The gates of hell shall not prevail

I will comment on the Peter Williams webinar:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7ACbpMfv3o&feature=youtu.be

1. One issue is whether his exposition is representative of contemporary Catholic theology. Like so many Catholic apologists, Williams is a layman. Not a Catholic theologian like Karl Rahner or Gerhard Ludwig Müller. Not a graduate of a Catholic seminary.

What we're getting from him is the usual version of Catholicism presented by lay Catholic apologists. An idealized, retro version of Catholicism. A version of Catholicism that's well to the right of mainstream Catholic scholarship (e.g. Bible scholars, church historians). Well to the right of the contemporary hierarchy. 

2. He's concerned with definitions, such as defining the sufficiency of Scripture. Up to a point, there's value in that. But should that be the starting-point?

To begin with, you can defend the content of Protestant theology without having to defend all the classic formulations. Suppose "sufficiency" isn't the best word to capture the principle. So what? It's unlikely that a single word will be adequate to represent a complex concept. Moreover, it should be possible to express an idea using more than one particular word. Just because the issue is traditionally framed in terms of "sufficiency" doesn't mean we have to use that particular word to expound and defend sola Scriptura. 

3. Apropos (2), when Protestants speak of sola Scriptura and the sufficiency of Scripture, what does Scripture represent? From a Protestant perspective, "Scripture" (or the Bible) is the inspired record of God's public, propositional revelation. By "public", I mean a revelation that's normative at every time and place–unlike a topical private revelation to provide guidance to a particular individual in a particular situation. This is a somewhat roughhewn definition. It could be further refined, but I think it's adequate for immediate purposes.

3. This, in turn, goes to the burden of proof. Is the onus on Protestants to directly prove the sufficiency of Scripture? Likewise, must Protestants begin with a precise definition of Scriptural "sufficiency"? 

Not necessarily. If there is no viable or comparable alternative to Scripture (as defined), then by process of elimination, sola Scriptura is the only remaining option. In that respect, the sufficiency of Scripture is defined by contrast to the alternatives. They are insufficient. Indeed, they are false alternatives. You don't have to prove sola Scriptura or the sufficiency of Scripture directly; rather, you only have to disprove rival paradigms. 

If Scripture is the only source of God's public, propositional revelation, then it naturally enjoys a certain primacy in relation to other sources of information or belief. Divine revelation is normative in a way that nonrevelatory sources or putative candidates are not. 

That doesn't mean Protestants have no burden of proof, but I'm just framing the issue. Where to locate the burden of proof. And, of course, Catholics have their own burden of proof.

4. Williams says Scripture cannot be sufficient because we can't establish the canon from Scripture alone. We can't can't answer the canonicity of Hebrews by looking to the scriptures. We can't prove from Scripture that Jude is inspired. Scripture has no inspired table of contents or index. The canon is not implicitly materially within Scripture. 

There are, however, some basic problems with his objection. To say Scripture is insufficient because Scripture is insufficient to give us the canon of Scripture is an eccentric definition. That's not what Protestants mean by Scriptural sufficiency.

In fairness, Williams may say the Protestant definition is arbitrarily restrictive. 

However, the sufficiency of Scripture doesn't rule out the necessity of extrabiblical evidence to identify Scripture and interpret Scripture. For the point of contrast involves the distinction between what is revelation and what is not revelation. The fact that we need some knowledge of history, some knowledge of the world, to identify revelation and interpret revelation doesn't nullify the unique authority of revelation to determine our duties to God and man. If the Lord has verbally expressed his will regarding our duties to God and man, how could any nonrevelatory source of information function as an equally authoritative source and standard of guidance? 

In fact, Catholic apologists concede this principle by appealing to ongoing revelation when they claim the Holy Spirit guides the Roman Catholic church into all truth. They themselves regard revelation, or the functional equivalent (the extraordinary magisterium) as a higher source and standard of guidance than nonrevelatory sources of information. So where the dispute comes to a head is (i) if there is ongoing public revelation, and (ii) the church of Rome is the organ of that revelation. 

5. Another distinction. The sufficiency of Scripture stands in contrast, not to extrabiblical sources of evidence, but to an illicit argument from authority. Appeal to reason and evidence is very different from appeal to the Roman Magisterium or a Roman Catholic census fidelium. It's equivocal to say that when Protestants rely on extrabiblical evidence, that's a concession to, or equivalent to, "tradition" in the technical Roman Catholic sense of the word. Appeal to extrabiblical evidence is not an argument from ecclesiastical authority. 

