Did St. Athanasius teach sola scriptura? White v. Matatics (1997), part 6.

Note: This is a con­tin­u­a­tion of a series on Dr.* James White’s 1997 debate with Ger­ry Matat­ics on sola scrip­tura. You can find part 1 here and fol­low the links for­ward. (The debate itself is on YouTube, and I direct you there since I would no more embed the labor of anoth­er man’s vast brain than I would take a bone from a harm­less Ger­man Shep­herd dog­gy.)

t this point, we should — just for now — skip over a sec­tion of his open­ing state­ment in which Dr.* White lists what he con­sid­ers bad argu­ments against sola scrip­tura. We can save those for anoth­er post or two. Much of what he has been doing up to this point is try­ing to find the doc­trine in writ­ings of the Church Fathers, so we should see that line of argu­ment through to its end.

It’s a fun­ny exercise—trying to find sola scrip­tura in the Fathers. If the Bible con­tains all that is required for faith and prac­tice, and sola scrip­tura is required for faith and prac­tice, then Dr.* White should just tell us where he finds it in the Bible. It would end the argu­ment. Of course, Protes­tants know that if the Church Fathers did not talk about sola scrip­tura, then it real­ly would be an inven­tion of the Ref­or­ma­tion that was unknown before. Sure­ly, if it were a true doc­trine, some­one knew about it before the six­teenth cen­tu­ry! So they go plow­ing through vol­ume after vol­ume of the Church Fathers try­ing to find it by force of div­ina­tion, which they call sound exe­ge­sis. In the ear­li­er parts of his open­ing state­ment, Dr.* White has claimed to find it in St. Cyril, in Theodor­et, and in St. Augus­tine. Now he tries to pile on St. Athana­sius. St. Athana­sius is a real hero of Dr.* White’s, since he stood against near­ly the whole Church to defend the Coun­cil of Nicaea and the doc­trine of the Trin­i­ty against the Ari­ans, and his defense rest­ed heav­i­ly upon the words of Sacred Scrip­ture. Thus Dr.* White thinks he can find sola scrip­tura in the writ­ings of Athana­sius, the bish­op of Alexan­dria, sec­ond in impor­tance to only the pope him­self.

This part of the open­ing state­ment starts around 40:45. Dr.* White pro­vides three quo­ta­tions from St. Athana­sius:

Let this, then, Christ-lov­ing man, be our offer­ing to you, just for a rudi­men­ta­ry sketch and out­line, in a short com­pass, of the faith of Christ and of His Divine appear­ing to usward. But you, tak­ing occa­sion by this, if you light upon the text of the Scrip­tures, by gen­uine­ly apply­ing your mind to them, will learn from them more com­plete­ly and clear­ly the exact detail of what we have said. For they were spo­ken and writ­ten by God, through men who spoke of God. (On the Incar­na­tion of the Word 58)

We can dis­miss this one at once. Athana­sius does not claim here that the Bible is the sole rule of faith. What he does say is that Scrip­ture will con­firm the truth of what he has been teach­ing about the Incar­na­tion. But the Catholic Church does not claim that Scrip­ture isn’t able to affirm Church teach­ing. If you take a glance at the Cat­e­chism, at the Sec­ond Vat­i­can Coun­cil, at papal encycli­cals, you will find Scrip­ture cit­ed as a sup­port for Church teach­ing all over the place.

Here’s the sec­ond quo­ta­tion:

But since holy Scrip­ture is of all things most suf­fi­cient for us, there­fore rec­om­mend­ing to those who desire to know more of these mat­ters, to read the Divine word. (Let­ter to the Egypt­ian Bish­ops 4)

That comes at the end of a sec­tion the edi­tors have titled “It prof­its not to receive part of Scrip­ture, and reject part.” Athana­sius is writ­ing against the errors of Mar­cion and the Manichaeans, who reject­ed the Old Tes­ta­ment. Athana­sius argued that the New Tes­ta­ment com­plet­ed — it did not super­sede — the Old, and that the New Tes­ta­ment could not be under­stood except by ref­er­ence to the prophe­cies of Christ.

And the first thing to point out about all of this is that Scrip­ture itself is imme­di­ate­ly rel­e­vant to the ques­tion being asked. Because this is an argu­ment about the Bible, ref­er­ence to the Bible will nat­u­ral­ly have cen­tral impor­tance in the same way that cit­ing Shake­speare’s tragedies will “most suf­fi­cient” to answer­ing a dis­pute about the con­tent of Shake­speare’s tragedies.

Athana­sius does not say here that the Bible alone is suf­fi­cient for all ques­tions of faith and prac­tice. He says it is most suf­fi­cient. But say­ing some­thing is “most” suf­fi­cient does not pre­clude oth­er rules of faith that are suf­fi­cient to less a degree. This sounds more like an argu­ment for pri­ma scrip­tura than sola scrip­tura. The late Car­di­nal Yves Con­gar assert­ed that pri­ma scrip­tura is the “nor­ma­tive” Catholic approach to the author­i­ty of the Bible: “The­ol­o­gy must take its point of depar­ture from a con­tin­u­al and updat­ed return to the Scrip­tures read in the Church.”

So we can dis­miss the sec­ond quo­ta­tion as well.

