Maybe Scripture is true because the Holy Spirit says it is, but who is to say that the individual Baptist’s interpretation of the truth of Scripture is true? Doctrine does not emerge from the truth of Scripture, but from the understanding of the truth of Scripture, and so Scripture cannot be “sufficient authority for Christian doctrine.” A better formula: Scripture is true because the Church, whose witness Scripture is, says it is.

You state the evangelical belief is that the ultimate authority is not the Bible, but rather the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit leads one to accept the veracity of the Bible. That Word of God, being a written word, is the same for anyone. But obviously the interpretations, the sensus fidei, lifted from that Word are different for everyone.

So is there more than one Holy Spirit? Or is there another authority on Earth given to us to interpret the Bible?

You could just as well claim that the Holy Spirit guided you to believe in the authority of the Church to interpret the Bible, as the Church claims this authority. This claim is in Scripture.

Below is Vincent of Lerins' view of scripture. He was a fifth century monk:

"Since the canon of Scripture is complete, and sufficient of itself for everything, and more than sufficient, what need is there to join with it the authority of the Church's interpretation? For this reason — because, owing to the depth of Holy Scripture, all do not accept it in one and the same sense, but one understands its words in one way, another in another; so that it seems to be capable of as many interpretations as there are interpreters. For Novatian expounds it one way, Sabellius another, Donatus another, Arius, Eunomius, Macedonius, another, Photinus, Apollinaris, Priscillian, another, Iovinian, Pelagius, Celestius, another, lastly, Nestorius another. Therefore, it is very necessary, on account of so great intricacies of such various error, that the rule for the right understanding of the prophets and apostles should be framed in accordance with the standard of Ecclesiastical and Catholic interpretation.

"Moreover, in the Catholic Church itself, all possible care must be taken, that we hold that faith which has been believed everywhere, always, by all. For that is truly and in the strictest sense "Catholic," which, as the name itself and the reason of the thing declare, comprehends all universally. This rule we shall observe if we follow universality, antiquity, consent. We shall follow universality if we confess that one faith to be true, which the whole Church throughout the world confesses; antiquity, if we in no wise depart from those interpretations which it is manifest were notoriously held by our holy ancestors and fathers; consent, in like manner, if in antiquity itself we adhere to the consentient definitions and determinations of all, or at the least of almost all priests and doctors."

I can accede to the claim that scripture is the normal rule of faith and practice for the Christian, when said scripture is understood in accord with the uniform teaching of Christ's Church Universal throughout the ages. This is my colloquial restatement of the rule of St. Vincent of Lerins.

I note however that the Holy Spirit is not mentioned in his rule, which is because individuals can and have claimed the guidance of God's Spirit for nearly every heretical interpretation there has been, and thus, while the indwelling of the Spirit is indespensible for the Christian life, the invocation of the same is an unsafe guarantee of orthodoxy.

Is MacGabhann's statement a correct account of the Catholic position here?

I ask only because it seems there may be a ground-occasion conflation/equivocation in his argument. It's one thing to say that the Church is the authoritative interpreter of Scripture and yet something else to claim the authority of the church over Scripture. I frequently run across Catholic arguments that go something like this: The Church determined the canon, so the Church is authoritative over Scripture. But isn't what the Church actually did rather more like recognizing the voice of God in Scripture. Isn't the source of the authority of Scripture not the Church or the Church's recognition of the voice of God in Scripture but rather God Himself or the voice of God contained in his infallible revelation. The Church's recognition of the voice of God in Scripture, in the establishment of the canon, would seem to be the occasion upon which Scripture became authoritative or the canon becomes an authoritative canon, but not the ground of Scripture's authority, which is nothing other than God Himself.

Let me add this: even if Scripture is variously interpreted, it doesn't follow at all that it admits of any interpretation one can impose upon it. So the Church's interpretation can't be authoritative just by virtue of being the Church's interpretation. It would, given that Scripture is the revelation of God, have to authoritative by virtue of being the right interpretation. That is, isn't the Church captive to the Word of God, rather than the other way around? But doesn't MacGabhann's remarks suggest things are the other way around?

I'm thinking, for a moment, of Constitutional theory here. The way that some describe the relation of the Church to Scripture seems to mirror the way constitutional theorists who subscribe to the idea of a living Constitution (or legal realists) describe the relation of judges to the Constitution--the Constitution is really open to any construal you might imagine, so the Constitution is whatever judges say it is. But the Constitution isn't really as open as living constitutionalists and legal realists pretend--though it certain is ambiguous in places. Doesn't the same go for Scripture. Isn't someone who says it can be interpreted any which way, and for that reason we must have one authoritative interpreter really pretending that Scripture is more open ended than it is? We engage texts that require interpretation all the time without thinking that any interpretation we can come up with is just as good as any other.

