‍ 

Dialogue on the Protestant System 

of Authority

 

Is Scripture clear enough to be the basis 

of Christian unity?

 

Gary Hoge

 

Sometimes we commit formal fallacies that are easy to spot and correct. Other times we commit esoteric informal fallacies like ignoratio elenchi or ad verecundiam or petitio principii, which are not always easy to spot and correct. Still other times our formal logic is correct, but the premises we use in it are incorrect and we don’t see that.

 

This is how I look at the controversy among Protestants over infant baptism (and other issues, too). People of equal faithfulness and love for God approach the same Scriptures (which say what they say regardless of anyone’s biases), use the same logical principles, construct similar formal arguments, and yet come to different conclusions.

 

I think Protestant disagreements are caused by more than just a failure to rigorously apply the rules of logic. If proper biblical interpretation were merely a matter of dispassionately applying fixed rules of logic to a fixed text, we could create a computer program to analyze the text and tell us what it really means.

 

No, I think the reason Protestants misunderstand Scripture is because they start with the false premise that Scripture contains within itself all that’s needed for its proper interpretation. That might be a reasonable assumption if Scripture had been written to unbelievers who had to have everything spelled-out for them, but, as you know, Scripture was written to people who were already Christians. For that reason, it’s not always very specific, because its authors and its audience already shared the same theological worldview, and the same basic understanding of the faith. That’s why Scripture never directly tells them – or us – to baptize babies. It didn’t have to, because they already knew that.

 

Now obviously, someone has to be wrong in the controversy (noncontradiction still reigns supreme), and both sides believe it is the other party who is wrong. And both sides may say that Scripture “clearly” supports their position.

 

That’s true, and it’s exactly why the Protestant system doesn’t work. A book (even an inspired one) can’t sit up and tell us which side has misinterpreted it. That’s why the Protestant system has never been able to resolve any of the myriad “controversies of religion” it’s caused. Instead, the controversies invariably lead to divisions, and the divisions invariably lead to new churches being formed, and the only thing the Protestant system can do is tell both sides to go back and read their “supreme judge” again for the zillionth time.

 

This is just part of normal human discourse in the world that God made.

 

It is indeed, and that’s precisely why he also made an authoritative Church to settle such disputes. Otherwise, as history has repeatedly shown, they don’t get settled at all. Instead, the various parties separate and form new churches, and this has the effect of institutionalizing and perpetuating those disputes.

 

As 1 Corinthians 11:19 says, “There have to be differences among you in order to see which of you have the Lord’s approval.” The presence of multiple, conflicting interpretations in the Church is a good thing – nay, a necessary thing – for it forces the Church to wrestle with revelation and grow in her understanding of it.

 

I think you’re reading this passage anachronistically. Paul wasn’t talking about “multiple, conflicting interpretations” of Scripture in the Church. He was contrasting those who celebrated the Eucharist according to the apostolic practice with those who didn’t. But about divisions, in the previous sentence, he wrote, “In the first place, I hear that when you come together as a church, there are divisions among you, and to some extent I believe it” (1 Cor. 11:18). That doesn’t sound as if he thought division was a good thing, except that when people were forced to take sides, it showed who was faithful and who was not.

 

Paul clearly wanted everyone to be faithful, and for there to be no divisions in the Church. In this very same letter, he wrote, “I appeal to you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another so that there may be no divisions among you and that you may be perfectly united in mind and thought” (1 Cor. 1:10). In another place, he wrote, “I urge you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and put obstacles in your way that are contrary to the teaching you have learned. Keep away from them” (Rom. 16:17). I think he would have had harsh words for anyone who claimed that division in the Church was a good and necessary thing.

 

Without heresy there can be no orthodoxy.

 

That statement makes no sense to me. Would you also say, “Without evil there can be no good”?

 

Alas, the Reformed church, broadly considered, is not immune to [division]. We have our share of true schismatics who take their stand against everyone else simply because they personally believe Scripture clearly supports them against the majority.

 

But, Tim, that is exactly what Martin Luther and John Calvin did. They took their stand against everyone else because they personally believed Scripture clearly supported them against the majority, did they not? If you approve of what these men did to my Church, I don’t see how you can criticize others for doing exactly the same thing to yours.

 

But the existence of such divisive spirits in no way militates against the idea that Scripture is clear in all essential matters.

