I am increasingly of the belief that one of the biggest problems - and the root of many other problems - with contemporary Evangelicalism is what I call "hyper-Reformation theology." I don't mean hyper-Calvinism. I use the term "Reformation theology" to refer to five points which are far more fundamental to the Reformation that the points of Calvinism: namely, the five solas. By the term "hyper-Reformation theology," I mean a collection of exaggerated caricatures of these essential doctrines which are currently popular among Evangelicals. The most visible of these is "hyper-sola scriptura", which I have discussed before, but there are similar positions for each of the others: "sola fide" and "sola gratia" become an excuse for antinomianism; "solus Christus" and "soli deo gloria" mean we shouldn't ever mention any dead saints, and Mary the mother of Christ is not to be mentioned except at Christmas. Now, I deliberately state these absurdly, but I really think that these sorts of caricatures are behind a lot of the problems in contemporary Evangelicalism, and I know that, for my part, it was not until recently that I had any real idea of how to finish the sentences ("scripture alone ... what?"). Now Johnny-Dee is pointing to a very interesting article by J.P. Moreland on "hyper-sola scriptura" which he provocatively calls "Evangelical over-commitment to the Bible." I don't agree with everything he says, but I think he appreciates the nature of the problem and the fact that it can be addressed without rejecting inerrancy or "sola scriptura," properly understood. He also has some interesting reflections on how we got here, which have to do with the sociology of education.
A lot actually. I don't want to start making a list (I might not stop). Regular readers may wonder why I still use the title so prominently, given my concern for history and tradition, and frequent attempts to distance myself from many elements of popular Evangelicalism. The answer is that I agree with the statements of faith of all the major Evangelical para-church groups, including their view of Scripture (my increasingly great respect for tradition has not altered that), and I continue to believe (perhaps more strongly than before) in "generous orthodoxy" - the view that the collection of doctrines we require all of our church members and leaders to subscribe to should be closer to the length and level of detail of the Nicene Creed than to the length and level of detail of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, or even the Westminster Confession. (I say "closer to the length and level of detail of the Nicene Creed" - I certainly don't think that affirming only the Nicene Creed is sufficient for church leadership, and I don't think it's probably enough for membership either - you need at least to hold a view of the authority of Scripture - but I certainly don't think that one should have to affirm a book length statement, even for leadership, unless that book is the Bible itself.)
The reason I bring this up (besides the need to define myself in relation to our recent fascinating Ecumenical discussion), is that I've just read a review by Carl Trueman of a book entitled Is The Reformation Over? on Reformation21 (the magazine not the blog), which was recommended to me by a friend. The review is very well written and I think it does a good job of describing some of the shortcomings of modern Evangelicalism, and giving reasons for nevertheless not giving up on the Reformation. I agree with nearly everything he says.
Last night, I had a brief friendly debate with some Calvinists, which has me thinking about theological method. Briefly, I approach the issue of Calvinism and Arminianism from the perspective primarily of philosophy rather than revealed theology. That is, I argue that libertarian free will, which is incompatible with most (but, surprisingly, not all) versions of Calvinism, but is central to Arminianism, is a philosophically attractive thesis on grounds of, for instance, human moral responsibility, the problem of evil, and the phenomenology of choice. (I don't claim that Calvinists can't provide accounts of these things, I simply claim that Arminians are able to provide better accounts. I also acknowledge that Calvinists might have better accounts of other things.) As an Evangelical, I have to justify this approach, and I generally justify it by arguing that the answer is simply not, or at least not clearly, revealed to us; that the Scriptural arguments pro and con balance, or at least nearly balance. Because I don't believe the answer is revealed to us, and also because of the nature of the question, I don't think this issue is that important, as theological claims go (but it is still a theological claim, and therefore matters). As a result, when it comes up in theological contexts my approach is generally to argue for a claim that I do think is important: the claim that this is not a matter of dogma, i.e. that churches ought not to enforce uniformity of belief on this issue among their members or even among their leadership. I've been trying to think through my reasons for this, and I've realized that they have a lot to do with theological method, so in this post I am going to develop an account of an idealized theological method (still very much a work in progress - objections or suggestions are extremely welcome!), then briefly attempt to identify where in this method Calvinism and Arminianism enter the picture, and suggest that their position ought to disqualify them from being considered dogma. (Wayne Leman's five part series on what the Bible "explicitly" teaches about headship and submission, discusses what it means for the Bible to explicitly teach something and so has also helped to get me thinking about this subject.)
