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Dialogue on Two Versions of Sola Scriptura

 

Is the modern version of sola Scriptura different 

from the Classical Protestant version?

 

Gary Hoge

 

[Classical Protestantism] holds to Sola Scriptura, . . . [American evangelicalism] holds to what one Reformed writer has called “Solo Scriptura,” or “me and my Bible against everybody else.” This is NOT a real Protestant idea! I will probably end up quoting this more than once, so forgive me, but Luther himself said of that kind of individualism, “That would mean that each man would go to hell in his own way.”

 

It seems to me that “Solo Scriptura” vs. “Sola Scriptura” is a distinction without a difference. Sola Scriptura always necessarily leads to an attitude of “me and my Bible against everybody else.” If you disagree, then tell me who has binding moral authority over you to interpret Scripture. Does your denomination have this authority? If so, who gave it to them? and why doesn’t the Lutheran denomination have a similar authority over you? What if you disagree with your denomination? Must you relinquish your own interpretation in favor of their “authoritative” interpretation, even if you disagree with it? If so, how is this different from Catholicism? If not, how is this different from “me and my Bible against everybody else”? We all know what the Bible says, but who defines what it means—the individual or the Church? If the Church, then how does this differ from Catholicism? If the individual, then how does this differ from “me and my Bible against everybody else”?

 

One thing that is going to make this dialogue difficult is that, as a Roman Catholic, you cannot help but view the entire issue of authority in the Church as something which is necessarily logically connected to the infallibility of its human instruments when they are operating in an official capacity. It is as if Roman Catholicism simply cannot believe that there could be any true authority where there is the possibility of making errors of judgement.

 

I don’t know where you get that idea. We Catholics believe that the Church is the only authority that does operate infallibly. Every other authority, e.g., the U.S. Goverment, the Supreme Court (especially the Supreme Court! :-), my employer, my parents, etc., are quite fallible. But that doesn’t mean they have no authority. Authority does not require infallibility. We simply believe that God promised His Church the gift of infallibility, and that such gift is necessary, not in order for the Church to have authority, but in order for it to preserve the apostolic deposit of faith.

 

However, having said that, I would observe that once the Reformers denied the infallibility of the Church, it sure didn’t take them long to reject her authority, too. Indeed, what authority does the Church have in real life, if her children are free to disobey her and rebel against her whenever they disagree with her?

 

I submit to you that in other realms of human existence, this is an unworkable idea. One area of human life in particular has special relevance to what I am saying here. Do you have children, Gary? If so, do you have binding spiritual authority over them despite the fact that you might make an error in something you tell them? Of course you do! Scripture says, “Children obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right”. Note that your children are NOT told, “Children obey your parents in the Lord only if you can be sure they are speaking infallibly, for this is right.” This is but one example of the undeniable fact that one may have true and legitimate authority without being infallible.

 

I agree, but since the position you’re critiquing is not one that I hold, it’s kind of irrelevant. :-)

 

The application of my example to the Church would, of course, be that the Scriptures teach that the Church is essentially our Mother. She has true, legitimate authority over us without being infallible. Her authority over her members is guided by the infallible God through His infallible Word over the ages into increasing comprehension of the truth (Eph. 4:11-16).

 

If you acknowledge that God guides the Church, then doesn’t infallibility follow logically? How can God guide anyone into error? If the Church were fallible, wouldn’t the passage of time really lead to increasing distortion of the truth? Isn’t that always the case when men are left to their own wisdom? Is it really so difficult to believe that the same God who rendered fallible, sinful men infallible when they committed the Word of God to Scripture could and would also render a fallible, sinful Church infallible when she guards, preserves, and proclaims that Word throughout the ages?

 

Think about it: in theory, error could come from either the Bible, if it contained errors, or from its interpretation, if that interpretation contained errors. Therefore, if God wanted Christian doctrine to be infallible, he would have to cause two things to happen:

 

1) His Word must be written infallibly;

 

2) His Word must be interpreted and proclaimed infallibly.