 

No, what militates against the idea that Scripture is clear in all essential matters is the fact that plenty of intelligent people who aren’t “divisive spirits” disagree about what Scripture teaches about those essential matters. They can’t even agree on which matters are essential.

 

Non-Reformed Baptists generally approach the Bible as if it was a book written to modern, individualistic Americans and interpret practically everything in it according to that unstated and unexamined presupposition.

 

Perhaps, but this is just a species of the general Protestant error of assuming that Scripture contains within itself all that is necessary for its proper understanding. Clearly, it doesn’t, and therefore, different groups supply the required theological subtext according to their own (often unconscious) cultural and theological presuppositions. Again, that’s why Tradition is so important: it supplies the correct subtext. Even some Baptists are beginning to understand that:

 

But appealing to the Bible alone and the personal enabling of the Holy Spirit, however central these are, do not insure orthodoxy (they never have!), since these cannot function in isolation from their reception and development within the ongoing life of the church. Dividing Scripture from Tradition or from the church creates an artificial distinction which would have been completely alien to the earliest generations of Christians. (D.H. Williams (ordained Baptist minister), Retrieving the Tradition and Renewing Evangelicalism : A Primer for Suspicious Protestants, (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1999), 14).

 

Infant baptism is a ludicrous concept to them because everybody knows that Christianity is all about the individual’s personaldecisiontomakeJesustheirLordandSavior, and this can only happen in someone who is able to think rationally and use that beautiful gift of God called the autonomous “free will” to fulfill all the conditions for achieving justification so that God is obligated to reward them with the new birth.

 

The Baptists aren’t the only ones who read Scripture through the lens of their own presuppositions. For example, regenerative baptism is a ludicrous concept to you because everybody knows that regeneration precedes faith, which – at least for an adult – precedes baptism. It doesn’t matter that Christianity from its inception unanimously believed and taught that baptism regenerates, your Reformed presupposition to the contrary outweighs all of that.

 

Reformed Baptists, on the other hand, are more concerned with exegeting the doctrine of baptism from the Scriptures rather than from such modern-day American prejudices.

 

If that’s the case, and if the Scriptures are so clear, why don’t the Reformed Baptists agree with you? See, once again your theories go down in flames when you apply them to real people. The fact is, no one exegetes the Scriptures in a state of pure objectivity, with no biases and prejudices at all. The Reformed Baptists simply have a different set of prejudices than the non-Reformed Baptists do. The trick isn’t to get rid of all prejudices (which is impossible), it’s to have the right prejudices. Again, that’s why Tradition is important. It tells us what prejudices we’re supposed to have.

 

Like Presbyterians, many Reformed Baptists talk about baptism in the same basic covenantal terms that the Bible does, and attempt to derive their understanding of the covenant and its administration from the Bible. I’ve seen some decent defenses of credobaptism by RB writers, and to some degree, I respect their position. At least they are grappling with the text of Scripture, unlike their Fundamentalist brethren who are content to mindlessly accept “the literal interpretation” of baptism (read: the modern American individualist’s interpretation of baptism).

 

The Fundamentalists, too, grapple with the text of Scripture; they just don’t do it the same way you do. And if they have “the modern American individualist’s interpretation of baptism,” what do you have but John Calvin’s medieval interpretation of baptism? Neither of you accepts the apostles’ interpretation of baptism, which was carefully preserved and unanimously proclaimed in the ancient Church.

 

But look at what just emerged in the preceding paragraph. Despite the fact that the Reformed camp is divided into Presbyterian and Baptist “factions” (each of which says the Scriptures “clearly” teach their view of baptism), the two “factions” are nevertheless fundamentally united on (a) the existence of baptism as one of two divinely-ordained rites and (b) basic Reformed covenantalism. The differences center on the meaning of the term “new covenant” in both the OT and NT and, therefore, on how and to whom the covenant sign of baptism is to be administered.

 

So you guys agree on some things, and you disagree on other things. This I knew.

 

“There have to be differences among you so that the ones with the Lord’s approval may be made manifest.” Ah, the foolishness of God is wiser than the wisdom of man, is it not?

 

The differences between you and the Baptists have existed for nearly 500 years now. Have they made it manifest yet which of you has the Lord’s approval? If so, is it you, or is it the Baptists?

 

What a marvelous catholicity of both doctrine and practice is demonstrated in the Presbyterian / Baptist difference over baptism!