I have wrestled on this blog with questions about Scripture and tradition, and have usually been short on answers. In the context of the present discussion, I am going to venture an answer to the question of how the two relate to one another: tradition, I claim, enters the picture in that the method described below is to be applied primarily by the Church rather than the individual. In saying it is applied by the Church, I mean to include the entire Church, from the beginning to the present. Because the process is iterative and further stages build on past stages, awareness of Christian tradition will be critical if an individual's efforts are to contribute to the total process. (It should be noted that this is not a general answer to the question of the relationship between Scripture and tradition because, as those who have read my Why Believe the Bible? series are aware, I think that the Church and its traditions have something to do with how we know that the Bible should be central to our theological method.) It is a good intellectual exercise, I think, for an individual to start, as it were, from scratch in theology, but we ought not to base our doctrine or our lives on the conclusions that we have drawn from scratch without awareness of the total process being done by the Church.
Although tradition thus has an important place in theology, I suspect that the nature of the method is such that anyone who believes that this is the correct method for the Church to apply agrees with what the Reformers meant by sola scriptura (but I am not an expert on Reformation theology). Also, it is critical to realize that the individual and, especially, the Church is to be guided by the Holy Spirit throughout the process.
Here, then, are the steps in my proposed theological method:
Step 1 is harder than it sounds. For one thing, language and culture come in here. (Fortunately, the Church started the process when the cultural and linguistic context of at least the New Testament was familiar.) For another, we have to be careful not to take things out of context. However, I'm pretty confident that even an individual acting alone could read through the Bible, especially the epistles which are the most explicitly theological portions, and take the general points (without getting bogged down in details) and have enough to go on to get started, and a significant enough percentage of this would be correct that the process would be able to self-correct in later iterations.
In step 2 our primary concern is to form general theories, resolve apparent contradictions, and interpret at a slightly deeper level. In step 3, we wish to know if there are any further points to which we are rationally comitted by accepting the theological points we have earlier discovered. At either of these steps, we may decide that what we previously thought was clear is no longer so clear. Finally, we return to Scripture and begin again by looking at those portions which were previously unclear to us to see if further learning has made them any clearer. From here, we iterate through the process again. Further iterations may lead to modify our previous conclusions, and this is ok.
This is a process that the Church is to undertake communally. We might try (but there are a lot of fuzzy concepts here) to say that someone is within the bounds of historical orthodoxy if and only if he or she shares the general views of the community to a great enough degree to be able to participate meaningfully in the process.
Now, the claim of a belief to be dogma should, it seems, be judged on two closely related issues: first, how early in the process is it discovered, and, second, how confident is the Church about it. These are closely related, because the Church is, in general, most confident about things that can be drawn immediately out of Scripture or derived with very little interpretation and which have not been subject to credible challenges in later iterations. (A third issue, which I will ignore here, is the degree of practical importance attached to the doctrine; if a doctrine has a lot of practical importance in terms of ethics or religious practice churches may be forced to take a position on it.)
As an example, doctrines like "all humans are sinners" (Romans 3:23, etc.) or "those who trust Jesus are not condemned for their sin" (John 3:18, etc.) come from step 1. On the first iteration of step 2, we might get doctrines like the trinity, a basic concept of propitiation (subject to refinement in future cycles), and such things. Then we'll go back and read confusing passages in light of these discoveries.
