Concerning 'sola scriptura'

This post and its comment thread is intended to allow for a discussion of the Protestant doctrine of 'sola scriptura', rather than hi-jacking a thread at Neo-neocon.

So, in this OP, I'll duplicate the pertinent parts of some comments from that linked thread.

Roy Nathanson
Just a point…

There is nowhere in the Bible (Old or New Testaments) that expressly proscribes abortion. The absolute forbidding of abortion is an extreme position, when looked at in historical terms.

R.C.
1. Protestants made up a solid majority of the population during the days when serious Christians made up much of the population. Consequently, the assumption called Sola Scriptura leaked into the popular culture: Non-Christians in the U.S. naturally assume that all the content of the Christian religion can be derived from Bible passages (which will state that content with sufficient clarity that the meaning won’t be misunderstood).
...
This is relevant because outside the Protestant world, Sola Scriptura does not exist as an operating premise; it’s considered a weird and self-contradictory 16th-century well-meaning-but-heretical innovation.

Something I find amusing about this particular comment is that R.C. goes on (which I haven't quoted) to contrast 'sola scriptura' ... with an approach which is totally in keeping with 'sola scriptura'.

Ilion:
Crazy me, but I also dream of a day when the bureaucrats of The One True Bureaucracy will stop instructing their flock in false teachings about 'sola scriptura' (especially) and the other Protestant 'solas'.

The fact of this false teaching is especially amusing when one understands that The One True Bureaucracy implicitly endorses 'sola scriptura': does not the the Roman denomination ultimately try to justify all its claims, no matter how questionable, by appeal, no matter how strained, to Scripture?

RC
(Warning: the following reply to Ilion is utterly uninteresting to anyone uninvolved in Protestant-Catholic disagreements. If that ain’t your cup o’ tea, skip it.)

@Ilion:

Thanks for your reply; and I think I kinda like your characterization “One True Bureaucracy.” It has a ring to it, and is (sadly) a fair characterization of one of the worst traits in one segment of the Roman clergy: Too many senior clergy come off more like bank branch-managers than like, say, Athanasius or Thomas Aquinas. They ain’t all like that; but too many are.

That said, I have to disagree with a three of assertions you’ve made (one implicitly):

Assertion #1: “[Catholic bishops] instructing their flock in false teachings about ‘sola scriptura‘ (especially) and the other Protestant ‘solas‘”:

I don’t think that’s accurate, because in my experience Catholic bishops don’t teach Catholics anything about Protestant beliefs, true or false. In fact only the best of them make much strenuous effort to teach Catholics anything detailed about Catholic beliefs. This goes hand-in-hand with my complaint that many of the bishops act more like careerist middle-managers. When it comes to faithful preaching of the Catholic faith, Protestant Billy Graham probably outdid 75% of the current American episcopate.

In response to that, I anticipate you might reply, “Okay, fine, if 75% of your bishops aren’t really teaching, perhaps it wasn’t they, but in my opinion someone has been teaching Catholics something false about ‘Sola Scriptura’, which leads to…

Assertion #2 (implied): “[Some Catholic teacher, somewhere] instructing [Catholics] in false teachings about ‘sola scriptura‘”:

If I have correctly anticipated that clarification, let me grant that, yes, some Catholic teachers have, on occasion, failed to distinguish between Sola Scriptura as held by, say, John Calvin, and the less-defensible “just my Bible and me” approach which makes no reference whatsoever to patristics or liturgical tradition. (One wag used the term “Solo” Scriptura for this latter form.)

My Southern Baptist upbringing makes me sensitive to the distinction, so I’m always quick to point it out whenever I find my Catholic friends conflating the two. One ought not to indulge in straw-manning one’s interlocutors even if they’re atheists; still less if they’re brothers-in-Christ.

Fortunately, I find that the recent (last 30 years) influx of Protestant clergy, lay apologists, missionaries, seminary professors, etc., becoming Catholic has led to a wider understanding. When Catholics have Sola Scriptura described to them these days, it’s by folks like David Anders, Bryan Cross, Jimmy Akin, Tim Staples, and Scott Hahn. In this way, they get a more-nuanced description than they would if some “cradle” Catholic tried to do it.

