathison cannot avoid the result that “the church” must likewise be ‘final’ in the sense he thinks is objectionable. In that case it follows that his own interpreters must also be subject to the charges of “autonomy” and to a Reformed version of “sola ecclesia.”  Mathison’s objection to the Catholic Church’s position is that in relation to Scripture the Catholic Church is hermeneutically equivalent to a large subjective individual composed of many individuals — a collective version of the individual proponent of solo scriptura — and that the Catholic Church therefore falls victim to the same problem of individualism found in solo scriptura, except that it does so in a large scale, institutional way. So if he thinks all this follows against the Catholic Church because the Catholic Church (as opposed to Scripture) has, or makes itself out to have,  final interpretive authority, then, if it follows that in his own sola scriptura position “the church” is also the final interpretive authority, then his position must also face the same problems that he attributes to the Catholic position.

Mathison clarifies this somewhat by claiming that what makes the Catholic Magisterium autonomous viz-a-viz Scripture is the notion that the Magisterium is infallible under certain conditions. He writes:

Finally, we must always be mindful that claims to infallibility by the Church or any member of the Church inevitably lead to autonomy on the part of the one or ones claiming such infallibility. Even such qualified infallibility as that which is claimed by Rome has led to virtual autonomy. The Roman church has become a law unto herself. Against what higher standard can an infallible Church be measured? None. The only standard against which Rome allows herself to be measured is Rome.⁸⁴

Mathison thinks that if the Church claims to be guided infallibly in her definitive formulations of dogma, this makes her a “law unto herself,” not subject to a higher standard. And that result, thinks Mathison, is precisely the mistake of solo scriptura; it makes final authority rest some place other than the Word of God.

Let’s consider this objection carefully. Mathison claims that “the only difference [between Catholic doctrine and the 'solo scriptura' position] is that the Roman Catholic doctrine places final authority in the Church while solo Scriptura places final authority in each individual believer.” Notice that he does not specify what he means by ‘final authority.’ The term can refer to two different types of authority. It can refer to the authority of the deposit of faith entrusted by Christ to the Apostles, or it can refer to teaching and interpretive authority with respect to that deposit of faith. Mathison seems to conflate the two types, or fail to distinguish between them, as though having final interpretive authority with respect to Scripture is to be equal in authority to the deposit of faith.

There is a difference, however, between the authority of the deposit of faith, and interpretive authority. We can see this difference already in Tertullian, who writes:

Our appeal [in debating with the heretics], therefore, must not be made to the Scriptures; nor must controversy be admitted on points in which victory will either be impossible, or uncertain, or not certain enough. For a resort to the Scriptures would but result in placing both parties on equal footing, whereas the natural order of procedure requires one question to be asked first, which is the only one now that should be discussed: “With whom lies that very faith to which the Scriptures belong? From what and through whom, and when, and to whom, has been handed down that rule by which men become Christians? For wherever it shall be manifest that the true Christian rule and faith shall be, there will likewise be the true Scriptures and expositions thereof, and all the Christian traditions.⁸⁵

Since this is the case, in order that the truth may be adjudged to belong to us, ‘as many as walk according to the rule,’ which the church has handed down from the apostles, the apostles from Christ, and Christ from God, the reason of our position is clear, when it determines that heretics ought not to be allowed to challenge an appeal to the Scriptures, since we, without the scriptures, prove that they have nothing to do with the Scriptures. For as they are heretics, they cannot be true Christians, because it is not from Christ that they get that which they pursue of their own mere choice, and from the pursuit incur and admit the name of heretics. Thus not being Christians, they have acquired no right to the Christian Scriptures; and it may be very fairly said to them, ‘Who are you?’”⁸⁶

Before debating the interpretation of Scripture, says Tertullian, we must first discover who has teaching and interpretive authority with respect to the deposit of faith. To do this, we locate those to whom the deposit of faith was entrusted, as handed down from the Apostles. Tertullian was writing about one hundred years after the death of the last Apostle. So the method he indicates for locating interpretive authority was not limited only to the generation after the Apostles. Tertullian indicates here a relation between interpretive authority and apostolic succession. In each generation, those persons having interpretive authority viz-a-viz the Scriptures are those to whom the deposit of faith was entrusted in the previous generation, all the way back to the Apostles themselves.

In this way Tertullian provides a clear example of the Catholic understanding of interpretive authority, and the basis for it in apostolic succession. Regarding the interpretive authority of the Church viz-a-viz the individual, the Council of Trent stated the following:

Furthermore, to check unbridled spirits, it decrees that no one relying on his own judgment shall, in matters of faith and morals pertaining to the edification of Christian doctrine, distorting the Holy Scriptures in accordance with his own conceptions, presume to interpret them contrary to that sense which holy mother Church, to whom it belongs to judge of their true sense and interpretation, has held and holds, or even contrary to the unanimous teaching of the Fathers.⁸⁷

And the First Vatican Council reaffirmed this, saying:

Now since the decree on the interpretation of Holy Scripture, profitably made by the Council of Trent, with the intention of constraining rash speculation, has been wrongly interpreted by some, we renew that decree and declare its meaning to be as follows: that in matters of faith and morals, belonging as they do to the establishing of Christian doctrine, that meaning of Holy Scripture must be held to be the true one, which Holy mother Church held and holds, since it is her right to judge of the true meaning and interpretation of Holy Scripture. In consequence, it is not permissible for anyone to interpret Holy Scripture in a sense contrary to this, or indeed against the unanimous consent of the fathers.⁸⁸

In the Catholic understanding, the individual’s own interpretation of Scripture does not have equal or greater authority than does that of the Magisterium. One of the primary tasks of the Magisterium is to give the authoritative interpretation of the deposit of faith.