Now, my claim is that Calvinism and Arminianism are late-comers in this process; an ideal reasoner might get one or the other on the third iteration of steps 2 and 3. One point in support of this is simply that basic exegesis and preaching is rarely directly effected by one's views on this issues; they come in at the level of systematic theology (steps 2 and 3), and even then they are relatively advanced subjects in systematic theology. Another point is that they are late-comers historically. Now, it is important to note that the discussion is not without precedent in Church history, but before Arminius challenged Calvin's views on the subject, the debate was not carried on the way it is today, and it wasn't nearly as focal. Thus, even though some of the issues were around earlier, the actual debate is relatively recent. However, this could have at least two other explanations (and there exist debates having each of these explanations): the first is that prior to that time it was simply assumed that everyone held one view rather than the other, and the second is that some outside circumstance cause the debate to come to prominence. The first I find implausible (though if it were the case, it wouldn't go well for the Calvinists, as their position is an extreme one in the total context of Church history). The second is possible, since the discussion is partially a reaction against perceived Pelagianism in the Roman Catholic church. In short, between the antecedent debates and the outside circumstances, the recentness argument is a relatively minor consideration.
I do think, however, that, on balance, this discussion shows some reason to suppose that the issue of Calvinism or Arminianism is not a good candidate for the status of dogma.
Here it is, finally! Almost exactly 13 months after the last post, I am finally continuing my series. For those of you who have forgotten (probably most of you), in May of 2006 I outlined a proposed series providing an argument for belief in the Bible. I'm going to give a fairly detailed recap here because it has been so long since my last post. In Part 1: Plan of Attack I outlined the argument I intended to give. The basic claim of the argument is that historical investigation renders the idea that the canon of Scripture as we have it is divinely inspired a live option, and personal experience in the life of an individual can provide the kind of confirmation that will lead one to reasonably believe in inspiration. I have added to the plan of attack two proposed appendices: the first will deal with the question of what to believe about the Bible, and the second will deal with which Bible to believe in (i.e. with determining the canon). Because they will be dealt with later, I will skirt these issues as much as possible in the current post, though they will have to be addressed in some degree.
In Part 2: The Life and Teachings of Jesus of Nazareth we assumed that a super-human conscious entity had created the world and wanted to live in community with other minds (we didn't assume the Christian God as such, but decided to call him God for convenience). We argued that, if such a being exists, he may well be trying to get our attention, and may perhaps choose to use human language to speak to us. Such a revelation would be validated by a 'signature,' which would be something easy for God but difficult or impossible to counterfeit. We argued that the historical evidence points to the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth as such an event, and therefore concluded that his life and teachings constituted such a revelation. (The whole argument, but this part especially, is indebted to Richard Swinburne and his book Revelation.)
In Part 3: Jesus' Witness to the Hebrew Bible we argued that certain New Testament texts (especially the synoptic gospels, Acts, and 1 Corinthians) could, without assuming inerrancy or inspiration, be treated as reliable historical sources about the life and teachings of Jesus and that these sources tell us that Jesus regarded the Hebrew Bible as a divine revelation to mankind. As a result, the Hebrew Bible is included by reference in God's revelation to mankind in the life and teachings of Jesus.
This post will assume all these things. If you find any of these claims questionable (and I hope some people who find these claims questionable are reading!) you are encouraged to go back and read the previous post and comment on it. For now, however, we've got the Hebrew Bible, and we've got the life and teachings of Jesus as far as we can determine them from the historical sources as a revelation of God (now that we've got the Hebrew Bible he can, without qualification, be called God) to mankind. The next step is the witness of the Church. What do I mean by this?
Our sources (which, recall, are primarily the synoptic gospels, Acts, and 1 Corinthians) are indisputably clear about one thing: Jesus had twelve particularly close followers, and he ultimately named these men as his "apostles." The Greek word apostolos means "emissary" or "ambassador." Now these guys were sent out, it is pretty clear, to continue Jesus' work of proclaiming the good news and so forth after he left. Furthermore, it is also pretty clear that they were to get others to join them in this task, and this was to continue until Jesus returned (for all of this, see Matthew 28:18-20; it's also stated in many other places). This group or organization or whatever it might be, is called the Church, and Jesus himself - whose teachings are the revelation of God to mankind - taught that this group was the divinely authorized and enabled proclaimer of God's revelation to mankind in himself. It is by the witness of the Church that we know a great many things about God, including the canon of Scripture and its status as divine revelation.
