Steve Hays and the parable of the Biltmore.

either Mr. X (who calls him­self Tur­ret­inFan) nor the polem­i­cal rogue (who calls him­self John Bugay) have dared to respond yet to my last arti­cle on sola scrip­tura. I say they have not dared to respond, even though the arti­cle was addressed to their habits of inven­tion and avoid­ance on one essen­tial ques­tion: Where is sola scrip­tura in the Bible? Mr. X runs a mad dash through Sacred Scrip­ture, cit­ing any verse that he can bend out of sense, and says, “See! Here! Sola Scrip­tura! Refute that, Roman­ists!” Mean­while Mr. Bugay, who hath no peer for pre­var­i­ca­tion, denies he has to find it at all, and claims that the ques­tion is “dis­hon­est.” Catholic apol­o­gists real­ly ought to shut up if they know what is good for them. Oth­er­wise, Mr. Bugay might write anoth­er blog arti­cle. The hor­ror! the hor­ror! But no; as I said, nei­ther respond­ed. For indeed, why should they? Leave that dirty work for another—in this case, no less a per­son­age than Steve “Pur­ple” Hays, who also blogs at Tri­ablogue.

Mr. Hays did not link to my arti­cle (which is fine, I guess, since he only quot­ed my first sen­tence and ignored the rest). If I were a sus­pi­cious man, which I am not, I would won­der whether Mr. Hays desired that his read­er be unable to find my arti­cle, foras­much as it is far too dev­as­tat­ing to his own posi­tion. Per­pend: He did not link to it; he did not men­tion me by name (only as “a Catholic apologist”—as though I might be Jim­my Akin, or that mere­tri­cious apos­tate Jason Stell­man). It is as though Mr. Hays had some­thing to hide—but no, I am not sus­pi­cious, and will not pur­sue this vain line of insin­u­a­tion. Suf­fi­cient it is to say that I will­ing­ly link to Mr. Hays’ dumb arti­cle; and you, dear read­er, may go and see for your­self what silli­ness lurks in the blogs of Calvin­ists. The arti­cle is not long: per­haps because Mr. Hays felt it cir­cum­spect not to say too much, lest he trap him­self fur­ther.

THE LOGIC OF A SYLLOGISM

But I have too much fun. Before I get into the gist of Mr. Hays’ arti­cle, I wish to take a moment to ’splain why the ques­tion is so dam­ag­ing to the Protes­tant posi­tion on sola scrip­tura. The ques­tion, again (since you have, no doubt, for­got it by now, in your fit of laugh­ter), is this: Where is sola scrip­tura in the Bible? (Real­ly, though, I must con­fess, the spec­ta­cle of Mr. Bugay and Mr. Hays ask­ing, “Why do I have to prove it from the Bible?” is just too much iron­ic fun.) The hon­est Chris­t­ian will recall one of the key char­ac­ter­is­tics of the tra­di­tion­al def­i­n­i­tion of sola scrip­tura; name­ly, that what­ev­er is not explic­it­ly set forth in Scrip­ture, or what­ev­er may not log­i­cal­ly be inferred from Scrip­ture, is not bind­ing upon Chris­tians. Scrip­ture alone, the doc­trine says, is the source for what must be believed by Chris­tians. We are bound only by what is in Scrip­ture; we are not bound by what is absent. (Should I repeat this one more time for the assis­tance of Mr. Hays?)

So we might begin a syl­lo­gism, thus:

• The Bible alone is the source of all doc­trine that is bind­ing upon Chris­tians;
• Sola scrip­tura is a doc­trine that is bind­ing upon Chris­tians;
• There­fore—

Well, dear read­er, how would you com­plete that syl­lo­gism? If you did not say, “There­fore, sola scrip­tura must be in the Bible,” you should fail Log­ic 101 and be solemn­ly ush­ered back to the sixth grade.

And that is why Catholic apol­o­gists ask the ques­tion “Where is sola scrip­tura in the Bible?” And that is why nei­ther Mr. Bugay nor Mr Hays are going to intim­i­date us into not ask­ing it. If Protes­tantism had but one Achilles’ heel, this would be it.

