Alexander Pruss on the regress argument

Alexander Pruss has posted a long comment, over at Tim Enloe’s intermittent blog, defending the Catholic rule of faith:

http://tgenloe.wordpress.com/2009/08/21/trusting-the-authority-of-scripture-is-not-knowledge/#comment-7413

Pruss is far more sophisticated than the average Catholic epologist, so this is a good test-case of whether Catholicism is ultimately defensible. If that’s the best a Catholic philosopher of his ability can do, then the argument doesn’t get any better than this.

Obviously he’s not presenting a full-blown argument. But he’s presenting an argumentative strategy. Even if it were more detailed, the details are only as good as the operating framework.

Before we delve into the details, I’ll make a preliminary observation. A philosopher is not a historian. An occupational hazard when a philosopher discusses a complex historical issue is the temptation to reduce the problem to an elegant principle which is largely or wholly out of touch with the facts on the ground. The simplicity of the proposed solution makes it very appealing, but there in lies its weakness. The philosopher is grafting a solution onto the historical data–a solution which doesn’t arise from the historical data under consideration.

So let’s review his argument:

You are right to identify a regress problem with the arguments as they are sometimes put.

In fact, there are three separate Catholic apologetic arguments, each of which invites a regress argument like yours, but each of which can escape it in a different way.

1. The Canonicity Argument. This is as follows: To figure out which if any of the millions of books written are divinely inspired, we need an authority beyond the books themselves. (One way of formulating this is in terms of the question of the choice of canon.) This invites the regress that to figure out which if any of the billions of authorities (for in some sense, each person and organization claims to be an authority) is properly guided by God we need another authority, and so on.

One way to reformulate the Canonicity Argument to escape the criticism is this. We ask how in fact we all, Catholics and Protestants, have decided which NT books (the OT case is more complex, being bound up with Jewish understandings of the canon as well) are authoritative Scripture? The answer is that the Church decided for us, and we all have accepted this judgment of the Church. Therefore, in this regard, we all de facto accept the authority of the Church. However, the argument continues, it is inconsistent to accept the authority of the Church in this crucial matter, without accepting it in others. This formulation of the Canonicity Argument escapes the regress criticism, because it does not make the general claim that we always need another authority to decide what is authoritative, but only the specific claim that the way we decided in THIS case was by following the Church’s tradition.

There are several problems with this argument:

i) Suppose, for the sake of argument, that his description is true. Suppose the Church decided for us, and we accept the authority of the Church on that decision.

But that sidesteps the normative question. The real question is not, do we trust the Church, but should we trust the Church? Suppose our trust is misplaced?

ii) There is also the problem of equivocation. What “Church” decided this for us? It’s as if Pruss had the image of a pyramid in the back of his mind. Someone at the top of the flowchart handed down this ruling for the rest of us. But, to my knowledge, what we call the ancient “church” consisted of a geographically diverse range of semi-autonomous churches. It was quite decentralized.

iii) By the same token, Pruss is tacitly assuming that the church he belongs to is identical with the church which allegedly decided the canon for us. But it’s not as if the Greek Fathers were Roman Catholic. For that matter, it’s not as if the Latin Fathers were Roman Catholic. The church of Rome was a local church. It’s not as if all the early Christians belonged to the same denomination, and Pruss belongs to the same denomination they did.

iv) Why does he frame the issue in terms of “authority”? Assuming, for the sake of argument, that we accept the tradition of the church on this particular issue, does this mean we accept the authority of the church? Our acceptance could be quite separable from the question of authority. It may be that we accept the testimony of early church fathers because we think they are well-placed informants. That’s quite different than institutional authority.

v) It’s entirely possible for an institution to be reliable at one time, but unreliable at another. A scrupulous businessman may found a company. Because he’s honest, and holds his employees to the same standard, his company acquires a fine reputation.

Eventually he retires or dies. The fact that he was a man of unimpeachable character creates no presumption that his successor will be. Indeed, his successor may exploit the sterling reputation of his predecessor to cheat unsuspecting clients.

vi) There is another ambiguity in his usage. For Pruss, the “Church” is one thing, while “we” are another thing. The “Church” decided for “us.”