 

How sad. Has Protestantism really devolved to the point where it happily embraces error along with truth and calls it “catholicity”? Maybe I’m just a “perfectionist,” but I don’t think true Christianity welcomes heterodoxy and glories in the sheer diversity of contradictory teachings it’s able to embrace. But if that’s what Protestantism has come to, why stop there? What a marvelous catholicity of both doctrine and practice is demonstrated in the Arian / Trinitarian difference over the deity of Christ! What a marvelous catholicity of both doctrine and practice is demonstrated in the Arminian / Presbyterian difference over grace!

 

Unlike the stagnant, monolithic doctrine of Roman Catholicism, which has never advanced a millimeter beyond the primitive understandings of the Church Babies, er, Fathers.

 

Truth is monolithic, but there sure seems to be no limit to the diversity of error.

 

Now, it’s pretty obvious that John Doe Baptist thinks his views are “what Scripture clearly teaches” – he doesn’t think Scripture’s teaching on baptism is unclear. The same goes for John Doe Presbyterian. But what is not obvious (despite your insistence that it is blindingly obvious) is that this difference of viewpoint arises from problems in the text.

 

And what is even less obvious (again, despite your insistence that it “logically” follows) is that the difference of viewpoint can only be solved by appeal to an infallible interpreter.

 

Okay, how would you solve it?

 

By the long-term process of exegetical wrestling with the text, performed by representatives from every Protestant tradition working in conjunction with each other under the common principle that Scripture is the final arbiter of all truth and that its meaning is clear.

 

If its meaning is clear, how come you guys have spent centuries doing your “exegetical wrestling with the text” and you still can’t agree on what that meaning is? Seems to me it must not be all that clear.

 

And in the whole history of Protestantism, has this dispute-resolving method ever actually resolved a dispute? Has your “common submission to the authority of Scripture” ever enabled you guys to settle an argument, or end a division? Offhand, I can’t think of even one dispute that’s been settled by following Protestant principles (though I can think of several that have been started by following them). Instead, to the best of my knowledge, you guys have the same doctrinal disputes you’ve had since the Reformation began, and you debate them endlessly, generation after generation. I’d sure hate to see what the situation would be like if Scripture’s meaning weren’t clear.

 

This is not nearly as cut-and-dried as your system, but it’s far more realistic and biblical.

 

You think your system is biblical? You think the Bible tells us to resolve our differences by dividing into autonomous sects, insisting that Scripture is “clearly” on our side, and then arguing with each other ‘till the Second Coming? We must not be reading the same Bible, because mine presents a different model. In my Bible the way to resolve a dispute is for the leadership of the Church to meet in council (Acts 15:6), make a decision with the guidance of the Holy Spirit (Acts 15:28), and impose it on the rest of the Church (Acts 16:4). If the apostolic Church did things your way, we’d still be arguing about whether circumcision was necessary for salvation.

 

I’m even more perplexed that you think your approach is more realistic than ours is. Apparently, “realism” is another word for which you have your own secret definition, because my dictionary defines it as “rejection of the impractical and visionary.” You guys have a dispute-resolving system that’s completely incapable of resolving disputes. If that’s not impractical, I don’t know what is.

 

You seem to imagine such a situation can only end in bitter feuding and continual visible splintering.

 

When in Protestant history has a doctrinal dispute ever ended any other way?

 

But that is not true. I have nothing but respect and admiration for my Reformed Baptist brethren and they for me. We continue to embrace each other as brothers and continue to mutually wrestle with the text we both commonly accept and submit our consciences to.

 

I’m glad you get along, but God wants more than that. He wants you to “agree with one another so that there may be no divisions among you and that you may be perfectly united in mind and thought” (1 Cor. 1:10). It’s a pity he didn’t give you some way of achieving that goal. You say you have the “common principle that Scripture is the final arbiter of all truth,” but I can’t think of a single dispute in Protestantism that Scripture’s been able to arbitrate, can you? Instead, you continue to debate today – however cordially – the same disagreements you debated 450 years ago.

 

I don’t know why you imagine that your ecclesial community is in any better shape than ours.

 

That’s easy. We’re in “better shape” than you are because we have a system that naturally produces unity of faith among those who follow it, and you don’t. We have one Church and one faith. Anyone who wants to be embrace the Catholic faith can easily discern what it is, and having embraced it, he will be in agreement with, and in fellowship with, his brothers and sisters all over the world. But the Protestant system is incapable of producing unity, even among those who follow it in good faith.