This is a problem with Williams contention that we need to go by "tradition" to establish the canon. But that's a loaded word. In Catholicism, "sacred tradition" or "living tradition" is hardly synonymous with evidence. Rather, it's a very selective view of what constitutes the relevant evidence. 

6. Williams talks about "the Church hearing the Holy Spirit's voice", but in ancient debates over the canonicity of certain books, the appeal wasn't to detecting the Holy Spirit speaking to the church, but questions of authorship and evidence for authorship. 

7. Williams neglects or underestimates the internal evidence for the canon. Underestimates internal evidence for the authorship of many biblical books. Overlooks the cross-attestation between many biblical books. Many biblical books naturally group together. You don't need separate attestation for the five books of the Pentateuch. They form a literary unit. You don't need separate attestation for Luke-Acts. 

The historical books for a continuous history. Each succeeding book takes up where the preceding book left off. There's overlap between the historical books and the prophets. There's overlap between Acts and the NT epistles. 

Books sharing common authorship go together. The Synoptic Gospels are interconnected. Later books frequently refer back to incidents recorded in earlier books. The phenomenon of "undesigned coincidences" is another example. 

The fact that the case for the canon may need to be supplemented by external evidence doesn't reduce the canon to a random anthology of writings, as if we could just as well produce a different collection. 

8. In prooftexting the Roman Magisterium from Mt 16, Williams makes the standard move of assuming that v19 is an allusion to Isa 22:22, then imports the entire Isaian context into v19. However, the related metaphors of keys, gates, and doors are stock imagery (e.g. Mt 23:13; 25:10; Lk 11:52; Jn 10:9; Acts 14:27; 1 Cor 16:9; Col 4:3; Rev 1:18; 3:7-8,20; 9:1; 20:1), so it doesn't require any special explanation, in terms of literary dependence, to account for the imagery. And even if it was an allusion to Isa 22:22, it doesn't follow that Jesus is reproducing the entire context of Isa 22, rather than mining the passage for picturesque metaphors or theological motifs. 

9. To ascribe certain prerogatives to Peter does not imply that he alone has these prerogatives. Mt 16 doesn't contrast Peter with what is said about the other disciples in the Gospel. It doesn't say Peter had these prerogatives to the exclusion of the other disciples. It's illogical to infer that what is said about one person can't therefore be said about someone else. 

10. Williams confidently says binding and loosing is a rabbinical concept. Well, that's one possible meaning. But the binding/loosing metaphor needs to be related to the keys metaphor. And is it coincidental that we have a back-to-back comparison between the "gates of hell" (v18) and the "keys to the kingdom of heaven" (v19)? Isn't that a clue?  

11. When Catholic apologists like Williams quote statements about "the church" in Matthew and elsewhere, there's the danger of committing the illegitimate totality transfer fallacy, where they read a theological construct, based on all the varied occurrences of "the church" in NT usage, back into any particular occurrence. We need to avoid making "church" a loaded word wherever it occurs in the NT.

12. Williams initially says Jn 16:13 is a promise to the apostles, but later he reverts to the standard Catholic substitution when he says the Holy Spirit guides "the church" into all truth. But that's not what the text says. At best, that's reading apostolic succession back into Jn 16:13. 

And even if, for the sake of argument, we suppose Jn 16:13 is a promise to "the church", there's nothing in the text or context or entire Gospel to index that to the Roman Catholic church. 

13. He says Trent simply formalized the sensus fidelium regarding the scope of the canon, yet there was no consensus when the Tridentine Fathers met. Rather, two opposing camps were represented: the Jewish canon championed by Jerome and the wider canon championed by Augustine. Moreover, the final vote wasn't unanimous, or even a majority, but merely a plurality: "by a vote of 24-15, with 16 abstentions, the Council issued a decree (De Canonicis Scripturis)" B. Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament (Oxford, 1987), 246.

14. Williams emphasized the infallibility of the ordinary magisterium, represented by the sensus fidelium. In my extensive experience, Catholic apologists routinely attack sola Scriptura and "private interpretation" on the grounds that you can't interpret the Bible on your own. 

15. There's abundant evidence that the Roman Magisterium is not what it aspires to be. Abundant evidence that the church of Rome performs just like you'd expect from an all-too-human organization that lacks foresight, that's improvising on the fly, that can't anticipate future developments, and must therefore reinvent itself periodically. Like other Catholic apologists, Williams is offering us a winsome paper theory that bursts into flame when put in contact with the realities of church history.