But how are we related to the church? Isn’t the church the people of God? What does it mean for Pruss to contrast the church with the people of God? Aren’t we part of the church? Don’t we compose the church?

vii) Because he’s approaching this question from the standpoint of church history, his myopic focus is on how the books of the NT relate to the subsequent deliberations of the church, rather than on how they relate to each other. But shouldn’t we at least take a look at the NT on its own terms? How do these books go together in their own right? Is this an arbitrary collection of books, held together by the sheer authority of the “Church”? Or are there various ways in which these books are internally related to each other?

For example, if two or more books share common authorship, then they form a little “canon” of books by the same author. Likewise, one author may refer to another author. So the canon of one author may canonize the canon of another author. Where the NT is concerned, there’s an elaborate network of cross-references. The same is true for the OT. And the same is true for the NT in relation to the OT.

2. The Authority Argument. This argument doesn’t ask about the canon, but picks up a Bible with a shorter (i.e., Protestant canon) and asks simply: How do we know these texts are authoritative? Surely, we need an authority to tell us so. And of course we can ask the same question about how we know that the alleged authority is authoritative, and your regress goes on its merry way.

A good way to reformulate the argument is this. Don’t formulate some general principle that we need a further authority to tell us that something or someone is authoritative. That general principle leads to regress or circularity, obviously. Instead, go as follows: Catholics and Protestants agree that we have good reason to accept the authority of Scripture. What is that good reason?

In the case of some individuals, there may be a religious experience tied to a Bible. Maybe an individual is holding the Bible, and God inspires the individual to think that everything in that book is God’s word. While that may happen for some Christians, it probably doesn’t happen to all. Of course, some people may accept the testimony of those who claim to have had such a religious experience, but then we have to worry about the Mormons who came to our door and claimed to have had such an experience in regard to the Book of Mormon.
The best apologetic story I know about the authority of Scripture is what I call the “spiral”. We spiral upwards.

- Start with ordinary historical/literary arguments that the Gospels are fairly reliable as reports of the character, words and deeds of Jesus, at least if we omit the miracles. (Think of what C. S. Lewis says about how we meet the character of Jesus in Scripture.)
- Then argue that Jesus is God, by any of the standard apologetic arguments. (Maybe the individual’s relationship with Jesus indicates Jesus’s divinity; maybe we run the Lord/liar/lunatic argument; maybe we run any of the apologetic arguments for Jesus’s resurrection, and then argue that the best explanation of the resurrection is that God raised Jesus from the dead, while God would not raise from the dead a man who falsely claimed to be God.)
- Next, note that among Jesus’s words there are promises of divine guidance to the Church.
- Next, observe that the early Church has taken the letters of Paul, including 2 Timothy, to be expressive of her faith. But if the Church is guided, then that which is expressive of the Church’s faith is true. Hence, the doctrinal claims of 2 Timothy are true. But 2 Timothy 3:15-17 says all Scripture is inspired by God. Hence, all Scripture is inspired by God.
- The Church also accepts such-and-such a canon of Scripture.

This gives us a non-circular argument for the inspiration (and, hence, authority) of Scripture. This argument, however, depends on the authority of the Church. Moreover, there does not appear to be a better generally accessible argument (i.e., one not dependent on individual religious experience) for the authority of Scripture. So, in the course of arguing for the authority of Scripture, we had to argue for the authority of the Church. We then argued for the authority of the Church on the basis of the authority of Christ. And we argued for the authority of Christ on the basis of the authority of God. And the authority of God, I guess, follows from his essential righteousness and omniscience.

Unfortunately, this repeats a key equivocation regarding the identity of the “Church.”

i) What church is the heir to these promises?

ii) What do the promises actually promise? What’s the specific content of the promise?