Assertion #3: “The One True Bureaucracy implicity endorses ‘sola scriptura‘: does not the the Roman denomination ultimately try to justify all its claims, no matter how questionable, by appeal, no matter how strained, to Scripture?”

Nope. Not in the way you mean.

Catholic apologists argue by the following pattern:
– We’re being told that XYZ is integral to the theological/moral/liturgical content delivered by Christ to the apostles, and by the apostles to their earliest disciples, and they to their disciples, down to the present. But is that accurate?
– Ignore, for the moment, the claim of “divine inspiration” or “inerrancy” of these texts called “the Bible,” and view them (or even just the least-controversial parts of them) as historical witnesses to what the early Christians did, said, and thought. Do they support XYZ ambiguously, or unambiguously?
IF unambiguously, then skip down to the step marked “CHURCH”
IF ambiguously, continue…
– We are unsure whether XYZ was supported by Those Historical Texts or not, because the relevant passages are ambiguous: They can be interpreted in various ways, not all of which support XYZ. How can we exclude some of these competing interpretations?
IF an interpretation is anachronistic in the context of a 1st-century Jewish audience, exclude it (the earlier traditions in the Mishnah and the Dead Sea Scrolls are helpful to understand the assumptions of the initial hearers/readers);
IF an interpretation utterly contradicts the consensus views of the early Christians whom the apostles installed in positions of early Church leadership (a.k.a. the “Early Church Fathers”, exclude it;
IF an interpretation means that true Christianity didn’t exist anywhere in the world for multiple centuries at in the history of Christianity, such that Christ’s promises were thereby proven false and His claim to be even a true prophet (let alone God) were also proven false, exclude it. (After all, the guy rose from the dead, and normal folk don’t do that.)
– What remains, then, among the interpretations still open to us?

Catholic apologists argue that the remaining interpretations include no known forms of Protestant ecclesiology and sacramentology. It’s pretty much down to hierarchical and sacerdotal churches (Catholic, the various Orthodoxes) who claim judicial binding and loosing authority with divine sanction (“He who hears y’all hears Me, he who rejects y’all rejects Me” / “Whatsoever you/y’all bind on earth is bound in Heaven and whatsoever you/y’all loose on earth is loosed in Heaven”).

– “CHURCH”: If you have a church with an authoritative and divinely-sanctioned judicial authority on matters of faith and morals (parallel to the system of judges, tribal overseers, and “seat of Moses” seen during the Exodus) then naturally that Church will do the following:
(a.) preserve (by judicial affirmation) those traditions of faith/morals which come from the apostles;
(b.) allow (by judicial permission) those traditions of men which don’t nullify the word of God, but can contribute beneficially to the lives of the faithful (e.g. fasting on certain days, having Wednesday Night church suppers);
(c.) reject (by judicial condemnation) those traditions of faith/morals which do nullify the word of God (i.e. contradict those preserved by (a.)).

Through that process, the content of the Christian religion (or “Apostolic Deposit of Faith”) can remain objectively knowable (and thus potentially obey-able) in every century from the Ascension to the Second Advent. But which traditions were approved by this process?

– The traditions judicially approved by the Church include:
(d.) apostolic origin (sometimes indirect through scribes or secretaries) of the 27 New Testament books;
(e.) apostolic use of the Septuagint Old Testament canon (including Wisdom, Baruch, Sirach, Judith, Tobid, 1&2 Maccabees, and the disputed parts of Daniel);
(f.) a tradition giving certain books the supreme honor of being read-from aloud from them in the Liturgy of the Word (the first half of the Divine Liturgy, the second half being the Liturgy of the Eucharist);
(g.) a tradition of limiting that highest-honor to only books of apostolic origin or use;
(h.) a tradition of applying the phrase “God-breathed” in Paul to all those highest-honor books, not just the Septuagint Old Testament (which is what Paul was referencing when he wrote that phrase to Timothy);
(i.) a tradition of interpreting “God-breathed” to logically imply “inerrant, given a correct interpretation of the authors’ intended meaning.”