The task of giving an authentic interpretation of the Word of God, whether in its written form or in the form of Tradition, has been entrusted to the living teaching office of the Church alone. Its authority in this matter is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ.⁸⁹

The pronouncements of the teaching and interpretative authority of the Church do not hold the same intrinsic authority as the deposit of faith, just as the Apostles were not equal in authority to Christ Himself. Christ has greater authority than did the Apostles, but that does not entail that when the Apostles were preaching and teaching they had no authority, or that they only had authority when what they were saying was divinely inspired. Having interpretive authority does not entail that the interpreter has the same or more authority than what is being interpreted. Jesus told them, “The one who listens to you listens to Me, and the one who rejects you rejects Me.” (Luke 10:16) When the Apostles testified that Jesus is the Christ, they did not take away from Christ’s authority; they spoke with His authority, by His authorization. But if interpretive authority were ipso facto equivalent in authority to that which it had been given the authority to interpret, then since the Apostles had the authority to speak in Christ’s name and interpret and explain what He had said, it would follow that the Apostles and Christ had equal authority. The Apostles and Christ, however, do not have equal authority. Therefore, interpretive authority is not ipso facto equivalent in authority to that which it has been given the authority to interpret. An authorized witness can give an authoritative testimony concerning an authority greater than himself; otherwise no one could have come to believe in the divinity of Jesus through the authority of the Apostles’ testimony. That is why, according to Catholic doctrine, the Magisterium “is not superior to the Word of God, but is its servant.”

Yet this Magisterium is not superior to the Word of God, but is its servant. It teaches only what has been handed on to it. At the divine command and with the help of the Holy Spirit, it listens to this devotedly, guards it with dedication and expounds it faithfully. All that it proposes for belief as being divinely revealed is drawn from this single deposit of faith.⁹⁰

Protestants sometimes mistakenly think that the Catholic position is sola ecclesia, but that is inaccurate. There is a three-fold arrangement of ecclesial authority consisting of Sacred Tradition, Sacred Scripture, and Magisterium, each according to its own mode:

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.⁹¹

In Catholic theology Scripture is something known and properly understood only within the bosom of the Church, and only as explicated by the Magisterium of the Church. Of course this does not preclude private study of Scripture; that is encouraged.⁹² But in the Catholic Church Sacred Scripture is something properly known and understood through the Magisterium’s teaching authority guided by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit operates through the Magisterium to cast a supernatural light upon Scripture, so that it may be understood according to the same Spirit by Whom it was inspired.

So, in sum, the authority of Scripture is the authority of the deposit of faith. The authority of the Magisterium, on the other hand, is interpretive authority with respect to the deposit of faith. These are two different types or modes of authority. They do not compete with each other, but complement each other, and are mutually dependent. The Magisterium cannot exist as an interpretive authority, without the sacred deposit of the Word of God. Similarly, the Sacred Scriptures cannot provide their own authentic and authoritative interpretation to the Church, and so require the Magisterium in order to fulfill their purpose in the Church.

Mathison indicates that it is not teaching and interpretive authority per se, that (in his view) entails Magisterial autonomy. It is primarily the doctrine of Magisterial infallibility.⁹³ There are at least two principled reasons why a Protestant might object to the doctrine that the Magisterium is infallible. First, one might believe that if any doctrinal pronouncements by the Magisterium are infallible, then such pronouncements are equivalent in authority to Scripture. Second, he might think that if any doctrinal pronouncements by the Magisterium are infallible, then there is no court of appeals for such doctrines.

Consider the first reason. If two statements are true, this does not entail that they are equally authoritative. Authority is not reducible to truth. The statement “I exist” is no less true than Christ’s statement, “I am the way, the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.” (John 14:6) Both statements are equally true, but the latter has greater authority because it was spoken by God Himself. Since infallibility means protected from error, therefore it only means that the result is true. It does not, in itself, determine the degree of authority the statement has. Authority in this sense is that to which submission and obedience is due from those entrusted to it. Reducing authority to truth conceptually eliminates authority. That is because such a reduction would imply that we need only submit to authority when the authority speaks what we already believe, or can independently verify, to be the truth.  Hence, the result would eliminate authority, because “When I submit (so long as I agree), the one to whom I submit is me.”

So the true interpretation of Scripture is not authoritative because the interpretation is true, but this interpretation can be known to be true because it has been divinely authorized. An authoritative interpretation of Scripture is authoritative not because it is true (though it is true), but because of the authority given by Christ to the Magisterium to which is due submission of mind and will regarding the authentic interpretation of Scripture. For this reason the infallibility of a doctrinal pronouncement by the Magisterium does not make that doctrinal pronouncement as authoritative or more authoritative than Scripture itself.

