Audio only:
Joe’s opening statement in his debate against Doug Wilson on Sola Scriptura.
Transcript:
Joe:
Welcome back to Shameless Popery. I’m Joe Heschmeyer and happy Easter. I suspect many of you are familiar with the Protestant pastor, Doug Wilson. He’s often been described as a Christian nationalist. He recently made the news for arguing that the law shouldn’t permit Catholics to process down the street with images of Mary or with the Eucharist.
Clip:
Catholic church bells would be okay. Catholic church bells would be okay. But a parade in honor of the Virgin Mary, carrying an image of the Virgin Mary down Main Street, no. So basically- What about the Eucharist?
Joe:
What about the Eucharist? What about a Eucharistic
Clip:
Procession?That’s a new one. I would say probably not. It would depend on what was being done around it, how it was being conducted. But basically, public displays of idolatry.
Joe:
And look, obviously Doug is a controversial figure. He is not afraid to take his ideas to their logical limits, even if that makes people uncomfortable. And to be honest, he’s been kind of on the periphery of my own awareness for a while now. So when I was invited to debate him, I wasn’t 100% sure what to expect, but I agreed and I’m glad that I did. I find him gracious, thoughtful, amiable, and I’d be happy to debate or dialogue with him again on any number of topics. Now, obviously, there are a lot of issues upon which we clearly disagree. And one of those issues is what brought me to Moscow, Idaho in the first place. The doctrine in question is sola scriptura or scripture alone. More specifically, is the Bible our only infallible rule of faith? Protestants like Doug are going to say yes. Catholics like me are going to say no, it isn’t.
And in fact, it can’t be. As the second Vatican council says, it is not from sacred scripture alone that the church draws her certainty about everything which has been revealed. Instead, we accept both sacred tradition and sacred scripture with the same sense of loyalty and reverence. Now, obviously, I’m not going to rehash our entire nearly two hour debate right now. I’m going to link to it at the end of this and I might do a post-debate recap with Cameron Bertuzzi of capturing Christianity soon. What I want to do instead is threefold. Number one, to clarify what it is Catholics believe on this subject because Protestants often misunderstand the Catholic view. Number two, when Protestants have traditionally believed on this subject because both Catholics and many modern evangelicals often misunderstand that view. And then number three, explain why I think the traditional Protestant view suffers from many of the same critical flaws as the modern evangelical version of solo scriptura.
So first, what is it Catholics believe and why? If you’re a Protestant wondering why Catholics would possibly think anything more than scripture is needed as our soul and fallible rule of faith, let me give a very basic explanation. St. Paul describes binding apostolic teaching being transmitted both through scripture and through tradition, both through letter or epistle and word of mouth. In fact, he speaks of the apostles’ writings as tradition, Peridosis, because they’re handed on. So think about it like this. How is it that you know what it is that the apostles taught? It’s not because you’ve read the original manuscripts, you haven’t. Those don’t exist anymore. And it’s not because you personally watched the apostles write those epistles. No, you and I know what the apostles taught because we believe that the Holy Spirit who was in charge of making sure the biblical texts were written accurately also ensured that they were transmitted accurately.
Revelation is God’s unveiling. That’s what the word revelation means. If God revealed himself through the scriptures, but then those texts were just completely lost or corrupted, he would hardly be unveiled. He’d hardly be revealed. And so the Holy Spirit speaks and works both through the original inspiration of the sacred writings and through reliably handing on that apostolic teaching to future generations. That’s scripture and tradition. Now, this very much matches the way the Bible describes the Holy Spirit’s role in preserving Christian teachings. At the Last Supper, Jesus promises to ask the Father to send the Holy Spirit the Spirit of truth to lead us into all the truth. That doesn’t just mean he’s going to inspire the evangelists to write the perfect book. As Saint Jerome pointed out long ago, the devil himself quoted scripture. Anybody can twist the teachings of the Bible. That’s not the fullness of truth.
The fullness of truth is rightly understanding what God has revealed, not just having a book that you haven’t read or don’t understand. In Jerome’s words, the essence of the scriptures is not the letter, but the meaning. And so we need three things, the word of God spoken and recorded, the faithful handing on of that revelation, and a proper understanding of the revelation. And the church is going to play an important role in properly interpreting scripture for our understanding. St. Paul describes the church both as the household of God, but also as a pillar and bulwark of the truth. So we have this kind of trifecta. God reveals himself to his people through scripture and tradition, and then he guides the church into the proper understanding of this revelation. Okay. So what about the Protestant side of the question? What does it mean to believe in Soloscriptor in the first place?
That’s a slightly tricky question to answer and not just because I’m not a Protestant, but because different Protestants mean different things by it. So I think it’s good here to make an important distinction between what many evangelical Protestants today mean by solo scriptura and what the doctrine has classically meant. Because there are many people today who treat solo scripture exactly like what it sounds like, scripture alone with no real binding authority for anybody, anything else aside from the Bible. This ends up being a kind of hyper-individualized sort of Christianity, a sort of me and Jesus Christianity.