PURPLE’S PARABLE

Mr. Hays, how­ev­er, ’plains that it is the “wrong ques­tion.” In a mad, mad, mad, mad effort to explain why, he con­cocts invents sup­plies the fol­low­ing odd para­ble. He imag­ines a pre­sum­ably Catholic tourist—perhaps the afore­men­tioned Mr. Akin, or Mr. Stellman—arriving at the Bilt­more and com­plain­ing, thus:

I went to Asheville to see the Bilt­more. I even bought a tick­et. But try as I might, I nev­er saw the Bilt­more. The tour guide took us through room after room, but I could nev­er find the Bilt­more. I peered into clos­ets; not there! I peered into cup­boards; not there! I peered into cab­i­nets, bureaus, and desk draw­ers; not there! Where was the Bilt­more?

Now, the rea­son this is a strange, and frankly idi­ot­ic, anal­o­gy (for I am thus bound to be hon­est), is because no Catholic apol­o­gist I know of has ever asked “Where is the Bible in the Bible?” Not even Robert Sun­ge­nis has said that, and his views of late have been wild. But here is why, in Mr. Hays’ view, the Para­ble of the Bilt­more is sage. As he puts it, “The Bilt­more isn’t in the Bilt­more. [You don’t say.] Rather, the Bilt­more is the Bilt­more. [How pro­found.] … Why assume that sola scrip­tura is only true if you can find [it] in the Bible? What if sola scrip­tura sim­ply is the Bible?”

The Bilt­more is the Bilt­more! The Bible is the Bible! And sola scrip­tura is just anoth­er term for the Bible itself! Check­mate, Catholic apol­o­gists! Get in your boats and cross the Tiber to the oth­er side before we encounter more slap­downs like that one.

(By the way, did you catch Mr. Hays’ admis­sion that sola scrip­tura is not in the Bible? I hope you did. If it were in the Bible, he would have told us where, and the argu­ment would be over. Because it is not, he must bluff.)

Jere­my Lott, the edi­tor of Real Clear Reli­gion, has one word for Hays’ argu­ment. On my Face­book page, he wrote: “It’s sil­ly.” That it is “sil­ly” would be, in a sane world, self-evi­dent, and any sane man embar­rassed to have writ­ten it. But we are liv­ing in the age of blogs, when any­one with a pair of under­wear and a base­ment may opine on any­thing at all and pre­tend it’s sense. Thus are many con­fused. And thus I will patient­ly explain, in the same gen­tle way one would address the rav­ings of the deranged.

Here is the dif­fer­ence between the Bible and sola scrip­tura: The Bible is a col­lec­tion of books, where­as sola scrip­tura is a doc­trine about the exclu­sive author­i­ty of that col­lec­tion. They are not one and the same, can­not be, and nev­er have been. And it is less than hon­est for Mr. Hays, by sleight-of-hand, to pre­tend that they are the same in an effort to bluff his way out of an apolo­get­ics jam.

The true para­ble would have had the Catholic apol­o­gist go look­ing about the Bilt­more for evi­dence that the Bilt­more alone was built by God, and that the Bilt­more alone con­tains all that is nec­es­sary for a suf­fi­cient night’s rest, and that what­ev­er is not in the Bilt­more will lead to insom­nia. No one is ask­ing Mr. Hays, or Mr. Bugay, or Mr. X, or any­one else, to find the Bible in the Bible. That was nev­er the ques­tion, for it was nev­er the doc­trine. Truth be told (as it must and shall), it is a sense-free tau­tol­ogy: The Bible alone is the Bible alone. It amounts to sur­ren­der; it amounts to an admis­sion that sola scrip­tura is not in the Bible. Mr. Hays has giv­en the game away, though he attempts to deny it by chang­ing the def­i­n­i­tion of sola scrip­tura to a nev­er-before-sug­gest­ed cir­cum­lo­cu­tion.

THAT SOLA PUT A SPELL ON HAYS

In fact—and I am grate­ful to Steven Grey­danus for these par­tic­u­lar references—not only is sola scrip­tura not in the Bible, but it is denied by the Bible. It is as though Mr. Akin, or Mr. Stell­man, upon tour­ing the Bilt­more, found an author­i­ta­tive inscrip­tion that said, “Van­der­bilt has oth­er homes!” Thus in 2 Thess. 2:15, St. Paul puts oral tra­di­tion on an equal author­i­ty with the writ­ten word:

“So then, brethren, stand firm and hold to the tra­di­tions, which you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by let­ter.”