 

We both agree that the first condition has been met, that God did cause His truth to be written infallibly; the Scriptures contain no errors. But if only the first condition has been met, and not the second, then error will necessarily be found in the fallible interpretation, definition, and proclamation of the infallible Word. The net result will be erroneous doctrines. But this is the same result we would have if the Bible itself contained errors. Thus, if God were to render the Bible infallible, but fail to render its interpretation infallible, he would be working against himself, and would make moot the infallibility of Scripture. Indeed, if God did not render the Bible’s interpretation infallible, then he wasted His time making the Bible itself infallible. But if God cared enough about the truth to cause it to be recorded infallibly, it makes sense to suppose that he wanted us to know that truth with infallible certainty. The only way to accomplish that was to also cause the truth to be interpreted infallibly. So, logically, it is reasonable to believe either that God allowed both the recording and the interpretation of Scripture to be fallible, or that he rendered them both infallible. To do one without the other would be the same as doing neither, and thus would make no sense.

 

Now, if it be established that infallible interpretation is as necessary to the infallible apprehension of truth as is an infallible written source for that interpretation, it remains to be asked whom God guides infallibly to interpret the infallible Scriptures. There are only two choices: the individual, or the Church. God could have used either, as he saw fit, so we must determine which one he in fact chose to use. The multiplicity of interpretations among sincere Christians is enough to rule out the individual as God’s instrument of infallible interpretation, and that only leaves the Church.

 

The very fact that the Church is said to “attain” to the fullness of Christ over time implies that she will, at times, be in error and need correction.

 

Not at all, it simply means that the faith of the early Church was in many ways undefined and implicit, rather than defined, developed, and explicit. Jesus himself said that the Church was like a mustard seed that grows into a tree. The Church is a living, breathing thing. The modern Catholic Church resembles the early Church in the same way a man resembles a child. It has the same substance, but it has grown and changed in appearance. Likewise, doctrines develop over time, especially as heresies arise and require the Church explicitly to define what she believes. Today, we believe explicitly what the ancients believed implicitly. For example, I very much doubt that Paul could have formulated a precise doctrinal statement regarding the Trinity and the two natures of Christ (apart from a specific revelation from God, of course). Those definitions were the result of much study and debate. But I’ll bet that if Paul read the decrees of Chalcedon and Nicaea, he would have said, “Yes, that’s what I believe.” St. Vincent of Lerins (I do seem to quote him a lot, don’t I? :-) described how doctrines develop over time:

 

But some one will say, perhaps, Shall there, then, be no progress in Christ’s Church? Certainly; all possible progress. … Yet on condition that it be real progress, not alteration of the faith. For progress requires that the subject be enlarged in itself, alteration, that it be transformed into something else. The intelligence, then, the knowledge, the wisdom, as well of individuals as of all, as well of one man as of the whole Church, ought, in the course of ages and centuries, to increase and make much and vigorous progress; but yet only in its own kind; that is to say, in the same doctrine, in the same sense, and in the same meaning.

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The growth of religion in the soul must be analogous to the growth of the body, which, though in process of years it is developed and attains its full size, yet remains still the same. There is a wide difference between the flower of youth and the maturity of age; yet they who were once young are still the same now that they have become old, insomuch that though the stature and outward form of the individual are changed, yet his nature is one and the same, his person is one and the same. An infant’s limbs are small, a young man’s large, yet the infant and the young man are the same. Men when full grown have the same number of joints that they had when children; and if there be any to which maturer age has given birth these were already present in embryo, so that nothing new is produced in them when old which was not already latent in them when children. This, then, is undoubtedly the true and legitimate rule of progress, this the established and most beautiful order of growth, that mature age ever develops in the man those parts and forms which the wisdom of the Creator had already framed beforehand in the infant. …

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In like manner, it behooves Christian doctrine to follow the same laws of progress, so as to be consolidated by years, enlarged by time, refined by age, and yet, withal, to continue uncorrupt and unadulterate, complete and perfect in all the measurement of its parts, and, so to speak, in all its proper members and senses, admitting no change, no waste of its distinctive property, no variation in its limits. …

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Therefore, whatever has been sown by the fidelity of the Fathers in this husbandry of God’s Church, the same ought to be cultivated and taken care of by the industry of their children, the same ought to flourish and ripen, the same ought to advance and go forward to perfection. For it is right that those ancient doctrines of heavenly philosophy should, as time goes on, be cared for, smoothed, polished; but not that they should be changed, not that they should be maimed, not that they should be mutilated. They may receive proof, illustration, definiteness; but they must retain withal their completeness, their integrity, their characteristic properties.

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For if once this license of impious fraud be admitted, I dread to say in how great danger religion will be of being utterly destroyed and annihilated. For if any one part of Catholic truth be given up, another, and another, and another will thenceforward be given up as a matter of course, and the several individual portions having been rejected, what will follow in the end but the rejection of the whole? (Vincent of Lerins, “Commonitory,” 23, A.D. 434).