My fellow Protestants are getting nervous at this point, but never fear! My Protestant credentials are, on this issue, impeccable: the Westminster Confession is on my side. The beginng of 1.5 reads, "We may be moved and induced by the testimony of the Church to an high and reverent esteem of the Holy Scripture." Some will be quick to point to 1.4 which says, "The authority of the Holy Scripture, for which it ought to be believed, and obeyed, depends not upon the testimony of any man, or Church; but wholly upon God (who is truth itself) the author thereof: and therefore it is to be received, because it is the Word of God." This, however, is a different issue. This says (and, incidentally, Catholic and Orthodox believers generally agree) that the testimony of the Church does not efficaciously make Scripture Scripture. Rather, as 1.5 says, the testimony of the Church "moves" and "induces" us to believe that Scripture is Scripture (but it would be the Word of God whether we were moved to believe that it was or not). I hope to discuss some other parts of WCF chapter 1 in part 5 and appendix B.
Now, we don't yet know much about this Church, but we know that its first members were Jesus' twelve apostles, and we know that it was out telling the world about God's revelation as soon as Jesus ascended, and it's still at it today, and will be until Jesus returns. I recently listed four aspects of ecclesiology (theory of the Church): somatic, apostolic, evangelistic, and eucharistic. Jeremy pointed out a fourth aspect that I can't believe I initially missed: ecclesiastic ecclesiology! That is, the Church is also the assembly of the called, and, as such, one can say that it is most fully the Church when it is assembled.
Be that as it may, all of these accounts are developed with a lot of assumptions already on the table, and at this point in our argument we don't have many assumptions available to us (comparatively speaking). We do, however, know that the Church proclaims the revelation, and the book of Acts tells us a lot about what the Church was like. One passage stands out to me:
And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching, to fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayers. Then fear came over everyone, and many wonders and signs were being performed through the apostles. Now all the believers were together and had everything in common. So they sold their possessions and property and distributed the proceeds to all, as anyone had need. And every day they devoted themselves to meeting together in the temple complex, and broke bread from house to house. They ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart, praising God and having favor with all the people. And every day the Lord added to them those who were being saved. (2:42-47)
Suppose we begin our inquiry with the apostles themselves, then look to people like Clement of Rome, Polycarp, Papias, and Ignatius whom the apostles recognized as members of the same Church as themselves, and then look to the next generation, and the next, and the next, until the present day. In other words, suppose we assume (1) that being recognized as a member of the Church by a known member of the Church is a sufficient condition for Church membership, and (2) that the "is a member of the same church as" relation is transitive. This could, but need not, take the form of the doctrine of apostolic succession as understood by the Catholic and Orthodox churches, in which we work with the process of ordination of bishops. If we could do this, then we would know where the Church was today and we could just go ask about the Scripture (of course, there are some ways the Church could conceivably be such that even once we identified it, it wouldn't be that easy to find out what it's official proclamations were - for instance, what if the Anglican Communion came out on top? or, what would be even more confusing, what if it was the American Baptist Church? - but leave that aside for now). This, however, will not work.
The first problem is that, in general, organizational membership is (1) vague and (2) not transitive. Consider Thomas Jefferson and Hillary Clinton. Are they members of the same political party? Personally, I think not. But Jefferson's Democratic-Republican Party is unproblematically historically continuous with the modern Democratic Party. Furthermore, no point of discontinuity can be identified at which the Democratic-Republican Party ceased and was replaced by the Democratic Party. Surely the name change is irrelevant here. But Thomas Jefferson and Hillary Clinton are nevertheless not members of the same political party. Why? Because something more than historical continuity is required for the persistence of political parties through time. This requirement includes at least some kind of continuity of platform. There comes a point when the platform is so different that, totally regardless of history, it just can't be the same party, and this is the case with the Democratic-Republican Party of Thomas Jefferson as opposed to the Democratic Party of Hillary Clinton. Vagueness enters, because there is no point, no single person or event, that can be singled out as the point where it was no longer the party of Thomas Jefferson. Non-transitivity enters here too: for any person in the Demcratic Party, we can, in principle, come up with a chain of recognition as members of the same party leading back to Thomas Jefferson.
