Wherein James White’s definition of sola scriptura does not help him at all. White vs. Matatics (1997), part 4.

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.

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have said mul­ti­ple times on this wery blog that, if one were to piece togeth­er a def­i­n­i­tion of sola scrip­tura based only upon quo­ta­tions from the Church Fathers said to sup­port it, you would come up with some­thing no Catholic would dis­agree with. (Okay, some Catholics might dis­agree, but they don’t count.) And you would nev­er think to use the word sola in con­nec­tion with it. If you go about it this way—if you start with the quo­ta­tions and work your way to a definition—you would not get sola scrip­tura. If you worked in reverse, however—if you began with the def­i­n­i­tion and only then pecked around for quotations—you would be sure to find many words that super­fi­cial­ly sound like it.

Many Church Fathers held a high doc­trine of Scrip­ture; and that is only prop­er. Pope Bene­dict XVI had a high doc­trine of Scrip­ture. He wrote in Ver­bum Domi­ni: “The nov­el­ty of bib­li­cal rev­e­la­tion con­sists in the fact that God becomes known through the dia­logue which he desires to have with us.” If those words were writ­ten by a Church Father, they may have made their way into Dr.* White’s open­ing state­ment. But no one, not even a mad­man, sus­pects Pope Bene­dict believes in sola scrip­tura, so we leave him in peace. High as his view of Scrip­ture is, he nowhere says that it is the sole infal­li­ble rule of faith. Indeed he also speaks about the author­i­ty of the Church—many times.

And so it is with the Church Fathers.

HEAR A DEFINITION

Much of this I’ve said before, as long ago as 2013 when I start­ed the blog. I go into it again because it is use­ful to look at how a Protes­tant apol­o­gist like James White actu­al­ly defines sola scrip­tura, and then check whether the quo­ta­tions from the Fathers he offers to sup­port the doc­trine actu­al­ly match the def­i­n­i­tion. So we’re lucky that he gives a very detailed def­i­n­i­tion in his open­ing state­ment from the debate with Ger­ry Matat­ics.

The seg­ment begins around 26:30 in the YouTube video. (I don’t embed it because I would hard­ly infringe on any­one’s copy­right!) Dr.* White begins by com­plain­ing that Catholic apol­o­gists “rarely” are accu­rate about what sola scrip­tura is and, just as impor­tant­ly, what it is not. So I am hap­py to present a bul­let list from the def­i­n­i­tion that he gives us. I strive for accu­ra­cy, dear read­er.

• “The Scrip­tures are the only exam­ple of God-breathed rev­e­la­tion.” (To cite the Greek as Dr.* White is wont, they are θεόπνευστος, theop­neustos.)
• “They [there­fore] form the only infal­li­ble rule of faith for the Church.”
• Scrip­ture “is the ulti­mate author­i­ty in all things.”
• There are no oth­er infal­li­ble rules of faith. “There may be oth­er rules, but they are not infal­li­ble and they are sub­ject to the cor­rec­tion of the high­est author­i­ty.”

That’s the def­i­n­i­tion Dr.* White gives, and he then goes on to list a few things that sola scrip­tura is not.

• It does not deny “that God’s word has at times been in oral form dur­ing those peri­ods of enscrip­tura­tion.” [In oth­er words, we can’t point out this fact to deny sola scrip­tura, which accord­ing to Dr.* White comes lat­er, after the canon is com­plete. This will be impor­tant to remem­ber lat­er on in the series.]
• “Sola scrip­tura refers to the nor­ma­tive con­di­tion of the Church [i.e., after the canon is com­plete], not the excep­tion­al sit­u­a­tion [when the canon is still being writ­ten].”
• “It is not a denial of the role of the Holy Spir­it in lead­ing and guid­ing the Church.” Unless the Holy Spir­it is at work in our hearts, we can nev­er under­stand the Bible in the first place.
• “It is not an asser­tion that the Bible con­tains all knowl­edge.” John 21:25 does not refute sola scrip­tura.
• “It is not an asser­tion that we have noth­ing to learn” from our Chris­t­ian fore­bears over 2000 years. But “the ulti­mate author­i­ty is always the Scrip­tures, nev­er the Church.”

From there, Dr.* White dis­cuss­es what he con­sid­ers to be bad argu­ments against sola scrip­tura; and we can save those for anoth­er post.

