urretinFan is back! We’ve missed him. Longtime readers will remember this crack, Reformed theologian who, because of his anonymity, is known here as Mr. X. I thought his blog was dying a protracted death. There would be long silences; then, he would flicker up again for a post or two; then, slump into another doze. His post frequency had already been in a severe decline—which started, by sheer coincidence, at the very time I took up blogging and began to refute his silliness. Perhaps he thinks I have forgotten him and he can now resume his raison d’être: plowing wild and unhinged and desperate through the Bible and Church Fathers for evidence of Protestant doctrine. Mr. X never defends himself once refuted; he simply plows on to the next text, hoping to tire us. Now, in a post on January 14, he claims to have discovered formal sufficiency in Origen’s De Principiis. Here’s the text in question:
But, as we had begun to observe, the way which seems to us the correct one for the understanding of the Scriptures, and for the investigation of their meaning, we consider to be of the following kind: for we are instructed by Scripture itself in regard to the ideas which we ought to form of it. In the Proverbs of Solomon we find some such rule as the following laid down, respecting the consideration of holy Scripture: And do, he says, describe these things to yourself in a threefold manner, in counsel and knowledge, and that you may answer the words of truth to those who have proposed them to you.
Mr. X sees the words “we are instructed by Scripture itself,” etc., and cries: Aha! Formal sufficiency! He tears over to his blog and writes:
It is not that there is a deficiency in the form of Scripture that must be made up by the church, but rather the Scriptures themselves provide the key to their understanding.
This is wild. Origen overstates his meaning some, but Mr. X would have figured that out had he taken the time to breathe and work through the passage. Instead he gets impatient for vindication. Origen does not mean that the Bible provides a key to its own interpretation; rather, he finds a piece of instruction in Proverbs about something else and says that we can apply that same principle to biblical interpretation.
Origin then quotes from Proverbs 22:20, which is rendered a bit differently in earlier translations than we find it today. The RSVCE reads: “Have I not written for you thirty sayings of admonition and knowledge?” But according to Barnes [find his and other commentaries here]:
The rendering of the Septuagint is: “write them for thyself three times;” that of the Vulgate, “I have written it (i. e., my counsel) in threefold form;” the “three times” or “threefold form” being referred either to the Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, the Song of Solomon, or to the division of the Old Testament into the Law, the prophets, and the Hagiographa.
The discrepancy in translation involves the Hebrew word שלשום (translit., shlishom), which is left untranslated by Strong’s but seems to mean “the day before yesterday,” so that the verse might be translated “Have I not written to you already?” As the Cambridge Commentary explains:
Another reading is heretofore, or long ago. If this be adopted, the reference may be either to the earlier sections of this Book, or to the fact that what is now promulgated had been committed to writing long ago, and was therefore no hasty utterance.
But in the Greek Septuagint, this Hebrew word is translated τρισσῶς, which one can render “threefold,” “triune,” or “triplicate.” (See here.) Thus in the translation of Origin, this comes out as “Describe these things to yourself in a threefold manner.”
It’s a bizarre, inaccurate translation of Proverbs, but Cambridge Commentary explains the historical significance of it:
This passage has borne a prominent part in the history of Biblical exegesis. By it, understood (with the LXX. and Vulg. quoted above) of “threefold” teaching, or teaching “in triple form,” Origen supported his doctrine of the threefold meaning of Holy Scripture.
This section of Proverbs 22 is about the importance of listening to the counsel of wise persons:
Incline your ear, and hear the words of the wise, and apply your mind to my knowledge; for it will be pleasant if you keep them within you, if all of them are ready on your lips. That your trust may be in the Lord, I have made them known to you today, even to you. Have I not written for you thirty sayings of admonition and knowledge to show you what is right and true, that you may give a true answer to those who sent you?
It says nothing at all about some principle of biblical interpretation that magically gives Sacred Scripture formal sufficiency. But because a Greek word meaning “three” found its way into the Septuagint, Origen used the text to advance an idea he had about Scripture having a threefold meaning—the literal, the moral, and the allegorical. Origen is teaching the threefold meaning of scripture, not the formal sufficiency of scripture.
But let’s play devil’s Mr. X’s advocate. Even if Origen was teaching formal sufficiency, the text he uses—Proverbs 22:20—is poorly rendered by the translation he has. Proverbs 22 tells us, “Listen to wise people.” It doesn’t say, “Here’s a principle of interpretation that gives the Bible formal sufficiency.” If Origen did mean that, Proverbs did not and Origin therefore misread the Bible, even if he can be excused because of a faulty translation. Thus Protestants must abandon the notion unless they can find it elsewhere; citing Origin doesn’t help the apologetic argument.
After all, if you hold to sola scriptura and the formal sufficiency of Scripture, you don’t accept doctrines because a Church Father believed them. You accept them because you find them in the Bible. And formal sufficiency is not in Proverbs 22:20.
Origen, whether or no he believed in formal sufficiency, did teach the false doctrine of the pre-existence of souls (condemned as heresy by the Second Council of Constantinople). And he was also a Universalist. Are these in Scripture? Origen thought he found pre-existence in Romans 9:11–14, but he was wrong. Formal sufficiency, if that is what he believed, did not work out very well for him.
Devil’s advocacy aside, we learn, when we work through all of the above, that Mr. X has a very bad and persistent habit. He’s careless and hasty. He reads a text from the Bible, or in this case the Church Fathers; finds some words that sound superficially similar to a doctrine he holds dear (e.g., “instructed by Scripture itself”); and then immediately dashes the book to the ground, hies himself to his blog, and claims victory.
If you behave this way, you will make the pleasant discovery that the Bible and the Church Fathers teach whatever you want them to.
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