What's the significance of the extrabiblical sources?

We need to keep in mind that the significance of extrabiblical sources varies, and can vary widely, from one context to another. On a subject like eternal security, which I've been addressing a lot in recent months, we're in a context in which the Biblical sources provide us with a large amount of information. It's not as though eternal security is some minor issue that never came up or only came up on rare occasions in the Biblical record. It's not something with as little significance as what year Isaiah died or how many times Paul visited a particular city. The potential to lose justification has existed since the time of Adam and Eve, instead of being something that only came up toward the end of the Biblical era or afterward. The Bible provides us with relevant information in dozens of documents from dozens of authors over more than a thousand years. A supposed lack of clarity in one Biblical source can be resolved by consulting another passage or group of passages elsewhere in that source or by consulting one or more other Biblical sources. The nature of eternal security is such that our dependence on extrabiblical sources is much less in that context than it is on other issues.

Something like a universal or nearly universal absence of or opposition to eternal security among the extrabiblical sources would give us reason to reconsider our view on the subject, but any conclusion we'd reach would still have to interact with the large amount of Biblical data we have on the topic. But there isn't a universal or nearly universal absence of or opposition to eternal security among the extrabiblical sources, as I've demonstrated in my posts on the subject. Since eternal security is addressed so much in scripture and is neither universally nor almost universally absent or contradicted in the extrabiblical sources, we have a situation in which the extrabiblical sources are less significant accordingly.

Whether the topic is eternal security or something else, we need to remember what's involved when people refer to something like "the Bible" or "scripture". There's a sense in which only one source is involved, but there's also a sense in which there isn't. We could similarly refer to the church fathers collectively as "the church fathers" or refer to medieval sources collectively as "medieval sources", for example. But the Bible, like those other collections of documents, consists of many sources who wrote in many contexts. Extrabiblical sources have some value in assisting us in interpreting the Biblical documents, and some people underestimate the value of those extrabiblical sources (because of ignorance, laziness, dishonesty, or whatever other reason), but there's also a danger of overestimating them. And the level of significance they have varies from one context to another.

Jesus, Paul, and perspicuity

As to Scripture, Jesus himself constantly appeals to the OT as the measure of what is true and right, and he evidently does so "not only with the expectation that this testimony will be accepted by faithful Jewish men and women, but that it will be intelligible to them. What use would there be in quoting texts no-one was able to understand?" When he quotes Hos 10:8 in Lk 23:28, for example, he appears to believe that "the images of this OT text would be both recognizable and intelligible" to his hearers. 

The apostles appeal to the OT Scriptures in the same way as Jesus, and what is initially striking here is that "the appeal is not reserved for Jewish audiences where some familiarity with the Scriptures…might be fairly assumed." It is also made in respect to Gentiles audiences. Paul, for example, displays "general confidence in the accessible meaning of the OT" so far as the church of Rome is concerned, I. Provan, The Reformation and the Right Reading of Scripture (Baylor 2017), 308-9.

Given that they were writing in Greek to an audience in which knowledge of Greek was widespread (see below), the apostles unsurprisingly used the LXX as a major source in citing the OT Scriptures. There is no e evidence that, like Philo, they believed the LXX to be inspired in itself. Paul, for example, appears to translate directly from the Hebrew on at least six occasions where the LXX does not agree with it; on at least twenty-eight occasions his citations reflect neither the MT nor the LXX. He and the other apostles were not bound to the LXX, I. Provan, The Reformation and the Right Reading of Scripture (Baylor 2017). 234.

What is perspicuity?

1. In classic Protestant theology, Scripture has four attributes: necessity, sufficiency, clarity, and authority. And these are related to the case for sola scriptura.

2. As I've often remarked, it's important to distinguish between traditional theological positions and traditional supporting arguments. With the benefit of hindsight, we might conclude that a traditional supporting argument isn't very good, but maintain the traditional position. We might replace an old argument with a new argument. There are sometimes opportunities to improve our case. Some apologists try too hard to defend a traditional argument rather than defending the traditional position. But the point of a supporting argument is to defend the position in question. 

3. The sufficiency of Scripture overlaps with sola scriptura. Those are closely related concepts. If Scripture is sufficient, then Scripture is all you need (for whatever Scripture is sufficient for).

4. By contrast, perspicuity is more like a supporting argument for sola scriptura. The substantive position is sola scriptura whereas perspicuity is more of a justification. 

It's possible that the Protestant Reformers exaggerated or oversimplified the clarity of Scripture. If so, that admission is not a fatal concession. My Protestant faith is not invested in perspicuity since there is no real alternative. If the Catholic alternative is false, then the justification of sola scriptura is independent of Scripture's clarity. If there is no Magisterium, no divine teaching office in the Catholic church, then that moots debates over the clarity of Scripture. The alternative to sola scriptura is a chimerical ideal. 

5. This doesn't mean perspicuity is entirely irrelevant to the case for sola scriptura. If the Bible was pervasively ambiguous or incomprehensible, then it couldn't function as a moral and theological guide. However, perspicuity is a diverse concept. 

6. In my experience, when Catholic apologists attack the clarity of Scripture, what they sometimes mean is that Scripture is unclear because it fails answer certain questions posed to it by the reader, viz. What words should be used at a baptismal ceremony? What kind of bread should be used for communion bread? Leavened or unleavened? Wheat? What about cornbread or rice cakes? 

The unclarity due not to what is stated but to what is left unstated. A Catholic apologist can always concoct a stipulative definition of perspicuity, although he can't impose that on evangelicals.

However, that objection to the clarity of Scripture begs the question. Perspicuity is only defective if we're supposed to have a particular answer to such questions. One right answer. If God requires that of us. If it's necessary to discharge our moral or religious duties. If, however, we're not responsible for having a definitive answer, then its not a deficiency of Scripture that it lacks clarity on that definition. 

7. Another way a text (or speech) might be unclear is if the author has expressed himself obscurely. This differs from the definition in (6). On this definition, it doesn't leave the question unanswered; rather, it provides an answer but the answer is obscure. The writer may provided a detailed exposition or explanation but it's hard to understand. And there are variations on this definition:

i) Studied obscurities. The writings of James Joyce are intentionally obscure. He makes great demands on the reader. But he knows exactly what he's doing. It's not incomprehensible in principle. Rather, it requires specialized background knowledge

ii) By contrast, a text (or speech) might be obscure because the author is a poor communicator. The problem lies at his end rather than the reader's end. 

8. Perspicuity involves a relation between the communicator and the audience. In that regard, there can be degrees of clarity or unclarity. Take an article in a physics journal or medical journal. That might be perspicuous to a reader with the requisite understanding of physics or medical science, but incomprehensible to a reader who lacks the requisite understanding of physics or medical science. They physicist may express himself with utter clarity, but what he writes is unintelligible to the uninitiated. So perspicuity has an objective side and a subjective side. Both author and reader have responsibilities. 

9. On a related note, perspicuity is not a static property:

i) A text or statement may become more clear or less clear to the reader. As a kid I used to watch Laugh-In. That contained lots of topical political satire. But the jokes have become obscure with the passage of time because the references are so ephemeral. 

ii) Conversely, a text may become clearer. I understand an annotated edition of a Shakespeare play better than the straight text.

10. The salient question is whether the Bible is it clear enough to achieve its divinely intended purpose. God has different purposes for different readers. 

The Bible and The Tempest

Is there a point of tension between the perspicuity of Scripture and the grammatico-historical method? To the extent that correct exegesis requires background information about the text, does that undercut the perspicuity of Scripture? A few points:

i) It's possible that the Protestant Reformers exaggerated the perspicuity of Scripture. That's not a fatal concession to Catholicism unless Catholicism is a viable alternative. Moreover, that just shifts the issue, since exegeting church fathers, papacy encyclicals, conciliar documents, Aquinas et al. raises the same need for background information. Catholic sources can't be interpreted in a historical vacuum. 

It's not as if popes, church fathers, and Scholastic theologians are more perspicuous than the Bible. Indeed, that adds 2000 years of additional layers to sift through. 

ii) The Protestant claim is not that Scripture is uniformly perspicuous. To say background information is sometimes necessary to exegete a particular passage doesn't imply that all of Scripture or most of Scripture is obscure without the illumination and clarification of background information. 

iii) Apropos (ii), it's possible both to overemphasize and underemphasize the necessity of background information. Let's take a comparison. To understand the language in The Tempest, it helps to have an annotated edition, like A. L. Rowse. But once you known the language, the basic plot and motives of the characters are comprehensible. Indeed, Shakespeare wrote it to make sense on its own terms, at the level of the story. 

But according to Renaissance historian Frances Yates, The Tempest is a political allegory. Cf. The Occult Philosophy of the Elizabethan Age (Routledge, 1979), based on court wizard John Dee. Suppose we grant that interpretation for the sake of argument. That would mean there's a whole hidden dimension to The Tempest. It moves on two levels. There's the overt story, and then there's a parallel story it alludes to. A story behind the story. If true, that would certainly fill in our interpretation of The Tempest. It would go two-levels deep. 

But even if that's true, it doesn't invalidate the overt meaning of the story. The overt meaning of the story is independent of the subtext, in the sense that it's a self-contained story with a dramatic logic all its own. It can stand alone without any reference to the underlying allegory. It enjoys a certain interpretive autonomy in that regard. The story is complete without the allegory. 

By comparison, even if the reader is missing the subtext of certain biblical passages, that doesn't ipso facto falsify a textual reading. Knowledge of the subtext may enrich the overall interpretation, but it doesn't necessarily correct a textual reading.

Perspicuity

In this post I'd like to make two related observations. They're not directly related to teach other, but they share the same general topic, and it's more efficient to discuss them together than separately.

1. There are some Christians as well as former Christians who have an unwarranted expectation regarding the nature of Biblical communication. They fail to make certain allowances which they automatically make in ordinary human communication. For instance, when Proverbs makes blanket statements (e.g. Prov 22:6), they treat those as absolute promises. Likewise, when the NT makes blanket statements about prayer (Mt 21:22; Mk 11:24; Jn 14:13), they treat those as guarantees.

They have different rules for Scripture. They have the unspoken assumption that if God is talking, then we shouldn't have to make allowance for implicit conditions or qualifications.

In ordinary human communication, we use hyperbole. We generalize. But when it comes to Scripture, they suppose it ought to mean exactly what it says, without the unstated caveats, conventions, or limitations we take for granted in normal human communication.

It's a simple-minded expectation, like a child who complains that his parents broke their promise if some unforeseen contingency arises. They act as though God would be duplicitous if you had to nuance his statements. As a result, professing Christians who operate with that false expectation suffer a crisis of faith or lose their faith when God "breaks" his promise.

2. I think part of the problem is that you have Christians who read the Bible as if God is speaking directly to them. This segues into my second point. In response to Roman Catholicism, Protestant theologians emphasized the perspicuity of Scripture. Indeed, they may have exaggerated the perspicuity of Scripture. That's understandable, but the case for the Protestant faith doesn't require that.

If God appeared to me and spoke to me personally, the meaning of his statement might well be unequivocally clear to me. That's because God knows how I will understand or misunderstand a statement depending on how exactly that's worded.

Clarity of communication isn't a purely objective feature of speech. It depends on the listener as well as the speaker. What is clear to one person may be unclear to another.

Take opinion polling. The same question may have different connotations to different respondents. Or take an exam in which questions may be open to more than one interpretation. It's possible to overthink some exam questions. 

If the communication is individualized, and the communicator is omniscient, then that can forestall possible misunderstanding. But Scripture is a medium of mass communication. It isn't customized for each reader. In that respect, Scripture won't be equally clear to each reader.

However, a Magisterium is not a solution, not a genuine alternative, because the communications of a pope or ecumenical council will also be mass communication. Will also be a one-to-many communication. 

And even if (ex hypothesi), a pope or ecumenical council is infallible, that's not the same as omniscience. An infallible speaker can still be misunderstood, for unless he knows how the individual will construe his statement, his statement is still vulnerable to misinterpretation. So the Magisterium fails to solve the problem it poses for itself. 

The clarity of Scripture

http://www.waynegrudem.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Perspicuity-of-Scripture-for-Themelios-Word-97-3.pdf

Gregg Allison on Scripture and Its Interpretation

I’m working my way slowly (I apologize) through Gregg Allison’s work,“Roman Catholic Theology and Practice: An Evangelical Assessment”.

Throughout, Allison’s method is to show side-by side, the Roman Catholic beliefs, along with what an “Evangelical Assesment” of those beliefs might say. And he does it in the light of a methodology that he clearly articulates at the beginning.

This is necessarily a broad-brush treatment. Other than his role of the explication of Scripture, which describes in the briefest terms the “grammatical historical hermeneutic” by which most Evangelical Protestants understand Scripture, he fails, at the outset, I think, to show how Roman Catholics understand Scripture (in his text here, he makes a brief allusion to the Medieval “fourfold sense of Scripture”. But that is no longer an official methodology.)

Here is one place where he states what Evangelicals believe, without going into much detail of how Roman Catholics understand Scripture. I’ll give Allison’s overview of an Evangelical understanding of Scripture, then I’ll clarify “actual Catholic beliefs” about Scripture below:

Understanding Scripture: “What’s up with head coverings and eating blood?”

How to find the knowledge of God.

I’m loosely following a discussion over at Darryl Hart’s Old Life; a Roman Catholic who goes by the name of Cletus Van Damme seems to be a fair-minded Roman Catholic who nevertheless is befuddled about Scripture because of Roman Catholic teaching about what the Scriptures really are.

I’m going to go into some depth here, because if you truly want to understand the Scriptures, the Protestant principles, as articulated by the Reformers, genuinely shed light and give understanding, in ways and places that the Roman Catholic teachings have only served to confuse things.

[I also saw a very good opportunity here to distinguish between different kinds of “traditions”, and how different the “traditions” Paul is talking about are from the “living Tradition” of the Roman Catholic Church.]

Cletus van Damme (CVD)
Posted January 6, 2014 at 1:39 pm | Permalink

“You say that as if it were a bad thing”

Jonathan Prejean stepped out of retirement yesterday to ask me a few questions.

[Michael Liccione’s] point is simply that if Scripture was intended by God to function as you describe, then there would be observable consequences.

Just because the “observable consequences” are not what you expect, doesn’t take anything away from the view of the Scriptures that we hold.

We are constantly told, “If the Protestant perspicuity thesis were true, then over the past five hundred years we should expect to see not an explosion of fragmentation into various Protestant sects, but a coalescing into one body of all persons who in good faith attempt to discern the meaning of Scripture.”

This is a bogus condition to place on this view of Scripture at two levels.

Undermining Rome’s supposed “infallibility”

In comments below, Nick said:

I'd like to get your take on This Imputation (logizomai) Article. To me, this is what everything comes down to. This might sound arrogant, but I believe there's somewhat of a 'conspiracy' on the Protestant (especially Reformed) end to run away from the plain Biblical teaching on this matter.

Devin Rose cites D.A. Carson on Romans 4:3-5, “The passage is notoriously complex” (pg 50)

Then he says:

This is quite an astonishing admission by a well respected and very conservative scholar, since Protestants teach that the Bible alone is the only inspired source for Christian teaching, including the idea that Scripture clearly teaches all essential doctrines (i.e. Scripture is “perspicuous”). So, from the get to, Carson has not only admitted that Romans 4 is “notorious complex,” but also that Paul does not clearly state Christ’s righteousness is imputed. This should leave room for a long pause to consider the implications of these admissions: the chief proof text for Justification by Faith Alone, Romans 4:3, does not, by their own admission, clearly teach what they need it to teach.

Right from the start, Rose is guilty of misrepresenting what the doctrine of Sola Scriptura actually teaches. Here is what it actually says about “perspicuity”:

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.

Bryan Cross is “out there” saying things like this:

“when the participants do not exercise the discipline to withhold criticism of prima facie appearances or impressions of their interlocutor’s position, without first confirming that these appearances or impressions are accurate characterizations of their interlocutor’s position. Charity calls us to avoid setting up straw men of our interlocutor’s position, and so it calls to refrain from a shoot first ask questions later approach to our neighbor’s position. That’s a virtue necessary for fruitful rational dialogue”.

And yet that is the very thing that Devin Rose does. He sets up a straw man about perspicuity, and when one New Testament scholar says that a particular verse is “notoriously complex”, he is talking not about the doctrine itself, but the exegesis which goes into following the concept through the Scriptures.

Much of what Rose reports afterward is the in-house discussion, wherein naturally there is some disagreement. That disagreement does not undermine the central truths of the Scripture (“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”).

“Imputation of Christ’s righteousness” is not one of “those things” “necessary to be known, believed, and observed for salvation”. It is rather one of those things which “by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture”, and it is a way of understanding how Christ’s work actually saves us.

* * *

Rose refers to “a serious lack of integrity and honesty in Protestant scholarship and thinking when approaching and speaking on this subject”. This is hogwash. Later on, he talks about “‘drive by’ exegesis”, failing to realize that incredible amounts of work on this topic have already been done by those we understand as “the Reformed Orthodox”, those theologians of the 17th century who explored this question every which way.

Lane Keister notes on one such question, “You need to read some of the older Reformed exegesis here.” I haven’t read it all, but knowing “the older Reformed exegesis”, it is very thorough and not in the least dishonest.

Carson’s article is a very thorough and honest exegetical treatment of this word and topic. Very few people have the ability to do the type of exegesis that Carson did. And there is no need to re-invent the wheel.

In dismissing John Owen, Rose says: This ‘analysis’ of Owen is some of the most in-depth philosophically that I’ve found (I only quoted a portion for brevity), but Biblically it holds no weight. He literally invents a distinction and projects it right onto the Bible. His “antecedent” distinction (i.e. speaking of a quality possessed beforehand) has no basis in Scripture; he invented it simply to make Imputation work.

First, since when is a Roman Catholic averse to a philosophical treatment? But that’s not the real issue with Owen.

Carl Trueman notes that in Owen’s multiple and complex arguments in favor of the imputation of Christ’s righteousness, that he “is working within an established framework of standard [Reformed] Orthodox responses to criticisms of the mainstream position”.

>“As is typical of Owen, however, this lack of originality in the basic trajectories of argument does not prevent him from engaging in significant theological elaboration, of a kind which lays bare the sophisticated underlying structure of the Reformed Orthodox theology to which he is committed, particularly as it finds its ground in the doctrine of the Trinity, specifically the covenant of redemption and its determinative impact upon both the history and the order of salvation.”

I have no objection to Owen’s pursuit of the implications of “Reformed Orthodox theology”. It’s true that not everyone accepts it. And it’s likely that there are honest objections to it.

But Devin Rose’s is not an honest objection.

On the flip side, none of these objections do anything to explain what Reymond calls “Rome’s tragically defective representation” of justification. Rome is not just wrong, it is tragically wrong, and it has doubled-down [authoritatively, because it can do nothing else but assert its own authority].

Devin Rose takes the argument form that “Protestantism has conflicts, therefore Rome is correct”. But that is very wrong. One of the chief complaints that Protestants have been having with Bryan Cross over at Green Baggins and other places is that Bryan (following Rome) never puts forth an argument for Rome’s supposed authority. The only thing forthcoming on that score is something akin to Newman’s statement that “it is not a violent assumption” to assume that the Roman Catholic Church is somehow today the bearer of the authority that Christ gave to the apostles. And if you don’t hold to that assumption, anything you say is “begging the question”. Everything a Protestant says is “Begging the question”, and that is the response over there.

But that is a violent assumption, in today’s environment, where we know so much more about the earliest church than Newman ever could imagine.

In asking for an argument for the authority of the papacy, the CTC guys have put up the “Papacy Roundup”, articles full of assertions and “philosophical” treatments of why there is some necessity for Roman style of authority. Philosophically, it is argued that there is some need for some authority who can “infallibly” posit “the formal proximate object of faith”. But never argument either from Scripture or history that such a thing was ever provided by God, or required by God. Nor that the historically-developed Roman Catholic Church was ever the bearer of the Apostles’s authority.

Rome is very much like the emperor with no clothes. Strutting around, without any Scriptural or historical foundation for itself, beyond the fact that it inherited the vacated seat of power in Rome in the fifth century. Prior to that, there was no agreement that Rome, as a church, had any authority outside of its sphere of influence.

The Protestants rightly rejected that.

Getting back to Nick:

If people are really interested in a theological novum, this is it. It's a red-herring to suggest Augustine's view of "righteousness" was the real issue if the very notion of imputation is not being addressed.

Augustine’s was the prior “novum”. His is a foundational error. The issue that I’ve brought up is to show specifically one place where Rome’s supposed “infallibility” is undermined, and specifically how it is undermined. McGrath does a very good job of detailing the problem. In order to maintain its “infallibility”, Rome must have the temerity to argue that even though Augustine made a mistake, and Roman dogma at Trent followed Augustine’s mistake, “we still got it correct because we have the authority to define it as such”.

So much for the “formal proximate object of faith”, and its foundation in error.

If Rome is not what it says it is (i.e., if Rome is not “infallible”), then all the disputing Protestants in the world don’t make Rome what it says it is.