As a political party can't survive a complete change of platform, so the Church could not survive a complete change of mission. Furthermore, a less than complete change could cast doubt on the persistence of the Church, and any change in doctrine will necessarily be a change in mission, since the Church's mission is the preaching of that doctrine. There are other essential characteristics that the Church, or a political party, would not persist through a change in, but these are certainly among the essential characteristics.
Now, suppose a group of people in the Democratic Party today discovered (to their shock!) that the principles of the Democratic Party were not the principles of its founder (or, rather, the founder of its predecessor, the Democratic-Republican Party), and decided to break away into another group, the Jeffersonian Democrats, which would embrace his principles. (I use this example because I have heard friends of mine suggest this very thing - though I suppose they probably weren't shocked by their discovery.) They claim to be the real modern Democratic-Republican Party since, on the one hand, they have historical continuity (through the Democratic Party), and, on the other hand, they have continuity of platform with Thomas Jefferson. However, the Democratic Party leadership doesn't recognize them and this leadership has been passed on through generations according to by-laws. The by-laws weren't around in the time of Jefferson, but they were around in times when he would certainly have recognized the party as still his own, and since they were instituted they were changed only according to their own rules. These grant the leaders legitimacy, but if a party can't survive through too great a change in platform, and the leaders preside over a party whose change in platform was too great, then they don't preside over the party of Thomas Jefferson. Of course, the Jeffersonian Democrats also have a problem, that their historical continuity goes through a party that is not identical with the original, but at least they are an eligible candidate, since they have the original platform (or, at least, continuity with it).
Now, there was one group of Christians, the Reformers, who believed they were in the position of the modern Jeffersonian Democrats in our example. My point is not that they were right (though I think they were, more or less), but that the underlying ideas about the persistence of organizations through time are credible, so that this possibility must be examined. That is, the very nature of the Church, as far as we know it at this point in our argument, is not such as to render their claim absurd.
Furthermore, the history of the Church is much more complicated than the history of the Democratic Party (of course, there is a lot I don't know about the history of the Democratic Party, so perhaps it is more complicated than I think it is). We have a lot of splintering all over the place starting pretty early, and all sorts of rival groups claiming to be the Church. Furthermore, the identity of the Church is complicated by another factor: its spiritual nature. We have all kinds of strange statements in the New Testament like "you yourselves, as living stones, are being built into a spiritual house for a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ" (1 Peter 2:5). The deeply spiritual nature of the Church might be thought to cast doubt on the degree to which its continuity is of the same sort as the continuity of a purely human organization. After all, if the Church is a spiritual entity, mightn't it spring up on earth just wherever it pleases? Mightn't it just suddenly spring up at Azusa Street in 1906 or in Toronto in 1994? Well, I suppose so. That is, if the Church is supposed to be simply that group of people that Jesus has commissioned to continue his mission of announcing the divine revelation (which is all we've argued it is so far), then we can't really prove that it needs historical continuity and doesn't just spontaneously spring up wherever Jesus happens to commission people to preach the revelation. So, if we are to remain suitably general and not beg the question, we are going to have to, in looking for the modern Church, focus on the essential characteristics of the Church rather than on history. (This is not intended to assume that just any group that has these characteristics - or, in particular, the one characteristic already mentioned: announcing the revelation - is the Church, but only that, for all we know at this point in our argument, any of those groups might be.) Nevertheless, we can learn from the diachronic approach. The argument I've given only shows that the further away from the apostles we get, the more uncertain things become. We can, however, safely consider the first few generations of the Church and ask what it proclaimed.
To begin with, we can say that, like Jesus, the first few generations of the Church regarded the Hebrew Bible as the inspired Word of God. Furthermore, they don't seem to take the traditional Jewish view which I worried in part 3 that Jesus may have taken. We can see this in Acts 4:24-25, where Peter and John are recorded introducing a quotation with the phrase, "Master, You are the One who made the heaven, the earth, and the sea, and everything in them. You said..." The quotation which follows is from Psalm 2, part of the Ketuvim.