But not only that. As Mr. Grey­danus points out, the apos­tles under­stood Jew­ish tradition—outside of the Old Testament—to be an author­i­ta­tive source of divine teach­ing. Acts 7:53, Gal. 3:19, and Heb. 2:2 all allude to the Jew­ish tra­di­tion that the Torah was “spo­ken by angels” (to use the expres­sion in Hebrews). This tra­di­tion is not to be found in the Old Tes­ta­ment.

Some, such as Dr.* James White (Th.D., D.Min., etc., etc.), of Alpha & Omega Sophistries (he calls it “Min­istries”; it’s one of his crotch­ets), have attempt­ed to extri­cate them­selves from this dif­fi­cul­ty by posit­ing that sola scrip­tura is a “nor­ma­tive con­di­tion” of the Church, which only came into exis­tence after the canon was closed. I addressed that claim here and here. The problem—as I stat­ed then, and reit­er­ate now—is that Dr.* White fails to name one source, before him­self, who refers to sola scrip­tura as a “nor­ma­tive con­di­tion.” If that is how sola scrip­tura is to be under­stood, why is Dr.* White the first to know about it? If sola scrip­tura is just the Bible itself, why are Mr. Bugay and Mr. Hays the first to know about it?

If Van­der­bilt gave up his oth­er man­sions when the Bilt­more was com­plete, why would he leave behind word about his oth­er res­i­dences? Would he not have removed those inscrip­tions, lest many be con­fused? Would he not have includ­ed some­thing to indi­cate, “This is the only place Van­der­bilt lives; the Bilt­more alone is my dwelling place”?

At bot­tom, Mr. Hays is try­ing, how­ev­er clev­er­ly, to avoid a ques­tion he knows, and admits, he can­not answer. Bluff may work when you’re a col­lege sopho­more, but it does not work in the world of men. If sola scrip­tura is not in the Bible, and no one should expect it to be, then Mr. Hays should pass the mes­sage on to Mr. X; for that daunt­less Calvin­ist is still wild­ly flip­ping through the pages of Sacred Scrip­ture try­ing to stran­gle sola scrip­tura out of any verse he thinks he can get away with abus­ing. If sola scrip­tura is not in the Bible, if even Mr. Hays and Mr. Bugay have giv­en up look­ing, why is Mr. X still hold­ing on to his strong delu­sion?

Remem­ber the apt­ness of a syl­lo­gism: If sola scrip­tura is not in the Bible, then it fails its own test. In truth, the Bible is a col­lec­tion of 73 books—Protestants false­ly say 66—whose author­i­ty is attest­ed exter­nal­ly. That is to say, the Bible does not give its own table of con­tents. What books are to be includ­ed is the deter­mi­na­tion of an author­i­ty out­side the Scrip­ture itself. R.C. Sproul calls the Bible “a fal­li­ble col­lec­tion of infal­li­ble books,” but that is just anoth­er attempt to avoid fac­ing the fun­da­men­tal flaw of sola scrip­tura. Protes­tants, even as they assert sola scrip­tura, must accept extra-bib­li­cal author­i­ty when declar­ing the canon, and extra-bib­li­cal author­i­ty when they assert sola scrip­tura itself. For how­ev­er we define sola scrip­tura, so long as Mr. Hays admits it is not in the Bible, he must have an author­i­ty out­side the Bible to tell him it is so. What is that author­i­ty? Mr. Hays does not say. But if he were hon­est, he would admit that his author­i­ty is noth­ing but his own tra­di­tion.

The truth is this: Not only is sola scrip­tura false, it is impos­si­ble. For, just as there must be an exter­nal author­i­ty to tell us what is in the canon, so there must be an exter­nal author­i­ty to tell us what the Bible means. Our fal­li­ble inter­pre­ta­tions must needs be kept in check. Were it not so, that would mean God had aban­doned Chris­tians to an eter­nal con­fu­sion about (1) what the infal­li­ble books are and (2) what they mean. And unless that exter­nal author­i­ty is itself infal­li­ble, we could nev­er dis­tin­guish right­ly between true and false doc­trine. All we would have is the assur­ance of who­ev­er could argue his case with the most gus­to, or the most clever decep­tion, or both.

That is the conun­drum all advo­cates of sola scrip­tura must address. Denial and avoid­ance, which Mr. Bugay and Mr. Hays now engage in, are no answer. The Para­ble of the Bilt­more is clev­er­ness in search of coher­ence.