Honest questions. To which I add this one: I've sometimes heard Catholic rebuttals to a position like the one Joe stakes out framed in a way that suggest the position is a priori and necessarily wrong--as if God couldn't actualize some possible world x that worked this way. That means the Catholic position would be this: Necessarily, God cannot create a world such that Scripture is authoritative and the right understanding of it is the work of the Holy Spirit, not necessarily mediated through a Magisterium. But how could it be impossible for an omnipotent God to actualize such a state of affairs? There's nothing necessarily inconsistent with His essential goodness that precludes it, so far as I can tell. Protestants generally think of the possible world I've described as the actual world. And the Catholic response usually seems to be--it not only is not but cannot be so. And it's the cannot be so part that I don't get.

@MacGabhann ***Maybe Scripture is true because the Holy Spirit says it is, but who is to say that the individual Baptist’s interpretation of the truth of Scripture is true?***

I would be leery of trusting any “individual Baptist’s interpretation”—including my own. Scripture is to be interpreted within the community, not by isolated individuals.

***Doctrine does not emerge from the truth of Scripture, but from the understanding of the truth of Scripture, and so Scripture cannot be “sufficient authority for Christian doctrine.”***

I have to disagree with you on that point. I agree with the Westminster Confession of Faith which states:

“IX. The infallible rule of interpretation of Scripture, is the Scripture itself; and therefore, when there is a question about the true and full sense of any scripture (which is not manifold, but one), it may be searched and known by other places that speak more clearly.

X. 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.”

***A better formula: Scripture is true because the Church, whose witness Scripture is, says it is.***

But where does the Church (assuming you mean the Catholic Church) derive it’s authority?

@Brian L. ***So is there more than one Holy Spirit? Or is there another authority on Earth given to us to interpret the Bible? ***

I would say that the only ultimate authority to interpret the Bible is Scripture itself. History has shown that there is no other infallible authority.

Sixty-six books, Joe? Hmm...that number seems a little low to me.... Oh, I remember now: that's the number of books in the Reader's Digest abridgment of the Bible used by Protestants.

I don't know, Joe. Supposedly I'm Lutheran, but I'm slowly coming around on this one. Maybe it comes from being in a "church body" where there are 2 (sometimes more) groups of people, communities, if you will, claiming inspiration of the Holy Spirit for two vastly different, radically opposed, mutually exclusive readings of Scripture. Who decides which one is really the Holy Spirit's inspiration?

The idea of Scripture alone being the sole and final authority - and self-authenticating at that - has always, as far as I can see, had the central flaw of Scripture not being codified for four centuries after the time of Christ. There simply wasn't a library of books to point to or check against each other. It tweaks the intellect a bit to have to just accept that God didn't provide the sure means of knowing truth for the first four centuries of Christianity.


And Joe's reliance on the "sixty-six" remains at final analysis a reliance on an extra-Biblical conclusion.


When Joe raises the question: "But where does the Church (assuming you mean the Catholic Church) derive it’s authority?" - the answer is, in a sense, it doesn't 'derive' it from anywhere; for four centuries, the Apostles and those to whom they passed on their shepherding authority were the only game in town.

Not to get lost in the LDS weeds, but cannot this same argument be used to demonstrate that the Book of Mormon is also true and from God? That is certainly the argument that the missionaries who visited me recently made. In fact, the Book of Mormon is even more emphatic about it's own truthfulness, whereas the Bible (at least the NT) is much less explicit about the veracity of the text itself.

Each time I meet with the Mormons, I am asked to pray to find out whether the Book of Mormon is true. It claims to be, and the Holy Ghost will confirm it to me. It worked for those guys. Why shouldn't it work for me?

(N.B. I am not in any way considering jumping to the LDS church. Just pointing out that the arguments given above are nearly word-for-word identical to the arguments supporting the B of M.)

@JDD Well of course scripture was "codified" before the fourth century, you forget the Hebrew Scriptures which were used as authorities by Jesus, Paul and the other disciples.

"Isn't it circular reasoning to claim that Scripture is authoritative because it says it is? "

Yes, it is circular reasoning, and that's one reason--among many--that the church loses many potential Christians; if that is the only reason to believe--because the Bible tells them so--they perceive Christianity as completely illogical. But it need not be. Sola scriptura is a Protestant artifact. The Bible is the result of the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and the result of Christ's life, not the source. Christianity was vibrant before the Bible, as we know it, even existed. Were that idea to become clear, we'd have a lot more Christians.

In fact, the New Testament wasn't officially scripture until the end of the second century AD. Until then the only "Bible" that existed was the Old Testament. Whenever the scriptures are mentioned in the New Testament, they are referring to the Old Testament. It took almost 200 years for the epistles, sermons and first-hand accounts to become codified and elevated into what we now know as the New Testament.

So, if there was no New Testament, what did all those Christians in the first two centuries do for inspiration? They used copies of copies of the testimonies of the apostles, and whatever letters and sermons of the apostles and the Fathers they might be able to obtain. Oral testimony. And pictures--icons--for those who could not read. And they worshipped for hours a week and believed something fervently as exactly it was passed down to them, even though no Bible with a New Testament as we know it yet existed. They believed fervently enough to lay down their lives with nary a "Bible" in sight.

I think they would have sung something like"Jesus loves me, yes I know, for He, Himself, and his apostles, and eyewitnesses, and the Church Fathers tell me so." Christianity has had a strong, living tradition from its very beginning, requiring little further interpretation--certainly not yours or mine.

As far as authority goes, the church fathers in the first 500 years or so of Christianity hammered out most of the misunderstandings and heresies among Christ's followers--long before the first Protestant was a fond gleam in his Father's eye. Christianity requires only that its followers adhere to its original tenets--tenets that make it a religion beautiful beyond imagination. More Christians should become familiar with the Patristic Era and the works of the Church Fathers.

Mysterious and transcendent? Certainly. Illogical? No.

Mr. Carter,
Thanks for this post because it reminds me of my own childhood. Sword drills were always such a source of excitement. And I have travelled a similar path as I grew up, understanding that there is so much more than just memorizing the specifics about the Bible, rather than its content. May I enquire whether you are still a baptist?

Come on Paige, go easy on us Protestants for having 66 books. History takes a long time to make things happen, and Protestants have only been around for about 500 years, most in NA less than that. It will take time to recognize the benefit and teachings of the Apocrypha.

Joe:
I think I prefer the Jesus', Paul's and St. Anthony's formulation.

- "John 14:10 Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. 11 Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves." NIV

- 1 Corinthians 2:4 And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power: 5 That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.

- Here's Ramsay MacMullen's take on St. Anthony's view of these things from MacMullen's book, Christianizing the Roman Empire:
"…here is how Saint Athanasius in the 350s, writing the Life of Saint Anthony, depicted the old man demonstrating the superiority of Christianity. He had been visited and challenged by 'persons counted as wise among pagans' (§74). In answer to them, he undertook to offer proof (§80) that 'believing, pistis, in Christ is the only true religiousness,' derived not by 'seeking logical conclusions through reasoning' but rather through that believing in itself.

'We convince,' he says, 'because people first trust in what they can actually see, and then in reasoned argument.'

Well said!—defining in a few words a distinction (I have called it "proof and content") and a sequence already met with in dozens of scenes. But Anthony adds, as his biographer imagines,

'Look now: here are some folk suffering from daimones' (for there were present some who were troubled by demons and had come to him; so he brought them forward, and went on). 'Either cleanse these men by your logic-chopping or by any other skill or magic you wish, and calling on your idols, or otherwise, if you can't, lay down your quarrel with us and witness the power of Christ's cross.'

And with these words he called on Christ, sealed the sufferers with the sign of the cross twice and a third time, and straightway the men stood forth all healed.'"

Here's my take on it: Bubble Boy Christianity http://bit.ly/d8lxwx

The underlying question is what authority you appeal to. If you argue that you appeal to the authority of the Bible because it's reasonable to do so, the authority you're ultimately appealing to is the authority of reason. But should you?

Just as empiricists eventually run up against the problem that their senses are not necessarily reliable, so rationalists eventually run up against the problem that neither is their reason. Much of advanced mathematics and physics consists of counterintuitive ideas that defy certain notions that most people would regard as a matter of simple logic or common sense. What we look to as reason, in other words, sometimes fails us, and so we go back and amend our definition of it to make it over into something that's consistent with, say, quantum physics.

Reason is educable too, always subject to further development or refinement. We understand this much through reason itself -- which is to say that reason is humble and honest, that it's always telling us (but do we listen?) that, no, it's not the ultimate authority.

Meanwhile, we have to live our lives, make decisions, exercise our will one way or another. There's no getting around it: Not to make a decision would be to make the decision not to make a decision. This being the case, what authority can I turn to for guidance about how to live this life I find myself living? My own ego? My imperfect ability to reason? The Bible?

"The Bible" is a traditionally Protestant answer. The Catholic and Orthodox answer assumes the Bible as something incorporated into a larger body that has been conceived by and is still being fed by the Holy Spirit, as Joe, I think, might agree.

Mr. Carter:

** X. 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.”**

This here is the form of an authoritative statement that relies on an extra-scriptural understanding of the authority of Scripture to establish the authority of Scripture. It does not confute my observation, but confirms it, viz., Doctrine arises, not from the truth of Scripture, but from the understanding of the truth of Scripture, and so Scripture cannot be “sufficient authority for Christian Doctrine.” That, in this case, the truth of the understanding of the Westminster Confession is defective does not change the fact that its formation of doctrine depends on an extra-scriptural authority of understanding.


**Scripture is to be interpreted within the community, not by isolated individuals.**

And is this community an historical community? For example, if a churchly community at Chalcedon, say, declares as true an interpretation of some aspect of Scripture, then is it coherent that the same community at a later time, or a community that regards itself as the same community, should interpret the same aspect of Scripture in such a way that it fundamentally contradicts the interpretation at Chalcedon? I would think not, for precisely what makes the later community the same as the earlier community is that it incorporates the earlier interpretation to itself. If it were to repudiate the earlier interpretation, then it would cease to be the same community. The later community may further develop and add to interpretations and still remain the same community so long as it does not reject or contradict the truth of earlier interpretations. Such a community would participate in a Tradition which bestows on it a self regulatory form and openness to the explication of further truth. And there can only be one such community in truth, for the Holy Spirit cannot be divided.

** But where does the Church (assuming you mean the Catholic Church) derive it’s authority?**

From Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ founded his Church so that, together with the Holy Spirit, it would proclaim him to all the world so that all men might be saved through him. The form of her proclamation consisted in 1) establishing a scriptural cannon that testified to her witness to Jesus Christ, the Word of God, 2) developing definitive doctrine to explicate and hold fast to the truth of her witness, and by 3) instituting the sacramental life of grace through which all members of the Church together participate in the body and life of Christ.
It is the Church, together with the Holy Spirit, that bestows the authority of Scripture. It is not the other way around. To accept her scriptural witness one must accept her authority to proclaim it.

2 Thesalonians 2:15-17
So then, brethren, stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye were taught, whether by word, or by epistle of ours. Now may our Lord Jesus Christ Himself and God our Father, who has loved us and given us eternal comfort and good hope by grace, comfort and strengthen your hearts in every good work and word.

Hi Joseph,
Some years back I happened upon the Larry King Show where he was interviewing a minister of an Evangelical church and minister of another Protestant denomination which escapes me. The subject was the actively gay life. One man said that homosexual living was always wrong and sinful.Upon asked by King how he knew this he said he knew it because of the Holy Spirit speaking through the Bible. The other minister said that it was not always wrong or sinful and indicated that he knew this from the Bible as inspired by the Holy Spirit. Whereupon Larry King asked: "So which Holy Spirit do Christians believe?" Sola Scriptura has so many unintended consequences.
Joe, I very much enjoy your articles even when we disagree.

Angels dancing on the head of a pin, here. I strongly suspect commenters of arguing a particular POV with the idea of trapping others into "See, my church was right all along, just like we told you but you wouldn't listen." Defensive tribalism in open discussion does not strike me as a hallmark of the Holy Spirit. Neener, neener. Dig?

In the West, we tend to frame the debate as occurring between Catholics and Protestants, with the Protestants having further internal debates. This neglects a rather large Orthodox and smaller Coptic population. So here. The Catholic arguers of the idea of descending authority of the Church as primary, don't seem to notice a few other guys hanging about who can make the same claim. As to the suggestion that there was some generally identifiable true tradition in the early centuries that they have and Protestants don't, history records rather that there were many traditions, right from the start, and the Church coalescing around Rome drew from many of them.

As to logical circles, we should expect that. It is true not only of Christianity, but of any belief, including Buddhism, atheism, Islam. Trying to identify the one point we can hold amidst the flood - "Can we rely on the Scriptures without the Spirit?" "Can we rely on the Church without the Scriptures?" "Can we rely on the Spirit with no earthly visible assistance?" - are theoretical, not practical arguments. Should not faith figure prominently in the discussion? Should not grace? We might say that the Spirit can exist in isolation from the others, but it cannot exist for us without some point of earthly contact - and the others do not exist independently of each other. Even in the early centuries, when the scriptures were in oral and scattered form, the Church relied on them and appealed to them as authority in disputes.

Now folks, don' t lump me in with that character who constantly goads readers to visit his blog that will prove the Catholic Church teaches what it doesn't teach! However, this discussion inexorably leads to the question of whether it was necessary to have a "protestantism," and of course being Orthodox (but a convert from Lutheranism!) I say NOT. I offer for consideration (and ask you all to forgive me for being verbose) something I wrote for a 200 level class I took at an Evangelical college. The context was a professor's challenge for us to see the "liberating" effect of Luther's innovation:

"I am indebted to Dom Gregory Dix for a great deal of what follows, though I do not have his book, “The Shape of the Liturgy,” close to hand. But I am convinced that Dix was on to something important when he suggested that, for Luther and the first two generations of reformers, the worship and piety of medieval Catholicism played a much greater role than either the Scriptures or critical thinking in what would eventually become the confusing, contradictory amalgamation that is Protestantism.
To begin with, the pre-Nicene Christians were in fairly constant danger, not due to excessive street corner evangelism or “train-station tract ministry,” but from their resolute insistence on participation in the Church’s worship. In fact, Dix shows that it was worship that kept the Church in hot water, not “faith” as some sort of opinion, or necessarily the making of new adherents. Christians, when they attended the Liturgy on successive, early, early Sunday mornings, were taking part in an unlawful religious assembly; that’s precisely the Roman law they were accused of breaking, and it is for this reason alone that they were arrested. Their “faith” or “teaching” mattered to the Roman government not at all; the Romans knew that religion which didn’t express itself in worship was too unsubstantial to demand any constabulary attention.
What is often missed, and missed almost entirely by the reformers, is the obvious importance being together faithfully and regularly in worship held for the earliest Christians. Thousands of ordinary men and women risked their lives each and every Sunday, not by passing out tracts or street preaching, but by simply attending Liturgy, “the work of the people.” Their insistence on being present for the Eucharist in the face of the very real danger involved, I would suggest, casts a great deal of light on what they actually believed about what they were doing. It was obviously something a great deal bigger than the familiar, “Jesus in my heart” notions held by a large number of Protestants. I would contend they believed it was something a good deal more profound than just a memorial when they partook of the Eucharist. I would further suggest, on evidence, that they assumed this corporate work to be extremely germane to their salvation. Faith that did not express itself in worship would have been incomprehensible to them, would likely not have deserved the name of “faith.”
Conversely, in the early middle ages and only in the west, we begin to see the advent of the low mass. Long before the time of the reformers, this was done with only a priest and a server. The Council of Trent would later make some interesting points in defense of the practice; the notion of a nearly ‘round the clock cycle of mumbled masses in a large cathedral like the Frauenkirchen in Munich, or the Duomo in Florence, could arguably be construed as a constant prayer over the daily bread and activities of the city. But it could not exactly be equated with the ideas about corporate worship held by the early Christians. A liturgy said “for” an absent person, living or dead, endowed by people who are not even part of the prayer is not quite the same as “the work of the people.”
What is even more pertinent to the reformers and their sensibilities is that this had been the primary Holy Communion experience for all of them, and for all their lives. The cathedrals and larger churches still had the Chapter High Mass on Sundays, yet most of the choir offices which used the haunting strains of Gregorian chant were often sung only by the cloistered chapter of monks themselves. For the lion’s share of the rank and file, “going to church” meant standing or sitting in a dimly lit building while a priest and a server mumbled back and forth at each other in an incomprehensible language. Instead of a liturgy to be done by clergy and lay people together, it had become a thing done exclusively by the clergy; the laity, whom this was ostensibly done “for,” were not even necessary. The weekday leisured, especially, were able to sit in quiet pews, quite apart from anyone else and not at all “annoyed” by what might be going on at the altar, free to pursue their own private devotions. With the advent of the printing press, there was a plethora of devotional aids to the “ghostly exercise” of the spirit; things to think about the mass instead of actually participating in it. Small wonder, then, that the results were highly individualistic, as varied as the number of the “liberated” when Luther’s dubiously anointed conscience overtook him.
While Luther himself was reluctant to change much about what got done on Sunday morning, his cronies and their successors were certainly not. The mass had long ago ceased to be a corporate undertaking, anyway. Dix, with a great deal of ironic wit, describes the Communion Service of noted English reformer Richard Baxter, a document of some fifty-five or sixty pages. It contained repeated harangues regarding the danger of inappropriately receiving what he argued were mere bread and wine, other harangues about what ghostly exercises the people should be doing while the minister was praying aloud, snippets of scripture to “strike pious fear and self-loathing into their hearts,” and yet more admonitions about further ghostly exercises to correct what might have been lacking in the prior ghostly exercises. Nervous introspection alone was stressed. And it should now be obvious that except for being said in the people’s spoken language it was exactly like the low mass Baxter purportedly spurned: The entire service was done by the minister alone, the people not once opening their mouths until page forty-six, and then only to receive the bread and wine itself. All of Baxter’s “ghostly exercises” were, with more scripture tacked on to them, simply recycled from what had been used for generations of Catholics at low mass.
The common thread here has rather little to do with scripture and a great deal to do with individualized piety. Luther merely articulated something about the perversions of institutional piety in the Ninety-five Theses, but did nothing in the way of challenging the conventional piety itself. He did not really, either, challenge numerous important epistemological underpinnings at all in any of his numerous solas. The “tyranny of the church” had long ago been replaced, anyhow, by the tyranny of the individual conscience. And this has grown into the tyranny of at least, to date, thirty-thousand other radically individual consciences, and counting. And sophomoric, self-styled agnostic undergrads are simply acting as good, non-conformist Protestants when, first confronted with the demands of Jesus Christ, they immediately respond with statements about oppressive religious organizations imposing things on consciences and negating free opinions. Not just Protestant Christians, but the whole North American continent has truly assimilated the teaching of Martin Luther!
Is this unfair to Luther? Perhaps. The winsome notions that he didn’t intend to start a new Church is familiar to folks across denominational lines, even to the Orthodox. I don’t think it matters. Luther was not so stupid as to be innocent of the radical nature of what he was proposing. The results of the radical individualism Luther lit fire to are simply not inspiring; the “success” is extremely dubious. It’s still not clear to me how this has honored the words of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in, among other places, John 17."

Again, apologies for verbosity, but it reflects, I think, an Eastern Orthodox way of considering this matter.

If Martin Luther came up with his criteria for determining the canon of scripture, why can't I? Who has authority for such matters? The Church has always understood, and is confirmed by scripture, that such authority was given to Peter and his successors when Jesus gave him the keys of the kingdom. Is there scripture to confirm that Martin Luther or John Calving or anyone else has such authority?

Keep in mind that this is only Part I of a two part series. While I don't think that what I write next week will change the mind of many Catholics, it will provide better context for the claims made in this essay.

I will say, though, that there seems to be some confusion about what Protestant's believe on the doctrine of Sola Scriptura. It does *not* mean that the Bible is the only authority in the church. Rather, they meant that the Bible is the only *infallible* authority in the church.

What it means is that we only accept one source of infalliable special revelation as oppossed to the two that Catholics accpet (Scripture and Tradition).

I'm certainly not one of those loosey-goosey evangelicals that think the Holy Spirit and I can carry out a private Bible study and I'll get everything right. Doctrine is developed by the community of believers searching the Scripture and laying them out in a systematic way. This is why we need creeds. But where we differ from Catholics is that we do not think the any other extra-scriptural source (including the creeds) are infalliable. They are all subject to reformation and revision based on an increased understanding provided by the Holy Spirit.

That is why we say that the Bible is the sole ultimate authority—it is the only source that is infallible. I'm sure that some serious Catholics can make a strong case how the Church has made infalliable pronoucments throughout its history. But I hope you can realize why so many of us are skeptical.

Oh, and I'm curious about the reasoning of those that say the Church establishes the authority of the Bible and yet also say that the authority of the Papacy is derived from the Bible. How exactly does that work? ; )

@Jon Rowe ***May I enquire whether you are still a baptist?***

Technically, yes. Although I don't currently attend a Southern Baptist church (I go to a Reformed nondenominational church) I still consider myself a Southern Baptist.

While I may not sit in the pews with them on Sundays, I'll have to caucus with the Baptists when we get to heaven.

"Oh, and I'm curious about the reasoning of those that say the Church establishes the authority of the Bible and yet also say that the authority of the Papacy is derived from the Bible. How exactly does that work? ; ) "


You've touched on what I think is a very crucial question, and at one point some time ago I realized that I held that circular belief at least subconsiously. You'll notice I didn't claim it in my previous post. :)


That word "derived" is hanging us up again. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but the crucial point is that Catholicism doesn't claim the papacy is outright derived from the Bible - rather that it is supported by it.


Just like the Scriptures describe a number of things that were already "in place" at the time of the writing.

Joe,

"I will say, though, that there seems to be some confusion about what Protestant's believe on the doctrine of Sola Scriptura. It does *not* mean that the Bible is the only authority in the church. Rather, they meant that the Bible is the only *infallible* authority in the church." This is an interesting point and a good one. Clearly, Catholics speak of more than one source of trustworthy or infallible authority as you state: "It is clear, therefore, that sacred tradition, Sacred Scripture and the teaching authority of the Church, in accord with God's most wise design, are so linked and joined together that one cannot stand without the others, and that all together and each in its own way under the action of the one Holy Spirit contribute effectively to the salvation of souls" (Dei Verbum 10). On the other hand, Catholics are sometimes too willing to speak of Tradition and the Magisterium as equal in authority to the Scriptures. I am not certain of this; Dei Verbum 10, just prior to the previous quote, states, "But the task of authentically interpreting the word of God, whether written or handed on, has been entrusted exclusively to the living teaching office of the Church, whose authority is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ. This teaching office is not above the word of God, but serves it, teaching only what has been handed on, listening to it devoutly, guarding it scrupulously and explaining it faithfully in accord with a divine commission and with the help of the Holy Spirit, it draws from this one deposit of faith everything which it presents for belief as divinely revealed." "This teaching office is not above the word of God, but serves it" is an important point. Too often Catholics see Scripture as an addendum to the faith and not the "heart" of it. Indeed, the Church gathered and chose the texts, but they were inspired by God and reflect the truth of the faith, which all Christians must agree is Jesus Christ himself. I want to say more, but I have blog posts on this very topic to write for America Magazine on "What is the Good Word?" Come on over, won't you all? It would be wonderful to have some evangelical readers (and others) respond to a Catholic position on Scripture:http://americamagazine.org/blog/entry.cfm?blog_id=1&entry_id=3403.

Mr. Carter, Paul:

**But where we differ from Catholics is that we do not think the any other extra-scriptural source (including the creeds) are infalliable. **

I feel a point is being missed here. The bottom line is that if you do not have an extra-scriptural source that is ”infallible”, then neither can Scripture be “infallible”. The meaning of infallible is to be known without deception. The truth, as the manifested Word of God, is not constituted, or made manifest, simply by what is proclaimed, but also by being understood as the truth. If a man tells the truth about something, but everybody misunderstands what he says, then the truth about what is said has not been made manifest. The proclamation, or witness, cannot be separated from the understanding of the proclamation, yet the understanding is not part of the proclamation. If there is no certainty with respect to the understanding then it follows that there is no certainty with respect to the proclamation presented to understanding. When Jesus asked the disciples “But you, who do you say I am?” and Peter replied, “You are the living Christ,” it was at this point that the Word of God became “truly,” infallibly, manifest and it was at, and from, this point that Jesus could found his Church. For the Church is the foundation point (the rock) at which the proclamation of the Word and the recognition of the Word converge to manifest truth in this world. The Church’s mission is to hold fast to this truth, not just by serving the proclamation (through her scriptural and sacramental witness), but also by safeguarding and promoting its recognition through her creeds and doctrines.

"Assuming that the Spirit has in fact guided me to believe the premise, I have a rational, reasonable, non-circular reason for believing that the Bible is true. "

That's quite an assumption, no? How do you discern a prompting of the Holy Spirit from personal whims or emotions?

I've heard and read many statements from Christians who insist the Holy Spirit led them to believe x or y about the Bible, and these claims were often mutually exclusive. Someone's incorrect.

It seems you're back to circular reasoning: I know I'm being led by the Spirit because I believe it's so.

We all have different reasons for believing as we believe.

I am a Catholic. Scripture attests to the fact that Jesus left us a Shepherd (Peter) but did not leave us further Scriptures. Ever since I realized this, I have not had any temptation to protestantism.

As far as infallibility goes, the statement "what you bind on earth is bound in heaven" is pretty clear. Has anybody ever noticed that this statement from Jesus in Matthew 16 is followed by an example in Matthew 17? Peter is initially wrong about paying the Temple Tax, but Jesus calls him aside and makes him right (by telling him to fish for a shekel to pay the tax) to avoid the scandal of Peter being "wrong".

Anyway, it seems to me that the Church points to and imbibes Scripture, Scripture describes a Church with Authorities (magisterium), and both have been handed down to us (traditio) through history. We cannot realistically expect to separate Scripture and Magisterium and Tradition without grave distortion and even blindness. We are bound by all and any 3, each of them framing and explaining and containing the other 2.

Joe Carter wrote:
"What it means is that we only accept one source of infalliable special revelation as oppossed to the two that Catholics accpet (Scripture and Tradition). "

Gibraltar replies:
Joe, thanks for your thoughts in this article. Don't you see that Scripture is "part of" Tradition? Scripture is handed down. You can't divide up Tradition and Scripture like that, without devastating effects on the One Body of Jesus, or rather, without leaving the unity of the Church which cannot be divided.

In response to the Protestant notion that the Holy Spirit + the individual reader = a firm basis for belief, I yield the floor to St. Edmund Campion:

"I would ask them what right they have to rend and mutilate the body of the Bible. They would answer that they do not cut out true Scriptures, but prune away supposititious accretions. By authority of what judge? By the Holy Ghost. This is the answer prescribed by Calvin (Instit. lib. I, c. 7), for escaping this judgment of the Church whereby spirits of prophesy are examined. Why then do some of you tear out one piece of Scripture, and others another, whereas you all boast of being led by the same Spirit? The Spirit of the Calvinists receives six Epistles which do not please the Lutheran Spirit, both all the while in full confidence reposing on the Holy Ghost. The Anabaptists call the book of Job a fable, intermixed with tragedy and comedy. How do they know? The Spirit has taught them. Whereas the Song of Solomon is admired by Catholics as a paradise of the soul, a hidden manna, and rich delight in Christ, Castalio, a lewd rogue, has reckoned it nothing better than a love-song about a mistress, and an amorous conversation with Court flunkeys. Whence drew he that intimation? From the Spirit. In the Apocalypse of John, every jot and tittle of which Jerane declares to bear some lofty and magnificent meaning, Luther and Brent and Kemnitz, critics hard to please, find something wanting, and are inclined to throw over the whole book. Whom have they consulted? The Spirit. Luther with preposterous heat pits the Four Gospels one against another (Praef. in Nov. Test.), and far prefers Paul's Epistles to the first three, while he declares the Gospel of St. John above the rest to be beautiful, true, and worthy of mention in the first place,thereby enrolling even the Apostles, so far as in him lay, as having a hand in his quarrels. Who taught him to do that? The Spirit. Nay this imp of a friar has not hesitated in petulant style to assail Luke's Gospel because therein good and virtuous works are frequently commended to us. Whom did he consult? The Spirit. Theodore Beza has dared to carp at, as a corruption and perversion of the original, that mystical word from the twenty-second chapter of Luke, this is the chalice, the new testament in my blood, which (chalice) shall be shed for you [Greek: potaerion ekchunomenon], because this language admits of no explanation other than that of the wine in the chalice being converted into the true blood of Christ. Who pointed that out? The Spirit. In short, in believing all things every man in the faith of his own spirit, they horribly belie and blaspheme the name of the Holy Ghost."