The other objection to Magisterial infallibility is that it removes the possibility of a court of appeals for such doctrines. More specifically, given this doctrine of infallibility, the Scripture cannot be the “final court of appeal” if the Magisterium has already definitively and infallibly ruled on some matter of faith or morals, and there is no court of appeal beyond the Magisterium. In reply, recall that for Mathison,

All appeals to Scripture are appeals to interpretations of Scripture. The only real question is: whose interpretation?⁹⁴

There are a few things we can say here. First, if all appeals to Scripture are appeals to interpretations of Scripture, then Scripture alone cannot function as the “final court of appeals.” So Mathison’s requirement that Scripture be the final court of appeal is incompatible with his claim that all appeals to Scripture are appeals to interpretation of Scripture.

Second, if the Church’s definitive rulings are infallible, then there is no reason to challenge them by appealling to some higher authority. It makes no sense to appeal an infallible decision. So Mathison’s autonomy charge against the Catholic doctrine of Magisterial infallibility only applies if the Catholic doctrine of Magisterial infallibility is false. Hence in that respect Mathison’s charge begs the question (i.e. presumes precisely what is in question). Wishing to appeal an infallible ruling begs the question, by presuming that the infallible ruling is fallible. The problem in that case is not that the Magisterium has a charism of infallibility, but that the person requiring an additional court of appeals has not recognized that the Magisterium has this charism.

Third, when Mathison claims that the Church’s Magisterium needs to be accountable, he only pushes back the question. Accountable to whom? It cannot be Scripture itself, for the reason shown above, that Scripture needs to be interpreted. So it must be some other person or persons. Designate those to whom the Magisterium is accountable as x. Now, to whom are x accountable? Designate those to whom x are accountable as y. Now to whom are y accountable? We can keep asking this question. Either there is an infinite regress, or there is a final interpretive authority. But an infinite regress of accountability is absurd. So if there is to be accountability with respect to doctrinal and interpretive judgments, there must be a highest or final interpretive authority. Therefore the request for the Magisterium to be accountable to some other body is a denial that the Magisterium is the Magisterium, and a presumption that there is another Magisterium having final interpretive authority.

But the person who wants the Magisterium to be accountable to some other body, can only be satisfied if that body is either himself or those whom he approves. Otherwise his dissatisfaction with the lack of accountability would necessarily remain, for any body which has final interpretive authority. Hence the person who demands that the Magisterium be accountable to some other body is in actuality demanding that the Magisterium be accountable (directly or indirectly) to himself. And that is another way of showing that the demand is in essence an implicit arrogation to oneself of Magisterial authority. It is an expression of the maxim: “When I submit (so long as I agree), the one to whom I submit is me.”⁹⁵

VI. Implications

The Objections to Solo are Objections to Sola

In this paper we have argued that apart from apostolic succession, there is no principled difference between solo scriptura and sola scriptura. If our argument is sound, it follows that the criticisms Mathison raises against solo scriptura apply no less to sola scriptura. If “hermeneutical chaos and anarchy” result from solo scriptura, then they likewise result from sola scriptura. If solo scriptura leads to the “multiplication of schisms,” so does sola scriptura. If solo scriptura entails that the creeds have no “real authority,” then sola scriptura likewise entails that the creeds have no real authority. If the necessary result of solo scriptura is a practical relativism concerning the content of Scripture, then this too is the necessary result of sola scriptura. If solo scriptura “destroys” the authority of Scripture “by making the meaning of Scripture dependent upon the judgment of each individual,” then so does sola scriptura. Given the soundness of our argument, it follows that the claim by various Catholics that sola scriptura is the source of Protestant fragmentation and division in which each person interprets Scripture as seems right in his own eyes, is not a criticism of a straw man, but is in fact quite accurate.

Concerning solo scriptura, Mathison writes,

By denying the authority of the corporate judgment of the Church, solo scriptura has exalted the individual judgment of the individual to the place of final authority. It is the individual who decides what Scripture means. It is the individual who judges between doctrines on the basis of his individual interpretation of Scripture. It is the individual who is sovereign.”⁹⁶

In light of our argument that there is no principled difference between sola scriptura and solo scriptura, Mathison’s criticism of solo scriptura turns out to be a criticism of sola scriptura. So long as the individual retains final interpretive authority, it is the “the individual who is sovereign.” Yet as we have shown, in sola scriptura, the individual retains final interpretive authority. Hence it follows that in sola scriptura, it is the individual who is sovereign.

Solo Scriptura is the Fuller Manifestation and Outworking of Sola Scriptura

Moreover, our argument helps explain the rise over the last one hundred and fifty years of the explicit embrace of a solo scriptura approach within Protestantism. Philosophies and theologies more fully manifest their nature over time. If there is no principled difference between sola scriptura and solo scriptura, then we would expect the sola scriptura doctrine taught by the early Protestant to come to manifest its true nature over time as outright solo scriptura. Sola scriptura could temporarily conceal its true nature, as Protestantism lived on the inertial remnants of Catholic conceptions of sacramental authority. Sacramental magisterial authority is supernatural in origin, as we explained above, because the Church is a divine institution. The denial of sacramental magisterial authority closes a person off to the Church as supernatural, leaving only the possibility of democratic (bottom-up) man-made authority under providential guidance. As Protestants have come to understand more clearly the democratic nature of Protestant ecclesial authority, they have come to see that as Protestants, they themselves as individuals, hold final interpretive authority, and have come to live as such. This explains the widespread solo scriptura phenomenon within Protestantism that Mathison decries. Louis Bouyer concurs, saying:

The main difficulty Protestants have with the Catholic Church (and with the separated Eastern church as well) is on the subject of authority, and more particularly the teaching authority she claims. The opposition of those Protestants who are closest to the spirit of primitive Protestantism rests, as we have said, on the fear that whatever is conceded to the authority of the Church detracts correspondingly from the authority of the Word of God in the Bible. The opposition of those who adhere to doctrinal liberalism, however, while equally strong, has a different object, quite the reverse of the other. They object to the authority of the Church not for replacing another authority held to be divine and, as such, claiming man’s exclusive and undivided submission. They object to it simply because it is authority and therefore something inimical to the individual religious conscience.

This being the case, we may be tempted to believe that Protestantism, in the course of its development, has passed from one extreme to the other. That is to a certain extent, but not absolutely, true. The Protestantism which rejects the authority of the Church because it rejects all authority has come out of the Protestantism which rejected the authority of the Church because of the fear it wronged that other authority, held to be sovereign, of the Scriptures. If it was possible for the first to come from the second, it must somehow have been contained therein.⁹⁷

Bouyer presents two stances within Protestantism toward Magisterial authority. One of them, which he refers to as those closest to early Protestantism, fears that Magisterial authority detracts from the authority of Scripture, as though the two are the same sort of authority, and hence must be in competition with each other. Liberal Protestantism, by contrast, likewise objects to Magisterial authority, not for fear that it might detract from the authority of Scripture, but simply because it rejects authority. We might be tempted, claims Bouyer, to think that liberal Protestantism’s attitude toward authority is the opposite extreme of early Protestantism’s notion of authority. But according to Bouyer, that would be inaccurate. The liberal rejection of authority came out of the earlier Protestant conception of authority, precisely because it was somehow contained within it.

Recovering Apostolic Succession is the only way to avoid Solo

How then can Protestants avoid solo scriptura? Only by recovering apostolic succession. Solo scriptura logically follows the denial of apostolic succession. Either ecclesial authority has its basis in agreement or approval as determined by the individual’s own interpretation of Scripture, or ecclesial authority has its basis in Christ’s authorization and appointment. Wherever ecclesial authority has its basis in the individual’s agreement with that authority’s interpretation, there in essence is solo scriptura. And there in essence is the fulfillment of St. Paul’s prophecy:

For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires (2 Timothy 4:3.)

Only where ecclesial authority has its basis in Christ’s authorization and commission is the individual’s interpretation ultimately subject to that of the Church. Mathison’s positive intention to read and understand Scripture in the Church has genuine implications only if ‘Church’ is not defined as those who interpret Scripture like he does regarding the marks of the Church.⁹⁸ But authorization and appointment by the incarnate Christ can be found only in those having the succession of authorizations extending back through the Apostles to Christ Himself. Without apostolic succession, the individual has no less interpretive authority than does the Church. For this reason, only by recovering apostolic succession can Protestants overcome solo scriptura and all its destructive effects. May Christ the Good Shepherd bring us all into the one flock with one shepherd. (John 10:16).

By Bryan Cross and Neal Judisch

1. See the Catholic Encyclopedia entry ‘Protestantism.’ See also Philip Schaff, The Principle of Protestantism (Wipf & Stock, 2004).
2. Cf. Alister McGrath, Christianity’s Dangerous Idea (HarperOne, 2007).
3. “Solo Scriptura: The Difference a Vowel Makes,” pp. 25-29, 16 Modern Reformation Mar./Apr. 2007. Cf. The Shape of Sola Scriptura, pp. 237-253 (Canon Press, 2001) [hereinafter Shape].
4. “Solo Scriptura: The Difference a Vowel Makes.”
5. Shape, pp. 274-275.
6. In his letter of March 10, 2009, Pope Benedict XVI said something quite similar. He wrote:

   Leading men and women to God, to the God who speaks in the Bible: this is the supreme and fundamental priority of the Church and of the Successor of Peter at the present time. A logical consequence of this is that we must have at heart the unity of all believers. Their disunity, their disagreement among themselves, calls into question the credibility of their talk of God. Hence the effort to promote a common witness by Christians to their faith – ecumenism – is part of the supreme priority.

   Readers are also encouraged to examine the exposition of this theme in Pope John Paul II’s encyclical, Ut Unum Sint.

7. Shape, pp. 239-240.
8. Shape, p. 240. On the following page Mathison writes, “Unless one can escape the effects of sin, ignorance, and all previous learning, one cannot read the Scriptures without some bias and blind spots.” Here he is decrying what he describes as the “naïve belief in the ability to escape one’s own noetic and spiritual limitations” that undergirds the solo scriptura orientation. Shape, p. 241.
9. “Solo Scriptura: The Difference a Vowel Makes,” pp. 25-29. Note that we, as well as Mathison, nevertheless accept that scriptura scripturae interpres (Scripture interprets Scripture), in the sense that the whole and each of the parts of Scripture function in such a way as to illuminate the meaning of one another. Dei Verbum, one of the documents of Vatican II, teaches:

   Holy Scripture must be read and interpreted in the sacred spirit in which it was written, no less serious attention must be given to the content and unity of the whole of Scripture if the meaning of the sacred texts is to be correctly worked out. The living tradition of the whole Church must be taken into account along with the harmony which exists between elements of the faith. It is the task of exegetes to work according to these rules toward a better understanding and explanation of the meaning of Sacred Scripture, so that through preparatory study the judgment of the Church may mature. For all of what has been said about the way of interpreting Scripture is subject finally to the judgment of the Church, which carries out the divine commission and ministry of guarding and interpreting the word of God.  Dei Verbum, 12.