 

I think that last paragraph is an apt prophesy of the effects of the Reformation that was to occur a thousand years later. So, to answer your question, no, the fact that we attain to the fullness of Christ over time does not imply error, but merely youth. The failure of the early Church to define the Trinity or the Canon of Scripture, or the two natures of Christ was not error. It was simply not yet time, in God’s providence, for the Church to know her faith fully on those points.

 

I would ask you to at least consider that possibility rather than merely assuming that infallibility is a necessary corollary of authority.

 

I do not assume that infallibility is a necessary corollary of authority, nor do I automatically assume that the Church is infallible. Remember, I was once a Protestant who explicitly rejected the idea of infallibility. I accepted it only when I became convinced, through Scripture, history, and reason, that God did indeed leave us an infallible Church, in order to safeguard the gospel message, which otherwise would have become completely distorted by now. Indeed, every Protestant must acknowledge that the gospel has been distorted in those branches of Protestantism with which he disagrees. The need for an infallible Church, then, should be obvious. As I argued above, an infallible Bible requires as its corollary an infallible interpreter. What good (practically speaking) is an infallible Bible if we can’t interpret it infallibly? Error is error, whether it occurs in the Bible itself (which is impossible) or in its interpretation (which happens all the time). Assuming that God wanted His followers to know the truth, and to be sure of it, simply giving us an infallible book would not be enough, as history has proved. An infallible book cannot correct the faulty interpretations of its readers, but an infallible teacher can.

 

[“solo Scriptura” vs “sola Scriptura”] is not a distinction without a difference because (unlike many so-called “fundamentalist Bible-Christians”) the classical Protestants (Luther, Calvin, etc) believed in the derivative authority of the Church over its members and did not see such an idea to be in conflict with Sola Scriptura.

 

Really? What authority did Martin Luther obey? Only his own. If the whole of Christianity was against him, then as far as he was concerned, the whole of Christianity was wrong. When the Church tried to exercise its authority over Luther, he refused to submit. When it forbade him to publish, he published anyway. When it forbade him to preach, he preached anyway. When it excommunicated him, he publicly burned the decree of excommunication and set up his own church. If that was Luther’s idea of submitting to the “authority of the Church over its members,” I’d hate to see what rebellion would have looked like.

 

Also, both Luther and Calvin did see the practical conflict between the authority of the Church and sola Scriptura. The problem with sola Scriptura is its counterpart, private interpretation. Of necessity, Luther and Calvin had to deny the authority of the Church to interpret Scripture in order to maintain their own authority to do so. But by so doing, they also legitimized everyone else’s authority to interpret Scripture. In the resulting anarchy, both were quick to resort to authoritarian tactics to enforce their own doctrines. Secular historian Will Durant wrote,

 

Calvin was as thorough as any pope in rejecting individualism of belief; this greatest legislator of Protestantism completely repudiated that principle of private judgment with which the new religion had begun. He had seen the fragmentation of the Reformation into a hundred sects, and foresaw more; in Geneva he would have none of them. (Will Durant, “The Reformation,” from The Story of Civilization, (NY: Simon & Schuster, 1957), vol. 6, 473).

 

Likewise, Protestant author Walther Kohler wrote of Martin Luther,

 

In Luther’s case it is impossible to speak of liberty of conscience or religious freedom . . . The death-penalty for heresy rested on the highest Lutheran authority . . . The views of the other reformers on the persecution and bringing to justice of [Protestant] heretics were merely outgrowths of Luther’s plan; they contributed nothing fresh. (Walther Kohler, Reformation und Ketzerprozess, 1901, 29).

 

These self-appointed “reformers” saw their grand experiment fail spectacularly within their own lifetimes. They each seemed to think that the Bible was so clear that if only its interpretation could be wrested from the corrupt church, then the true gospel (as they each conflictingly defined it) would shine forth. What they discovered, whether they admitted it or not, was that the Church was the safeguard of the Word of God, and that once that safeguard was breached, there was no end to the new doctrines that would be discovered in the “clear teachings” of Scripture.

 

Sola Scriptura does NOT mean that Scripture is the ONLY authority in the life of a believer; just that Scripture is the SUPREME authority in the life of the believer.