The most important person the original apostles recognize as a member of the Church is Paul (Galatians 2:9). Mark (Acts 12), Luke (Colossians 4:14), and James the brother of Jesus (Acts 12:17, 15:13-21; James the apostle, the brother of John had already died, in 12:2) are also recognized. This will get us most of the New Testament as the most important writings of the early Church. In terms of authorship by either an apostle or one of these people recognized by the apostles, and historical evidence of this authorship, we've now got all four gospels, Acts, the ten Pauline epistles (excluding the pastorals), James, 1 Peter, and 1 John. That's 18 out of 27 in the canon agreed upon by the Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox churches. We are missing due to disputed authorship 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, Hebrews, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, and Revelation and due to authorship by someone not well attested as a Church member we are missing Jude.
Note something very important here: we have not established that the Church proclaims these books as inspired accounts of the revelation. Rather, we have established that these books are all written by people who were very clearly members of the Church. Now, the next thing we should say is that it is obvious that these books were treated as authoritative from a very early date. We can pretty safely say that these essentially undisputed books constitute at least the Church's proclamation of the revelation. That's enough to say that if any of these books says something about the revelation of God to mankind in Christ, the fact that it's written there is good reason to believe it, and this might reasonably be called "believing in the Bible." But it isn't enough to say that the books are inspired and absolutely inerrant.
So, what do these books say that is relevant to our question? Well, we don't have 2 Timothy 3:16 yet, because 2 Timothy's authorship is disputed (I know all my fellow believers were just dying to use that one - sorry!), nor do we have 2 Peter 1:20-21, which is also of disputed authorship. There is also 1 Timothy 5:18, where Paul says "the Scripture says," and then quotes Luke 10:7, and 2 Peter 3:15-16, where Peter speaks of Paul's letters and "the other Scriptures." However, if these weren't written by Paul and Peter - and we haven't established that they are - then they don't do us any good, so we're going to have to move on to the next generation. (Of course, if your historical investigations led you to believe that 1 Timothy and 2 Peter were genuine - as many scholars do, in fact, think - then you would already be most of the way to the end of the argument.)
Moving on to the second century already complicates things because by that time we already have the fairly well-attested view that the Septuagint (which includes the Deuterocanon) is the Old Testament, as opposed to the Hebrew Bible. We even have some people, including Justin Martyr, claiming that the Hebrew text has been corrupted and the Septuagint is the only reliable version. However, I will, as I said, be skirting this issue as much as possible for the present.
Writing in the mid-second century, Justin Martyr gives us a window into an early Christian worship service, which is quite relevant to the place of the New Testament:
And on the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits; then, when the reader has ceased, the president verbally instructs, and exhorts to the imitation of these good things. (First Apology chapter 67)
By the end of the second century, we have a number of writers (e.g., Irenaeus, a disciple of Polycarp, a disciple of John) who are not far removed from the apostles who use the New Testament in their theological writings in much the same way they use the Old Testament, and treat them as absolutely authoritative in all theological disputes (see Bruce, The Canon, chapts. 13 and 14). What is relevant here is that by the second century the Church, in proclaiming the revelation, relied on the Bible - both the Old and New Testaments - as its principle source; it proclaims authoritatively, citing the Scripture as its authoritative source.
The synchronic approach, as has been said, involves examining the claims of various present-day groups claiming the be the Church. It is limited primarily in that there are so many claimants we cannot possibly examine them all. However, we have a bit of luck here: there is substantial agreement among nearly all of them, especially if we ignore for now, as we have resolved to do, disputes among the claimants about certain specific books, and only examine the broad general claim. (There are still disputed books, besides just the duetero-canon - the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, for instance, has a number of additional books; it is also worth considering how one should think about the Book of Mormon in this sort of discussion, seeing as the LDS church is also a claimant here.) All of the major Christian groups agree that Scripture is inspired, and that it includes both the Old and New Testaments. This means that, regardless of precisely what the Church is and how it is manifested in history just at present, we can know that it has indeed proclaimed that the Scriptures are inspired by God, and that we should believe what they say.