10. Shape, p. 246. We do not agree with Mathison that solo scriptura necessarily entails relativism. The person holding solo scriptura may believe firmly that his own interpretation is objectively true, and that everyone who disagrees with his interpretation is wrong. But we agree with Mathison that there is some truth to the connection between solo scriptura and relativism. That is because it is difficult in our present fluid culture to sustain the notion that anyone who disagrees with one’s own interpretation is wrong. The continual encounter with those of obvious intelligence and sincerity revering the very same book, and yet interpreting it differently from oneself, makes some form of relativism attractive without a principled basis for believing that one’s own interpretation is the authorized interpretation. So in this way, solo scriptura lends itself to a ‘practical relativism,’ which easily slides into an unqualified relativism.
11. 1 Corinthians 1:10. Someone might object that divisions are good, since St. Paul says, “For there must also be factions among you, in order that those who are approved may have become evident among you.” (1 Cor. 11:19.) But St. Paul is not there praising division among Christians. He is teaching that division always entails schism from, not schism within.
12. Shape, p. 241.
13. Reymond, for his part, will respond that the Nicene Creed does have “real authority,” but that the authority it possesses is derivative and contingent upon its fidelity to Scripture; and since in his estimation it fails to conform to Scripture on this point of Trinitarian doctrine, he wishes to see it rectified “in light of the Biblical teaching.” The confluence between Mathison’s and Reymond’s orientations in this instance is quite striking. Striking, too, is the appearance that for Mathison the “real authority” of the Nicene Creed entails its irreformability: for Mathison does not criticize the theological or exegetical argumentation upon which Reymond relies to justify his repudiation of the “Nicene Trinitarian Concept,” but contents himself merely to point out Reymond’s departure from it, leaving us to conclude that his departure from the Nicene Creed is ipso facto a mistake.  Yet if the “real authority” of Nicaea entails the irreformability of its Creed — as it certainly appears to here for Mathison, at least “in practice” — then it can be no argument against the “infallibility” of Nicaea or any other Council that the dogmatic decrees promulgated in them are likewise “irreformable.” Why, then, are we meant to believe that the irreformability of (infallible) Catholic dogma is objectionable, whereas the irreformability of the “real but subservient authority” of the Councils Protestants accept fails to infringe upon the ultimate authority of Scripture?  
14. Quoted in Shape, p. 242.
15. Shape, p. 243.
16. Shape, pp. 243-244.
17. Shape, p. 246.
18. He writes:

    The doctrine of solo scriptura, despite its claims to uniquely preserve the authority of the Word of God, destroys that authority by making the meaning of Scripture dependent upon the judgment of each individual. Rather than the Word of God being the one final court of appeal, the court of appeal becomes the multiplied minds of each believer. One is persuaded that Calvinism is more biblical. The other is persuaded that dispensationalism is more biblical. And by what standard does each decide? The standard is each individual’s opinion of what is biblical. The standard is necessarily individualistic, and therefore the standard is necessarily relativistic. Shape, pp. 246-247.

19. Someone might claim that “the science of exegesis” will overcome this problem. But the evidence does not support that claim. Protestant theologians in many different traditions have been using exegetical methods to support their particular interpretations of Scripture for almost five hundred years. And yet there has been little to no convergence of these various traditions and denominations. Instead new theological positions and traditions have arisen, positions such as dispensationalism, Pentecostalism, open theism, federal vision, etc., each defending itself by the very exegetical methods that are supposed to bring and preserve all Christians in unity. The continued diversification and variegation within Protestantism indicates that exegesis is not capable of establishing or preserving unity among Christians who believe in the inspiration and authority of Scripture. Exegesis has shown itself to be used more within a tradition to support the theological position held by those in that tradition. So the appeal to exegesis only pushes back the question: Whose exegesis? Lutheran exegesis? Calvinist exegesis? Methodist, Anglican, Baptist, Pentecostal, (etc.)? And we have to ask ourselves how much more time would be necessary to falsify the claim that exegesis is capable of unifying all Christians.
20. Mathison writes, “It should go without saying that solo scriptura was not the doctrine of the early Church or of the medieval Church. However, most proponents of solo scriptura would not be bothered in the least by this fact because they are not concerned to maintain any continuity with the teaching of the early Church.” Shape, p. 247.
21. The first recorded use of the term ‘layman’ in the early Church Fathers is found in St. Clement’s epistle to the Church at Corinth, written around AD 96.
22. Quoted in “Solo Scriptura: The Difference a Vowel Makes.”
23. “Solo Scriptura: The Difference a Vowel Makes.”
24. Shape, pp. 248-249.
25. “Solo Scriptura: The Difference a Vowel Makes.”
26. Shape, pp. 250-251.
27. In 1 Corinthians 1:13 St. Paul asks, “Is Christ divided?” The obvious answer is “no.” And that answer must remain the same forever.
28. Mathison writes:

    The doctrine of solo scriptura also reduces the essential doctrines of the Christian faith to no more than opinion by denying any real authority to the ecumenical creeds of the Church. We must note that if the ecumenical creeds are no more authoritative than the opinions of any individual Christian, as adherents of solo scriptura must say if they are to remain consistent, then the Nicene doctrine of the Trinity and the Chalcedonian doctrine of Christ are no more authoritative than the doctrinal ideas of any opinionated Christian. The doctrine of the Trinity and deity of Christ become as open to debate as the doctrine of exclusive psalmody in worship.

