There’s a common line of Protestant attack—or perhaps better described as a counter-attack—where they argue that the problem Catholicism raises for Protestants is, in fact, just as much a problem for Catholics, even if less immediately obvious.
I’ve discussed this tu quoque tactic before. In this article, I want to examine a few examples of it, particularly as they relate to a recent piece of mine on the philosophical case for Catholicism (and why Protestantism tends toward religious skepticism).
Here’s the gist of the argument: Revelation—Scripture—is often ambiguous, especially since it was delivered fully clothed in the culture and customs of times long past. So, to ensure its successful transmission and proper understanding, what’s needed is a living person or “moral person” (that is, an institution) to guide its interpretation. To leave such enormously complex matters to the fallible individual is surely beyond what’s reasonable for the rational powers of beings like us—and definitely not something God would require.
Using our reason, then, we can see that this is a context where we should expect an epistemic (from episteme, meaning knowledge—epistemic refers to belief formation) authority to be provided—and can recognize what that authority is: the Catholic Church, which claims pretty much what we’d expect and has the historical pedigree to back it up.
Related to this argument, I pointed out,
the Protestant paradigm offers no living, infallible epistemic authority. Just sola scriptura. And no book interprets itself. So inevitably, the final arbiter is the individual—and nothing beyond himself.
But that individual is—according to his own paradigm—no less fallible than the many Christians throughout history he believes got these matters wrong.
For any intellectually honest or responsible person, this should inspire a great deal of skepticism—about whether their doctrines are true, their interpretations are correct, or whether they even have the right canon of Scripture. Within their own paradigm, they really shouldn’t feel confident about any of it!
So that’s the problem: Protestantism—because it rejects the kind of epistemic authority Catholicism claims—opens the door to (catastrophic) religious skepticism about Christian doctrine and teaching. After all, the Protestant must believe that countless thinkers—many of the most influential theologians and Church Fathers—were seriously mistaken about matters they themselves held to be essential: baptism, the Eucharist, the papacy, you name it. And since Protestants have no living epistemic authority they can “tap into,” they should have little to no confidence that they, in our own time, have things concerning divine revelation any more figured out than those towering figures before them—who were often, even radically, wrong.
A Few Objections
Let’s now consider a few objections to this line of reasoning—objections that, in effect, try to show that the problem Catholics point to really applies just as much to them (a kind of tu quoque move).
For example, perhaps the Protestant will flip the objection about significant error and say, “Well, Catholics also believe that many Christians throughout history have been wrong—especially those whose beliefs the Church later condemned! And certainly, they think Protestants are Christians who get a great many things wrong as well!”
To which the Catholic should say, true. But here’s the key difference—Catholics don’t locate the error within the institutional Church. The error—this is important—is with individuals or groups either breaking away from the Church or operating within it prior to a formal declaration—not with the Church’s formal, authoritative teaching. There’s no error at that level, because, as Catholics hold, God doesn’t allow it. That’s precisely what avoids the problems Protestants now find themselves mired in.
Put differently, Catholicism doesn’t require us to believe that the visible Church Christ founded fundamentally failed or taught heresy—which Protestants must, in effect, maintain. That’s why Catholicism doesn’t generate the same kind of religious skepticism I argue Protestantism ultimately struggles with. There is, for Catholics, a reliable, infallible epistemic authority at work.
Thus, Catholics can claim real continuity with an institutional, infallible teaching authority—one that has been there from the beginning. Protestants, on the other hand, deny that such a thing even exists. So when the Church “goes off the rails” (as they see it), there’s no built-in safeguard to preserve or restore the truth. It’s error all the way down—or at least all the way back.
But Wait—What About Eastern Orthodoxy?
There are problems. First, Eastern Orthodoxy lacks the clear unifying principle of the papacy—the mechanism that allows the Church to definitively settle disputes and, moreover, to clarify which councils are actually ecumenical. Eastern Orthodoxy is effectively frozen—and, moreover, appears to be in schism with itself at present. (The situation between Ukraine and Moscow is quite serious.) It suffers, functionally, from many of the same problems as Protestantism, despite its initially more traditional appearance.
So, although Eastern Orthodoxy may have a stronger claim to historical continuity than Protestantism in certain respects, it does not meet the other key expectations—and in fact, it experiences just the issues one would expect to arise without the sort of mechanism Catholicism has.
If one looks more closely into the history, other problems emerge. For example, it takes some serious contortions to get around the (very Catholic) papal teachings ratified by the Third, Sixth, and Seventh Ecumenical Councils. Eastern Orthodox theologians must adopt strained and implausible interpretations to avoid the plain sense of those teachings—interpretations that, in effect, render the teachings functionally useless. After all, if what appears clear is not actually what was intended, then the teachings become massively opaque and incapable of serving as reliable guides. Unless—yes, you guessed it—there’s a living, infallible authoritative interpreter—someone who can bring definitive clarity and settle the matter.
Eastern Orthodoxy doesn’t have that. Catholicism does—and has definitively clarified the role and authority of the papacy. (See Vatican I and beyond.)
And So You See . . .
We return to the heart of the religious skepticism problem for Protestants: if the institutional Church got it wildly wrong for a thousand years, then why assume we’re not just as wrong now—even about core doctrines like the Trinity or the divinity of Christ? After all, within the Protestant paradigm, there’s no principled difference in the epistemic situation. It’s just fallible individuals then and fallible individuals now, trying to hash out matters that are very, very difficult. (Not so, obviously, for Catholics, who do have an infallible authority they can remain in visible union with.)
Another objection might go like this: “But even the Catholic must use his fallible private judgment to discern the Church—so doesn’t that collapse the whole thing?” That is, if Catholics claim that private reason or judgment isn’t sufficient to sort through all the complicated matters of revelation and interpretation, isn’t it just as much a problem that they must rely on private reason to identify the true Church in the first place?
Answer: No—not at all. In fact, I addressed this in my previous article by showing that private judgment is often sufficient for
- recognizing when an epistemic authority is needed and
- discerning what that authority is,
- but not for replacing that authority once it’s found.
The Catholic paradigm fits this picture perfectly. The Protestant one falls apart at point 3.
The examples I gave—whether with respect to medicine or to even more everyday things like hiring a trail guide—make this distinction clear: we are generally well suited to recognize when we need help, and even whom to turn to for help, but we’re not always well suited to resolve the matter independently. (The first two judgments are indeed reasonable and responsible; the latter, in many—if not most—cases, is unreasonable and irresponsible.) We might know we need a doctor, and we might be good at picking one. But we’re not good at diagnosing our own condition or prescribing our own treatment. That’s why we submit to medical authority.
It’s not hard to see why the same sort of thing applies to propositional revelation. Nor is it particularly difficult to discern which Church might be that authoritative guide. After all, Catholicism is the only candidate that both meets our a priori expectations for an authoritative magisterium and has the historical continuity to back it up. It fits the bill—and the historical data.
As I said before, there are no other serious contenders.