Did Theodoret of Cyrus teach sola scriptura? White vs. Matatics (1997), part 2.

ot sat­is­fied with his effort to co-opt St. Cyril of Jerusalem into a defense of sola scrip­tura, Dr.* James White (Th.D., D.Min., etc., etc.), of Alpha & Omega Sophistries (he calls it “Min­istries”; it’s one of his crotch­ets), goes on to abuse the text of Theodor­et’s Dia­logues by quot­ing him out of con­text too. This comes at about the 23:00 mark in his 1997 debate with Ger­ry Matat­ics. The quo­ta­tion Dr.* White pro­vides us is this one: “The doc­trine of the Church should be proven, not announced. There­fore show that the Scrip­tures teach these things.” I will get there.

•••

Theodor­et (ca. 393–458), born in Anti­och, was bish­op of the Greek city Cyrus, whose ruins are in north­ern Syr­ia near the Turk­ish bor­der. He played a key role in the Nesto­ri­an con­tro­ver­sy of the fifth cen­tu­ry. Nesto­rius and his fol­low­ers denied the hypo­sta­t­ic union between Christ’s human and divine natures; they reject­ed the title Theotokos for Mary, believ­ing (as do many Protes­tants today) that Mary was the moth­er of Christ only, not of God. Nesto­ri­an­ism was con­demned as a heresy, first by the Coun­cil of Eph­esus in 431, and then by the Coun­cil of Chal­cedon in 451. Accord­ing to the Canons of Eph­esus:

“If any­one does not con­fess that Emmanuel is God in truth, and there­fore that the holy vir­gin is the Theotokos (for she bore in a flesh­ly way the Word of God become flesh), let him be anath­e­ma.”

Accord­ing to the Catholic Ency­clo­pe­dia, Theodor­et’s role in all this was a com­pli­cat­ed one. Along with John of Anti­och, he had peti­tioned Nesto­rius not to reject the title Theotokos, but to no avail. How­ev­er, he defend­ed Nesto­rius at the Council—not because he was con­fused in his Chris­tol­ogy, but because did not believe Nesto­rius taught that Christ was two per­sons. Because of his oppo­si­tion to Cyril of Alexan­dria, who wrote the arti­cles con­demn­ing Nesto­rius, Theodor­et was lat­er excom­mu­ni­cat­ed, but would be restored to both the Church and his see by the Coun­cil of Chal­cedon. In the sixth cen­tu­ry, pro­pos­als known as the Three Chap­ters anath­e­ma­tized Theodor­et for his writ­ings against Cyril, but the Chap­ters were them­selves con­demned by the Sec­ond Coun­cil of Con­stan­tino­ple.

So while we need to admit these things, we must also under­stand the role the Dia­logues played in all this con­tro­ver­sy. The rea­son Theodor­et wrote them was to defend him­self against the charge of Nesto­ri­an­ism that led to his excom­mu­ni­ca­tion. He want­ed to show that his Chris­tol­ogy was ortho­dox, to affirm the hypo­sta­t­ic union of two natures in one divine per­son, and also to refute heresy. But the key ques­tion, for our pur­pos­es here, is whether, in his Dia­logues, he also taught sola scrip­tura. Dr.* White says that he did.

•••

There are three Dia­logues (you can find them here), between an ortho­dox Chris­t­ian (Ortho­dox­os) and a heretic (Eranistes). In the Pro­logue, Theodor­et gives an overview of true Chris­tol­ogy:

[T]o call our Lord Christ God only is the way of Simon, of Cer­do, of Mar­cion, and of oth­ers who share this abom­inable opin­ion. [Christ was both God and man.]

“The acknowl­edg­ment of His birth from a Vir­gin, but cou­pled with the asser­tion that this birth was mere­ly a process of tran­si­tion, and that God the Word took noth­ing of the Vir­gin’s nature, is stolen from Valenti­nus and Barde­sanes and the adher­ents of their fables. [Christ took his human nature from Mary.]

To call the god­head and the man­hood of the Lord Christ one nature is the error filched from the fol­lies of Apol­li­nar­ius. [Christ is two natures in one divine per­son.]

Again the attri­bu­tion of capac­i­ty of suf­fer­ing to the divin­i­ty of the Christ is a theft from the blas­phe­my of Arius and Eunomius.” [Christ suf­fered on the cross in his human per­son, not his divine per­son.]

In the first dia­logue, Ortho­dox­os shows that “the divin­i­ty of Christ is immutable.” That is, the Word was not changed into flesh, but it took flesh—i.e., from Mary.

In the sec­ond, Ortho­dox­os shows that Christ is both ful­ly human and ful­ly divine.

And in the third, he shows that the divin­i­ty of Christ is “impass­able.” In oth­er words, Christ’s divine nature did not suf­fer in the pas­sion; only His human nature did.

•••

The first thing that must be said about the words Dr.* White quotes—they are from the third Dialogue—is that they are not spo­ken by Ortho­dox­os but by the heretic Eranistes. That’s odd; Dr.* White does not men­tion that. Isn’t that impor­tant? Here is the word­ing in the trans­la­tion at New Advent:

“The decrees of the Church must be giv­en not only declara­to­ri­ly but demon­stra­tive­ly. Tell me then how these doc­trines are taught in the divine Scrip­ture.”

Eight times dur­ing these three debates, Eranistes says “Where is that in the Scrip­tures?” or “I will only believe it if it is in the Scrip­tures” or “the Scrip­tures do not say that.”

Now, I do not want to push this point too far. I just find it strange that, in attempt­ing to show that Theodor­et taught sola scrip­tura, Dr.* White choos­es the words, not of Ortho­dox­os, but of the heretic. Eranistes does not speak for Theodor­et. So why does Dr.* White quote his words? Per­haps he can explain it to us, if he has the courage to read my refu­ta­tions of him, which I doubt.

But in fact, Ortho­dox­os says very sim­i­lar things through­out the Dia­logues, and Dr.* White could have quot­ed them if he had liked.

• Do not, I beg you, bring in human rea­son. I shall yield to
  scrip­ture alone.
• I am not so rash as to say any­thing con­cern­ing which Divine Scrip­ture is silent.

And yet, while Ortho­dox­os affirms these truths twice, Eranistes speaks words like these sev­en­teen times. One soon gets the feel­ing that Eranistes says “You must prove it to me from the Scrip­tures” so many times only because he doth protest too much. He says these things as an excuse to avoid ortho­doxy, not as a rea­son to embrace it. If he insists that Ortho­dox­os prove his Chris­tol­ogy from the Scrip­tures, that does not—as we shall see—save him from heresy.

But if Ortho­dox­os can assert his Chris­tol­ogy from Scrip­ture, does he derive it from Scrip­ture alone? By no means. In fact, he tells us at the out­set that he gets it “[by] Holy Scrip­ture, both Old and New, and by the Fathers in Coun­cil in Nicæa.” He gets it—mark this, Dr.* White—from both the Scrip­tures and the Church. He gets it from the Creed as much as from the Bible. And while he does say that that all his doc­trines are to be found in Scrip­ture—Catholics do affirm mate­r­i­al suf­fi­cien­cy—we must make note of all the oth­er the things he finds proofs of in Scrip­ture, none of which Dr.* White would accept.

• The Real Pres­ence. In fact, near­ly a thou­sand years before Aquinas, Theodor­et affirms some­thing very like the dis­tinc­tion between sub­stance and acci­dents.

Orth. You know how God called His own body bread?

Eran. Yes.

Orth. And how in anoth­er place he called His flesh grain?

Eran. Yes, I know. For I have heard Him say­ing The hour has come that the Son of man should be glo­ri­fied, and Except a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abides alone; but if it die it brings forth much fruit.

Orth. Yes; and in the giv­ing of the mys­ter­ies He called the bread, body, and what had been mixed, blood.

Eran. He so did.

Orth. Yet nat­u­ral­ly the body would prop­er­ly be called body, and the blood, blood.

Eran. Agreed.

Orth. But our Sav­iour changed the names, and to His body gave the name of the sym­bol and to the sym­bol that of his body. So, after call­ing him­self a vine, he spoke of the sym­bol as blood.

Eran. True. But I am desirous of know­ing the rea­son of the change of names.

Orth. To them that are ini­ti­at­ed in divine things the inten­tion is plain. For he wished the par­tak­ers in the divine mys­ter­ies not to give heed to the nature of the vis­i­ble objects, but, by means of the vari­a­tion of the names, to believe the change wrought of grace. For He, we know, who spoke of his nat­ur­al body as grain and bread, and, again, called Him­self a vine, dig­ni­fied the vis­i­ble sym­bols by the appel­la­tion of the body and blood, not because He had changed their nature, but because to their nature He had added grace.

God does not change their nature (or sub­stance), but he adds grace. Now lest any­one protest that Ortho­dox­os is clear­ly speak­ing about sym­bols here, it is impor­tant to point out that the word “sym­bol” does not mean “metaphor” in this con­text. Theodor­et uses it in the more archa­ic sense of an object that is invest­ed with addi­tion­al mean­ing beyond its mere­ly mate­r­i­al one.

The dis­cus­sion on this point is tak­en up again in the Sec­ond Dia­logue:

Orth. Tell me now; the mys­tic sym­bols which are offered to God by them who per­form priest­ly rites, of what are they sym­bols?

Eran. Of the body and blood of the Lord.

Orth. Of the real body or not?

Eran. The real.

Orth. Good.

[…]

Eran. What do you call the gift which is offered before the priest­ly invo­ca­tion? … And after the con­se­cra­tion how do you name these?

Orth. Christ’s body and Christ’s blood.

Eran. And do you believe that you par­take of Christ’s body and blood?

Orth. I do. … [Now watch this.] [E]ven after the con­se­cra­tion the mys­tic sym­bols are not deprived of their own nature; they remain in their for­mer sub­stance fig­ure and form; they are vis­i­ble and tan­gi­ble as they were before. But they are regard­ed as what they have become, and believed so to be, and are wor­shipped as being what they are believed to be.

That’s sub­stance and acci­dents.

• The Priest­hood. In the Sec­ond Dia­logue, Ortho­dox­os and Eranistes have a dis­cus­sion of the priest­hood of Christ as found in the Book of Hebrews. But two things stand out, and one is that nei­ther of them dis­pute that there is a priest­hood. The sec­ond is that Eranistes con­cedes that the pas­sage about Melchizedek “is a very dif­fi­cult one and requires much expla­na­tion.” He affirms here the prob­lem with for­mal suf­fi­cien­cy.
• The Theotokos. Because Christ took his flesh from Mary, and because his human­i­ty is not divis­i­ble from his deity, there­fore Mary is right­ly called the Moth­er of God.
• Apos­tolic Suc­ces­sion. The Church Fathers, he says, are “suc­ces­sors of the divine apos­tles.”

Ortho­dox­os will not teach us any­thing that is not to be found in Scrip­ture. Why will Dr.* White not yield to Scrip­ture on these points?

•••

If you read the Dia­logues all the way through, from begin­ning to end, you will find one more thing that is very odd for some­one who—so Dr.* White tells us—teaches sola scrip­tura. It is this: In each of the three, Ortho­dox­os and Eranistes argue back and forth, from Scrip­ture, for almost the entire part of the dia­logue. Eranistes time and again will say things like “Where is that in Scrip­ture?” or “I don’t find it so in Scrip­ture.” Ortho­dox­os will con­tin­ue to give proofs of true Chris­tol­ogy from Scrip­ture. Dr.* White might say that this shows how Scrip­ture is suf­fi­cient to resolve such dis­putes. But no; here’s the point: Scrip­ture alone does not set­tle the mat­ter between the two. In every case, Eranistes remains uncon­vinced until Ortho­dox­os quotes from the Church Fathers and shows that they taught the same doc­trine that he does. This takes place three times out of three.

In the first dia­logue, he cites proofs from Athana­sius, Ambrose, Ignatius, Ire­naeus, Hip­poly­tus, Method­ius, Gre­go­ry of Nazianzus, and Gre­go­ry of Nys­sa, among oth­ers.

In the sec­ond, he cites, Ignatius, Ire­naeus, Hip­poly­tus, Athana­sius, Ambrose, Basil, Gre­go­ry of Nys­sa, John Chrysos­tom, Hilary, Augus­tine, and Cyril of Alexan­dria, among oth­ers.

Last, in the third, he cites Ignatius, Ire­naeus, Hip­poly­tus, Athana­sius, Pope Dama­sus, Ambrose, Basil, Gre­go­ry of Nazianzus, Gre­go­ry of Nys­sa, Theophilus, Gela­sius, and John of Con­stan­tino­ple, among oth­ers.

Now, would­n’t you say that that is odd? If Theodor­et had want­ed to show that the Bible is the sole rule of faith, why is he quot­ing all these guys as some­how author­i­ta­tive on Chris­tol­ogy? Would­n’t proofs from the Bible alone have been enough to con­vince Eranistes? After all, he asserts the prin­ci­ple that Dr.* White says is his own: Show me where it is in the Bible! Then why is the Bible not suf­fi­cient for Ortho­dox­os to prove his case? Why does the debate remain unset­tled until he quotes from the Fathers? And Ortho­dox­os cites many Fathers, and at great length, too. Why does he do this?

He tells us why. “They are suc­ces­sors of the divine apos­tles,” he says at the end of the First Dia­logue. That is why. “Does it seem right for you to wag the tongue of blas­phe­my against them?” It is as bad to do that as to abuse the Bible.

And Eranistes con­cedes the point. “It were the utter­most fool­ish­ness,” he says, “to with­stand author­i­ties so many and so great.” Take note of that, Dr.* White.

At the end of the Sec­ond Dia­logue, Ortho­dox­os again says: “It is mad and rash against those noble cham­pi­ons of the faith”—the Church Fathers—“so much to wag your tongue.” And final­ly, at the end of the Third, he says:

“Imi­tate the bees. As you flit in men­tal flight about the meads of the divine Scrip­ture, among the fair flow­ers of these illus­tri­ous Fathers, build us in your heart the hon­ey-comb of the faith.”

One must rea­son from both the Scrip­tures (“meads,” i.e., hon­ey) and the Fathers (flow­ers). Only through both can one build “the hon­ey-comb of the faith.”

Again it is not five min­utes into his open­ing state­ment, and Dr.* James White (Th.D., D.Min., etc., etc.) keeps on pick­ing for cher­ries. He will have to do bet­ter than this if he wants to win his debate with Mr. Matat­ics. … [Read part 3.]