    It is extremely important to understand the importance of this point. If the adherents of solo scriptura are correct, then there are no real objective doctrinal boundaries within Christianity. Each individual Christian is responsible to search the Scripture (even though he can’t be told with any certainty what books constitute Scripture) and judge for himself and by himself what is and is not scriptural doctrine. In other words, each individual is responsible for establishing his or her own doctrinal boundaries-–his or her own creed. Shape, p. 249.

29. Shape, p. 250.
30. Shape, p. 252.
31. Shape, p. 252.
32. “Solo Scriptura: The Difference a Vowel Makes,” pp. 25-29.
33. Shape, p. 245.
34. Mathison’s claim here is very much in agreement with that of the Catholic Church. The Catholic understanding of the relation between Scripture and the Church treats Scripture as a treasure entrusted by Christ to the Church, properly known and understood only within the bosom of the Church as explicated by her divinely appointed shepherds. Catholics come to Scripture through the guidance of Holy mother Church.
35. Shape, p. 256.
36. Shape, p. 260.
37. “We indeed willingly concede, if any discussion arises over doctrine, that the best and surest remedy is for a synod of true bishops to be convened, where the doctrine at issue may be examined.” As quoted in “Solo Scriptura: The Difference a Vowel Makes.”
38. Shape, p. 259.
39. Shape, p. 270-271.
40. Shape, p. 262.
41. Shape, p. 264.

42. To assert that the Bible is the sole infallible authority, and that the Bible is the final and supreme norm, in no way rules out the necessity or reality of other secondary and penultimate authorities. The Church is one such subordinate authority recognized by the early Church and by the Reformers. The Church was established by Jesus Christ Himself and given authority by Him. Jesus gives the Church an authority of “binding and loosing” that is not given to every member of the Church as individuals. . . . It is only within the Church that we find Scripture interpreted rightly, and it is only within the Church that we find the gospel. Shape, pp. 267-268.

43. Shape, p. 272.
44. Shape, p. 273.
45. Cf. 2 Timothy 4:3.
46. “It is therefore to the Church that we must turn for the true interpretation of the Scripture, for it is in the Church that the gospel is found.” Shape, p. 270.
47. Cf. the Confession of the English Congregation at Geneva (AD 1556), the French Confession of Faith (AD 1559), articles 26-28; the Scottish Confession of Faith (AD 1560), chapters 16 and 18, the Belgic Confession of Faith (1561), articles 27-29, and the Second Helvetic Confession (AD 1566), chapter 17.
48. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, IV.i.10 [hereinafter Institutes].
49. Covenant, Justification and Pastoral Ministry, p. 12.
50. Once again: “When I submit (so long as I agree), the one to whom I submit is me.”
51. Institutes, as quoted by Mathison in “Solo Scriptura: The Difference a Vowel Makes.”
52. Cf. Session 6, Canon 9.
53. We see here again the relevance of the statement, “When I submit (only when I agree), the one to whom I submit is me.”
54. Shape, pp. 272-273.
55. Kevin Vanhoozer writes:

    While God’s word is infallible, human interpretations are not. God is in heaven; we are on earth. Situated between heaven and earth, we lack the knowledge of angels. What, then, are our options? (1) Hermeneutical relativism: embrace the interpreter within you and live as they did in the period of the Judges where everyone did what was right in their own eyes (so long as you don’t hurt anyone, presumably!); (2) take the road to Rome and the safety of numbers; (3) join an independent church, where right reading is a function of one’s local interpretive community. None of these options inspires confidence. I propose a fourth possibility: that we set out like pilgrims on the way indicated by our book; that we employ whatever hermeneutical tools available that help us to follow its sense; that we pray for the illumination of the Spirit and for the humility to acknowledge our missteps; and that we consult other pilgrims that have gone before us as well as Christians in other parts of today’s world. “Lost in Interpretation? Truth, Scripture, and Hermeneutics,” JETS 48/1 (March 2005) p. 92.

    Vanhoozer’s option (1) is a description of solo scriptura. His option (2) is Catholicism. His option (3) is a description of sola scriptura, where “independent church” replaces denomination. His option (4) is not a fourth theoretical option, but a proposal to search for a way out of the hermeneutical mess. Of course we agree that (1) and (3) are false, for reasons we have explained in this article. And we believe that Vanhoozer’s option (4) leads inevitably to option (2).