I want to note, in closing, the relationship I think this has to how actual converts to Christianity have come to believe in the Bible. I am of the opinion that many of the problems in philosophy (consider, for instance, the refutation of solipsism) are problems of attempting to formalize rational inferences which we draw on an almost instinctive level (solipsism strikes me as a case where our inference is almost indisputably rational, and yet philosophy has had enormous difficulty trying to formalize the inference to prove that it's rational). This, I think, is the case here. Most people who believe in the Bible have, I think, come to believe in it in much the same way: someone told them that they ought to believe in the Bible, for some reason they took that claim seriously and, upon looking closely at it for themselves, some sort of experience they had in connection with the Bible led them to accept the claim originally presented to them regarding its inspiration. Parts two through four have been an attempt to make more explicit some of the lines of reasoning that might lead someone to take a claim like that seriously. I don't think that most people have done these sorts of historical explorations. Rather, I think they have probably simply been told about the Bible by people who have some kind of credibility in spiritual matters due to intelligence, or insight, or, more likely, the kinds of lives they lead. (This, of course, applies to taking Christianity seriously in general, and not just the claim of the inspiration of Scripture.) I hold that this line of reasoning is rational, but I'm skeptical about it getting you much farther than taking the claim seriously. Actually believing it will likely require some personal experience, and that will be the subject of part 5, which I hope to write less than 13 months from now!
Just a couple quick links:
John Fraiser of Chaos and Old Night discusses the attitude Evangelical Protestants ought to take to Church tradition in his post, Sifting Through Church Tradition. Fraiser argues that we need to recognize the influence tradition has on us, and we ought not to try to escape from that influence, but, at the same time, we need to recognize that it is Scriputre and not tradition which is authoritative. I mostly agree with what Fraiser said (though I still think that the West is wrong to talk about Scripture and tradition as wholly distinct - instead we ought to consider Scripture as a sort of 'super-tradition,' as the Orthodox do; I have argued for this postion previously), but, unfortunately, he didn't present much in the way of argument. Or rather, in so far as he did argue for his position, he is arguing against Evangelicals who want to ignore tradition, not Catholic or Orthodox believers who give more authority to tradition than the position he argues for does.
On the other side, we have The God Fearin' Fiddler (with whom I have debated this issue before) presents a Catholic argument against sola scriptura. Unfortunately, the post is kind of long and focuses on debunking an argument that I've never heard any Protestant use, and that I certainly wouldn't use. However, he does make several good points, and I recommend taking at least a skim.
I've already sort of jumped into the fray by leaving a long comment for the Fiddler (Update 6/7/07, 1AM: the Fiddler has responded to my argument in a new and most interesting post), but I may jump in in a more substantial way some time soon. The best way to jump in would of course be to finish by Why Believe the Bible? series that has been sitting unfinished for a year. I'm considering, when I finish it, adding an appendix discussing what beliefs about the Bible the argument justifies. It will, I think, justify innerrancy without a problem, but it isn't clear to me what kind of a uniqueness claim that argument will justify.
As previously promised, this post will treat the presence of the doctrine of Sola Scriptura in Augustine. First, let me state that by Sola Scriptura I do not necessarily mean a particular formulation by Luther or Calvin or any particular church, but rather I mean to show that the cluster of doctrinal positions into which all of these fall exists in the early church. So I really mean the doctrines (plural) of Sola Scriptura, and not some particular doctrine. I define these as follows:
A teaching is a Sola Scriptura doctrine if and only if it asserts that the contents of the canonical books of Scripture possess divine authority* and/or sufficiency for Christian faith and practice in a manner and/or to a degree which is unique and which exceeds, excells, or is otherwise superior to any other religious authority.*By "authority" I mean "the quality of being authoritative," not "the right to command." God has the right to command, and the Scriptures are the authoritative source as to what it is he commands.