 

Reformed author Kenneth Samples, of the Christian Research Institute, himself a Presbyterian and an adherent to the Westminster Confession, wrote that sola Scriptura “implies the authority, clarity, and sufficiency of Scripture, and uniquely gives Scripture alone the role of final arbiter in all matters of faith and morals.”¹

 

Okay, let’s put that to the test, and see how Scripture alone is the “final arbiter” in the Christian life: You believe that a true Christian cannot lose his salvation. Suppose you meet an equally intelligent, equally sincere Lutheran who believes that a true Christian can lose his salvation. You both acknowledge the same authority as supreme in your lives. So, how does this supreme authority arbitrate between you? How does it enforce one interpretation over another? Obviously, it can’t. It is a “final arbiter” that cannot arbitrate. When doctrinal disputes arise among sincere believers, as they have countless times over the centuries, it is necessary for an outside authority to interpret Scripture and settle the dispute, and it is necessary for both sides to submit to the decisions of that authority. That’s why God gave us a Church and said, “but if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican” (Matt. 18:17). But in the sola Scriptura worldview, the authority formerly exercised by the Church necessarily devolves to the conscience of the individual Christian, and thus you and your Lutheran friend must agree to disagree, and your dispute remains unresolved, and unresolvable. That’s why sola Scriptura is ultimately a meaningless slogan, because it inevitably reduces to the fact that the supreme authority in the life of the believer is not Scripture itself, but his own interpretation of Scripture.

 

While you quoted a correct and classical Protestant definition of Sola Scriptura (the WCF [Westminster Confession of Faith]) in your previous letter, you nevertheless continue to speak of the doctrine in terms other than what it really is. Sola Scriptura is not a denial of the authority of the Church. Negatively, it is the assertion that no other authority is equal to or superior to Scripture. Positively, it is the assertion that all other authorities are to be judged by its decrees.

 

Don’t you see how meaningless these assertions are? Even the Catholic Church agrees that she is the inferior of the Scriptures, and that her teachings are to be regulated by them (see Dei Verbum, 10, 21). And every Protestant claims that no authority is equal to or superior to Scripture, and that all doctrines and authorities are to be judged by its decrees, but those assertions are meaningless without an authority to enforce them. Scripture is “authoritative,” but it is not an “authority.” It cannot correct the errant interpretations of its readers, and it cannot enforce its doctrines. If the Church does not have the authority to define doctrine, and to bind Christians to accept those definitions, then at best it can present its considered opinion, which the laity can either accept or reject. In that case the ultimate doctrinal authority necessarily devolves to the individual, as I said before. The individual’s opinion, however poorly informed, becomes the ultimate arbiter of truth. That’s how it could come about that the opinions of a lone Augustinian monk outweighed those of the entire Church. Martin Luther’s experience proves that these assertions inevitably boil down to “me and my Bible against the world.”

 

First, I am a member of the visible organization of Christians which calls itself the “PCA”. As such, I am under the derivative authority of the elders of my church and the ultimate authority of God speaking in His word. I am not free to come up with any interpretation of Scripture that strikes my fancy one day after I have a spicy Mexican meal and then proceed to publish and teach others my novel views. I can be disciplined by my church for violating its standards, and if necessary excommunicated. I have two choices regarding such disciplinary measures: 1) I can be a schismatic, reject the authority of my elders, and go form a new visible body based on my new Mexican-food induced theology, or 2) I can submit my views to the internal processes of my visible body, make a case for them, and try to get the standards changed (which could only be done at the highest level, the General Assembly, which might be likened to a local Church council, I suppose). When a judgement is rendered by the GA, I can either submit to its authority or return to option 1).

 

I had asked you to distinguish between “sola Scriptura” and “me and my Bible against the world,” and your response has only strengthened by contention that for all practical purposes there is no distinction. In the case of a doctrinal dispute between you and your denomination, you listed your options as 1) you can be a schismatic, reject the authority of the elders, and go form a new Church. This, of course, is “me and my Bible against the world.” Your second option: 2) you can submit your interpretation of Scripture to the internal processes of your church and hope they vote favorably upon it (personally, I find the very idea that Christian doctrine can legitimately be put to a vote unsettling). If they disagree with you, you can either submit to what you see as their faulty interpretation (in which case you violate sola Scriptura by allowing the church to judge the decrees of Scripture, rather than putting the authority of Scripture above that of the church), or you can rebel, which is back to “me and my Bible against the world.” So you see, you can either accept the authority of the Church to interpret Scripture, as in Catholicism, or you can practice “me and my Bible against the world.” There is no third option. When you assert that the authority of the Church is to be judged by the decrees of Scripture, you necessarily mean, “as interpreted by me.” Your hypothetical example illustrated quite well that either “sola Scriptura” equals “me and my Bible against the world,” or else, if the Church has real interpretational authority to which you must submit, it is a meaningless slogan.

