Did St. Augustine teach sola scriptura? White vs. Matatics (1997), part 3.

Note: In this post I return to a long-dor­mant series on a 1997 sola scrip­tura debate between Dr.* James White and Ger­ry Matat­ics. Part 1 of the series is here and Part 2 is here. The debate itself is on YouTube here.

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e pick up, dear read­er, where we left off in Dr.* James White’s open­ing state­ment. After wild­ly attempt­ing to con­vince us that Cyril of Jerusalem and Theodor­et of Cyrus teach sola scrip­tura—see the two ear­li­er posts linked above for rebut­tals of such silliness—Dr.* White con­fi­dent­ly pro­claims (~23:55): “The scrip­tures do, in fact, teach their own suf­fi­cien­cy to act as the sole infal­li­ble rule of faith for the Church.”

Real­ly? Well, it’s very odd, then—if this is what Dr.* White believes—that he has­n’t quot­ed a sin­gle text of Scrip­ture to us yet. But I’ll let you know if he does so lat­er in the open­ing state­ment, or at any point dur­ing the debate. If there’s a text of Scrip­ture that says this, if Dr.* White can open his Bible to 2 Imag­i­na­tions 6:66 and quote us the words, then he could set­tle it all in one minute. But he does­n’t quote the Bible at all. He quotes a Church Father; and then he quotes anoth­er Church Father. And give him a few more min­utes and he quotes St. Augus­tine! If the Bible teach­es its own suf­f­i­cen­cy, why is Dr.* White con­sult­ing the Church Fathers for evi­dence? It’s remark­able. But in char­i­ty, maybe he’s inten­tion­al­ly leav­ing us in sus­pense. We’ll have to hang on his every word and find out.

Before he gets to St. Augus­tine, Dr.* White has a seg­ment where he con­trasts sola scrip­tura with what he calls “sola eccle­sia”; I will save that for a future post in this series. Let us pick up for now at just after 28:00 in the video, where Dr.* White reads to us two quo­ta­tions from St. Augus­tine that, in his view, teach sola scrip­tura.

AGAINST THE CANONICAL SCRIPTURES

The sec­ond of the two is eas­i­est dealt with, so I will start with that one. Augus­tine says: “Nei­ther dare one agree with Catholic bish­ops if by chance they err in any­thing, with the result that their opin­ion is against the canon­i­cal scrip­tures of God.”

Amaz­ing­ly, the title of the text that this comes from is On the Uni­ty of the Church. Dr.* White does not tells us this, and for a sec­ond I expect­ed that the title might be some­thing like On the Suf­fi­cien­cy of the Scrip­tures. But Augus­tine has no such work. You can find a trans­la­tion of On the Uni­ty of the Church here. The rel­e­vant text is at XI.28.

Now, what’s notable in all this is that Augus­tine does nei­ther of two key things:

• He does not say that the Scrip­tures are the sole infal­li­ble rule of faith [For that’s Dr.* White’s def­i­n­i­tion in five words];
• He does not con­tra­dict the Catholic belief in both the infal­li­bil­i­ty of Scrip­ture and the teach­ing author­i­ty of the Church

What he does say is: Don’t agree with bish­ops if they con­tra­dict the Scrip­tures. And that’s exact­ly right. No Catholic would have a prob­lem with that at all. To reject sola scrip­tura does not mean that bish­ops are free to con­tra­dict Scrip­ture. The Catholic posi­tion is that the Mag­is­teri­um’s author­i­ty is in addi­tion to Scrip­ture. We do not claim that it is or ought to be con­trary to Scrip­ture. But if you find some­thing in the Cat­e­chism that says oth­er­wise, or in an encycli­cal, a church coun­cil, or apos­tolic con­sti­tu­tion, let me know.

In this pas­sage, St. Augus­tine is address­ing a dif­fer­ent ques­tion than the one Dr.* White is sup­posed to be debat­ing. Why he imag­ines it to be rel­e­vant is a ques­tion he alone will have to answer.

ROMANS 12:3: A RULE TO OUR TEACHING

Here’s the oth­er quo­ta­tion from Augus­tine. I present it first as Dr.* White quot­ed it:

What more should I teach you than what we read in the apos­tles? For Holy Scrip­ture fix­es the rule for our doc­trine, lest we should dare to be wis­er than we ought. There­fore I should not teach you any­thing else except to expound to you the words of the teacher.

The first thing to point out—which, again, Dr.* White does not—is that Augus­tine wrote these words in De Bono Vidui­tatis—On the Good of Wid­ow­hood. (Isn’t that the very place one would go if he were look­ing for a defense of sola scrip­tura? You can find a trans­la­tion of the text here) The con­text of Augustine’s words is just what you would expect it to be. He is writ­ing to a woman named Juliana. Just as impor­tant, he is address­ing one par­tic­u­lar sub­ject, and that sub­ject is not “the rule for Church doc­trine.” Here are Augustine’s words in the trans­la­tion at CCEL: “Holy Scrip­ture set­teth a rule to our teach­ing, that we dare not ‘be wise more than it behoveth to be wise.’ ”

That makes the pur­port of Augustine’s words a bit clear­er than the for­mer trans­la­tion. He is not claim­ing here that Scrip­ture is the “sole rule of faith.” (It seems that Dr.* White finds a place where Augus­tine uses the word “rule” when quot­ing the Bible, and then imme­di­ate­ly gets excit­ed and claims vic­to­ry with­out stop­ping to ask what the Catholic bish­op is real­ly say­ing.) What Augus­tine does mean is that he finds a verse in Scrip­ture that is instruc­tive to reli­gious teach­ers: Don’t be wis­er than you should.

(The verse he is quot­ing, in which he finds this “rule to our teach­ing,” is Rom. 12:3; and if this proves Dr.* White’s point in any way, it proves too much. It would prove sola Romans 12:3.)

It’s not as though Catholics, because they reject sola scrip­tura, some­how feel that we can nev­er take instruc­tion from the Bible. It is not as though Catholics deny that Scrip­ture con­tains all sorts of rules that can guide us in any num­ber of things. It is not as though Catholics, in reject­ing sola scrip­tura, reject the Bible altogth­er. After all, we have sev­en more books of the Bible than Dr.* White does.

Dr.* White can’t just cher­ry-pick pas­sages out of the Church Fathers that speak high­ly of Scripture—or that quote from the Bible and say, “You know, this is a good rule for teach­ers in reli­gious instruc­tion to follow”—and then claim they are argu­ments for sola scrip­tura. Dr.* White’s own def­i­n­i­tion the doc­trine is immense­ly pre­cise [I’ll take that up in part 4], and the quo­ta­tions he’s giv­ing us from the Fathers do not in any way approach the pre­ci­sion he claims.

Dr.* White does not define sola scrip­tura to mean that the Church must nev­er teach what is con­trary to Scrip­ture. If that were the def­i­n­i­tion, no Catholic would dis­pute it.

Dr.* White does not define sola scrip­tura to mean that the scrip­ture con­tains use­ful rules to guide reli­gious instruc­tors in their work. If that were the def­i­n­i­tion, no Catholic would dis­pute it.

Dr.* White is throw­ing darts, but he does­n’t just miss the tar­get; he miss­es the entire dart­board.

He’s going to have to do a much bet­ter job at this if he wants to win his debate with Mr. Matat­ics. [Read part 4.]