I recently saw an interview with David Anders:
In particular, I watched the first 13 minutes where he tries to refute sola scriptura. He's an evangelical convert to Catholicism, and a charter member of Called to Communion. He has a BA from Wheaton, MA from TEDS, and a doctorate in Reformation history from Iowa U. A few general observations:
1. He equivocates between Protestant tradition and Sacred Tradition. But when Protestants reject Sacred Tradition, that's consistent with Protestant epistemology. Sacred Tradition is a technical term in Catholic theology. It's not analogous to Protestant traditions. In Protestant theology, tradition is not intrinsically authoritative.
2. He has the confused notion that sola scriptural is inconsistent with the role of inference in Protestant theology, as if only the "express" teaching of Scripture is authoritative. But that's a demonstrable straw man.
3. He regurgitates the Catholic trope that sola scriptura is self-refuting. But as I pointed out recently, that depends on how sola scriptura is formulated. For instance:
i) Believe and obey divine revelation
ii) Don't elevate non-revelation to the status of divine revelation
iii) Disregard whatever is contrary to divine revelation
Scriptures teaches these propositions. That's sola Scriptura in a nutshell.
4. Apopos (3), sola scriptura is analogous to saying the Bible is our only infallible map. Would it make sense of a Catholic apologist to counter: "Where is the map on the map?"
But a map is not about itself. It makes no sense to say the map is defective because you can't find the map on the map. That's not the function of a map. A map is not self-referential. The purpose of a map is not to locate the map on the map, but to locate your destination on the map, and a route to your destination.
5. Where does his dismissive attitude towards "funny internal feelings" ("Holy Spirit vibrations", "God zaps them," "Holy Spirit Geiger counter") leave Catholic mystics like Bernard of Clairvaux, Hildegard of Bingen, St. Bonaventure, Julian of Norwich, Catherine of Siena, Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, St. Francis de Sales, and Anne Catherine Emmerich? How did they know they were experiencing God in their mystical encounters? What did they have to go by apart from their "funny internal feelings"? So his objection discredits the religious epistemology of Catholic mysticism.
6. It's ironic that he never considers the illative sense, with its stress on the central role of intuition in human knowledge and Christian faith. Newman is the most influential Catholic thinker in modern times.
7. Protestant theology doesn't have a monolithic epistemology. And there's more than one line of evidence for the inspiration of Scripture as well as the canon of Scripture.
8. Many Christians simply find the Bible compelling on its own. And that's unavoidable. Most Christians don't have the aptitude or opportunity to formulate a strong philosophical or historical case for Scripture. So God must be able to cultivate faith by other means.
9. Then there's the problem with his alternative. Even if we grant Catholic assumptions, they face an insuperable dilemma. To climb the ladder to the "infallible magisterium," you have to start at the first rung of the ladder. But how do Catholics inerrantly determine that there is One True Church, and how do they inerrantly determine that it corresponds to the Roman Catholic denomination? They can't begin with the top rung of the ladder (the infallible magisterium). To reach the top rung, they must begin with their fallible judgment. But in that event they never put their fallible judgment behind them. It's inescapable.
10. Called to Communion resembles men sitting around a table in a burning church. Flames are licking the walls. Flames are licking the ceiling. Smoke is filling the sanctuary. Yet they sit with the backs to the fire, chatting with each other about the glorious architecture. The Catholic church is becoming engulfed in the conflagration of sodomy and modernism, yet they turn their backs to the raging fire that's consuming their adopted denomination, oblivious to the encroaching destruction all around them. The contrast between their hypothetical Catholicism and the pervasive reality is morbidly fascinating to the detached observer.
No comments:
Post a Comment