I mentioned two Sola Scriptura doctrines, one of which I think is good but incomplete and in general need of refinement, and the other of which I think is totally indefensible, in my post on Church dogma. The good but incomplete one says "Scripture alone is binding on the believer." The indefensible one says "Scripture alone is the source of all our knowledge of God." Another example of a Sola Scriptura doctrine is this excerpt from James Montgomery Boice's Whatever Happened to the Gospel of Grace, which I got off a bulletin from Tenth Pres.:
the Bible alone is our ultimate authority - not the pope, not the church, not the traditions of the church or church councils, still less personal intimations or subjective feelings, but Scripture only. Other sources of authority may have an important role to play. Some are even established by God - such as the authority of church elders, the authority of the state, or the authority of parents over children. But Scripture alone is truly ultimate. Therefore, if any of these other authorities depart from Bible teaching, they are to be judged by the Bible and rejected.
I would want to change this, as you will have noticed from my footnote above, to "God alone is our ultimate authority, and only the Bible is the ultimate authoritative source as to what he has commanded" (so as not to give the Bible authority separate from God's authority), but this is nit-picky. Let me give one more example of a Sola Scriptura doctrine, this time from the Westminster Confession (note: I like to cite the Westminster Confession because on issues other than soteriology it usually provides succinct and precise summaries of standard Protestant positions on issues. I'm not actually a Clavinist):
The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for His own glory, man's salvation, faith and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture: unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit, or traditions of men ... All things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all: yet those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed for salvation are so clearly propounded, and opened in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them ... The supreme judge by which all controversies of religion are to be determined, and all decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men, and private spirits, are to be examined, and in whose sentence we are to rest, can be no other but the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture. (1.6-7, 10)
Now, my question at present is very restricted in scope: it is whether Augustine' teaches a doctrine somewhere in this general cluster. I do not propose in this post to examine whether any of these doctrines is precisely the same as Augustine's, whether they occur elsewhere in Church history, or even whether they are true. All these things should be examined diligently, but I'm trying to do one thing at a time.
De Doctrina Christiana 2.24-29 famously discusses the contents of the canon. Augustine is one of the first to describe a canon nearly identical to our present-day canon. (He of course includes the deuterocanon ["Apocrypha"] and doesn't distinguish it from the protocanon, but the contents of the canon is a separate question from how those contents should be treated.) After this, Augustine says:
These are all the books in which those who fear God and are made docile by their holiness seek God's will ... the matters which are clearly stated in them, whether ethical precepts or articles of belief, should be examined carefully and intelligently. The greater a person's intellectual capacity, the more he finds. In clearly expressed passages of scripture one can find all the things that concern faith and moral life. (2.30, tr. R. P. H. Green)
This already is a Sola Scriptura doctrine by our definition. Augustine says first that the canonical books are unique among all books in that they are the only ones in which we are to seek God's will. Secondly, he says that the canonical books are totally sufficient (even if we only consider the "clearly expressed passages") for our religious and moral instruction. It might, however, still be disputed whether this is really "to a degree which is unique and which exceeds, excells, or is otherwise superior to any other religious authority" because Augustine only explicitly says that it is unique among books and that it is sufficient.
Jeremy Pierce recently had a post on Augustine's belief in the doctrine of inerrancy which quoted a letter Augustine wrote to Jerome:
I have learned to yield this respect and honour only to the canonical books of Scripture: of these alone do I most firmly believe that the authors were completely free from error ... As to all other writings, in reading them, however great the superiority of the authors to myself in sanctity and learning, I do not accept their teaching as true on the mere ground of the opinion being held by them; but only because they have succeeded in convincing my judgment of its truth either by means of these canonical writings themselves, or by arguments addressed to my reason. I believe, my brother, that this is your own opinion as well as mine.
I don't have a copy of this in Latin (nor can I read Latin well enough to do me any good in this discussion) but the English translation of this passage makes a stronger statement than the English translation of the other: it says that only the authors of Scripture (and not anybody else!) are free from error. The Scripture we believe because it is the word of God. Any other person or text must make an argument from Scripture or from reason in order to gain our assent. Surely this qualifies as a Sola Scriptura doctrine. Augustine has claimed something like the following: Scripture alone is inerrant and the proper source of knowledge about God's will for our lives, and the clear statements of Scripture are sufficient as a rule of faith and practice.