 

If my elders render a judgement against the doctrine of the Trinity, my separation from them would not be a “schism”, but a justified removal of myself from apostates. And just this kind of removal from apostate teaching was what the Reformers believed they were doing by separating from Rome.

 

Exactly my point. Everyone in history who has separated himself from his Church has done so believing that he was removing himself from apostates. But look who made that determination: the individual! Again, “sola Scriptura” equals “me and my Bible against the world.” In the sola Scriptura worldview it is always the individual who makes the final determination of orthodoxy. If it comes right down to it, the individual has the authority to judge his entire church to be apostate, just as Luther did, and just as Calvin did.

 

Let me give you a hypothetical example. As you know, the majority of Christians (including Protestants) believe that a Christian can forfeit his salvation. Lutherans, for example, believe that if you lose your faith, you lose salvation. Your denomination, on the other hand, believes that Christians are “eternally secure.” But suppose that upon studying the many Scriptures that refute this doctrine, your denomination concludes that it is wrong, and decides to align itself once more with historic Christianity. What would you do? Would you submit to the authority of your church and suppress your own interpretation of Scripture? Or would you leave those “apostates” and join another like-minded denomination? I think I know what the answer would be, and I think it proves my point that in the final analysis, it is you and your Bible against the world.

 

Significantly, these same options would be available to a Roman Catholic who disagreed with the visible hierarchy of the Roman communion (though the internal processes might differ from the PCA’s, I suppose). The difference would be that the PCA’s General Assembly is not going to view its pronouncements as infallible and binding on all other Christian communions, as does Rome.

 

That only proves that the PCA is not the Church of the New Testament. Do you remember the dispute in the New Testament over circumcision? The Bible says,

 

“Some men came down from Judea to Antioch and were teaching the brothers: ‘Unless you are circumcised, according to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be saved.’ This brought Paul and Barnabas into sharp dispute and debate with them.” (Acts 15:1-2).

 

If a dispute like that broke out within the PCA today, how would it be resolved? Unfortunately, it could not be. You have no mechanism for resolving doctrinal disputes in a binding way. The minority group would simply “remove itself from the apostates” and form yet another denomination, and the doctrinal differences would be institutionalized and perpetuated. But the Bible did establish a pattern for resolving such doctrinal disputes:

 

“So Paul and Barnabas were appointed, along with some other believers, to go up to Jerusalem to see the apostles and elders about this question.” (Acts 15:3).

 

The apostles and elders held a council at Jerusalem to discuss this issue, and their deliberations are described in detail in Acts 15:4-29. The end result was that the council, through the guidance of the Holy Spirit (Acts 15:28) issued a command: “You are to abstain . . .” (Acts 15:29). Once the council reached its decision, the debate was over. From that point on, it was outside the bounds of Christian orthodoxy to require Gentile converts to be circumcised, and that decision was binding on all Christians everywhere:

 

“As they traveled from town to town, they delivered the decisions reached by the apostles and elders in Jerusalem for the people to obey.” (Acts 16:4).

 

There was no room for individual judgment here. The council had ruled, and the people were expected to obey. To paraphrase Augustine, Jerusalem had spoken; the issue was settled. That is how doctrinal disputes were resolved in the Christian Church for the next fifteen-hundred years. Thus, the Catholic Church’s exercise of apostolic authority is entirely consistent with the Bible, and with history, and it lends credibility to her claim to be the Church of the New Testament.

 

The PCA does not wrongly believe itself, as does Rome, to be the sum total of the visible Church. The PCA remains open, in principle, to ultimately being shown by Christ through His word that its judgement on my views was incorrect. This is why the Reformers described the Church as “reformed and always reforming”. Rome, on the other hand, is completely irreformable because it does not admit it can err in its judgements on faith and morals.

 

Of course not, and thank God for it. I would hate to put my trust in the fallible decisions of fallible men. I want irreformable doctrines. I don’t want a church that may someday change its fundamental doctrines by taking a vote. Do you really believe that Christian doctrine is “reformed and always reforming”? Is Christian doctrine really always in a state of flux, so that what it is today is not what it was yesterday, and not what it will be tomorrow? You’ll have to keep me updated as your doctrines change. :-)

 

Again, Sola Scriptura is NOT a denial of the authority of the Church to interpret Scripture.