56. “Solo Scriptura: The Difference a Vowel Makes,” pp. 25-29.
57. Shape, p. 260.
58. Shape, p. 276.
59. Shape, p. 261.
60. Shape, p. 270.
61. “Solo Scriptura: The Difference a Vowel Makes.”
62. John Calvin similarly says:

    In this way, we willingly embrace and reverence as holy the early councils, such as those of Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus I, Chalcedon, and the like, which were concerned with refuting errors – in so far as they relate to the teachings of faith. For they contain nothing but the pure and genuine exposition of Scripture, which the holy fathers applied with spiritual prudence to crush the enemies of religion who had then arisen. Institutes, IV.9.8.

    The reason Calvin accepts the first four ecumenical councils, but not the following councils, is because the first four, but not the later ones, sufficiently agree with his interpretation of Scripture. This shows again the same problem described above: “when I submit (so long as I agree), the one to whom I submit is me.” In other words, Calvin does not in fact recognize the authority of the first four councils. Rather, he merely ascribes authority to them on the ground that these four councils agree with his own interpretation.

63. Shape, pp. 251-252.
64. In June of 1520 Pope Leo issued the papal bull titled Exsurge Domine in which he warned Luther that he faced excommunication from the Church unless he recanted 41 sentences contained in his writings. Luther responded by publicly burning a copy of this Church document in December of that year. As a result, on January 3, 1521, he was excommunicated. In the Spring of that year, Luther appeared before the Diet of Worms. He was asked by Johann Eck, an official of the Archbishop of Trier, whether he rejected any part of his writings. At first he said, “If I am shown my error, I will be the first to throw my books into the fire.” Eck replied, “Martin, …Your plea to be heard from the Scripture is the one always made by heretics. You do nothing be renew the errors of Wyclif and Hus. . . . Martin, how can you assume that you are the only one to understand the sense of Scripture? Would you put your judgment above that of so many famous men and claim that you know more than they all? You have no right to call into question the most holy orthodox faith, instituted by Christ the perfect lawgiver, proclaimed throughout the world by the apostles, sealed by the red blood of the martyrs, confirmed by the sacred councils, defined by the Church in which all our fathers believed until death and gave to us as an inheritance, and which now we are forbidden by the pope and the emperor to [debate] lest there be no end of debate. I ask you, Martin — . . . do you or do you not repudiate your books and the errors which they contain?” Luther replied, ” . . . Unless I am convicted by Scripture and plain reason — I do not accept the authority of popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other — my conscience is captive to the Word of God.” Roland Bainton, Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther, pp. 143-144 (Mentor, 1950).
65. Shape, p. 278.
66. Shape, p. 278.
67. Shape, p. 279.
68. Shape, p. 279.
69. Shape, p. 280.
70. This same problem faces Kevin Vanhoozer’s attempt to distinguish between magisterial authority and ministerial authority. See his The Drama of Doctrine: A Canonical-linguistic Approach to Christian Theology (Westminster John Knox, 2005).
71. Shape, p. 270.
72. Shape, p. 264.
73. See our previous article, “Ecclesial Deism.”
74. Donum Veritatis, 23.

75. Among the principal duties of bishops the preaching of the Gospel occupies an eminent place. For bishops are preachers of the faith, who lead new disciples to Christ, and they are authentic teachers, that is, teachers endowed with the authority of Christ, who preach to the people committed to them the faith they must believe and put into practice, and by the light of the Holy Spirit illustrate that faith. They bring forth from the treasury of Revelation new things and old, making it bear fruit and vigilantly warding off any errors that threaten their flock. Bishops, teaching in communion with the Roman Pontiff, are to be respected by all as witnesses to divine and Catholic truth. In matters of faith and morals, the bishops speak in the name of Christ and the faithful are to accept their teaching and adhere to it with a religious assent. This religious submission of mind and will must be shown in a special way to the authentic magisterium of the Roman Pontiff, even when he is not speaking ex cathedra. Lumen Gentium, 25.

    When the Magisterium, not intending to act “definitively”, teaches a doctrine to aid a better understanding of Revelation and make explicit its contents, or to recall how some teaching is in conformity with the truths of faith, or finally to guard against ideas that are incompatible with these truths, the response called for is that of the religious submission of will and intellect. Donum Veritatis, 23.

76. Shape, p. 273.
77. “Solo Scriptura: The Difference a Vowel Makes.”
78. Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther, pp. 143-144.
79. Of course the Commander in Chief is under the authority of God, but here we are speaking of ‘final’ only in a certain respect, i.e., within the human society.
80. Hebrews 13:17.
81. Christ did this when He instituted the Eucharist, and when He breathed on them and gave them the authority to forgive sins. Cf. Luke 22:19 and John 20:22-23.
82. Shape, p. 239.
83. “Solo Scriptura: The Difference a Vowel Makes.”
84. Shape, p. 264.
85. Tertullian, On Prescription Against the Heretics, ch. 19.
86. Ibid., 37.
87. Council of Trent, Session IV.
88. First Vatican Council, Session 3, ch. 2, paras. 8-9.
89. Dei Verbum, 10.
90. Dei Verbum, 10.
91. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 95.
92. Cindy Wooden, “Pope encourages Christians to read Bible,” Catholic News Service (Nov. 14, 2007).
93. See Lumen Gentium, 25.
94. “Solo Scriptura: The Difference a Vowel Makes.”
95. This does not mean that an infallible doctrine cannot be further developed (i.e. unpacked, unfolded, unveiled, etc.) Anything taught by the Magisterium can be further developed. This is how the Nicene Creed went from the form it had in AD 325 to the form it acquired in AD 381. But development never contradicts what has already been given. If it could, then over the last 2000 years, nothing at all would have been definitively established; the Arians might still turn out to have been right. And in that case, there would have been no point in holding any councils.
96. Shape, p. 276.
97. The Word, Church and Sacraments: In Protestantism and Catholicism, pp. 37-38 (Ignatius Press, 2004).
98. See Scott Hahn’s article titled “The Authority of Mystery: The Biblical Theology of Benedict XVI” in 2 Letter & Spirit, pp. 97-149 (2006).