 

The Roman community is so full of factions and feuding parties that it isn’t funny.

 

When I say that Catholicism has an essential unity that Protestantism lacks, I’m comparing faithful Catholics to faithful Protestants, because I think that’s the only fair comparison. I don’t deny that there are “Catholic” dissenters out there who refuse to follow Catholic principles, and I’m sure there are “Protestant” dissenters who refuse to follow Protestant principles, too. But so what? You can’t judge the effectiveness of an ecclesiastical system by those who don’t follow it. What I’m interested in is the results our respective systems produce among those who follow them faithfully, because that’s the only real test of whether any system works.

 

The Catholic system of authority can be summarized in one sentence, and it’s an affirmation that every adult who wishes to enter the Church is required to make: “I believe and profess all that the holy Catholic Church believes, teaches, and proclaims to be revealed by God.” I made that affirmation because I believe the Church was created and commissioned by Christ to teach in His name. Therefore, like all faithful Catholics, I accept those teachings as coming from him (“He who hears you hears me”). Any Catholic who can still honestly make that affirmation is a valid subject for your critique of the effectiveness of the Catholic system. Any Catholic who can’t, isn’t.

 

The Protestant system, on the other hand, operates on the principle that “the Scripture alone is our authority.”¹ In order for this principle to work, it’s also necessary to assert that “all things necessary for salvation and concerning faith and life are taught in the Bible clearly enough for the ordinary believer to find it [sic] there and understand.”² Clearly, this system has not led to unity of faith among those who follow it, nor has it been able to resolve disagreements among those people. That’s because it proposes a completely impractical and circular principle for resolving such disagreements. It asserts that Scripture itself is “the supreme judge by which all controversies of religion are to be determined,”³ even though most of those controversies are the result of conflicting interpretations of Scripture in the first place. Clearly, pointing the disputants back to the same Scripture from which their disagreements arose only perpetuates the problem and solves nothing.

 

I don’t have to go any farther than Steve Ray’s Message Board to watch the lot of you pointing fingers at each other and claiming “true Catholicism” for your own preferred factions, and engaging in disputes more bitter and divisive than any Reformed Baptist and Presbyterian ever dreamed of devising.

 

Please. If you’re really having trouble discerning which “faction” represents true Catholicism, I’ll give you a hint: It’s headquartered in Rome, and is currently led by an elderly Polish gentleman named Karol. You’d know him if you saw him.

 

I consider it to be self-evident that the Catholic Church has the right to define her own ecclesiology, and to say who is in her communion and who is not. Rebellious factions like the Lefebvrites or “Call to Action” can call themselves “Catholic” if they want to, but they have no more right to define “true Catholicism” than you do.

 

I don’t buy for a minute the “spin control” image that is put forth by the masses of Karl Keatings, Mark Sheas, Dave Armstrongs, Steve Rays, Scott Hahns, and so forth. Indeed, I can’t even understand why I ought to believe that this faction is accurately representing “true Catholicism” to me rather than the Traditionalists that regularly harass it with annoying historical, philosophical, and theological arguments.

 

As I said, the Catholic Church has the right to define her own ecclesiology. She has done so, and she requires her members to affirm that they “believe and profess all that the holy Catholic Church believes, teaches, and proclaims to be revealed by God.” The schismatic Traditionalists can’t say that. Neither can the liberal dissenters like “We Are Church” and “Call to Action.” They can make whatever arguments they want, but the fact remains that they have no more right to define “true Catholicism” than you do.

 

You guys in the “conservative” faction may fool yourselves into thinking you’ve got greater “unity” than we do, but you certainly aren’t fooling us.

 

Tell you what: When you guys who faithfully follow Protestant principles are able to come together in one visible Church, embrace one faith, worship at one table, and assent to the teachings of a comprehensive Catechism of the Protestant Church, then you can talk to me about unity.

 

To us, your much-trumpeted visible unity looks like a Band-Aid covering a cancer of division and incipient schism.

 

I have never claimed that the Catholic Church is able to prevent people from rebelling against its authority. I have claimed that submitting to the Catholic system of authority produces unity. This is the crucial distinction you routinely fail to make when you lump the dissenters in with the faithful. You can’t judge the effectiveness of a theological system by looking at people who don’t follow that system. Therefore, I can’t validly include non-sola Scriptura groups like the Mormons and the Jehovah’s Witnesses in my critique of your system, and you can’t validly include dissenters like the Lefebvrites and “Call to Action” in your critique of ours.