 

So you say, but I don’t see how. Could you please explain for me the parameters of this authority? In case of conflict, whose authority wins out, yours or theirs? If your church interpreted the Scriptures in way that you thought was manifestly wrong, would you submit to that authority? If so, how is this different from Catholicism? And if this is to be the pattern of authority, shouldn’t you acknowledge that the Reformers were wrong to violate it, and shouldn’t you rejoin the Catholic Church from which they illicitly departed? But if your own interpretation wins out when there is a conflict, how can the Church be said to have “authority to interpret Scripture”? Or do you mean by this merely that the Church has as much right to interpret Scripture as you do?

 

And again, Ephesians 4:11-16 states that the teachers within in the Church have been given for the purpose of building up the body of Christ until unity of faith is attained (notice the future tense of that clause!). And yet, there is another truth which must balance this one, namely, the warning Paul gives in Acts 20:29-30, that false teachers would arise from within the very elders of the church (see vs. 17).

 

Yes, exactly. Paul was quite right, this sort of apostasy happened many times, and it was always resolved the same way. Error was declared to be error, either by papal decrees or the decrees of the general councils (which were ratified by the pope). That way, the faithful could always know when a false teacher had arisen in their midst. Indeed, how else could they know? How could the great mass of Christians, mostly uneducated and illiterate, sort through the deep theological issues raised by the various heretics and decide for themselves what the truth was? Obviously, that would have been impossible. It was necessary for the Church to identify error, and unless the faith was to be hopelessly corrupted, it was likewise necessary for God to safeguard the church in that process.

 

Paul was obviously prophesying about such men as Nestorius, Arius, and Donatus, who set themselves against the faith of the whole Church. But have you not considered the possibility that Paul was also prophesying about the Reformers? Didn’t Martin Luther, an elder, rise up among the others, set himself against the faith of the whole Church, and draw away disciples after himself, just as Nestorius, Arius, and Donatus, et al., had done? Paul also prophesied that “the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.” That sounds very much like contemporary Protestantism.

 

It’s just not enough to claim, as does Rome, that it has institutional unity that goes back to the apostles.

 

Perhaps not, but I think the true faith must be able to do at least that, given that Christ promised that the gates of hell would not prevail against His Church, and that he would be with it always. New theologies that have arisen only within the last four-hundred years bear a heavy burden of proof to show that they are in fact the true faith.

 

I cannot fathom why this [disunity] would be problematic for you except that you believe visible institutional unity is the sine qua non of true apostolicity. I’d like to see you defend that assumption rather than simply assume it.

 

I assume that we can agree that the true faith is the doctrine of the apostles, no? Well, it’s easy enough to show, both from Scripture, and immediate post-apostolic history, that their doctrine included apostolic succession. If you’d like to go into that issue, I’d be glad to, but in a different post.

 

I’m really not sure what more can be said about the issue of private judgement (which you are hinting at here) other than that it means every individual must make up his own mind what to believe. That is simply a truism which I am sure you will not deny.

 

No, I certainly won’t deny that. What I will deny is the idea that it God granted to individual Christians the authority to interpret Scripture in a way contrary to the Church. I will instead affirm that God vested ultimate interpretational authority in His Church, in order to avoid precisely the chaos that characterizes Protestantism.

 

What “private judgement” does not mean is that each and every individual who gets a copy of the Bible has the right to impose his own hermeneutical constructs on it complete disregard of what his Mother says. I realize only too well that “fundamentalists” are guilty to the Nth degree of this denigration of the Church, but I am not a fundamentalist and neither were Luther and Calvin.

 

Please tell me how this works in practice. If you were alive in the sixteenth century, the Catholic Church would have been your Mother. On what issues would you feel yourself bound to listen to her, and on what issues would you feel free to disregard her? Where, when, and how, does your private judgment legitimately outweigh hers? Who decides which issues call for submission, and which call for rebellion? I applaud your efforts to avoid denigrating the Church, but it’s very easy to obey the church when you happen to agree with it. When the Reformers decided that they disagreed with their Mother, they called her a whore and they left her.