Where the church is treated as an afterthought or even as an obstacle to a personal relationship with Jesus. Now, Doug Wilson acknowledged that just me in my Bible is in fact a view held by many contemporary evangelicals, but he thinks this is wrong and that it’s not true solo scriptura. Following Keith Matheson in his book, The Shape of Solo Scriptura, he calls this modern evangelical version so low scriptura or tradition zero. There’s plenty of terms that are all kind of confusing. In any case, many Protestants on Doug’s side of the equation are going to say that this evangelical view or maybe the Catholic critiques of that view are a straw man of Solascriptora, but that’s not really true in my opinion. First, the reformers themselves never had a doctrine they called solo scriptura. The term is actually much newer. Second, the reformers had different views of how much authority to give to the church or to tradition.
And third, if a bunch of people say they believe in a doctrine called the sola scriptura and then you critique that doctrine, I think it’s fine to use the name people give for their own belief system. Nevertheless, Doug is right. It is broadly true that the view that many evangelicals today have of tradition of the church is going to be much lower than what a Protestant in the 16th century might have believed. And as Doug rightly points out, the more traditional Protestant view is that in addition to the Bible, “There are other genuine religious authorities in our lives and their secondary authority must not be dismissed as a nullity. These authorities would include parents, pastors, teachers, church councils, statements of faith, church tradition, and so forth. You might be surprised,” he says, “Am my inclusion of tradition, but historic Protestants do believe in authoritative tradition, just not ultimate or infallible tradition.” I like that Doug brings up parental authority because I think it can help clear up any confusion you might have because again, many Catholics and many evangelicals are going to want to say, “Look, you just said you’re committed to scripture alone, solo scriptura.” Now you’re complaining that people take that to mean only scripture.
Sounds like those are the same thing, but the traditional Protestant belief is that scripture is the only infallible authority, not the only authority, period. A lower court, you can appeal their decision, but they still have real authority unless they get overturned by a higher authority. As a parent, you have real authority of your kids, but as most parents and all kids can tell you, that’s not an authority that you wield infallibly. You can and you do heir. So Catholics and Protestants can actually agree a lot here. We both believe in the idea of secondary authorities. Obedience is good, but if even your bishop tells you to do something wicked, you should resist him. So secondary authorities exist. It’s good for both sides to remember that. The options on the table are not only that scripture has no authority or that it’s infallible. Protestants have believed traditionally and many still do believe that tradition has a real but fallible authority and that the church has a real but fallible authority.
Okay. Given this, why do I say that both forms of solo scriptura fail then? Because there’s an important difference between the church trying to interpret scripture and a parent trying to decide the best thing for their kids. And we can actually see this very clearly from the works of Keith Matheson in the book that Doug Wilson quoted from. At one point in the book, Matheson denounces a theologian by the name of Ed Stevens. He’s going to be very much in the solo scriptura, the zero kind of authority crowd. He says that the creeds have no real authority anyway. They are no more authoritative than our best opinions today, and he claims that they’re valued because of their antiquity. Now in Ed Stevens’s view, we must not take the Creeds any more seriously than we take the writings and opinions of people like Martin Luther or the writings of C.S.
Lewis or the Westminster Confession. Very much solo scriptura. And Matheson rejects this view in the strongest terms. He says, “If evangelical Christians would simply reflect upon what statements such as the ones above entail, the error would be very clear. 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. After all, Mathson points out this would seemingly lower the Nicene Creed’s defense of the Trinity to the level of C.S. Lewis speculating about something like the afterlife. And as Mathiston rightly points out, if you accept that, if you say, “Well, the Creed is just our best interpretation of the biblical evidence. Maybe the first council of Nicia got it wrong about the Trinity.” The end result of that is sheer doctrinal chaos.
Matheson again, “If the ecumenical councils 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.” Now, I think Mathson has a great critique of the evangelical, me and my Bible kind of approach. The problem is, as I hope is clear, this isn’t just a problem for modern evangelicals.
This is a problem within Protestantism itself. Even if you hold to the historic Protestant confessions, they’re going to disagree about the essential doctrines of Christianity. To take just one example, the Westminster confession says it’s sinful not to baptize your baby, but baptist confessions don’t believe you should baptize your baby. They might even go so far, depending on the baptist you’re looking at in terms of their work, to say it’s sinful to baptize your baby. So they’re going to disagree both whether or not baptism is an essential doctrine, but also what that essential doctrine actually says, what it teaches, and they’re going to take polar opposite views. So this isn’t just a problem for modern evangelicals. This is a problem within Protestantism itself. And the problem comes down to this. If you interpret the Bible and your interpretation of the Bible contradicts the way the Bible has traditionally been understood and the way the church teaches the Bible is meant to be understood who’s right.