Here is the third:

For although the sacred and inspired Scrip­tures are suf­fi­cient to declare the truth — while there are oth­er works of our blessed teach­ers com­piled for this pur­pose, if he meet with which a man will gain some knowl­edge of the inter­pre­ta­tion of the Scrip­tures, and be able to learn what he wish­es to know — still, as we have not at present in our hands the com­po­si­tions of our teach­ers, we must com­mu­ni­cate in writ­ing to you what we learned from them — the faith, name­ly, of Christ the Sav­iour; lest any should hold cheap the doc­trine taught among us, or think faith in Christ unrea­son­able. (Against the Hea­then 1:1)

“Now how did that Protes­tant end up in the Church so long ago?” Dr.* White cries. Of course, the only part of this pas­sage that he quotes — I give the unedit­ed sen­tence — is: “the sacred and inspired Scrip­tures are suf­fi­cient to declare the truth.” He leaves out (just like every oth­er anti-Catholic who cher­ry picks this quo­ta­tion) the pre­ced­ing word “although,” by which Athana­sius makes the point that his audi­ence does not pos­sess the writ­ten Scrip­tures and there­fore he has to be an inter­me­di­ary. Teach­ers, says Athan­sius, are nec­es­sary for Chris­tians to acquire “some knowl­edge of the inter­pre­ta­tion of the Scrip­tures.” They were not able to do it on their own, par­tic­u­lar­ly when they did not have the text avail­able to them and lit­er­a­cy belonged to the few.

That’s impor­tant; every one who cher­ry picks leaves out this con­text. And the rea­son it’s impor­tant is this: The fact that the writ­ten Scrip­tures were large­ly unavail­able to Chris­tians means that sola scrip­tura, as a Protes­tant prac­tices that doc­trine, could not have worked in the ear­ly Church. The pas­sage actu­al­ly con­firms a key argu­ment against sola scrip­tura.

Dr.* White does not men­tion that.

Some may say at this point: “But Alt! Now that every­one can access a copy of the Bible, may we not revert to Athana­sius’s con­fir­ma­tion that it is “suf­fi­cient to declare the truth”?

•••

Before we try to answer that ques­tion, let us look at some­thing else St. Athana­sius wrote. The West­min­ster Con­fes­sion of Faith tells us that we must com­pare Scrip­ture with Scrip­ture, and so for sim­i­lar rea­sons it is wise to com­pare Athana­sius with Athana­sius. This comes from his Third Dis­course Against the Ari­ans 58, in which he is giv­ing proofs of Christ’s divin­i­ty from Gospel accounts of the Pas­sion:

Had Christ’s ene­mies [i.e., the Ari­ans] thus dwelt on these thoughts, and recog­nised the eccle­si­as­ti­cal scope as an anchor for the faith, they would not have made ship­wreck of the faith.

This is remark­able: This whole time Athana­sius has been giv­ing scrip­tur­al proofs of Christ’s divin­i­ty, but in the mid­dle of that he points not to the Bible, but to the “eccle­si­as­ti­cal scope” as an “anchor for the faith.” Now what does that mean? That means that the Ari­ans need to under­stand the text of Scrip­ture in the light of Church teach­ing, and not apart from it. Exe­ge­sis must remain with­in the “eccle­si­as­ti­cal scope.”

And that helps us to under­stand bet­ter Athana­sius’s words about the Bible being “suf­fi­cient to declare the truth.” It is, but only when your inter­pre­ta­tion of it is with­in the bound­aries set by Church teach­ing. Athana­sius con­demns the Ari­ans for wan­der­ing out­side that. In oth­er words, we can say that Athana­sius believes in the mate­r­i­al suf­fi­cien­cy of scrip­ture but not the for­mal suf­fi­cien­cy of Scrip­ture.

Mate­r­i­al suf­fi­cien­cy, which Catholics are free to affirm, says that Scrip­ture con­tains with­in it every true doc­trine and dog­ma of the faith, though some­times it’s there only by infer­ence. (The per­pet­u­al vir­gin­i­ty of Mary, or the Assump­tion, are two such dog­mas.)

For­mal suf­fi­cien­cy, which Catholics must reject, says that no “eccle­si­as­ti­cal scope” is need­ed in order for Chris­tians to right­ly under­stand the Bible. The Bible has suf­fi­cient per­spicu­ity that any­one who comes to the Bible in good faith can under­stand it and know what God requires Chris­tians to believe.

Sola scrip­tura says that the Bible is both mate­ri­al­ly suf­fi­cient and for­mal­ly suf­fi­cient. But we can only rec­on­cile the two quo­ta­tions from Athana­sius above if we under­stand that he affirmed mate­r­i­al suf­fi­cien­cy and reject­ed for­mal suf­fi­cien­cy. He did­n’t have these terms for it, but that’s what he was doing.

And it’s also worth point­ing out that Athana­sius believed in a num­ber of dis­tinc­tive­ly Catholic teach­ings: such as the author­i­ty of the Deute­ro­canon, the per­pet­u­al vir­gin­i­ty of Mary, the Immac­u­late Con­cep­tion, the Real Pres­ence, the pri­ma­cy of Rome, and on and on.

One won­ders: If Athana­sius prac­ticed sola scrip­tura, how is that he found all these Catholic doc­trines there? Should­n’t Dr.* White accept them too, if they’re to be found by the kind of sound scrip­tur­al exe­ge­sis that his hero St. Athana­sius was known for? Dr.* White does­n’t say. [Read part 7.]