 

Despite your well-meaning protestations, private judgment does indeed give the individual the right to interpret Scripture for himself, and to disregard the Church. If he subordinates his own interpretation to that of the Church, he simply repudiates sola Scriptura by inverting the authority relationship postulated in that theory. For all their many faults, at least Fundamentalists have recognized the logical, inevitable result of sola Scriptura, and they don’t pretend that the Church has any binding authority over their interpretation of Scripture.

 

NO individual acting all on his own has the right to interpret the Scriptures as he pleases. Again I quote Luther: “That would mean that each person would go to hell in his own way.” The Reformers did not believe they were acting all on their own. In support of this, I also quote William Webster from the recent book “Roman Catholicism: Evangelical Protestants Analyze What Divides and Unites Us” (Moody Press, 1994):

 

It is important to remember that the Reformers advanced their arguments as diligently on historical grounds as on theological. They knew church history, the church Fathers, and the major theologians of the church throughout the Middle Ages. An example of what I mean can be seen in John Calvin. In his Institutes, he quotes from no less than thirty-seven major church Fathers of the Patristic Age, not to mention many scholastic theologians, popes, and church councils. (pg. 270)

 

Roman Catholics may, of course, argue that the Reformers got their history and their quotations wrong or out of context, but the point remains that the Reformers were in no way advancing doctrines that they had just spun out of thin air in their own “rebellious” minds.

 

Was Luther following history when he removed seven books from the Old Testament that had been there for twelve-hundred years? Was he following history when he removed four books from the New Testament because he thought they contradicted his new theology? Was he following Augustine when he denied the papacy to which Augustine was loyal? Was he following Augustine when he rejected the Apocrypha, which Augustine acknowledged as inspired Scripture? Was he following Augustine when he rejected Purgatory, in which Augustine believed?

 

I don’t doubt that the Reformers tried to ground their teachings in history, just as they tried to ground them in Scripture. But to claim it, and to do it are two different things. One can always find a Scripture, or a patristic citation to defend his views. Just look at us: you and I have both quoted from Augustine [in a different dialogue] to establish opposite doctrines!

 

The Reformation was not a “Luther and his Bible against the grand apostolic continuity of Rome” affair. It was a “Luther and a large body of historical and theological evidence against uncritically accepted Roman traditions” affair. Luther believed that he was standing back to back with arguably the greatest theologian the Western Church has ever produced—Augustine. That’s not as easy a thing to debunk as you might think. Certainly it cannot be debunked by the kinds of question-begging eisegesis of passages which Rome relies on to support its ecclesiastical authority.

 

Once again, I ask that you deal with the real Protestant Reformation, and not the sad caricature that is championed by so many of its modern would-be defenders. Sola Scriptura is not behind the 23,000 “Protestant” denominations; the sin of not consulting Mother is.

 

You sound almost Catholic when you say that. I would really love to know why you think the Reformers were justified in not consulting Mother, and indeed, of actively ignoring her, calling her a whore, and rebelling against her, but for everybody else, this is a sin.

 

The fundamentalists don’t know what they are talking about when they call themselves “Protestants”. Let’s ignore them for a while, ok? :)

 

Believe me, nothing would make me happier than to ignore the Fundamentalists, but they too are descended from the Reformation, by way of the Anabaptists, and I think they have every bit as much right to the name “Protestant” as you do. I simply don’t recognize your authority to define the parameters of “real Protestantism.” However, I’ll agree with you that there are indeed a whole host of issues on which the Fundamentalists don’t know what they’re talking about! :-)

 

Finally, it occurred to me that there was once a great man who stood nearly all alone on a certain doctrine. Reviled, banished, and persecuted, he stubbornly stood for a major part of the faith once for all delivered unto the saints while the rest of the visible Church hierarchy arrogantly promoted heresy. He refused to bow to councils or to “institutional unity”, but stood solidly against nearly the whole world on what the Scriptures plainly said. The man’s name was Athanasius. Was Athanasius guilty of “me and my Bible against everyone else”? On the criteria by which you judge classical Protestantism to be guilty of that offense (defying the established hierarchy), you would have to say “yes”. But you know as well as I do that Athanasius was not ignoring Mother in taking his stand; he was defending Mother against her rebellious children. Luther and Calvin thought they were doing the same. Perhaps it is time for you to rethink some of your criticisms of them.

 

Gee, Tim, I really hate to take the wind out of what you evidently think is a powerful analogy, but I’m afraid you have the story of Athanasius almost exactly backward. Unlike the Reformers, Athanasius did not defy the established hierarchy. Nor was he excommunicated, nor did he reject the decrees of an Ecumenical Council. In fact, he was persecuted precisely because of his loyalty to the Pope, and to the Christological definition of the Nicaean Ecumenical Council. Athanasius is a saint, a doctor and confessor of the Church, a true Catholic hero. Here is his story:

 

In 325, the Ecumenical Council of Nicaea declared, against Arius, that Christ was of the same substance as the Father. Athanasius, though not yet a priest, attended the council as the secretary to his bishop, Alexander. Five months after Nicaea, Alexander died, and Athanasius succeeded him as Bishop of Alexandria, Egypt. Around the year 330, Arius was recalled from exile, but Athanasius refused to have fellowship with him, so one of Arius’s friends, the Bishop of Nicomedia, lodged a bunch of bogus political charges against Athanasius. The Arians succeeded in rigging his trial, and when he refused to be tried by a rigged tribunal, he was condemned in his absence.

 

Athanasius was exiled for two years by Emperor Constantine, but the Emperor did not appoint anyone to replace him as Bishop. In 336, Arius died, and Constantine died the following year. His son, also named Constantine, invited Athanasius to return to his see. But in the year 340, the Arians succeeded in renewing the charges against Athanasius, and adding a few new ones, too. Eventually, they forcibly replaced Athanasius with Gregory of Cappadocia, thus forcing Athanasius to go into hiding. Athanasius took his case to Rome, and appealed to Pope Julius. After a careful examination of the facts, the Pope declared Athanasius innocent.

 

In 343, Athanasius’ innocence was reaffirmed by the Council of Sardica. Meanwhile, the Arians gained influence over Constantius, the emperor of the East, and he persecuted Athanasius and other orthodox Catholics. However, Athanasius found favor with Constans, the Emperor of Italy. When Gregory of Cappadocia died in June, 345, Constans sent a letter to Constantius defending Athanasius, and Constantius yielded. 

 

Athanasius returned to Alexandria, where he reigned as Bishop for ten years. But then Pope Julius died. His successor, Pope Liberius, was friendly toward Athanasius, but Liberius himself was driven into exile. (In those days, the Pope had no political power, and was at the mercy of the Emperor). At the Emperor’s orders, the Arian bishop Acacius of Caeserea installed a false Arian “pope,” Felix. But Athanasius, and all other orthodox Catholics, remained loyal to the true Pope, and the true hierarchy. 

 

Using the power of the Emperor, the Arians once again drove Athanasius into exile. When the Emperor Constantius saw that orthodox Catholics were ignoring his Arian “pope,” Liberius was allowed to return to Rome. Upon the death of Emperor Constantius, and his succession by Emperor Julian, Athanasius was yet again restored to his see. A few more emperors came and went, and Athanasius was alternately exiled and restored, depending on which emperor was in charge, but eventually, the Arians died out, and orthodoxy prevailed.

 

So you see, Athanasius did not rebel against the papacy and the hierarchy. On the contrary, he vigorously defended the Catholic creed defined at the Council of Nicaea. And contrary to your assertion, the Church hierarchy did not promote the Arian heresy. Rather, it defended the faith against it, in the face of some very powerful heretics who had the weight of the civil government behind them at a time when the Pope had no civil power. Bishops in those days were installed by the Emperor, not the Pope, and that’s how some Arians were able to become bishops. But God protected the papacy, as he always does.

 

Athanasius did not “defy the established hierarchy,” he appealed to it, and was vindicated by two popes. He was always loyal to the Church, and to the pope, but as I said, in those days, the popes had no political power, and they could not prevent his numerous exiles. Pope Liberius couldn’t even prevent his own exile. 

 

So your statement that “Athanasius refused to bow to councils or to ‘institutional unity’, but stood solidly against nearly the whole world on what the Scriptures plainly said” is just not true. Athanasius was not fighting against the councils, but for them. (Also, the Scriptures do not plainly say that Christ is of the same substance as the Father, which was the crux of the Arian debate. We believe that this formulation of the faith is true, but it is only “plain” in hindsight.)

 

Athanasius stood firm in defense of Catholicism against heretical elements that drove the Pope into exile, rejected the decrees of the Council of Nicaea, and threatened to take over the Church. Martin Luther, on the other hand, was himself a heretic, who stood against the popes, and against the decrees of the Ecumenical Councils (some of them, anyway). If you’re looking for an analogy, I’m afraid Luther better fits the role of Arius, than of Athanasius.