Because if you say you should go with yourself, you’re going to end up in the relativism and the tearing apart of any objective content of Christianity in solo scriptura. If you say we should trust the church, that’s going to undermine the basis for Protestantism as such. And I don’t see any way out of this problem. It seems to be one of those two answers. You can’t say, “Go with the church unless the church is right,” because the whole question is whether the church is right on the interpretation of the Bible. This problem becomes very clear within Matheson’s own book when he favorably quotes John Calvin. He quotes a letter from John Calvin in which Calvin says, “For although we hold that the word of God alone lies beyond the sphere of our judgment and that fathers and counsels are of authority only insofar as they accord with the rule of the word, we still give to councils and fathers such rank and honor as it is meat for them to hold under Christ.” Now look, Matheson, many Protestants hear that and say, “Look, he’s given real authority to the church, but here’s the problem.
As a parent, you may make good decisions or less good decisions. Some of your decisions may be ones that your neighbor makes and some decisions may not be. You might be anti-co-sleeping and somebody else’s pro co-sleeping, whatever. But when it comes to the interpretation of the Bible, there’s not room for just prudential disagreements where you say,” Well, I’m going to submit, even though this isn’t the decision I would make. “You can and should do that with secondary authorities. If your boss or if you’re a kid, your parents or your bishop say,” We’re going to do things this way. “There’s a lot of room where you can just say,” Okay, let’s go along with it. “But if the question is, this is the interpretation of the Bible you need to believe in, and it’s not the interpretation of the Bible you would’ve come to on your own, you can’t just submit to that unless you believe that the Holy Spirit is guiding the church in a way the Holy Spirit’s not guiding you the individual.
That at a certain point, the individual and the church clash. So which one has a final say? Should we trust the church’s interpretation of scripture even if it’s not our own? If so, we should be Catholic. Should we distrust the church’s interpretation of scripture if it contradicts our own? If so, we have this doctrinal chaos that Matheson rightly points out. And just saying,” Well, we trust the church if it agrees with the rule of the word absolutely doesn’t work because the whole dispute is whether degrees of the rule of the word. “In the Catholic Protestant dispute, as with the different disputes within Protestantism, it’s not as if one side is saying,” Let’s throw out the Bible. “The dispute is what does the Bible mean about justification? What does the Bible mean about how we are meant to approach the Eucharist or what Jesus means by this is my body?
These are interpretive questions. And so to say we can trust the church as long as it’s in agreement with the word is absolutely sheer question begging. And Matheson actually gives us all the tools to see this. In his words, quote,” Is it possible to resolve the problem of differing interpretations of scripture by an appeal to another interpretation of scripture? “The problem, he says that adherence of solo scripture, I haven’t noticed, and I’d suggest adherence of sola scripture, I haven’t noticed either, is that any appeal to scripture, 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, executed, and interpreted by somebody.
I think Matthiessen is exactly right, but I think that’s why sola scriptura ends up being unsustainable. There’s no method. There’s no principle by which to know whether to trust my interpretation or the churches. If you go one way, you end up in this radical chaos. If you go the other way, you end up in Catholicism. As a Catholic, I have a clear answer. I don’t think sola scriptura provides a clear answer because the answer can’t be trust the church’s interpretation as long as that interpretation is right if the entire question is, is the interpretation right. Now, that’s one point I made briefly in the debate with Doug Wilson. If you want to see the other points that we talked about, I really encourage you to watch the entire episode. I’m going to link to it at the end. But look, it would be crazy for me not to mention during the October of Easter that it is Easter.
Happy Easter, the Lord is risen. Last week, I shared some of the data suggesting there’s been a rising tide of conversions to the Catholic church in the US, and I caveated then that researchers like Ryan Burge have warned against labeling that a revival too quickly. Now, since then, Burge has actually acknowledged that there’s been a clear and noticeable uptick in Catholic converts recently, and he gives us the latest numbers really showing this. Now, look, he is still quick to point out that these numbers are much lower than they were 25 years ago. And I agree, it could be a while before we make up all of that lost ground. It’s been a tough 25 years for religion in general and the Catholic church in particular, but the undeniable fact is things really are going in the right direction right now. And that’s not just true here in the US.
The comments of last week’s video are about the most uplifting comments you’re going to see. And many of you shared your own conversion stories or shared what you were seeing in Catholic diocese around the world, places like Brazil, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Texas, the Netherlands, the UK, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia. I mean, the Holy Spirit really does seem to be doing something exciting, really wonderful right now. And we should acknowledge that and rejoice in it. And that’s not about triamphelism. That’s not just about numbers or something. It’s because every single conversion is a cause for joy. As Jesus said, just so I tell you, there’s joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents. If this content’s helpful, I hope you’ll consider supporting us over at shamelessjo.com. And I hope as well that you’ll check out my full debate, Doug Wilson, right here, and then let me know in the comments below what you think.
For Shamus Popri, I’m Joe Heschmire. God bless you.