As many
know, I am the Latter-day Saint apologist who has done the most work critiquing
the Protestant doctrine of Sola Scriptura. To read my full-length work
critiquing the doctrine, see:
While
browsing the old Catholic Legate Website, I came across a rather interesting
article by John Pacheco (someone who James White and Eric Svendsen referred to,
and insulted, as the “Jack Chick of Catholic apologetics”)
It does a
very good job at showing the problematic nature of section 1 paragraph 6 of the
1647 Westminster Confession of Faith (which one finds, more or less, repeated
in section 1 paragraph 6 of the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith). As
the article is no longer available online, I am reproducing it here, even if
one disagrees with the pro-Catholic nature of the article:
When arguing against our Protestant
opponents - Arminian, Reformed, or otherwise - we are inevitably reminded that
the Scripture is perspicuous in all things necessary for salvation.
Such a claim is made, of course, in order to buttress the sixteenth century
heresy of Sola Scriptura, and discount and attack the necessity of
an institutional and hierarchical mechanism for definitively resolving disputes
within the Church.
A dispute over the interpretation of a text may indicate that the
meaning of the text is unclear and open to misunderstanding. Since therefore
such a situation would gut the whole internal sustainability of the system of
Sola Scriptura, the proponents of this system seek to exempt the bible from
being unclear in certain instances thereby saving the coherence of their belief
in such a system. However, as we all know, simply declaring something to be
perspicuous does not necessarily make it so. In fact, while most Sola
Scripturists believe that the bible is clear, it is clear only to them individually or factionally and
not collectively. This reality, of course, completely
destroys the whole idea of something being clear. Readers who are interested in
reading my discussion of this topic in more detail can do so here.
In order to further highlight the problems which engulf Sola
Scriptura and the perspicuity of Scripture, let us turn to the horse's mouth,
so to speak. The Westminster Confession says this:
The whole counsel of God
concerning all things necessary for His own glory, man's salvation, faith and
life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture: unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new
revelations of the Spirit, or traditions of men. Nevertheless, we acknowledge
the inward illumination of the Spirit of God to be necessary for the saving
understanding of such things as are revealed in the Word: and that there are
some circumstances concerning the worship of God, and government of the Church,
common to human actions and societies, which are to be ordered by the light of
nature, and Christian prudence, according to the general rules of the Word,
which are always to be observed. (WCF, Of the Holy
Scripture, I:VI)
As the Confession makes plain, there are two ways of learning
about the truth in Scripture. The Scripture will either reveal the truth
explicitly or it will do so implicitly. While we can understand how a proponent
of Sola Scriptura will claim that all things fundamental to salvation are clear
because of explicit teachings in Scripture, it is very odd that they would do
so when the teachings are not explicit. As the Confession admits, there are
truths in Scripture which are implicit, which, by
good and necessary consequence, may be deduced from Scripture.
Yet, this begs many questions:
1) How much deduction is allowed?
2) Does not more deduction
make the conclusion less clear?
3) What if someone disagrees with
the conclusion which is derived from logic of the accepted explicit truths?
4) Who decides if the deduction is
to be accepted or rejected?
5) Can we use an implicit truth as
a premise in an argument which forms another implicit truth?
In light of these difficulties, there are two things which become
apparent. Firstly, as far as the Westminster Confession goes, the system of
Sola Scriptura (and its principle plank of perspicuity) is greatly compromised
by introducing the principle of deduction. By permitting an exegete to deduce
doctrines, the Confession has put no boundary on how much deduction
is acceptable. In fact, as more deduction is proposed on a question, a truth
becomes less and less perspicuous, even though, objectively speaking, the
proponent of the question may be correct in his conclusion.
Secondly, a semantic point of order needs to be made. SS
Apologists are forever castigating Catholics for appealing to
"implicit" support in Scripture for some of the Church's doctrines -
the Immcaculate Conception and Assumption of Mary both come to mind. It is
rather ironic then to read that the Westminister Confession is effectively
allowing the same thing - except that instead of pronouncing a doctrine as
being "implicit" in Scripture, it says that the doctrine is
"deduced". Yet, quite obviously, it's the same thing! This teaching
from the Confession really belongs in the Catholic camp, since Catholics say
that "implicit" teachings are embedded throughout Scripture, since Scripture
is only a witness to the truth, not a textbook on all Christian doctrine.
Moreover, the fact that Catholics can verify what one can "deduce"
from Scripture by comparing it to what the Tradition taught on the same
subject, then we have a confirmation that what we are "deducing" is
indeed correct. Otherwise, all "deduction" is subject to the whims
and biases of the deducer. Protestants have no authoritative confirmation for
their "deductions" even though they may claim, from time to time, to
be replicating this or that belief in the Patristics. Even here, however, this
appeal is impotent since SS Apologists do not consider their consensus or their
concilliar dogmas to be authoritative or definitive.
Thirdly, and quite paradoxically, the Catholic system of
development of doctrine would fit quite nicely into the Confession's permission
to deduce truths from Scripture which are not explicitly contained therein. The
difference between the Sola Scripturist and the Catholic is, of course, that
the Catholic has answers to all of the questions proposed above. And not only
that, in the case of a person who is able to deduce the truth of a doctrine
which itself is not explicit, a Catholic can find the truth and propose it for
"binding" whereas the Sola Scripturist is unable to share that
truth definitively with his co-religionists.
Hence, according to the Westminister Confession, both Catholics
and Protestants really approach Scripture in the same way -- as not being able
to explicitly teach all Christian doctrine. Yet it is the Catholics who have
the only system (Authoritative Tradition and Authoritative Magisterium) which
is able to fill the gaps, authoritatively, where Scripture is only implicit.
John Pacheco
The Catholic Legate
August 10, 2002
The Catholic Legate
August 10, 2002