To download the mp3, right click here.

The first entry found here is summarized by the following quotations:

The question is not whether one will have a lens through which to interpret Scripture, but rather which lens is the correct lens?

The reason this becomes important is that there are really only two alternatives. Either one takes the lens of a church’s confession, in which case one is entering into the collegiality of the church’s reading of Scripture, or one is inventing one’s own lens that will be on a par with the standards of the church, yet separate from it. At the very least, it could be said to be bordering on arrogance to think that one’s own lens has the same kind of authority as what the church has said.

The author then goes on to argue that one should submit to the Reformed confession(s) because the confessions come from ‘the church’ and the alternative would be inventing one’s own lens.

The author concluded:

The Reformers loved the church and highly respected her opinions. They respected her opinions above their own, in fact. And this is really the point. In submitting to the confessions, we acknowledge that the church is our mother.

The obvious question for a Catholic minded person is, “Which church is your mother?” Or, “How do you know this lens is the correct lens and not some other lens?”

Called to Communion contributor Bryan Cross summarized the problem with his comment early in the combox:

You say you reject biblicism. But then you use a biblicist way of defining ‘church’, and then say “We love the church and highly respect her opinions”. Well, if ‘church’ just means those who agree with your interpretation of Scripture, with marks determined by your own interpretation (or those whose interpretation you share), then, of course it is no big surprise that you “love and highly respect” the ‘church’, because, it is no surprise that you love and highly respect your own interpretations of Scripture. Apart from the biblicist-determined ‘marks of the Church’, what the early Protestants did in the sixteenth century viz-a-viz the Catholic Church (e.g. Luther publicly burning the papal bull) is quite indistinguishable from not highly respecting the Church, even rebelling, against the Church, whether or not their treatment of the Church is verbally described as loving and highly respecting the opinions of the Church, and whether or not the early Protestants had well-intentioned motives (which I generally think they did).

If the FV folks said they loved and highly respected the opinions of the Church, and defined the marks of the Church so that it included themselves, and justified their disregard of the rulings of the PCA, OPC, etc., you would be all over that, immediately. But that’s just what your claim [that I quoted above] looks like, from a Catholic point of view. So your position is, in that respect, ad hoc, accepting biblicist defining of the marks when it suits you (i.e. in the case of the early Protestants), and rejecting it when it doesn’t (i.e. viz-a-viz the FVers).

To understand how the position that Bryan describes is different than the position of the Catholic please read our article on ecclesial deism.

This original Green Baggins thread sparked about 1,000 comments and the conversation is not over yet. A follow up thread was posted several days later by Bob Mattes called The Lens of Confessions Revisited.

Mr. Mattes’ entry laments that the original thread became a conversation about authority. However, it seems almost impossible to avoid a conversation about authority when talking about which lens is the proper lens through which we view the faith.

Mattes writes:

I thought that I would try to bring the discussion back on point with this post and address the Federal Visionists’ blatant biblicism.

Here the author makes it known that a major purpose of submitting to a Reformed confession is to avoid biblicism.

It did not take long for somebody to ask, “Which lens?” An interlocutor asks:

If all of us come to the Bible with lenses, Lane asked the obvious question — which lens?

Are we really left with a Sophie’s Choice? On the one hand, if the church lens is the final authority, the question becomes which church? On the other, if the individual lens is the final authority, which individual has the correct lens?
[...]
But what would you say to the Romanist who, according to his lens, says that your so-called church is autonomous and unaccountable to the true Mother church?

In their view, God has mercifully shown Romanists the true lens, has overcome the hubris of Protestant individualism, who like Marcion mold the Bible to their own false stand-alone views.

The answer the interloctor received demonstrates that ultimately the position of the Reformed confessionalists is no different than biblicism.

Bob Mattes answered thus:

I centered my post on the PCA in particular, but I believe that it applies generally. When you say that one’s lens determines one’s church, I agree to a point. By the grace of God, though, He is a great lens grinder. I grew up in the RCC. God mercifully took His divine Dremel to my lens and fixed it. I remain eternally grateful for the regrinding. I think that He calls His Dremel ’sanctification’…

I don’t want this thread to go the way of the other one – a Protestant vs. RCC sink hole. I’ll simply say that Scripture doesn’t support their lens. Our Standards are solidly and solely based purely on Scripture as the only rule for faith and practice, their catechism and theology aren’t.

According to Mattes’ response, the individual must select which confession he believes is most biblical and then submit to it. However, Mr Mattes here demonstrates that his position does not avoid biblicism.