CYRIL OF JERUSALEM

So let us revis­it the hand­ful of quo­ta­tions from the Church Fathers that Dr.* White has, hith­er­to in his remarks, offered as sup­port for sola scrip­tura. (He has oth­ers, notably from St. Athana­sius; but since they come lat­er, I will take them up lat­er.) Let us check whether they actu­al­ly match this def­i­n­i­tion. We’ll start with St. Cyril. Here’s the quo­ta­tion:

For con­cern­ing the divine and holy mys­ter­ies of the Faith, not even a casu­al state­ment must be deliv­ered with­out the Holy Scrip­tures; nor must we be drawn aside by mere plau­si­bil­i­ty and arti­fices of speech. Even to me, who tell you these things, give not absolute cre­dence, unless you receive the proof of the things which I announce from the Divine Scrip­tures. For this sal­va­tion which we believe depends not on inge­nious rea­son­ing, but on demon­stra­tion of the Holy Scrip­tures. (Cat­e­chet­i­cal Lec­tures 4:17)

Now, Cyril cer­tain­ly thinks that the Scrip­tures con­tain all revealed truth. Cer­tain­ly he thinks that sup­port from the Scrip­tures is nec­es­sary in declar­ing the truth. Cer­tain­ly he believes Scrip­ture is capa­ble of refut­ing error. But that sounds just like a def­i­n­i­tion of the mate­r­i­al suf­fi­cien­cy of Scrip­ture, and that’s not the same thing as sola scrip­tura. The mate­r­i­al suf­fi­cien­cy of Scrip­ture affirms that all revealed truth can be found in Scrip­ture, even if it must be deduced implic­it­ly from what the text says. Catholics are free to believe this since it’s not the same thing as say­ing that the Bible is the sole infal­li­ble rule of faith. Sola scrip­tura goes fur­ther than mate­r­i­al suf­fi­cien­cy does.

“But Alt! How do you know that Cyril accept­ed oth­er rules as author­i­ta­tive?” Glad you asked. In the wery same Cat­e­chet­i­cal Lec­tures, Cyril also says this:

But in learn­ing the Faith and in pro­fess­ing it, acquire and keep that only, which is now deliv­ered to you by the Church. (5:12)

If Cyril believed that the Scrip­tures were the sole infal­li­ble rule of faith—if he adhered to Dr.* White’s def­i­n­i­tion, which says that “the ulti­mate author­i­ty is … nev­er the Church,” he could hard­ly have told his cat­e­chu­mens to retain only those truths deliv­ered to them by the Church. He may very well have believed in mate­r­i­al suf­fi­cien­cy, but he did not cross the line into sola scrip­tura.

THEODORET OF CYRUS

But Dr.* White goes fur­ther and quotes this pas­sage from one of Theodor­et’s Dia­logues: “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.”

The first thing to note here is that this is not an asser­tion of any­thing greater than mate­r­i­al suf­fi­cien­cy, either. That Scrip­ture teach­es all cor­rect doc­trine does not imply that it’s the sole infal­li­ble rule of faith.

But the more pecu­liar thing is that these words do not rep­re­sent an asser­tion of any sort from Theodor­et. Theodor­et is writ­ing a dia­logue between an ortho­dox Chris­t­ian and a heretic, and it is the heretic who says these words.

Oops. That’s slop­py of Dr.* White. Eranistes—that’s the heretic’s name—says words like these sev­en­teen times. One soon gets the feel­ing that he doth protest too much. Theodor­et is hard­ly try­ing to estab­lish a doc­tri­nal point of any sort by them. It’s a rhetor­i­cal device.

ST. AUGUSTINE

But Dr. White also gives two quo­ta­tions from St. Augus­tine; here’s the first:

Holy Scrip­ture set­teth a rule to our teach­ing, that we dare not “be wise more than it behoveth to be wise.”

Dr.* White treats this as though Augus­tine, by say­ing that the Bible “set­teth a rule to our teach­ing,” has just assert­ed that the Bible is the sole rule of faith. But no.

These words come in a text called On the Good of Wid­ow­hood. And it is impor­tant to remem­ber the point St. Augus­tine has in mind when he says this. His point is that reli­gious instruc­tors ought not pre­tend to be wis­er than they real­ly are. He obtains this max­im from St. Paul’s words in Rom. 12:3. All he is say­ing, in oth­er words, is: “Paul wrote some words that we would do well to keep in mind.” And indeed the advice is bib­li­cal, which means a great deal. But sola scrip­tura does not say Scrip­ture con­tains sound advice; I don’t read that in Dr.* White’s def­i­n­i­tion. Cer­tain­ly it does con­tain sound advice, but Protes­tants claim a lot more for Scrip­ture than that.

Here’s the sec­ond quo­ta­tion from Augus­tine that Dr.* White gives us. These words are from On the Uni­ty of the Church:

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.

But Catholics hard­ly assert that oth­er rules of faith are per­mit­ted to con­tra­dict the Bible. Catholics accept the teach­ing Church as a rule of faith, but on the under­stand­ing that it’s going to illu­mi­nate the Bible, not con­tra­dict it. If a bish­op were to say, “Christ did not rise from the dead,” you can cer­tain­ly be sure we would all reject that. (At least, we should.) So Augus­tine is not assign­ing a val­ue to Scrip­ture that Catholics do not already accept in the first place.

If Dr.* White thinks that these quo­ta­tions bol­ster some part of his def­i­n­i­tion of sola scrip­tura, he real­ly needs to do a bet­ter job of telling us which part and how so. [Read part 5.]