To take just one example, the NT word for “church” (Gr.=ekklesia) is a Septuagintal loanword for the OT “gathering” of Israel or “assembly” of the Lord. In choosing that word, NT speakers and writers are using a loaded word. A word which triggers a complex set of associations. And the connotations are the word are more communal than institutional.

iii) Likewise, if Pruss is going to invoke NT promises to the church, then we should examine NT ecclesiology to see which denomination is faithful to that description. Perhaps there’s more than one. Perhaps the church of Rome has defected from the NT church. If you appeal to NT promises to the church, then you need to compare and contrast the NT doctrine of the church with later claimants.

iv) He also overlooks other arguments for inspiration, such as prophecy.

v) Let’s also keep in mind that Jesus didn’t just make promises to the “Church.” He also made promise to the apostles. What is more, he made promises to Christians in general.

3. The Interpretation Argument. This argument is essentially different from the preceding two. Incautiously formulated, it says that every text needs interpretation, and the effective authority of a text is no greater than that of its interpretation. Hence, for Scripture to be effectively authoritative (imagine a text in a language we don’t know; no matter how innately authoritative it is, the authority is ineffective for us–it is useless to us, authority-wise), it needs an authoritative interpreter.
But now your regress comes. After all, the interpreter interprets a text by giving another text, orally or in writing. Hence, the interpretation needs an interpretation, and so on, and your regress goes off.

However, a better way to formulate the interpretation argument is not as a matter of general principle, but specifically as to Scripture: Look at the important differences between well-meaning Christian interpreters. (And note the fact that Scripture itself says that some of the letters of Paul are hard to interpret.) While some parts of Scripture are easy to interpret, many others seem very hard. Moreover, some of these parts that are very hard are actually very much relevant to the daily lives of Christians. (Think of Jesus’ teachings on divorce.) Furthermore, some of the parts that seem easy to interpret only seem that way because we have inherited an interpretation from others, without which the parts would in fact be very hard to interpret. Unless the Christian life is to be a life of difficult and uncertain exegetical work–and that simply does not seem to be the life in the Spirit that Jesus and Paul promise–it seems we need an authority that can tell us what various parts of Scripture relevant to our lives mean, and can tell us so authoritatively and in a way that does not require much difficult and uncertain exegetical work to understand, and that can tell this to us in the living language of the day.

That suffers from a number of problems:

i) Weren’t the Jews in a similar position? Many Jews lived in isolated villages. And even if they lived in Jerusalem, there was no Magisterium to hand down authoritative interpretations. You had rival rabbis. Competing schools of thought.

If we were to judge by divine precedent, then God is content with that arrangement.

ii) The actual practice of the Catholic church fails to correspond to this solution. If what he says were true, then we’d expect the church of Rome to dispense with Bible scholars like Lagrange, Fitzmyer, Brown, &c. All the relevant exegetical questions would be answered in a hardbound series of papal encyclicals.

iii) Likewise, if God wants all Christians to receive their spiritual instruction from Rome, why has he arranged church history in a way that creates so much religious isolation and rivalry? Why would he cause one Christian to be born a 17C Russian peasant, another Christian to be born an 18C Hutterite, and yet another Christian to be born a 19C Appalachian hog farmer-–if he wants every Christian to look to Rome for spiritual guidance? He’s setting up tremendous hurdles for them to overcome. And, as a practical matter, these hurdles are often insurmountable.

iv) If, instead of trying to answer this question in the abstract, we take a cue from divine precedent as well as God’s actual administration of church history, wouldn’t it be more reasonable to conclude that God holds Christians individually accountable for the specific situation he put them in? A situation which varies in time and place? The duties vary with the circumstances.

Ultimately, it’s a question of what God intends to accomplish in human history. If you think God wants everyone to agree, then he failed rather badly.

But wouldn’t it be more reasonable to begin with the outcome, and then infer something about his ulterior intent from the actual outcome–than commencing with some speculative assumption about what he would or would not permit, then attempt to harmonize the outcome with that a priori conjecture?

Catholic apologists always suffer from this topdown approach. And they can never bring the top all the way down to the bottom.

If we see a lot of conflict in church history, then that’s because God planned it that way. God has a purpose in doing things that way. God has something to reveal through the historical process. Something about human nature.

A different response to the regress argument is to say that the authority does not speak as much in words as in the life of the liturgy, which is not so much to be interpreted as to be participated in. That would be an Eastern Orthodox approach to the problematic.

Well, most Protestants have a corporate spiritual life as well.