So, by means of that judicial approval, Catholics get a divinely-inspired inerrant collection of 46 Old Testament books and 27 New Testament books, to which they grant the supreme honor of being read aloud from at Mass.

But as you see, this practice required the Church first to exist, and then to have divinely-protected judicial decisions (on such matters), to be able to arrive at confidence about the content of the Apostolic Deposit of Faith.

And the Table of Contents of the Bible (the “canon”) is a derivative work of the Apostolic Deposit of Faith, arising from the need to know which books should be granted the supreme honor of being ritually read from in the Liturgy.

Now, Ilion, I don’t know how you wish to define the term “Sola Scriptura,” but I don’t know of any popular definition of that term that could possibly be implicitly endorsed by the Catholic understanding.

Peace,

R.C.

Here is the response I have composed to the above --

R.C.: "... and I think I kinda like your characterization “One True Bureaucracy.” It has a ring to it, and is (sadly) a fair characterization of one of the worst traits in one segment of the Roman clergy: Too many senior clergy come off more like bank branch-managers than like, say, Athanasius or Thomas Aquinas. They ain’t all like that; but too many are."

Thank you; and that is one of the points of the quip.

R.C.: "[Objection #1] .. .In response to that, I anticipate you might reply, “... someone has been teaching Catholics something false about ‘Sola Scriptura’,"

Your objection is fair; and your anticipation of my response is correct.

I interact with a lot of intelligent-and-educated Catholics on the internet. In my experience, perhaps in large part due to where and with whom I interact on the internet, it's almost always a Catholic who broaches this sort of subject (that is, related to our insoluable disagreements), and it almost always involves 'sola scriptura' ... and what those Catholic persons say about 'sola scriptura' is always a gross misrepresentaton.

R.C.: "(One wag used the term “Solo” Scriptura for this latter form.)"

I like that; I'll try to add that to my cache.

R.C.: "... Nope. Not in the way you mean."

And yet, you lay out a series of steps for judging whether "XYZ is [indeed] integral to the theological/moral/liturgical content delivered by Christ" which is, just as I said, "... ultimately [to] try to justify all its claims ... by appeal ... to Scripture."

R.C.: "But as you see, this practice required the Church first to exist, and then to have divinely-protected judicial decisions (on such matters), to be able to arrive at confidence about the content of the Apostolic Deposit of Faith.

And the Table of Contents of the Bible (the “canon”) is a derivative work of the Apostolic Deposit of Faith, ..."

And there is seen another reason for the phrase, 'The One True Bureaucracy': the Catholic hierarchy is a late Imperial bureaucracy ... which outlived its Empire, and still has not given up on its imperial (and imperialistic) pretentions.

AND, in what you have written there is seen why 'sola scriptura' is so critical; for Catholicism does, indeed, set its bureaucracy above Scripture.

R.C.: "Now, Ilion, I don’t know how you wish to define the term “Sola Scriptura,” but I don’t know of any popular definition of that term ..."

What? Suddenly we're evaluating 'sola scriptura' by popular understandings ... and mis-understandings, a la "solo scriptura"?

Here is a treatment of 'sola scriptura' from 'the Gospel Coalition':

"Firstly, sola scriptura meant Scripture was the supreme authority over the church. It did not mean Scripture was the only authority. ..."

See, this is the very point of contention. On the one hand, the bureaucrats of 'The One True Bureaucracy' say, "*We* are the supreme authority over the souls of all men, for we (and we alone) speak in God's Name." And on the other hand, we Protestants say, "Well, no, you're not. Rather, Scripture is the supreme authority for evaluating all allegations of speaking in God's Name."

And, of course, 'sola scriptura' does have the inescapable consequence, much lamented by those who wish power over the souls of others, of individual liberty-of-conscience and even "Solo Scriptura" error.

(Shoot! Even that font of knowledge and wisdom, the Wickedpedia, does a fair job of explaining 'sola scriptura'.)

R.C.: "... that could possibly be implicitly endorsed by the Catholic understanding."

Oh, it's so much worse that I said initially. When necessary, The One True Bureaucracy will go straight-up hard-core Calvinist -- I was shocked (and amused) when I read the reasoning (at say, the Catholic Encyclopedia) to justify the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception.