David T. King is a Teaching Elder/Pastor of the Dayspring Presbyterian Church (PCA) Forsyth, GA. David holds a M.Div. from Reformed Theological Seminary, Jackson, MS. He is co-author with William Webster of the three volume work, Holy Scripture: The Ground and Pillar of Our Faith (Christian Resources, 2001), which is a defense of the Reformation principle of sola Scriptura, and has contributed articles to Tabletalk magazine.
Since Vatican II, there has been a significant shift in the way that many Roman apologists are seeking to defend Rome in their stance against the principle of sola Scriptura. This has occurred most conspicuously in the last decade of the Twentieth Century, which witnessed the conversion of some high profile evangelicals to Roman Catholicism. Almost immediately there came a flurry of apologetic books to justify their conversions; all of which, to one degree or another, have focused attention critically on the Protestant principle of sola Scriptura. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate the inconsistency in current Roman affirmations concerning material sufficiency and formal sufficiency.[1]
Observably, though their former fellow disputants often argued against the material sufficiency of Holy Scripture, it presently seems en vogue to argue either for or against it depending on what strategy is deemed appropriate for the targeted audience. For example, as a proponent of the former approach, James Cardinal Gibbons (1834–1921), the former Roman Catholic Archbishop of Baltimore, argued in the following manner:
A rule of faith, or a competent guide to heaven, must be able to instruct in all the truths necessary for salvation. Now the Scriptures alone do not contain all the truths which a Christian is bound to believe, nor do they explicitly enjoin all the duties he is obliged to practice.[2]To be sure, this is an explicit denial of material sufficiency. Continuing on the next page, Gibbons asserts further:
We must, therefore, conclude that the Scriptures alone cannot be a sufficient guide and rule of faith because they cannot, at any time, be within the reach of every inquirer; because they are not of themselves clear and intelligible even in matters of the highest importance, and because they do not contain all the truths necessary for salvation.[3]But then, Gibbons makes a volteface, interestingly enough, when contending for the Roman dogma of transubstantiation, asking, “Could any idea be expressed in clearer terms than these: This is My body; this is My blood?” He then offers the following explanation:
Why is the Catholic interpretation of these words rejected by Protestants? Is it because the text itself is in itself obscure and ambiguous? By no means; but simply because they do not comprehend how God could perform so stupendous a miracle as to give His body and blood for our spiritual nourishment.[4]This overt double standard regarding the clarity vs. obscurity of the text of Holy Scripture could not be set forth in a more striking contrast. One might just as easily respond with the words of the Apostle Paul to the Philippian jailer, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved,” and ask: Why is the Reformed interpretation of these words rejected by Roman apologists? Is it because the text itself is in itself obscure and ambiguous? By no means; but simply because they do not comprehend how God could perform so stupendous a miracle as to speak plainly in Holy Scripture in order to communicate efficaciously how men are to be saved.
This example demonstrates how for this Roman Catholic Archbishop, Scripture suddenly has lost all of its alleged obscurity and became crystal clear when it suits his purpose. For all their insistence otherwise, Roman apologists are willing to abandon their own claims regarding the obscurity of Holy Scripture when it comes to the dogmas peculiar to Rome.[5]
However, due to the strength of the Protestant apologetic, many present-day Roman Catholic apologists have abandoned the claim that Scripture does not contain all truths necessary for salvation.[6] Unlike the former Archbishop of Baltimore referenced above, they have sought to refine their apologetic methods concerning questions which address the sufficiency of Holy Scripture. This largely is due to the influences of John Henry Newman[7] (An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, 1845) and the “face-lift” of the Roman communion by Vatican II. When referring to the sufficiency of Holy Scripture, these Roman apologists now speak in terms of its material and formal aspects.[8] For instance, it is now said that “the [Roman] Catholic position allows for the material sufficiency of the Scriptures but denies its formal sufficiency.”[9] But virtually every Roman Catholic theologian from the Council of Trent to Vatican I (a span of about 300 years) affirmed that the documents of Trent denied the material sufficiency of Holy Scripture. Even into the Twentieth Century, many Roman theologians continued to affirm this understanding of the Tridentine decree.
As Yves M.J. Congar expressed it, “The idea upon which all Catholics are in agreement is known as the thesis of the formal insufficiency of Scripture.”[10] In other words, their denial of formal sufficiency stresses that Scripture is too ambiguous, too obscure sufficiently to communicate divine truth apart from the “infallible” magisterium of the Roman communion. But regarding the nature of the relationship of Scripture to tradition (i.e., whether or not Scripture is materially sufficient) is still a matter debated among Roman Catholics themselves.[11] Commenting on this question, with respect to the Council of Trent, Roman Catholic theologian Josef Rupert Geiselmann argues that the deliberations concluded left this problem unresolved.
What exactly, then, was actually decided by the Council of Trent about doctrine concerning the relation of Scripture and Tradition? We may now answer: neither the sufficiency of content of Holy Scripture was proclaimed, nor was the relation of Scripture and Tradition decided in the sense of “partly-partly.” One cannot emphasize enough that nothing, absolutely nothing, was decided at the Council of Trent concerning the relation of Scripture and Tradition.[12]Moreover, since the Council of Trent, Roman Catholic theologians have remained divided over the relationship of Scripture and tradition. Most (virtually all) have not embraced the concept of material sufficiency. Regardless of the “spin” that modern Roman apologists attempt in reinterpreting the decree of Trent (i.e., the phrase “in the written books and in the unwritten traditions” [in libris scriptis et sine scripto traditionibus]),[13] Gabriel Moran observes that
Whatever Trent intended to define on the Scripture-tradition relationship, there is very little controversy about the interpretation of post-Tridentine theologians. Sixteenth-century theologians like Cano, Bellarmine, and Cansius, in stressing the equality of tradition and Scripture as opposed to the doctrine of the reformers, originated the modern two-source theory. The classification of theological sources by Melchior Cano placed emphasis on tradition as an extrascriptural source of revelation and tended to put the Church, Scripture, and tradition into separate categories.[14]Moran even says that “long before Trent the doctrine of two partial sources of revelation was being taught, and the Council merely ratified this common teaching of the pre-Tridentine theologians.”[15] He then goes on to state:
Post-Tridentine theology, basing itself on the definition of Trent, has always taught the existence of extrascriptural traditions. Theologians were able to understand the Tridentine decree without the inclusion of the partly-partly formula. For present-day theology to suddenly decide that all of revelation is contained in Scripture would be to charge that Catholic theology has been in error these past four hundred years.[16]Moran says further:
The Council Fathers were almost unanimous in the belief that there are unwritten, dogmatic, apostolic traditions which must be accepted in addition to the Scriptures. Post-Tridentine theology has consistently taught the existence of two partial sources of revelation: Scripture and tradition. A denial of this consensus would require solid proof; no such proof has been brought forward to justify that the contents of Scripture and tradition are identical. Furthermore, the Church has shown no indication in her official teachng [sic] of substituting the one-source theory for the two-source theory.[17]Monsignor J.D. Conway addresses the shift of emphasis that has occurred in Roman theology in recent times regarding the relationship between Scripture and tradition. He notes that whereas many Roman theologians formerly held to the view that Scripture is materially insufficient (partim/partim), many have now adopted a position which affirms the very opposite, namely, the material sufficiency of Holy Scripture.
In recent years, besides the insights obtained from Scripture studies, Catholic theologians have been restudying the whole question of tradition, especially the history and meaning of its definition by the Council of Trent. In the face of Protestant claims that the Scripture alone had value as a source of God’s word, Catholics were tempted to reply: “Only part of our knowledge of revelation comes from Scripture; the rest is from tradition—as though from a different source.”
Now we realize more fully that Scripture and tradition are one: the same Good News transmitted to us in different forms. And modern theologians incline to the belief that all doctrines are found in the Scriptures, at least implicitly or by intimation. Tradition helps us to discover meanings which otherwise remain hidden.[18]But the question remains unsettled among Roman Catholics. For example, note the contrasting view of Monsignor G. Van Noort, S.T.D. In his work, published in the previous year to that of Monsignor Conway, he gives a definition of tradition which can only be understood as a denial of the concept of Scripture’s material sufficiency. As a proponent of the two-source theory, he says, “Tradition may be defined as follows: the collection of revealed truths which the Church has received through the apostles in addition to inspired Scripture and which it preserves by the uninterrupted continuity of the apostolic teaching office.”[19] Moreover, the old Catholic Encyclopedia likewise informs us that in contrast to Protestants, “Catholics...hold that there may be, that there is in fact, and that there must of necessity be certain revealed truths apart from those contained in the Bible.”[20]
Here, then, the problem with modern-day Roman apologetic claims begins to surface. The Roman Catholic communion has never officially defined Scripture to be materially sufficient.[21] The Roman Catholic communion has never officially defined the relationship between Scripture and tradition.[22] Though Roman Catholic controversialists have debated among themselves the question of their communion’s position on Scripture’s material sufficiency or insufficiency, the fact is that no official ecclesiastical pronouncement has been offered to resolve this question. And depending on what the Roman apologist is arguing for or against, he is able to draw upon the language of material sufficiency or insufficiency, and move from one position to the other at will! Roman apologists go back and forth between the two views, depending on what paradigm they deem plausible for the moment, proceeding as though the one approach does not stand in diametrical opposition to the other. Depending on the language they employ in a given situation, one can scarcely discern whether they embrace the material sufficiency or insufficiency of Holy Scripture. On the very heels of Vatican II, the Roman Catholic theologian Karl Rahner expressed the nature of this dilemma in the following manner.
The question about the relationship between scripture and tradition, which has occupied Catholic theology especially during the last twenty years, is a question about whether over and above this formal authority and even constitutive function of tradition, we must accept a further, material insufficiency of scripture with regard to its contents and as compared with tradition, or whether one can deny this without coming into conflict with the catholic principle of tradition.
If, in view of the question clarified in this way, we look into the history of the Christian self-understanding, we will have to say on the whole that we cannot find any really clear traditional answer to this precise question. In other words, a clear, fully thought-out, universally accepted answer to this precise question is not to be found in the tradition of Catholic theology but that-in so far as one can find any answer at all to the thus formulated question-different opinions and conceptions have been held right up to the present day.[23]Thus Rahner concedes that the Roman position “cannot find any really clear traditional answer to this precise question.” Even Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI), commenting on the documents of Vatican II (article nine of Dei verbum), stated that “no one is seriously able to maintain that there is a proof in Scripture for every catholic doctrine.”[24] Again, the denial of material sufficiency could not be expressed more clearly. In the face of Roman apologetic claims to the contrary, one has to ask, “whose word carries more authority in the Roman communion, the word of a Cardinal or a private Roman apologist?”
Moreover, exactly what the meaning of material sufficiency entails is far from clear when it is insisted, at the same time, that Scripture requires formal interpretation, the material of which is extrabiblical in nature. If Scripture requires an outside material content to define its meaning, then the reality is that it fails even the claim of material sufficiency that some Roman Catholics assign to it. Indeed, the formal definitions of papal infallibility and the Marian dogmas stand in utter contrast to the claim of material sufficiency. As Anthony N.S. Lane has noted:
A dogma like that of the Assumption [of Mary] condemns both Scripture and early tradition to material insufficiency in practice. The unfolding view [i.e., of development] is not a return from the supplementary [Trent] to the coincidence view [i.e., Scripture and tradition bear the same content] but rather an advance beyond the supplementary view in that tradition has now been found wanting. It represents not a renewed confidence in Scripture but a loss of confidence in tradition.[25]In the same vein, Oberman has keenly observed the plight of where Rome is today:
Especially due to the mariological dogmas of 1854 and 1950, theologians have concluded once again, that not only Scripture, but now also Scripture and tradition taken together are materially insufficient to support by simple explication these authoritative definitions. Scripture and tradition are still held to be the sources, and the Teaching Office of the Church, the norm which preserves and interprets the sources. But in as much as this interpretation is synthetic, the norm takes on the function of the source. The Apostolic Constitution in which the bodily assumption of Mary is defined refers to the unique consensus, not of the Church of all ages, but of the present-day Church. Not as an argument for, but as part of this authoritative definition it is announced that this divine truth is contained in the deposit of faith.[26]Regarding the dogma of papal infallibility, Colin Brown points out:
Papal infallibility was not defined until 1870. Up till then Catholics were deeply divided on the subject. It is no secret that many informed Catholics today wish that the dogma had never been defined. They are embarrassed by the fact that there are no grounds for it in Scripture and early church tradition. And the facts, both that Catholic theologians are uncertain which papal pronouncements are infallible, and that there has never been an official, infallible list of infallible pronouncements, are some indications of the vacuity of the dogma.[27]In an attempt to circumvent the facts of history, the theory of doctrinal development (as set forth and popularized by Newman) does not offer an alternative explanation for what is lacking in tradition. It is rather a virtual if not acknowledged abandonment of historical inquiry for the contemporary voice of the Roman communion. The logical conclusion of Rome’s present-day position is that Scripture and tradition are both materially insufficient, and that the Church exalts itself as the norm (rule of faith) over the sources of both Scripture and tradition. Critics of the present-day Roman position recognize how untenable its position is in reality. Hence, we see that the logical position of Rome is that of sola Ecclesia (the Church alone is the ultimate norm). Perhaps no one has given clearer expression to this than the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Henry Edward Manning (1808–1892) who wrote:
It was the charge of the Reformers that the Catholic doctrines were not primitive, and their pretension was to revert to antiquity. But the appeal to antiquity is both a treason and a heresy. It is a treason because it rejects the Divine voice of the Church at this hour, and a heresy because it denies that voice to be Divine. How can we know what antiquity was except through the Church? No individual, no number of individuals can go back through eighteen hundred years to reach the doctrines of antiquity. We may say with the woman of Samaria, ‘Sir, the well is deep, and thou hast nothing to draw with.’ No individual mind now has contact with the revelation of the Pentecost, except through the Church. Historical evidence and biblical criticism are human after all, and amount to no more than opinion, probability, human judgment, human tradition.
It is not enough that the fountain of our faith be Divine. It is necessary that the channel be divinely constituted and preserved. But...we have seen that the Church contains the fountain of faith in itself, and is not only the channel divinely created and sustained, but the very presence of the spring-head of the water of life, ever fresh and ever flowing in all ages of the world. I may say in strict truth that the Church has no antiquity. It rests upon its own supernatural and perpetual consciousness. Its past is present with it, for both are one to a mind which is immutable. Primitive and modern are predicates, not of truth, but of ourselves. The Church is always primitive and always modern at one and the same time; and alone can expound its own mind, as an individual can declare his own thoughts. ‘For what man knoweth the things of a man, but the spirit of a man that is in him? So the things also that are of God no man knoweth, but the Spirit of God.’ The only Divine evidence to us of what was primitive is the witness and voice of the Church at this hour.[28]Apologists like Keating, feeling the weight of both Scripture and history against them, have frankly found themselves forced to assert: “The mere fact that the Church teaches the doctrine of the Assumption as something definitely true is a guarantee that it is true.”[29] In other words, it is the living voice (viva voce—“whatever we say”) of the Church that constitutes the norm for belief, and this is precisely what Irenaeus identified as an heretical Gnostic notion.[30]
Thus the assertion by Roman apologists that Scripture is materially sufficient is no more than the expression of private opinion, for their communion has nowhere made any such official pronouncement; and the Marian dogmas constitute concrete proof to the contrary, notwithstanding all of their apologetic rhetoric otherwise. If, as Roman apologists are so fond of urging against Protestants, one needs an infallible ecclesiastical normative pronouncement to serve as the grounds for the certainty of one’s beliefs, where does this official infallible norm, which declares Scripture to be materially sufficient, exist? Where is it to be found? What council, what Pope has defined it? When one consults the documents of Trent, and Vatican I and II, they all employ the language of the two-source theory. No official statement from the Roman Church has ever pronounced Scripture to be materially sufficient, and one searches in vain for any such papal encyclical or bull. Yet, it is this “Goliath-like” argument which is continually brought forth to defy the position of their opposition as if it were an established magisterial maxim. But the forehead of this challenge faces the issue haphazardly exposed. For if one presses the need for an infallible ecclesiastical norm, then one must assume the same need on which one’s own case is to rest. Yet, as we have seen, the Roman apologist has no such norm to which he can appeal. Even someone as prominent as Karl Rahner has been forced to admit:
How scripture and tradition are related to one another, however, and what exact relationship they have with regard to their formal authority-and with regard again to their material limitation relative to the attestation of the material contents of faith, on the other hand-are all these questions about which the Council of Trent did not say anything and indeed did not wish to say anything and about which it has intentionally, one may rightly say, chosen a foundation which leaves this question open. We will not be able to doubt or dispute the fact that in post-Tridentine theology the main trend of thought has been to maintain, on the basis of an anti-Protestant front, that there is not only the truth of the inspiration and of the canon of scripture but that there are also other truths of faith which are not to be found in scripture, so that for them oral tradition is a materially distinct source of faith.[31]Rahner even proceeds to argue for a “Catholic” form of sola Scriptura:
I would like, however, to try in the last part of our reflections to bring forward certain reasons for our not needing to accept—not even from a Catholic point of view—a constitutive material function of tradition which goes beyond the testimony of the nature of scripture; that we can say conversely, therefore, that it is entirely possible to formulate a Catholic sola-scriptura principle with regard to the Church’s deposit of faith, provided that we understand this in a Catholic sense and therefore understand it to involve also an authoritative attestation and interpretation of holy scripture by the living word of the Church and her magisterium, and an attestation of scripture itself and its authoritative interpretation which cannot be replaced by scripture itself. If these two—not limitations but precisions arising out of the nature of things—are borne in mind then, I think, one can perfectly well speak of a Catholic sola-scriptura principle; this is always presupposing, of course—and this must be stated once more—that one does not interpret this principle of sola-scriptura in an unhistorical and petrifying sense as meaning a prohibition of a living development of the faith of the Church. If, however, these three conditions are observed, then it seems to me that there can be a perfectly correct Catholic principle of sola-scriptura.[32]The relationship between Scripture and tradition for Roman Catholicism remains a matter that is still “up for grabs” because the debate continues to be examined critically among theologians of their own communion. Asserting that one is free to understand them, in this or that relationship (material vs. non-material sufficiency), amounts to internal equivocation, which in turn is adjudicated only by the one who shouts the loudest, or by which position suits the current apologetic scenario. These contradictory apologetic scenarios are both represented in the book Not By Scripture Alone. Within the Roman Catholic communion, there remain today sharp lines of division on the relationship of Scripture to Tradition. They practice their own kind of private judgment with respect to the material sufficiency of Scripture when it fits the occasion for dispute with Protestants, but then they move into the realm of a nebulous oral tradition for articles of faith when the “material-sufficiency” position becomes too untenable to be sustained, all the while ignoring the double-standard of such methodology. Notice the language they employ (the italics in the following quotes are mine). In the book, Not By Scripture Alone, we read: “The Catholic Faith can agree that Scripture is sufficient” (181). .. “Catholic theologians, by and large, do not have much of a problem with material sufficiency” (221). .. “The Catholic position allows for the material sufficiency of the Scriptures” (396). Then a Roman Catholic catechism is cited which states, “This addition need not mean that the truth of the gospel would be contained partially in Holy Scripture and partially in the Tradition. The [Tridentine] declaration can be understood as agreeing with the Fathers of the Church,” etc. (396). Notice that, in the absence of any official ecclesiastical explanation of the meaning of Trent regarding the relationship of Scripture to tradition, these apologists are now in the realm of private interpretation of the Roman communion’s Tridentine documents. The truth is, as we have observed repeatedly, that the Roman apologist has no dogmatic, “infallible” pronouncement to support either the material sufficiency or material insufficiency of Holy Scripture.
When he chooses either position he does so exercising private judgment, because the Roman communion has yet to define its official position. They boast of their freedom and liberty to understand various passages in this or that way, but decry the same practice on the part of Protestants.[33] But, in the face of the vast array of patristic evidence to the contrary, evidence that has been repeatedly introduced by Protestants, present-day Roman apologists have been forced to yield at least lip-service to some degree to the material sufficiency of Scripture.
Moreover, in the same book referenced above, we find that the tendency is to reverse the language of material sufficiency when the occasion suits the apologists to argue for what can only be understood as the traditional two-source theory. Again, notice the language: “If at that time the written word contained the complete and only necessary revelation of God to preserve, it would have been superfluous for the first Christians to preserve any oral revelation. But since Paul did command to preserve and obey oral revelation, the Catholic Church has always taught that oral revelation serves as an additional source of revelation along side the written word” (127), and “Sacred Scripture is the written portion, but not the totality, of Revelation which is given to us by the apostles with the authority of Christ Jesus himself” (169). We read the following comment on 2 Thess. 2:15, “Why recommend two sources if the latter [Scripture] embraces all of the former?” (258). The same tactic is attempted on 293–295 where we are told that the Bible “leaves out information”. .. “lacks precise terminology to combat heresy”. .. “does not specify whether God would give additional revelation after Scripture was completed”. .. “does not tell us which books are canonical.” We read that there is “truth about issues the Bible does not cover.” It is suggested that God may “add other ‘perfect’ revelation in whatever form he chooses.” A comparison of the quotes in the previous paragraph with the ones here are sufficient to exhibit the contradictory nature of their apologetic appeals. Such contradictions on the material sufficiency/insufficiency of Scripture are endemic to their apologetic. Karl Keating does the same thing when he asserts:
It is true that Catholics do not think revelation ended with what is in the New Testament. They believe, though, that it ended with the death of the last apostle. The part of revelation that was not committed to writing—the part that is outside the New Testament and is the oral teaching that is the basis of Tradition—that part of revelation Catholics also accept. . .[34]Notice the language “part...part.” This is reminiscent of how some Roman theologians have understood Trent in terms of partim/partim (partly in Scripture, partly in unwritten tradition). These examples of contradictory appeals are sufficient to demonstrate that Roman apologists want to have it both ways, and thus end up contradicting themselves. They want to suggest, on the one hand, that Scripture is materially sufficient, but when the occasion of their apologetic warrants it, they insist that Scripture does not contain all that is necessary and that it needs to be supplemented by extrabiblical material. This makes the claim to material sufficiency virtually meaningless. Thus, as Francis Turretin (1623–1687) pointed out in his own day:
In order to clear themselves of the charge of attributing insufficiency to the Scriptures in this way, some of them distinguish between explicit and an implicit sufficiency (as Stapleton and Serarius) or mediate and an immediate (as Perronius). And they confess that the Scripture is not indeed sufficient immediately and explicitly, but yet it can be called so mediately and implicitly because it refers to the church and to tradition what is not contained in itself.[35]Thus, the Roman concept of material sufficiency is seen to be meaningless, and gathers to it Gnostic overtones. If there exists outside of Scripture a material content of revelation needed to supplement the material contained in Scripture in order to render it sufficient (as the Gnostics of Irenaeus’ day contended), then it makes the claim of material sufficiency a reductio ad absurdum.
The logic of this claim (namely, that Scripture is so obscure that it is incapable of sufficiently defining doctrinal truth) is equivalent to saying that the light of the sun is no brighter than the eyes of the man on whom it shines, which has nothing to do with the inherent brilliance of the sun itself. It is none other than the Lord Jesus himself who asserted, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will by no means pass away” (Matt. 24:35; Mk. 13:31; Lk. 21:33) and that his own words will judge men in the last day (Jn. 12:47–48). These statements presuppose both the preservation of our Lord’s words in Scripture and the responsibility of men for accepting or rejecting them.
It was nothing less than this presupposition of our Lord Jesus himself, regarding the basic perspicuity of Scripture, that gave force to his words in the story of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16). In response to the rich man’s request that Abraham send Lazarus back from the dead to warn his five brothers, Abraham replied, “They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them” (v. 29). Notice, our Lord does not inform the rich man (now in hell) that his five brothers (still alive) are bound to be persuaded by the “infallible” traditions or interpretations of Moses and the prophets by the official religious leaders in Israel, but that they are bound to heed the voices of Moses and the prophets themselves! Turretin observed correctly that “Christ does not say they have the priests and scribes (who cannot err), but they have Moses and the prophets (viz., in their writings), implying that they are abundantly sufficient for full instruction and that their authority must be acquiesced in.”[36]
Furthermore, when the rich man protested, believing that the miracle of a resurrection would make for a more certain and persuasive argument, Abraham replied yet again, “If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rise from the dead” (v. 31). This is precisely the way Chrysostom understood this passage. In his fourth sermon on Lazarus (Concionis IV, de Lazaro), Chrysostom declared:
So what does Abraham reply? “If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they listen if someone rises from the dead.” And the Jews proved that this is true, that he who does not hear the Scriptures will not hear even those who rise from the dead; for when they had not heard Moses and the prophets, neither did they believe when they saw some of the dead rising.. . .
In order to learn another reason why the teaching of the prophets is more worthy of belief than the report of those who rise from the dead, consider this fact, that every dead person is a servant, but what the Scriptures utter, the Master has uttered. So even if a dead person rises, even if an angel descends from heaven, the Scriptures are more worthy of belief than any of them. For the Master of the angels, the Lord of the dead and living, Himself has given the Scriptures their authority.[37]
Therefore let us not seek to hear from dead people what the Scriptures teach us more clearly every day. For if God knew that dead people by rising could help the living, He who has worked everything out for our good would not have omitted or neglected such a great benefit.. . .
But God who foreknew all these things prevented this attack. To spare us, He did not allow anyone even to come from the other world and speak of what is there to living people. In this way He teaches us to consider the Holy Scriptures the most trustworthy of all.[38]For conservative evangelicals, no further testimony is needed that Chrysostom plainly affirms that Scripture carries its own inherent authority, and needs no official normative interpretation to render Scripture understandable, and thus binding on the consciences of people who come under its powerful influence, for “what the Scriptures utter, the Master has uttered!” Theophylact, a Byzantine Archbisop, commented on the same passage shortly after the year 1090:
If raising the dead would truly help us to believe, the Lord would do this often. But there is no help so great as the close study of the Scriptures. For the devil by trickery has appeared to raise the dead and by this means has deceived the foolish; and concerning those in hades he spreads doctrines worthy of his own wickedness. But no such trickery can prevail against those who make wise study of the Scriptures. For the Scriptures are a lamp and a light, and when light shines, the thief appears and is discovered. Therefore, let us believe the Scriptures and let us not seek resurrections from the dead.[39]However, Roman apologists contend that “a Protestant case directed at proving a father’s belief in the material sufficiency of Scripture is innocuous, since Catholics too can affirm the material sufficiency of the Bible. Therefore, in order for Protestant apologists to prove that the Fathers affirmed sola scriptura (not simply material sufficiency) they must prove that the Fathers affirmed formal sufficiency.”[40] If this is indeed the case, what pray tell, then, can possibly be Augustine’s meaning when he says the following to a catechumen?
Love to read the sacred Letters, and you will not find many things to ask of me. By reading and meditating, if you pray wholeheartedly to God, the Giver of all good things, you will learn all that is worth knowing, or at least you will learn more under His inspiration than through the instruction of any man.[41]But contrary to Roman apologists’ representation of the members of the ancient Church, there are numerous examples from statements of the early Church fathers which prove beyond doubt to the honest reader that these apologists either (1) are very unfamiliar with what the fathers actually taught with respect to the clarity of Holy Scripture, or (2) have grossly misrepresented them. The fathers speak clearly and explicitly many times over in affirming the general perspicuity of Holy Scripture, especially with respect to essential matters. Augustine, e.g., makes it abundantly clear that the Scriptures themselves and God’s grace of illumination (which here he calls “inspiration”) will suffice to instruct one more than the instruction of any man.
Moreover, Roman apologists are wont to assert that the example of the Ethiopian eunuch is proof of the need for the Church’s magisterium. John Henry Newman argued, as have many after him, that. . .
The Ethiopian’s reply, when St. Philip asked him if he understood what he was reading, is the voice of nature: “How can I, unless some man shall guide me?” The Church undertakes that office; she does what none else can do, and this is the secret of her power. “The human mind,” it has been said, “wishes to be rid of doubt in religion; and a teacher who claims infallibility is readily believed on his simple word.[42]Thus the contention is that what the Ethiopian eunuch “needed was a teacher (magister) who could instruct him in what God intended him to understand; that is what the eunuch received in Philip, and that is what we have in the magisterium of the Church.”[43] But according to Rome, the magisterium is restricted to those who hold the office of bishop,[44] who are assisted by priests. This is where the Roman apologetic faces a problem with the example of the Ethiopian eunuch. Philip himself did not hold the office of bishop in the primitive Church. He was most likely a deacon (Acts 6:1–5) and explicitly is called an evangelist (Acts 21:8). But he was not a bishop. This was likewise confirmed Ambrosiaster, who wrote: “Even if they are not elders they can nonetheless preach the gospel without a chair, as Stephen and Philip are recorded to have done.”[45]
The only infallible authority that Philip appealed to was the Holy Spirit! Moreover, all the Ethiopian had in his hands was the Prophet Isaiah; whether he was in possession of any other Old Testament Scriptures, we do not know. But what we do know is that he did not have the benefit of the New Testament Scriptures which constituted the full and sufficient revelation of the Gospel; thus this is no argument against the perspicuity of Holy Scripture taken as a whole with respect to its essential message. But the Old Testament Scriptures were indeed sufficient for those who lived under them. Moreover, we have the explicit testimony of the Apostle Paul himself concerning the sufficiency of the Old Testament Scriptures, when he said to Timothy “that from childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise (δυνάμενα σε σοφίσαι) for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim. 3:15).
Moreover, it is interesting to note that the early Church father John Chrysostom exegeted this passage of Scripture on at least three different occasions; and his understanding of the passage regarding Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch differs significantly from Newman’s. In fact, his exegesis stands in utter contradistinction to that of Newman and other Romanists who follow his lead. Thus we let Chrysostom speak in these three examples as they are preserved in his sermons, beginning with his 3rd sermon on Lazarus. In the broader context, Chrysostom says:
For those without—philosophers, rhetoricians, and annalists, not striving for the common good, but having in view their own renown—if they said anything useful, even this they involved in their usual obscurity, as in a cloud. But the apostles and prophets always did the very opposite; they, as the common instructors of the world, made all that they delivered plain to all men, in order that every one, even unaided, might be able to learn by the mere reading. Thus also the prophet spake before, when he said, “All shall be taught of God,” (Isa. liv.13). “And they shall no more say, every one to his neighbor, Know the Lord, for they shall all know me from the least to the greatest,” (Jer. xxxi. 34). St. Paul also says, “And I, brethren, when I came to you, came not with excellency of speech, or of wisdom, declaring unto you the mystery of God,” ( 1 Cor. ii. 1). And again, “My speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power,” (1 Cor. ii. 4). And again, “We speak wisdom,” it is said, “but not the wisdom of this world, nor of the princes of this world that come to nought,” (1 Cor. ii. 6). For to whom is not the gospel plain? Who is it that hears, “Blessed are the meek; blessed are the merciful; blessed are the pure in heart,” and such things as these, and needs a teacher in order to understand any of the things spoken?
But (it is asked) are the parts containing the signs and wonders and histories also clear and plain to every one? This is a pretence, and an excuse, and a mere cloak of idleness. You do not understand the contents of the book? But how can you ever understand, while you are not even willing to look carefully? Take the book in your hand. Read the whole history; and, retaining in your mind the easy parts, peruse frequently the doubtful and obscure parts; and if you are unable, by frequent reading, to understand what is said, go to some one wiser; betake yourself to a teacher; confer with him about the things said. Show great eagerness to learn; then, when God sees that you are using such diligence, He will not disregard your perseverance and carefulness; but if no human being can teach you that which you seek to know, He himself will reveal the whole.[46]Chrysostom says that the apostles and prophets delivered the Scriptures to us in such a way that all, “even unaided, might be able to learn by the mere reading.” And then, as though anticipating the oft-repeated Roman apologetic regarding the Ethiopian eunuch, and his need for an infallible human guide—and thus our need of such to comprehend what we read in Scripture—the man whom history calls “Golden Mouth” thunders the reply for us:
Remember the eunuch of the queen of Ethiopia. Being a man of a barbarous nation, occupied with numerous cares, and surrounded on all sides by manifold business, he was unable to understand that which he read. Still, however, as he was seated in the chariot, he was reading. If he showed such diligence on a journey, think how diligent he must have been at home; if while on the road he did not let an opportunity pass without reading, much more must this have been the case when seated in his house; if when he did not fully understand the things he read, he did not cease from reading, much more would he not cease when able to understand. To show that he did not understand the things which he read, hear that which Philip said to him: “Understandest thou what thou readest?” (Acts viii. 30). Hearing this question he did not show provocation or shame: but confessed his ignorance, and said: “How can I, except some man should guide me?” (ver. 31). Since therefore, while he had no man to guide him, he was thus reading; for this reason he quickly received an instructor. God knew his willingness, He acknowledged his zeal, and forthwith sent him a teacher.
But, you say, Philip is not present with us now. Still, the Spirit that moved Philip is present with us. Let us not, beloved, neglect our salvation! “All these things are written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the world are come,” (1 Cor. x. 11). The reading of the Scriptures is a great safeguard against sin; ignorance of the Scriptures is a great precipice and a deep gulf; to know nothing of the Scriptures, is a great betrayal of our salvation. This ignorance is the cause of heresies; this it is that leads to dissolute living; this it is that makes all things confused. It is impossible—I say, it is impossible, that any one should remain unbenefited who engages in persevering and intelligent reading.[47]Goode translated the Greek phrase used by Chrysostom (᾿Αλλὰ οὐ πάρεστιν ὁ Φίλππος νῦν; ᾿Αλλὰ τὸ Πνεῦμα τὸ κινῆαν τὸν πάρεστι)[48] as “But there is no Philip present now. No, but the Spirit that moved Philip is present.”[49] Goode’s translation properly renders the force of the Greek conjunction ἀλλὰ (“but”) as a conjunction of contrast. Thus Chrysostom’s appeal is directed to the illuminating work of the Holy Spirit, which grants understanding to the mind of the reader, in order to strip away any pretext or excuse his hearers may raise for not reading the Scriptures for themselves. Near the beginning of section 2 of this sermon Chrysostom says, “It is not possible—I say, it is not possible, for any one to be secure without constant supplies of this spiritual instruction.” At the end of section 3 he repeats himself, “It is impossible—I say, it is impossible, that any one should remain unbenefited who engages in persevering and intelligent reading.” We ask then, where is Chrysostom’s indication of the need of an infallible human magisterium apart from the Holy Spirit Himself? He makes no such claim as Newman and others have argued with respect to the early Church fathers! But lest the objection is raised that this was an isolated instance in the preaching of Chrysostom, other citations can be referenced as well.
But what do the multitude say? “I do not hear what is read,” saith one, “nor do I know what the words are which are spoken.” Because thou makest a tumult and confusion, because thou comest not with a reverent soul. What sayest thou? “I know not what things are said.” Well then, for this very reason oughtest thou to give heed. But if not even the obscurity stir up thy soul, much more if things were clear wouldest thou hurry them by. Yea, this is the reason why neither all things are clear, lest thou shouldest indulge indolence; nor obscure, lest thou shouldest be in despair.
And whereas that eunuch and barbarian (Acts 8:20) said none of these things, but surrounded as he was with a crowd of so important affairs and on his journey, had a book in his hands and was reading: dost thou, both abounding in teachers, and having others to read to thee privately, allege to me thine excuses and pretexts? Knowest thou not what is said? Why then pray that thou mayest learn: but sure it is impossible to be ignorant of all things. For many things are of themselves evident and clear. And further, even if thou be ignorant of all, even so oughtest thou to be quiet, not to put out them that are attentive; that God, accepting thy quietness and thy reverence, may make the obscure things also plain.[50]As though anticipating Rome’s modern contention, Chrysostom charges that the objection of obscurity is but that of “excuses and pretexts!” Chrysostom declares in yet another place:
- The reading of the Holy Scriptures, dearly beloved, is a great blessing. This it is that arouses the soul to an appreciation of wisdom, this directs the mind to heaven, this brings the man to a thankful attitude, this prevents our getting excited over any earthly reality, this brings our thinking to rest in the world beyond and ourselves to do everything with a view to reward from the Lord and to deal with the trials of virtue with great readiness. From this source, you see, you can gain a precise understanding of the providence of God’s prompt retribution, the fortitude of good people, the Lord’s goodness and the greatness of his rewards. From this source you can be stirred to ardent imitation of noble men’s good sense in not fainting under the struggles of virtue but rather maintaining hope in God’s promises before their realization.
- Hence, I beseech you, let us practice the reading of the holy scriptures with great zeal. This, after all, is the way to fortify our knowledge, too, if we are assiduous in applying ourselves to their contents. I mean, it is not possible for the person who is in touch with the divine message in a spirit of zeal and fervent desire ever to suffer neglect; rather, even should a human teacher not come our way, the Lord himself would come from on high to enlighten our minds, shed light on our thinking, bring to our attention what had slipped our notice, and act as our instructor in what we have no knowledge of—provided we are prepared to contribute what lies in our power. Scripture says, remember, “Do not call anyone on earth your teacher.” When therefore we take an inspired book in our hands, let us concentrate, collect our thoughts and dispel every worldly thought, and let us in this manner do our reading with great devotion, with great attention so that we may be able to be led by the Holy Spirit towards the understanding of the writings and may gain great benefit from them.
- Even that pagan eunuch of the queen of Ethiopia, remember, despite being in all his glory and riding along in his chariot, did not neglect that opportunity for reading; instead, with the inspired author in his hand he put much effort into reading, even without understanding the contents. Nevertheless, because he brought to bear all that lay within him—his enthusiasm, his earnestness, his attention—he chanced upon a guide. Consider, I ask you, what a great effort it was not to neglect reading even while on a journey, and especially while seated in a chariot. Let this be heeded by those people who don’t even deign to do it at home but rather think reading the Scriptures is a waste of time: claiming as an excuse their living with a wife, conscription in military service, caring for children, attending to domestics, and looking after other concerns, they don’t think it necessary for them to show any interest in reading the holy scriptures. I mean, look at the case of the eunuch, a pagan to boot, both facts sufficient to induce indifference in him, and as well as that his public image and abundance of wealth, plus the fact that he was on a journey and traveling in a chariot (after all, it’s not easy to pay attention to reading when you’re traveling like that—quite the contrary, it’s extremely difficult). Yet his desire and great enthusiasm made light of all these problems, and so he gave himself to reading without muttering the words many people mutter these days: I don’t understand the contents, I can’t grasp the full sense of the words, why should I go to this trouble all to no purpose by reading without having someone capable of guiding me?
- None of these considerations counted for anything with that man, barbarian in language though he was, yet sage in his thinking; instead, he judged that, provided he gave evidence of all that lay within his power, he would not be overlooked but would rapidly enjoy grace from on high, and so he gave himself to reading. Hence the loving Lord, seeing his desire, did not ignore him, did not leave him unprovided for, but immediately sent him a mentor. In your case, on the other hand, I ask you, consider God’s wisdom in waiting for the man first of all to bring to bear his own resources and only then he demonstrated his characteristic assistance. Since, therefore, the eunuch had discharged himself of all his capabilities, then the angel of the Lord appeared to Philip and said, “‘Up now, and travel to the road that leads down from Jerusalem to Gaza a desert road.’ Lo, an Ethiopian, eunuch and minister of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who had gone to worship at Jerusalem, was on the return journey seated in his chariot, and he was reading the prophet Isaiah.” See how precisely the writer of the book described things to us, saying “Ethiopian” so that we should know he was a barbarian; then he said “minister” to show he in fact enjoyed the highest rank and pomp. “Who had gone to worship at Jerusalem,” he said: notice also the reason for his journey, sufficient to reveal his godfearing attitude of mind—I mean, how long a journey he undertakes so as to pay adoration to the Lord. You see, they were still of the mind that worship was conducted in one place only, and consequently traveled long distances to offer prayers there; for this reason, of course, he arrived at the place of the temple and Jewish cult so as to pay adoration to the Lord.
- After putting into effect what he had longed to do, the text says, “he was on the return journey, seated in his chariot and reading.” Then Philip approached him and said, “Do you really understand what you’re reading?” Do you see his spirit of devotion, persisting with his reading while not understanding the contents, and anxious to chance upon a mentor to guide him? You see, the apostle straightway stimulates his longing by the question he asks; the fact that he deserved to meet someone to guide him towards understanding of the contents emerges from his very reply. I mean, when the apostle said, “Do you really understand?” and came close in his lowly condition, he was not put off, he made no objection, he did not consider himself disgraced in the way many foolish people react, often preferring to remain in unbroken ignorance through a sense of shame in admitting their ignorance and having to learn from those able to instruct them. This man, on the contrary, had none of those reactions; instead, he made his response with great restraint and discretion, showing the state of his soul in the words, “Well, how could I, unless someone shows me?” Not only did he reply with restraint and continue on as well, but he showed us the virtue in his own behavior by issuing an invitation in those words—the minister, the barbarian, seated in his chariot, inviting the man of lowly mien, despicable in attire, to mount and ride with him. Do you see his enthusiasm of spirit? Do you see the extraordinary degree of his piety? Do you see the barbarian’s godfearing attitude in fulfilling that saying of a certain wise man, “If you see a man of understanding, pay him an early visit, and let your foot wear out his doorstep?” Do you see how fitting it was he was not scorned? Do you see how fitting it was he enjoyed favor from on high? Do you see how he omitted nothing that was due to be performed on his part? For that reason he chanced upon his mentor at that point and gained a precise knowledge of the efficacy of Scripture’s contents, shedding light on his mind.
- Have you noticed how great a good it is to practice the reading of the holy scriptures with earnestness and zeal? The reason, in fact, that I have brought to your notice the story of this barbarian as well, is in case we are all ashamed to turn imitators of the Ethiopian, of the eunuch, of this person who did not neglect spiritual reading even on a journey. This barbarian is capable of proving a teacher of us all, those living a private life, those enlisted in military service, those who happened to be surrounded with pomp and circumstance, people in general, not only men also women as well, as much those who live the monastic life as those who spend all their time at home. From him we could learn that no time proves an obstacle to the reading of the divine sayings; rather, it is possible not only at home but also moving about in public, making a journey, being in the company of a crowd and involved in business affairs, to give oneself earnestly to these sayings so that by bringing our own resources to bear, we too may promptly chance upon a mentor. Our Lord, you see, discerning our enthusiasm for spiritual matters, far from ignoring us, supplies illumination from above and enlightens our mind. Accordingly, let us not neglect reading, I beseech you; rather, whether we recognize the efficacy of the contents or are unaware of it, let us apply ourselves to it assiduously. Constant attention to it, after all, creates an indelible memory; and it often happens that what we could not discover today in our reading we all of a sudden come across the next day in returning to the task as the loving God in unseen fashion sheds light on our mind.[51]
Tarry not, I entreat, for another to teach thee; thou hast the oracles of God. No man teacheth thee as they; for he indeed oft grudgeth much for vainglory’s sake and envy. Hearken, I entreat you, all ye that are careful for this life, and procure books that will be medicines for the soul. If ye will not any other, yet get you at least the New Testament, the Apostolic Epistles, the Acts, the Gospels, for your constant teachers. If grief befall thee, dive into them as into a chest of medicines; take thence comfort of thy trouble, be it loss, or death, or bereavement of relations; or rather dive not into them merely, but take them wholly to thee; keep them in thy mind.
This is the cause of all evils, the not knowing the Scriptures. We go into battle without arms, and how ought we to come off safe? Well contented should we be if we can be safe with them, let alone without them.[53]Chrysostom could not have spoken in clearer terms; no man’s instruction is comparable to the sufficiency of Holy Scripture to teach us. We ask, then, who has departed from ancient precedent with respect to the perspicuity of Holy Scripture and the illuminating work of the Holy Spirit, Protestantism or Rome? Chrysostom says that the essentials of the faith are all plain:
All things are dear and open that are in the divine Scriptures; the necessary things are all plain. But because ye are hearers for pleasure’s sake, for that reason also you seek these things. For tell me, with what pomp of words did Paul speak? and yet he converted the world. Or with what the unlettered Peter? But I know not, you sub the things that are contained in the Scriptures. Why? For are they spoken in Hebrew? Are they in Latin, or in foreign tongues? Are they not in Greek? But they are expressed obscurely, you say: What is it that is obscure? Tell me. Are there not histories? For (of course) you know the plain parts, in that you enquire about the obscure. There are numberless histories in the Scriptures. Tell me one of these. But you cannot. These things are an excuse, and mere words.[54]As another example from Chrysostom, notice his use of the word precision (ἀκρίβεια). One of Chrysostom’s favorite phrases was “the precision of Sacred Scripture.”[55] For Chrysostom, precision is a distinctive feature of the biblical text. Moreover, he plainly indicates that when it is the intention of Scripture to teach us something, such as it does in this instance, it “gives its own interpretation and does not let the listener go astray”:
You see, despite the use of such precision by Sacred Scripture, some people have not questioned the glib words of arrogant commentators and farfetched philosophy, even to the extent of denying Holy Writ and saying the garden was not on earth, giving contrary views on many other passages, taking a direction opposed to a literal understanding of the text, and thinking that what is said on the question of things on earth has to do with things in heaven. And, if blessed Moses had not used such simplicity of expression and considerateness, the Holy Spirit directing his tongue, where would we not have come to grief? Sacred Scripture, though, whenever it wants to teach us something like this, gives its own interpretation, and doesn’t let the listener go astray.. .. So, I beg you, block your ears against all distractions of that kind, and let us follow the norm of Sacred Scripture.[56]In spite of the testimony reproduced here from Chrysostom himself, there are still those who, for no other reason than what has to be described as blind prejudice, will say that Chrysostom held no such position. For example, the Roman Catholic G. Van Noort says:
Protestants gain little profit from an appeal to St. John Chrysostom, who does in fact emphatically extol the clarity of Scripture (Homilia 3 de Lazaro 2 and 3; Homilia 3 in 2 Thessalonians 4) but nonetheless urges that for the more difficult passages the faithful consult the more learned and ask their priests for help. And when he treats the words, “You search the Scriptures,” he says quite frankly: “For what is said in the prophets concerning Christ does not lie on the surface in clear view, but is very deeply hidden, like a treasure of some sort”—Homilia 41 in Joannem 1.[57]First, Van Noort refers to some of the very passages cited above, yet dismisses them out of hand, informing us that we gain very little profit from our appeal to Chrysostom, even though Chrysostom testifies that “All things are dear and open that are in the divine Scriptures; the necessary things are all plain.” We are content to let the honest reader discern for himself what profit there is to be gained. Second, he asserts that Chrysostom urges the faithful, when confronted with the more difficult passages, to seek instruction from the more learned and inquire of their priests. Though it is true that Chrysostom encourages the people under his care to seek out those more learned than themselves to gain help with difficult passages, we have found no instances where he ever explicitly sends them to the “priests” for help in understanding the meaning of Scripture and or to an infallible magisterium of the Church, nor does Van Noort offer any such instance for his claim. Third, when he cites the passage of Chrysostom in his Homilia 41 in Joannem 1, he commits the informal fallacy of converse accident,[58] in presuming the application of a generalization to an individual citation from Chrysostom that does not properly represent his overall position. Van Noort has not only dealt with the testimony of Chrysostom in a superficial manner, but has utterly misrepresented his position. Moreover, the instance that Van Noort cites, when read in context yields a different impression:
Beloved, let us make great account of spiritual things, and not think that it is sufficient for us to salvation to pursue them anyhow. For if in things of this life a man can gain no great profit if he conduct them in an indifferent and chance way, much more will this be the case in spiritual things, since these require yet greater attention. Wherefore Christ when He referred the Jews to the Scriptures, sent them not to a mere reading, but a careful and considerate search; for He said not, “Read the Scriptures,” but, “Search the Scriptures.” Since the sayings relating to Him required great attention, (for they had been concealed froth the beginning for the advantage of the men of that time,) He biddeth them now dig down with care that they might be able to discover what lay in the depth below. These sayings were not on the surface, nor were they cast forth to open view, but lay like some treasure hidden very deep. Now he that searcheth for hidden things, except he seek them with care and toil, will never find the object of his search. For which cause He said, “Search the Scriptures, because in them ye think ye have eternal life.” He said not, “Ye have,” but “ye think,” showing that they gained from them nothing great or high, expecting as they did to be saved by the mere reading, without the addition of faith. What He saith therefore is of this kind: “Do ye not admire the Scriptures, do ye not think that they are the causes of all life? By these I confirm My claims now, for they are they which testify of Me, yet ye will not come to Me that ye may have eternal life.” It was thus with good reason that He said, “ye think,” because they would not obey, but merely prided themselves on the bare reading. Then lest owing to His very tender care He should incur among them the suspicion of vainglory, and because He desired to be believed by them, should be deemed to be seeking His own; (for He reminded them of the words of John, and of the witness of God, and of His own works, and said all He could to draw them to Him, and promised them “life”;) since, I say, it was likely that many would suspect that He spake these things from a desire of glory, hear what He saith: “I receive not honor from men.”[59]In this fuller context, Chrysostom’s emphasis is brought to light. He warns his hearers against not exercising “care and toil,” thus implying that a diligent search can yield its object, and that one must search the Scriptures in a posture of faith. No Protestant would argue with Chrysostom’s caution, but rather heartily encourage that which he had previously emphasized in Homily 15 on the same gospel.
And the Lord when He exhorts the Jews to “search the Scriptures,” the more urges us to the enquiry, for He would not thus have spoken if it were possible to comprehend them immediately at the first reading. No one would ever search for what is obvious and at hand, but for that which is wrapt in shadow, and which must be found after much enquiry; and so to arouse us to the search He calls them “hidden treasure.” (Prov. ii. 4; Matt. xiii. 44.) These words are said to us that we may not apply ourselves to the words of the Scriptures carelessly or in a chance way, but with great exactness.[60]Again, this would have been an opportune time for Chrysostom to emphasize a need for the infallible magisterium of the Church, but he offers no such concept. Commenting in Homily 59 of John, he adds:
Observe the marks of a robber; first, that he doth not enter openly; secondly, not according to the Scriptures, for this is the, “not by the door.” Here also He referreth to those who had been before, and to those who should be after Him, Antichrist and the false Christs, Judas and Theudas, and whatever others there have been of the same kind. And with good cause He calleth the Scriptures “a door,” for they bring us to God, and open to us the knowledge of God, they make the sheep, they guard them, and suffer not the wolves to come in after them. For Scripture, like some sure door, barreth the passage against the heretics, placing us in a state of safety as to all that we desire, and not allowing us to wander; and if we undo it not, we shall not easily be conquered by our foes. By it we can know all, both those who are, and those who are not, shepherds. But what is “into the fold”? It refers to the sheep, and the care of them. For he that useth not the Scriptures, but “climbeth up some other way,” that is, who cutteth out for himself another and an unusual way, “the same is a thief.” Seest thou from this too that Christ agreeth with the Father, in that He bringeth forward the Scriptures? On which account also He said to the Jews, “Search the Scriptures” (c. 5:39);. . .[61]Commenting on the same text elsewhere:
Mark how he disapproves of questioning. For where faith exists, there is no need of question. Where there is no room for curiosity, questions are superfluous. Questioning is the subversion of faith. For he that seeks has not yet found. He who questions cannot believe. Therefore it is his advice that we should not be occupied with questions, since if we question, it is not faith; for faith sets reasoning at rest. But why then does Christ say, “Seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you” (Matt. vii. 7); and, “Search the Scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life”? (John v. 39.) The seeking there is meant of prayer and vehement desire, and He bids “search the Scriptures,” not to introduce the labors of questioning, but to end them, that we may ascertain and settle their true meaning, not that we may be ever questioning, but that we may have done with it.[62]Chrysostom does not direct his hearers to end their doubts by sending them to a human magisterium. Rather, he rebukes the kind of skeptical reasoning that suggests one can have no certainty in these matters, and he urges his hearers to seek the face of God in prayer to end their doubts. Chrysostom assures them concerning the apostle, “if ye be willing to apply to the reading of him with a ready mind, you will need no other aid. For the word of Christ is true which saith, ‘Seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.’ (Matthew 7:7.)”[63] Anyone familiar with the works of Chrysostom knows that his homilies and sermons abound with such statements.
But Roman apologists use skepticism repeatedly, often at the expense of Holy Scripture, in an attempt to bring those, whom they can manage to influence, into a disposition of doubt to order to facilitate a ready-made solution. But Chrysostom emphasizes that a careful and prayerful consideration of the text is the proper means for “ascertaining and settling the true meaning” of the passage in question. Firsthand recourse to his sermons proves that Chrysostom’s position on the perspicuity of Holy Scripture affirms, not what Rome asserts, but what the Reformers and their heirs have always affirmed. The evidence is simply overwhelming.
Moreover, Chrysostom was a firm believer in the principle that Scripture interprets Scripture (Scriptura Scripturam interpretatur) or that Scripture interprets itself (Scriptura sui interpres). Robert Charles Hill, the translator of Chrysostom’s Homilies on Genesis for the Fathers of the Church series (a Roman Catholic endeavor) and his Commentary on the Psalms by Holy Cross Orthodox Press (an eastern Orthodox Publisher), has called attention to this hermeneutical principle, stating, “he is a great believer in his principle ‘Scripture interprets itself’,”[64] This principle is likewise affirmed in a recent translation of Chrysostom’s commentary on Isaiah 1–8:
There is something else we can learn here. What sort of thing is it? It is when it is necessary to allegorize Scripture. We ourselves are not the lords over the rules of interpretation, but must pursue Scripture’s understanding of itself, and in that way make use of the allegorical method. What I mean is this. The Scripture has just now spoken of a vineyard, wall, and wine-vat. The reader is not permitted to become lord of the passage and apply the words to whatever events or people he chooses. The Scripture interprets itself with the words, “And the house of Israel is the vineyard of the Lord Sabaoth.” To give another example, Ezekiel describes a large, great-winged eagle which enters Lebanon and takes off the top of a cedar. The interpretation of the allegory does not lie in the whim of the readers, but Ezekiel himself speaks, and tells first what the eagle is and then what the cedar is. To take another example from Isaiah himself, when he raises a mighty river against Judah, he does not leave it to the imagination of the reader to apply it to whatever person he chooses, but he names the king whom he has referred to as a river. This is everywhere a rule in Scripture: when it wants to allegorize, it tells the interpretation of the allegory, so that the passage will not be interpreted superficially or be met by the undisciplined desire of those who enjoy allegorization to wander about and be carried in every direction. Why are you surprised that the prophets should observe this rule? Even the author of Proverbs does this. For he said, “Let your loving doe and graceful filly accompany you, and let your spring of water be for you alone.” Then he interprets these terms to refer to one’s free and lawful wife; he rejects the grasp of the prostitute and other woman.[65]Van Noort has insisted, in contrast to the testimony of the early Church, that “the reading of sacred Scripture is not necessary for the individual faithful. .. Nor is it necessary by divine command, for certainly no such command can be proved to exist,”[66] after which he pronounces the word of Christ in John 5:39, “Search the Scriptures,” to be virtually irrelevant.”[67] But we learn in Holy Scripture that “Moses wrote this law, and delivered it unto the priests the sons of Levi, that bare the ark of the covenant of Jehovah, and unto all the elders of Israel. And Moses commanded them, saying, At the end of every seven years, in the set time of the year of release, in the feast of tabernacles, when all Israel is come to appear before Jehovah thy God in the place which he shall choose, thou shalt read this law before all Israel in their hearing” (Deut. 31:9–11; cf., Josh. 8:34–35; 2 Kings 23:1–3; 2 Chron. 34:30–31; Neh. 8:1–8). And lest there be any protest that this was only to be observed publicly, we read earlier as to what the individual faithful are commanded to do—“And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates” (Deut. 6:6–9; cf., Neh. 9:3, where we are taught by example that the people themselves were to read their Scriptures). Obedience to this command can only presuppose the personal hearing and/or reading of God’s word to observe it. The Prophet Isaiah delivered the precept—“Search from the book of the LORD, and read: not one of these shall fail; not one shall lack her mate. For My mouth has commanded it, and His Spirit has gathered them” (Is. 34:16).
Our Lord Jesus himself indicted the Sadducees, “You are mistaken, not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God” (Matt. 22:29; Mk 12:24), clearly condemning their ignorance of Holy Scripture. The Psalmist states explicitly that the blest man is the one whose “delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night” (Psa. 1:2). Again the Psalmist asks, “How can a young man cleanse his way?”—and answers, “By taking heed according to Your word” (Ps. 119:9). He goes on to say, “Your word I have hidden in my heart, that I might not sin against You” (Ps. 119:11). Van Noort can claim no agreement between himself and Chrysostom regarding the necessity of Bible reading, considering the foregoing citations from this early Church father, who spent the first six sections of his 35th Homily on Genesis rebuking his congregation for their slothfulness in reading and studying Holy Scripture. He indicted people whose attitudes are such that “they don’t think it necessary for them to show any interest in reading the Holy Scriptures.”[68]
It has to be emphasized that Van Noort commits the informal fallacy of converse accident again by appealing to an isolated quotation from Augustine, as though he supported the notion that personal reading of the Scriptures is not necessary for the individual faithful. The Bishop of Hippo said:
The man who is solidly grounded in faith, hope, and love, and remains unshakably rooted therein, needs the Scriptures only for the instruction of others. And in fact many people live by these three virtues out in the desert, far from access to the sacred books.[69]But if Van Noort’s isolated citation of Augustine proves anything, it proves too much. For if this is Augustine’s true meaning, i.e., that these three virtues are all that one needs, it would effectively rule out the necessity of “unwritten traditions,” any creed but “faith, hope, and love,” as well as Rome’s magisterium and the pope himself. Indeed, these virtues would suffice to the exclusion of the Church, her ministry of the sacraments, and the King of the Church himself, the Lord Jesus Christ. Augustine never intended his words to be construed with such a meaning. In fact, Augustine did not draw upon the disciplines of these three virtues from unwritten tradition, but understands them as having been normed by Scripture itself! Augustine went on to say:
This leads me to think that the text has already been fulfilled in them, As for prophecies, they shall be done away with, as for tongues, they shall cease, as for knowledge, it shall be done away with (1 Cor 13:8). But with them as a kind of scaffolding, such an impressive structure of faith and hope and charity has arisen, that these people, holding on to something perfect, do not seek that which is in part—perfect, of course, insofar as that is possible in this life; because compared with the future life not even the lives of holy and just people here below are perfect. That is why there abide he says, faith, hope, charity; but the greatest of these is charity (1 Cor 13:13), because when anyone attains to the things of eternity, while the first two fade away, charity will abide, more vigorous and certain than ever.[70]Further on in the same work, speaking of the divine Scriptures, Augustine wrote:
The fact is, after all, that in the passages that are put plainly in scripture is to be found everything that touches upon faith, and good morals, that is to say hope, charity, which we dealt with in the previous book.[71]
For whatever you learn outside them is there condemned if it is harmful, while if it is useful, it is also to be found there. And when you have found there everything of use that you can learn elsewhere, you will also find there in much greater abundance things that you cannot find anywhere else at all, things that can only be learned in the marvelous heights and equally marvelous lowliness and humility of those scriptures.[72]Augustine affirmed that the reading of Scripture itself has brought men to faith in Christ: “Call this fancy, if it is not actually the case that men all over the world have been led, and are now led, to believe in Christ by reading these books.”[73]
Following Van Noort’s insistence that “the reading of sacred Scripture is not necessary for the individual faithful,” he notes, “the reading of Scripture is in itself most advantageous” (citing 2 Tim. 3:16). But he then immediately adds: “But in view of the obscurity of Scripture, a certain amount of risk is always mixed in with the advantages. There is always the chance that the unlearned will misunderstand it and so be sidetracked into error.”[74] By his own vacillation, Van Noort virtually neutralizes any meaningful advantage the reading of Scripture can yield. One is reminded here of Augustine’s reprimand of Julian the Pelagian: “You exaggerate ‘how difficult the knowledge of the sacred scriptures is,’ claiming that ‘it is suited for only the learned few’.”[75] By contrast, when commenting on the “mountains” in Ezek. 34:13, Augustine directs his readers to the Scriptures:
He established the mountains of Israel, the authors of the divine scriptures. Feed there, in order to feed without a qualm. Whatever you hear from that source, let that taste good to you; anything from outside, spit it out. In order not to go astray in the fog, listen to the voice of the shepherd. Gather yourselves to the mountains of holy scripture. There you will find your heart’s desire, there is nothing poisonous there, nothing unsuitable; they are the richest pastures.[76]The testimony of Caesarius of Arles (470–543) stands as a sharp rebuke to Van Noort’s position as well. He issued a very clear warning against the danger of not reading the Scriptures:
Similarly, one who refuses to read the sacred writings which have been transmitted from the eternal country should fear that he perhaps will not receive eternal rewards and even not escape endless punishment. So dangerous is it not to read the divine precepts that the Prophet mournfully exclaims: ‘Therefore is my people led away captive, because they had not knowledge.’ ‘If anyone ignores this, he shall be ignored.’ Doubtless, if a man fails to seek God in this world through the sacred lessons, God will refuse to recognize him in eternal bliss.. .. A man should first be willing to listen to God, if he wants to be heard by Him. Indeed, with what boldness does he want God to hear him when he despises God so much that he refuses to read His precepts?[77]Once again, one may oppose to Van Noort’s position the language of Chrysostom, who admits of no such danger in Scripture, but rather emphasizes the safety one finds the deeper one goes into Scripture.[78] Chrysostom tells us explicitly what he believes to be the source of such an attitude toward Holy Scripture:
Let us not therefore despise the hearing of the divine Scriptures. For this is of Satan’s devising; not suffering us to see the treasure, lest we should gain the riches. Therefore he saith that the hearing the divine laws is nothing, lest he should see us from the hearing acquiring the practice also.”[79]He elsewhere concludes that the neglect of reading the Scriptures is positively harmful: “Let us then hear, as many of us as neglect the reading of the Scriptures, to what harm we are subjecting ourselves, to what poverty.”[80] Chrysostom states explicitly elsewhere that the Scriptures were the means of his own conversion to Christ: “It was the Scriptures which took me by the hand and led me to Christ.”[81] The Roman position finds opposition, as well, in the testimony of Epiphanius, bishop of Salamis (310/320–403), who stated that “scripture is life-giving; nothing in it offers an obstacle to the faithful or makes for the downfall of blasphemy against the word.”[82]
Yet against these ancient witnesses, Roman theologians often assert that Scripture alone is no more than a “dead letter.”[83] But the Bible is the living word of God because the Holy Spirit, who inspired it, takes the very truths of which it speaks and applies them efficaciously to the hearts of men, even as Augustine testified above. This is so much the case that Basil of Caesarea, while writing to a widow, noted:
Enjoying as you do the consolation of the Holy Scriptures, you stand in need neither of my assistance nor of that of anybody else to help you to comprehend your duty. You have the all-sufficient counsel and guidance of the Holy Spirit to lead you to what is right.[84]It must be noted that the strength of the Roman apologetic is effective only when it plays on the ignorance of its audience. Familiarity with the early fathers leads in another direction altogether from their contentions. Contrary to what Roman apologists assert, the dichotomy of sufficiency into the categories of material and formal is not a concept that we find explicitly addressed by the early fathers with respect to Scripture. But they did affirm that the Scriptures are sufficient in themselves to communicate all things necessary to be believed and practiced by the Church Catholic (universal).[85] It is the Protestant position, rather than Rome’s, that accurately reflects the patristic testimony with respect to the sufficiency of Holy Scripture.[86]
To these testimonies, we add the words of John Cassian (360–430s) regarding the perspicuity of Holy Scripture. He is careful to note that the failure to understand what the Scriptures teach is due, not to their obscurity, but to the sinfulness of unregenerate men. No statement regarding the purpose of the Holy Spirit in rendering Scripture sufficient to speak for itself could be expressed more clearly. If the following quote was given without reference, many Roman apologists might be prone to decry it as the sentiments of a sixteenth-century Reformer.
This man [i.e., Abbot Theodore] therefore, when some of the brethren were wondering at the splendid light of his knowledge and were asking of him some meanings of Scripture, said that a monk who wanted to acquire a knowledge of the Scriptures ought not to spend his labor on the works of commentators, but rather to keep all the efforts of his mind and intentions of his heart set on purifying himself from carnal vices: for when these are driven out, at once the eyes of the heart, as if the veil of the passions were removed, will begin as it were naturally to gaze on the mysteries of Scripture: since they were not declared to us by the grace of the Holy Spirit in order that they should remain unknown and obscure; but they are rendered obscure by our fault, as the veil of our sins covers the eyes of the heart, and when these are restored to their natural state of health, the mere reading of Holy Scripture is by itself amply sufficient for beholding the true knowledge, nor do they need the aid of commentators, just as these eyes of flesh need no man’s teaching how to see, provided that they are free from dimness or the darkness of blindness. For this reason there have arisen so great differences and mistakes among commentators because most of them, paying no sort of attention towards purifying the mind, rush into the work of interpreting the Scriptures, and in proportion to the density or impurity of their heart form opinions that are at variance with and contrary to each other’s and to the faith, and so are unable to take in the light of truth.[87]A man who professes to be a Christian, yet who has an aversion to reading and studying God’s word, is an anomaly. In the light of what certain Roman authorities have suggested above, the people of God need to be in direct contact with the word of God. Indeed, we desire to read the words of our heavenly Father. We have the living voice of God today, and it is inscripturated. “For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart” (Heb. 4:12). The word of God does not cease to be living and powerful when inscripturated. It remains just as much the word of God as when spoken. Yes, the prophets and apostles did preach orally, but the only record we have of their words are those that have been committed to Scripture. Thus it will not serve the agenda of Roman apologists, who continue to insist that God’s word is broader than what has been committed to Scripture. Even the present pope, Benedict XVI, while a still a cardinal, stated:
It is important to note that only Scripture is defined in terms of what is: it is stated that Scripture is the word of God consigned to writing. Tradition, however, is described only functionally, in terms of what it does: it hands on the word of God, but is not the word of God.[88]The Roman apologetic, as such, is but a diversion into Pyrrhonism.[89] The Scriptures are the only infallible and certain word of God in our possession. Therefore, we must always remember that whenever we hear the Scriptures read, we are hearing nothing less than the very utterance of God himself. We must never permit ourselves to regard it as anything less.
If we are to know the blessings of the man described in the first Psalm, we too must delight ourselves in the law of the LORD, and meditate in it day and night. So important was the instruction of the word of God for the people of God that Moses commanded that this word was to be in their hearts (Deut. 6:6). He commanded the people to “teach them (these words) diligently to (their) children,” to “bind them” figuratively, albeit truly, to their bodily members, and commanded them to “write them on the doorposts” of their homes and on their gates (Deut. 6:7–9) that their lives might be regulated by God’s word. This means that the people were to have direct access to the word of God in the intimate experience of everyday family life. They were to observe the Lord’s commandments, testimonies, and statutes diligently (Deut. 6:17). All of these direct commands to teach God’s word presuppose the necessity of careful study and extensive acquaintance with it. This word was not some ephemeral notion escaping the knowability of those to whom it was enjoined. It could be identified objectively and with certainty, as we can today in the pages of the Bible.
When Joshua succeeded Moses, on the verge of entering the promised land, God said, “this Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success” (Josh. 1:8).
The Lord Jesus said, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God’” (Matt. 4:4; Lk. 4:4). Chrysostom (349–407) made no hesitation to exegete these words of our Lord as applying to the Scriptures:
In the case of the soul, on the other hand, none of these things is necessary, unless, just as you daily spend money to give nourishment to the body, you are likewise determined not to neglect the soul and let it die of hunger but to provide it with proper nourishment from the reading of Scripture and the support of spiritual advice: “Not on bread alone does man live,” Scripture says, remember, “but on every word coming from the mouth of God.”[90]We are to desire God’s word. The Scriptures are to be our daily nourishment. It is necessary to read and study them daily to receive spiritual sustenance from them. Thus Peter commanded his readers to “desire the pure milk of the word that you may grow thereby” (1 Pet. 2:2).
We are to meditate in the Law of God day and night. The Psalmist says, “I will meditate on Your precepts” (Psa. 119:15, 78) and “Oh, how I love Your Law! It is my meditation all the day” (Psa. 119:97). And his reason? “You, through Your commandments, make me wiser than my enemies; for they are ever with me. I have more understanding than all my teachers, for Your testimonies are my meditation. I understand more than the ancients, because I keep Your precepts” (Psa. 119:98–100). “Through Your precepts I get understanding” (Psa. 119:104).
We are to tremble at God’s word, i.e., reverence it. “But on this one will I look: on him who is poor and of a contrite spirit, and who trembles at My word” (Isa. 66:2).
We are to memorize God’s word. “Your Word I have hidden in my heart, that I might not sin against You” (Psa. 119:11). “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. . .” (Col. 3:16). Unlike modern day Roman apologists who insist that this reference is broader than Scripture, Chrysostom (when he argues that Bible reading is likewise necessary for the laity) identified it specifically with the reading of Holy Scripture.[91] This word cannot dwell in us richly unless it is memorized. The implication of the text is clear.
- We are to obey God’s word. “How shall a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed according to Your word” (Psa. 119:9).
- We are to pray for understanding of God’s word. “Open my eyes, that I may see wondrous things from Your law” (Psa. 119:18). “Incline my heart to Your testimonies, and not to covetousness” (Psa. 119:36). “Give me understanding, that I may learn Your commandments” (Psa. 119:73).
Notes
- Material sufficiency is a term which means that the Scriptures contain all truths necessary for faith and practice. Formal sufficiency is a term used to affirm that the Scriptures are in themselves sufficient to communicate all things necessary to be believed and practiced by the Church of Jesus Christ. This latter term is what Richard A. Muller has identified as “the Reformed doctrine of the perspicuitas Scripturae sacrae.” See his Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, The Rise and Development of Reformed Orthodoxy, ca. 1520 to ca. 1725: Vol. II, Holy Scripture, The Cognitive Foundation of Theology, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003), 325. It finds an ancient precedent in the early Church Father Alexander of Alexandria (d. 328 A.D.) who made reference to ἡ τῶν ἀρχαίων Γραφῶν φιλοθεος σαφήνεια, “the religious perspicuity of the ancient Scriptures,” which (in a letter to Alexander of Constantinople) he complained that the Arian heretics opposed. See Theodoreti Ecclesiasticae Historiae, Liber I, Caput III, PG 82:904; ANF: Vol. VI, Epistle to Alexander, Bishop of the City of Constantinople, §10; and NPNF2: Vol. III, Theodoret’s Ecclesiastical History, Book 1, Chapter 3; and John Chrysostom (349–407): πάντα σαφῆ καὶ εὐθέα τὰ παρὰ ταῖς θείαις Γραφαῖ, πάντα τὰ ἀναγκαῖα δῆλα, “All things are clear and open that are in the divine Scriptures; the necessary things are all plain.” See Homilia III In Epistolam secundam ad Thessalonicenses, PG 62:485; and NPNF1: Vol. XIII, Homilies on the Second Epistle of Paul to the Thessalonians, Homily 3, Comments on 2 Thessalonians 1:9, 10.
- James Cardinal Gibbons, Archbishop of Baltimore, The Faith of Our Fathers: Being a Plain Exposition and Vindication of the Church Founded by Our Lord Jesus Christ, Eighty-third Revised Ed. (Rockford: Tan Books and Publishers, Inc., reprinted 1980, originally published in 1871), 72. See also John A. O’Brien, The Faith of Millions, rev. ed., 136, who likewise insists that “the Bible does not contain all the teachings of the Christian religion. . .”
- Ibid., 73. Gibbons and O’Brien were more consistent than many present day Roman apologists in their denial of the “material” sufficiency of Scripture.
- Ibid., 239. See also Vatican I, Dogmatic Constitution I in Denzinger, Enchiridion Symbolorum, The Sources of Catholic Dogma, marginal number 1826, 453, which, when speaking of the power and manner of the primacy of the Roman Pontiff, declares that the Church relies on “the clear testimonies of Sacred Scripture” as one of the supports of this dogma. Thus it is, that when it comes to one of the most disputed claims of the Roman Catholic Church, viz., papal primacy, Vatican I declares that Scripture contains “clear testimonies” to this dogma. Interestingly enough, Yves Congar reminds us that “Duns Scotus, for example, admitted that the letter of the eucharistic texts in the New Testament did not seem to him, of itself, to impose transubstantiation as an explanation.” See Tradition and Traditions, 385, 131, note 1.
- William Whitaker (1547–1595) likewise pointed out the double-standard of Roman controversialists in his day, saying, “Indeed all the papists in their books, when they seek to prove any thing, boast everywhere that they can bring arguments against us from the most luminous, plain, clear and manifest testimonies of Scripture. .. For in every dispute their common phrases are,—This is clear,—This is plain,—This is manifest in the scriptures, and such like. Surely when they speak thus, they ignorantly and unawares confess the perspicuity of the scriptures even in the greatest questions and controversies.” See A Disputation on Holy Scripture Against the Papists, Especially Bellarmine and Stapleton, trans. and ed. William Fitzgerald (Cambridge: The University Press, reprinted 1849), 401.
- e.g., Gabriel Moran, F.S.C., Theology of Revelation (London: Burns & Oates, 1966), 95, who states that “it is commonly held among Catholic theologians today that all revelation is in some way contained in Holy Scripture.”
- See Vittorio Subilia, The Problem of Catholicism, trans. Reginald Kissack (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1964), 33–34, where he argues that Johann Möhler and John Henry Newman “introduced Catholic thought to the notion of the seed-idea” and “gave credence to the concept of the evolution of dogma and gave rise to the remark that it was not Newman who had been converted [from Anglicanism] to Catholicism, but Catholicism that had been converted to Newman.”
- Turretin addresses the similar argumentation of Roman Catholics, Thomas Stapleton and Nicolaus Serarius, both of whom distinguished between explicit and implicit sufficiency, as well as Jacques Perronius, who spoke of mediate vs. immediate sufficiency. See his Institutes of Elenctic Theology, trans. George Musgrave Giger, ed. James T. Dennison, Jr., Vol. 1 (Phillipsburg: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1997), 136, 140ff. The Apostle Paul said very explicitly that the Holy Scriptures “are able to make us wise unto salvation” (2 Tim. 3:15). If this was true of the OT Scriptures, then so much the more of the NT Scriptures together with the OT.
- Robert Sungenis, ed., Not By Scripture Alone (Santa Barbara: Queenship Publishing Co., 1997), 396.
- Yves M. J. Congar, “The Debate on the Question of the Relationship between Scripture and Tradition from the Viewpoint of their Material Content,” in Robert W. Gleason, ed., A Theology Reader (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1966), 115. See also Not By Scripture Alone, 396.
- Moran explains in his Theology of Revelation, 32: “Some Catholic theologians had come to hold that all revelation is contained in holy Scripture at least implicitly. Instead of adding other truths, tradition would occupy a more formal or interpretive role. Other theologians claimed that this opinion was directly opposed to the Church’s teaching, especially as formulated by the Council of Trent.” The issue continues to be disputed in Roman Catholic circles.
- See his chapter “Scripture, Tradition, and the Church: An Ecumenical Problem” in Daniel J. Callahan, Heiko A. Oberman, and Daniel J. O’Hanlon, S.J., eds., Christianity Divided: Protestant and Roman Catholic Theological Issues (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1961), 47–48.
- Henry Denzinger’s Enchiridion Symbolorum, The Sources of Catholic Dogma, trans. Roy J. Deferrari, Thirtieth Ed. (Powers Lake, ND: Marian House, published in 1954 by Herder & Co., Freiburg), 244–245. See also Philip Schaff, ed., The Creeds of Christendom: With a History and Critical Notes, Vol. 2 (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, reprinted 1998), 80. The Latin phrase sine scripto traditionibus means “traditions without writing.”
- Gabriel Moran, F.S.C., Scripture and Tradition: A Survey of the Controversy (New York: Herder and Herder, 1963), 38.
- Ibid., 56.
- Ibid.
- Ibid., 60-61. See also Monsignor J.D. Conway, What The Church Teaches (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1962), 75, where he admits that “many Catholic theologians gave the impression that only part of revealed truth was found in the Scriptures, while another part could be known only through tradition.”
- Conway, What The Church Teaches, 82.
- Dogmatic Theology: Vol. III, 139. That this is indeed representative of Van Noort’s view of tradition, his comments regarding Protestants on 138 make clear: “These people refuse absolutely to admit a Tradition distinct from Scripture, a so-called ‘constitutive’ Tradition, one which discloses teachings not contained in the Sacred Books.” What Van Noort fails to note is the presence of those within his own communion who reject his view of ‘constitutive’ tradition, i.e. matters of faith which exist independent of Scripture.
- Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. XV (New York: The Encyclopedia Press, Inc., 1913), 6, 2nd column.
- See Not By Scripture Alone, 376–377, where the Roman Catholic priest Peter Stravinskas frankly admits that a study of the debates at the Council of Trent “will demonstrate that no single theory of divine Revelation dominated the Catholic landscape prior to Trent and indeed that none really did afterwards, either. Granted, all the Catholic apologists were united in asserting that both Church and Scripture carried weight, but they were far from unanimous in explaining the relationship between the two.” In other words, even within the Roman Catholic Church, the relationship between the Church, Scripture, and tradition was obscure at Trent and remains obscure today; and it is this very ambiguity that is exploited by Roman apologists.
- Lamenting the unresolved nature of this issue, Maurice Bévenot, S.J. commented, “The chief problem lies in the meaning of the term Tradition, ambivalent and elusive as it is.” He then says regarding the relationship of Scripture to tradition, “As such confusion surrounds one term of our comparison, it may be wiser to look first at the other term, which seems to offer more consistency: I mean, Scripture. Even here there is some ambiguity, in the face of the ‘Apocrypha’ or, as we call them, the deutero-canonical books. But, apart from that, we all recognize what the Bible is: that is our Holy Book, that is the ‘Scripture’ along side of which we place Tradition, in a sense not as yet clearly determined.” See his chapter “Scripture and Tradition in Catholic Theology” in F.F. Bruce and E.G. Rupp, eds., Holy Book and Holy Tradition (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1968), 171–172.
- Karl Rahner, Theological Investigations, Vol. VI Concerning Vatican Council II, trans. Karl-H. and Boniface Kruger (Baltimore: Helicon Press, 1969), 104–105. See also his remarks in Theological Investigations, Vol. IV, 143ff.
- See Joseph Ratzinger’s “The Transmission of Divine Revelation” in Herbert Vorgrimler, ed., Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, Vol. 3 (New York: Herder and Herder, 1969), 195.
- See A.N.S. Lane’s “Scripture, Tradition and Church” in Vox Evangelica, Vol. 16, 1975, 48, 50. Roman mariologist Junper B. Carol wrote concerning the assumption of Mary: “This poses a very weighty and involved problem, namely, the origin of this belief. This problem is seen to be all the more acute when it is borne in mind that there is no explicit statement in Scripture regarding Mary’s Assumption, and that, prior to the Transitus Mariae literature, there is no patristic tradition on this matter. These facts argue to the nonexistence of an oral tradition of apostolic origin on the final lot of Mary.” See his Mariology, Vol. 1 (Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Company, 1955), 174.
- Heiko A. Oberman, “Quo Vadis, Petre? Tradition from Irenaeus to Humani Generis,” in the Scottish Journal of Theology, Vol. 16, 1963, 253.
- Colin Brown, Philosophy and the Christian Faith (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, reprinted 1979), 163. Roman apologists often press the argument that the Bible itself offers no infallible list of infallible books, but often become indignant when the same argument is pressed about their claims of infallibility. They have no infallible list of infallible pronouncements, and no apologist to date has been able to offer the authors an “infallible” list of ex Cathedra pronouncements. In fact, they often deny the need for any such list all the while they wage the same argument against sola Scriptura.
- Henry Edward Manning, The Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost: Or Reason and Revelation (New York: J.P. Kenedy & Sons, originally written 1865, reprinted with no date), 227–228.
- Catholicism and Fundamentalism, 275. Again, this is just another expression of sola ecclesia with a vengeance. See also Roman Catholic scholar, Raymond E. Brown, Biblical Exegesis & Church Doctrine (New York: Paulist Press, 1985), 43, who states: “A discernible orthodox tradition about the Assumption, stemming from eyewitnesses of Mary’s grave, simply does not exist in the first centuries.”
- ANF: Vol. I, Against Heresies, Book 3:2:1.
- Karl Rahner, Theological Investigations, Vol. VI, trans. Karl-H. and Boniface Kruger (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1969), 106–107. Also see George Tavard, Holy Writ or Holy Church, 9, for a similar remark.
- Ibid., 107-108. See too the language of Congar, Tradition and Traditions: An Historical and a Theological Essay, 410.
- e.g. Karl Keating, Catholicism and Fundamentalism (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988), 129ff., where he states, “The Catholic Church is silent on the proper interpretation of many biblical passages, readers being allowed to accept one of several understandings.” Compare these remarks with the language of 141 where he castigates the Protestant practice (which was a patristic practice) of dependence upon the Spirit’s work of illumination. The appendices are replete with patristic support for this spiritual discipline. Not only is a double-standard raised here, but it is raised in the absense of any so-called list of “infallible” interpretations, and it reflects a radical departure from patristic belief.
- Ibid., 151.
- Turretin, Vol. 1, 136, (XVI.xi).
- Ibid., 155, (XX.viii).
- The Greek text for this paragraph in Chrysostom reads:῞Ινα δὲ Καὶ ἐτέρωθεν μάθῃς, ὅτι ἀξιοπιστοτέρα ἡ τῶν προφητῶν διδασκαλία τῆς τῶν ἀνισταμένων ἀπαγγελίας, ἐκεῖνο σκόπησον, ὅτι νεκρὸς μὲν ἅπας δοῦλος ἐστιν: ἃ δὲ αἱ Γραφαὶ φθέγγονται, ταῦτα ὁ Δεσπότης ἐφθέγξατο: ὥστε κἂν νεκρὸς ἀναστῇ, κἂν ἄγγελος ἐξ οὐρανοῦ καταβῇ, πάντων ἕστωσαν αἱ Γραφαι ἀξιοπιστότεραι. Ὁ γὰρ τῶν ἀγγέλων Δεσπότης, καὶ τῶν ζώντων Κύριος, αὐτὸς ἐκείνας ἐνομοθέτησε. De Lazaro Concio IV, PG 48:1010.
- Catharine P. Roth, trans., St. John Chrysostom On Wealth and Poverty, 4th Sermon on Lazarus and the Rich Man, 84–87. See also F. Allen, trans., Four Discourses of Chrysostom, Chiefly on the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, 4th Sermon, §3 (London: Longmans, Green, Reader and Dyer, 1869), 96–99.
- Fr. Christopher Stade, trans., The Explanation by Blessed Theophylact, Archbishop of Ochrid and Bulgaria, of the Holy Gospel According to St. Luke (House Springs: Chrysostom Press, 1997), 216–217. ᾿Επεὶ Εἴγε ὠφέλει ἡμᾶς εἰς πίστιν, καὶ τοῦτο ἐποίει ἂν συχνάκις ὁ Κύριος. Νῦν δὲ οὐδὲν οὕτως ὠφελεῖ, ὡς ἡ τῶν Γραθῶν ἀκριβὴς ἔρευνα. Νεκροὺς δὲ ἀνιστᾷν, ἐσοφίσατο ἂν ὁ διάβολος κατὰ φαντασίαν, καὶ διὰ τοῦτο ἐπλάνησεν ἂν τοὺς ἀνοήτους, περὶ τῶν ἐν ᾅδου δόγματα ἄξια τῆς οἰκείας κακίας κατασπείρων. Τῶν δὲ Γραθῶν ὑγιῶς ἐρευνωμένων, οὐδὲν ἰσχύσει τοιοῦτον σοφίσασθαι: αὗται γὰρ εἰσι λύχνος καὶ φῶς, καὶ τούτου φαίνοντος, ὁ κλέπτης φαίνεται καὶ εὑρίσκεται. Ταύταις οὗν πιστευτεόν, καὶ μὴ Ζητητέον νεκρῶν ἀναστάσεις. Enarratio In Evangelium Lucæ - Cap. XVI, PG 123:980.
- Not By Scripture Alone, 396.
- FC, Vol. 20, Saint Augustine Letters, 140. Addressed to Honoratus (412 AD), Chapter 37 (New York: Fathers of the Church, Inc., 1953), 135–136. Honoratus was a catechumen. Sed ama etiam ecclesiasticas legere litteras, et non multa invenies, quae requiras ex me; sed legendo et ruminando, si etiam pure Dominum largitorem bonorum omnium depreceris, omnia quae cognitione dogna sunt, aut certe plurima, ipso magis inspirante, quam hominum aliquo commonente perdisces. Epistola CXL, Caput XXXVII, §85, PL 33:577.
- John Henry Cardinal Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (London: Longmans, Green and Co. Ltd., 1927), 88. Newman’s example of the Ethiopian eunuch is cited in Not By Scripture Alone, 76, as proof of the need for Rome’s magisterium (teaching office) in order to understand Holy Scripture. See also Karl Keating, Catholicism and Fundamentalism, 140; James Cardinal Gibbons, The Faith of Our Fathers, 70; and John A. O’Brien, The Faith of Millions, rev. ed., 136.
- Not By Scripture Alone, 76, 188.
- See Catechism of the Catholic Church (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1994), #85, #100, #939, 27, 30, 246. See also the older work, Francis Spirago, The Catechism Explained: An Exhaustive Exposition of the Christian Religion, ed. Richard F. Clarke, S.J., 2nd ed. (New York: Benziger Brothers, Printers to the Apostolic See, 1899), 226–228; Austin Flannery, O.P., ed., Vatican Council II: The Conciliar And Post Conciliar Documents, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Chapter 3.22-29 (Boston: St. Paul Editions, 1980), Vol. 1, 374–387; and Robert C. Broderick, ed., The Catholic Encyclopedia (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1987), 366.
- See Mark J. Edwards, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, New Testament VIII: Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1999), 166. Evangelistae diaconi sunt, sicut fuit Philippus; quamvis non sint sacerdotes, evangelizare tamen possunt sine cathedra, sicut et beatus Stephanus et Philippus memoratus. In Epistolam B. Pauli Ad Ephesios, PL 17:387.
- F. Allen, trans., Four Discourses of Chrysostom, Chiefly on the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, 3rd Sermon, §3 (London: Longmans, Green, Reader and Dyer, 1869), 65–66.
- F. Allen, trans., 62–68. Cf., Chrysostom’s Concionis VII, de Lazaro 3, MPG 48:993–996. Interestingly enough, the translator of an Eastern Orthodox publication of these sermons, when she came to this portion of Chrysostom’s 3rd sermon, omitted nearly all of sections 2 and 3, stating that her reason for so doing with this passage (and others) is because they “are not directly relevant to the problems of wealth and poverty.” But Chrysostom does indeed address poverty here, viz., the spiritual impoverishment that comes to the one who abandons or neglects the use of Holy Scripture. See Catharine P. Roth, trans., St. John Chrysostom On Wealth and Poverty (Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1984), 18. See page 60 where the omission occurs.
- De Lazaro Concio III, PG 48:995.
- William Goode, The Divine Rule of Faith and Practice, 2nd ed., Vol. 3, 275. Or see his first edition, William Goode, The Divine Rule of Faith and Practice, 1st ed., 2 Vols. (Philadelphia: Herman Hooker, 1842), Vol. 2, 409.
- NPNF1: Vol. XII, Homilies on First Corinthians, Homily 36.9.
- FC, Vol. 82, Homilies on Genesis 18–45, Homily 35.1-6 (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1990), 304–308.
- Ibid., 309.
- NPNF1: Vol. XIII, Homilies on the Epistle of St. Paul to the Colossians, Homily 9. Rom apologists have frequently insisted that the Scriptures were unavailable to the early Christians, but Chrysostom’s words presuppose the very opposite.
- NPNF1: Vol. XIII, Homilies on the Second Epistle of Paul to the Thessalonians, Homily 3, Comments on 2 Thessalonians 1:9, 10. This quote is cited more fully in the appendix. Note especially the phrase Πάντα σαφῆ καὶ εὐθέα τὰ παρὰ ταῖς θείαις Γραφαῖ, πάντα τὰ ἀναγκαῖα δῆλα. Epistolam Secundam Ad Thessalonicenses, Hom. 3, PG 62:485.
- See FC, Vol. 82, Homilies on Genesis 18–45, 18.3, 9, 20; 20.5; 21.8, 11; 22.5, 6; 23.4, 8; 24.5; 25.10, 20; 26.15; 27.16, 17, 23; 29.22; 30.4; 31.18; 33.4; 35.4, 8, 9; 36.12; 38.6; 39.11; 43.3 (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1990), in which we find this phrase or its equivalent some 28 times: 4, 9, 15, 38, 56, 59, 71, 90, 93, 107, 131, 139, 155, 173, 174, 179, 213, 222, 249, 278, 306, 309, 310, 334, 359, 381–382, 437; See also Vol. 74, Homilies on Genesis 1–17, Homily 7.9-10, 13.5, 13, 15.11 (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1986), 96, 171, 175, 200; FC, Vol. 87, Homilies on Genesis 46–67, Homilies 49.3, 55..5 (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1992), 43, 109; and Robert Charles Hill, St. John Chrysostom Commentary on the Psalms (Brookline: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1998), Vol. 1, 80, 132, 158, 282, 304–305, 343, e.g., “See the wisdom of the inspired author, who speaks of everything with precision,” and “Note the inspired author’s precision.”
- FC, Vol. 74, Homilies on Genesis 1–17, 13.13 (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1986), 175.
- Dogmatic Theology: Vol. III, 127, n25.
- See Irving M. Copi and Carl Cohen, Introduction to Logic, 187ff.
- NPNF1: Vol. XIV, Homilies on the Gospel according to St. John, Homily 41.
- Ibid., Homily 15.
- Ibid., Homily 59.
- NPNF1: Vol. XIII, Homilies on the First Epistle of Paul to Timothy, Homily I. See also the comments of Chrysostom in FC, Vol. 82, Homilies on Genesis 18–45, Homily 24.1; 45.2 (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1990), 104, 470, where he alludes to the command of Christ, ‘Search the Scriptures,’ and urges a “careful study” of the Scriptures in order to derive benefit. He does not direct his readers to some nebulous hermeneutic called ‘tradition’ or to some human magisterium.
- NPNF1: Vol. XI, Homilies on the Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans, The Argument.
- Robert Charles Hill, St. John Chrysostom Commentary on the Psalms, Volume 1 (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Press, 1998), 30.
- Duane A. Garrett, An Analysis of the Hermeneutics of John Chrysostom’s Commentary on Isaiah 1–8 with an English Translation, Isaiah Chapter 5 (Lewiston/Queenston/Lampeter: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1992), 110–111.
- Chrysostom disagreed, e.g. “You see the reason Christ himself gave this command, ‘Search the Scriptures’.” Here Chrysostom clearly understood the verb ἐραυνᾶτε (search) to be in the imperative mode. See FC, Vol. 82, Homilies on Genesis 18–45, Homily 37.1 (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1990), 340.
- Dogmatic Theology: Vol. III, 115.
- FC, Vol. 82, Homilies on Genesis 18–45, Homily 35.3 (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1990), 305.
- Van Noort cites the reference as De doctrina Christiana 39, 34. (This reference can be found in Book 1 On Christian Doctrine).
- John E. Rotelle, O.S.A., ed., The Works of Saint Augustine, Part I, Vol. 11, trans. Edmund Hill, O.P., De Doctrina Christiana, Book I, 39.43 (New York: New City Press, 1996), 125.
- Ibid., Book II, Chapter 9, 14, 135. In iis enim quae aperte in Scripturis posita sunt, inveniuntur illa omnia quae continent fidem, moresque vivendi, spem scilicet atque charitatem, de quibus libro superiore tractavimus. De Doctrina Christiana, Liber II, Caput IX,14, PL 34:42. See also Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series: Volume II, On Christian Doctrine, Book II, Chapter 9. De Doctrina Christiana, Liber II, Caput IX,14, PL 34:42.
- Ibid., Book II, 42.63, 162.
- NPNF1: Vol. IV, Reply to Faustus the Manichaean, Book XVI, §20.
- Dogmatic Theology: Vol. III, 115–116. The same thing is suggested in the subtitle of the 7th chapter of John A. O’Brien, The Faith of Millions, rev. ed. (Huntington: Our Sunday Visitor, Inc., 1974), 125, “Why the Bible Alone Is Not a Safe Guide in Religion.” He insists on page 137 that “it must be abundantly clear that the Bible alone is not a safe and competent guide because it is not clear and intelligible to all, and because it does not contain all the truths of the Christian religion.” Here the Roman writer denies both the safety and material sufficiency of Holy Scripture itself. Again, Rome has no official stance as to whether Scripture is or is not materially sufficient. Thus when Roman apologists argue either way, they are simply engaging in private judgment, and exhibiting by means of a double-standard that the use of private judgment is reserved for the Roman apologist alone.
- John E. Rotelle, O.S.A., ed., The Works of Saint Augustine, Answer to the Pelagians, II, Answer to Julian, Book V:2, Part 1, Vol. 24, trans. Roland J. Teske, S.J. (Hyde Park: New City Press, 1998), 432.
- John E. Rotelle, O.S.A., ed., The Works of Saint Augustine, Part 3, Vol. 2, trans. Edmund Hill, O.P., Sermons, Sermon 46.24 (Brooklyn: New City Press, 1990), 279.
- FC, Vol. 31, Saint Caesarius of Arles, Sermons (1–80), Sermon 1.3 (New York: Fathers of the Church, Inc., 1956), 47–48. See also in the same work, Sermon 8.3, 52, where Caesarius repeats the same admonition.
- Catharine P. Roth, trans., St. John Chrysostom On Wealth and Poverty, 6th Sermon on Lazarus and the Rich Man, 118–119. The passage of Chrysostom is cited above; we only repeat the reference here.
- NPNF1: Vol. X, Homilies on Matthew, Homily 2.11.
- NPNF1: Vol. X, Homilies on Matthew, Homily 47.4.
- FC, Vol. 68, Discourses Against Judaizing Christians, Disc. 1.6.5 (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1979), 23–24.
- Frank Williams, trans., The Panarion of Epiphanius of Salamis: Book II and III (Sects 47–80, De Fide) 69. Against the Arian Nuts, 39, 5, 357.
- E.g., Not By Scripture Alone, 386. See also Catechism of the Catholic Church (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 1994), #108, #111, 31, 32; Congar, Tradition and Traditions, 504; Dom Bernard Orchard, M.A., ed., A Catholic Commentary on Holy Scripture (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1953), 2, first column, first paragraph: “It is the Church, the holder of Tradition, that gives life to the dead letter of Scripture.”; and John A. O’Brien, The Faith of Millions, rev. ed., 137, who refers to Bible as “dead letters.”
- NPNF2: Vol. VIII, Letters, Letter 283. ῎Εχουσα δὲ τὴν ἐκ τῶν θείων Γραφῶν παράκλησιν, οὔτε ἡμῶν οὔτε ἄλλου τινὸς δεηθήσῃ πρὸς τὸ τὰ δέοντα συνορᾷν, αὐτάρκη τὴν ἐκ τοῦ ἁγίου Πνεύματος ἔχουσα συμβουλίαν καὶ ὁδηγίαν πρὸς τὸ συμφέρον. Epistola CCLXXXIII, PG 32:1020.
- For an extended catena of patristic testimony addressing biblical sufficiency, see David T. King and William Webster, Holy Scripture: The Ground and Pillar of Our Faith, Vol. 3 (Battle Ground, WA: Christian Resources Inc., 2001).
- Cf., ibid. for a patristic catena on the material and formal sufficiency of Holy Scripture.
- NPNF2: Vol. XI, Institutes of The Coenobia, 5:34. Hic ergo quibusdam fratribus admirantibus tam praeclarum scientiae ejus lumen, et ab eodem quosdam Scripturarum sensus inquirentibus, ait: Monachum ad Scripturarum notitiam pertingere cupientem, nequaquam debere labores suos erga commentatorum libros impendere, sed potius omnem mentis industriam et intentionem cordis erga emundationem vitiorum carnalium detinere. Quibus expulsis confestim cordis oculi, sublato velamine passionum, sacramenta Scripturarum velut naturaliter incipient contemplari. Siquidem nobis non ut essent incognita vel obscura, sancti Spiritus gratia promulgata sunt: sed nostro vitio velamine peccatorum cordis oculos obnubente redduntur obscura, quibus rursum naturali redditis sanitati, ipsa Scripturarum sanctarum lectio ad contemplationem verae scientiae abunde etiam sola sufficiat, nec eos commentatorum institutionibus indigere: sicut oculi isti carnales ad videndum nullius egent doctrina, si modo fuerint a suffusione, vel caligine caecitatis immunes. Ideo namque et tanta varietas erroresque inter tractatores ipsos exorti sunt, quod plerique minime erga purgationem mentis adhibita diligentia prosilientes ad interpretandum eas, pro pinguedine vel immunditia cordis sui diversa atque contraria vel fidei, vel sibimet sentientes, veritatis lumen comprehendere nequiverunt. De Coenobiorum Institutis Libri Duodecim, Liber Quintus, Caput XXXIV, PL 49:250–254.
- See Joseph Ratzinger’s “The Transmission of Divine Revelation” in Herbert Vorgrimler, ed., Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, Vol. 3, 194.
- Such skepticism (or Pyrrhonism) has often been utilized by Roman Catholic apologists beginning with the Jesuit theologian Juan Maldonat in the 1560s. See Richard H. Popkin, The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Descartes (Assen: Van Gorum & Comp. N.V., 1964), 68ff; and John D. Woodbridge, Biblical Authority: A Critique of the Rogers/McKim Proposal (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1982), 70–72, who discusses “the new Pyrrhonism and Roman Catholic apologetics.”
- FC, Vol. 82, Homilies on Genesis 18–45, 21.22 (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1990), 66.
- NPNF1: Vol. IX, The Christian Priesthood, Book 4, §7–8.
- John E. Rotelle, O.S.A., ed., Works of St. Augustine, Part I, Vol. 11, trans. Edmund Hill, O.P., De Doctrina Christiana, Book I, §37. (New York: New City Press, 1996), 124, titubabit autem fides, si divinarum Scripturarum vacillat auctoritas: De Doctrina Christiana, liber I, Caput XXXVII, PL 34:35.
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