 

And it’s interesting how each of your little factions claims to be following the same grand, unified Tradition! Looks like you need an infallible interpreter of your infallible interpreter, because none of you can agree on what the first one “really” means.

 

On the contrary, all sides agree on what the Church “really” teaches, but some people don’t like what the Church teaches, and they want it to teach something else. This isn’t a failure of the intellect; it’s a failure of the will. It’s not a failure to understand; it’s a failure to submit. Being a faithful Catholic means assenting to the teachings of the Church, regardless of one’s personal feelings, and that is something the dissenters are unwilling to do.

 

* * * * *

 

In this case, your perspicuity doctrine actually works against you, because the louder you insist that Scripture is clear, the harder you’ll make it for John Doe Baptist to entertain the idea that he and his fellow Baptists have badly misunderstood it for the past 400 years.

 

You say this because you (seemingly) ignore how Protestants generally treat each other in their disagreements,

 

I don’t really care how you treat each other in your disagreements. It’s the existence of your disagreements that undermines your claim that Scripture’s meaning is clear, and that it’s able to function as the “final arbiter of truth” among you. So far, it hasn’t been able to arbitrate anything, and that’s because Scripture isn’t an arbitrator. It can’t tell you which Protestant group is interpreting it correctly, and which isn’t.

 

To continue the courtroom analogy, Scripture isn’t the judge; it’s the evidence. The various judges in Protestantism have weighed this evidence and they all think it’s clear, but they’ve reached different conclusions about what it means. And that’s as far as their system can take them, because it has no “Supreme Court” to which they can appeal. So they’re stuck endlessly arguing about what the evidence shows, with each side insisting that it’s right, and clearly so.

 

and you don’t (seemingly) have any faith that God is sanctifying us progressively by the means of the washing of the water of the Word. You (seemingly) want the eschaton right here and right now or else you don’t want anything.

 

When the apostle said, “I appeal to you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another so that there may be no divisions among you and that you may be perfectly united in mind and thought” (1 Cor. 1:10), that was a command for right here and right now, not for the eschaton. And when Jesus said, “May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me” (John 17:23), that, too, was a prayer for right here and right now. At the eschaton, it’ll be too late to show the world anything.

 

I’m sorry you feel that way and that you conceive of the Christian faith in such impatient and unrealistic terms.

 

I conceive of the Christian faith as having an established doctrinal content that has been revealed, that has been handed down from one generation to the next since apostolic times, and that can be known with certainty. I conceive of it as one faith, one Church, one altar. I do not conceive of it as a conglomeration of independent sects that teach contradictory things, that worship in contradictory ways, that deny what the others affirm, and affirm what the others deny. I don’t think God conceived of it that way, either, and if you think I’m impatient because I insist that Christians be united in one faith, then you must think God is impatient, too, because he demands the same thing. And it’s only “unrealistic” to expect that kind of unity in your system; it already exists in ours.

 

As for me, I’m content where I am. He who started a good work in Protestantism 450 years ago will be faithful to complete it on His own schedule and time.

 

God is not the author of confusion. Therefore, I question whether He’s the author of Protestantism, because Protestantism has proven itself to be incapable of producing one faith among those who follow its principles. That’s because those principles are inherently divisive, and because Protestantism lacks a mechanism for resolving the divisions that inevitably arise therefrom. In fact, the Protestant willingness to fragment into autonomous sects has the effect of setting those divisions in concrete.

 

On Steve Ray’s board you asked, “Does [Protestant divisiveness] show something inherent in Protestant ecclesiology, or does it show that there are lots and lots of immature people in Protestant circles?” Actually, it shows both. Protestant ecclesiology specifies that the teachings of the Church are to be judged by Scripture, the ultimate arbiter of truth. But Scripture is a book; it doesn’t judge anything. It’s all those immature people reading Scripture who have to make the judgment. They’re the ones who have to compare the teachings of your church with what they think Scripture clearly teaches. This is why I say that your system doesn’t work in the real world. Real people are immature, and rebellious too. That’s why your ecclesiology is inherently unstable and divisive.

 

You may insist that someday your system will work, but that’s just whistling past the graveyard. It didn’t work in the past, and it doesn’t work now. I see no reason to think it’ll suddenly work someday in the future.