Ok, Joe, so the Holy Spirit testified to the Bible for you. This is not, honestly, much more intellectually satisfying than saying "Jesus loves me" etc. How did this work? Did you pray over each book of Scripture and wait for a burning in the bosom? Are you sure it wasn't indigestion? Or did you cast replicas of the Urim and the Thummim? What did you do for the disputed verses of Daniel -- did the Holy Spirit instruct you about those as well? Did you pray over 1 Maccabees and reject it? How about 3 Maccabees? Enoch? The Gospel of Thomas? The Bhavaga Gita? Are you sure you got all the books?

Honest, I am not being sarcastic. These are questions that demand answers.

This is what I think happened, and you can correct me if I am wrong. Way back when, someone in your church (your parents, maybe?) handed you a Bible of 66 books. You believed them that the books belonged together and had the correct number of verses. You read it, it seemed good and salutary to you, so you concluded that the Bible with 66 books (and no more) must be inspired and inerrant.

But what really happened is that you believed a tradition. Someone determined that those 66 books were the Bible. That someone, by the way, was Luther and his friends. (Luther, left to his own devices, would have thrown out James, Hebrews, Revelation, and a few other books.) Maybe you confirmed the tradition with the Holy Spirit, but it still depended on the tradition, because unless you did what I said earlier, you did not independently (based on the Holy Spirit alone) prove that every book and only those books which are in your bible are the inspired and inerrant written Word of God.

There is no question that the issue of 'authority' remains a main issue for Christians in general. FYI, I am a Catholic. As we move into the second decade of the twenty-first century Christians who do not believe that the culture, the latest opinion poll or popular movement are the ultimate authority and norm according to which we live, need to look at 'the foundations of our ability to believe and have faith.

All Christians can and should affirm that God the Father is the Source of revelation. That His revelation is fundamentally the revelation of Himself first in His creation, then in history [Israel] and then fully and ultimately in and through Christ by the Holy Spirit. God's revelation is the revelation of Himself and His saving will [plan of salvation and what He calls us to be and do]

I think all Christians can and should say that Christ passed on everything necessary for our salvation to the Apostles in and by the Holy Spirit. He handed over the Jewish Scriptures in His own teaching pre-and post Easter, and with this the Jewish Scriptures became 'the Old Testament' [the Greek version of the Jewish Scriptures gives us the "Catholic" number of books in the Old Testament; the Hebrew version of the Jewish Scriptures gives us the "Protestant" number of Books in the Old Testament]

It is also obvious that all Christians believe that the 27 'books' of the New Testament are authoritative and normative, However, how did we come to this? Actually, the recent hooplah surrounding the Davinci Code gave Christians an opportunity to look at this again-together!

I do not believe thumping each other over the head saying "My Bible is better than yours' does anyone any good. While there are still some very real divisions over the issue of authority in Christianity, can we at least say that this is the key question [in this area]? The question is not about the authority of the bible. The question is the issue of authority within Christianity, the various 'traditional' responses to that question, seeing the question not only in terms of 1517 [Luther] or 1545 [Council of Trent] but seeing the issue within the bigger picture: the crisis both philosophical, theological and spiritual of the two hundred years prior to 1517. And even going back further-as Catholics and Orthodox are discovering-in our own dialogue concerning authority as it is exercised now in both Churches, and how it was exercised in the 'undivided Church' of the first Millenium

Discussing our 'differences' is always helpful. However in the twenty-first century with fundamentalist secularism and post-modern deconstructionists and even facing nihilism, is it not time for us to remember those words of Christ in Matthew's Gospel: You have one father, the Father in heaven; you have one teacher, the Christ' Matthew 23? Oh Catholics and Protestants do indeed differ how Christ teaches, but let us begin with Him, His authority and what He wanted passed down to each generation

I want to briefly respond a bit to the comments coming up about the worth of the topic, or the perceived motivations of the commenters.


Assistant Village Idiot says: “I strongly suspect commenters of arguing a particular POV with the idea of trapping others into "See, my church was right all along, just like we told you but you wouldn't listen." Defensive tribalism in open discussion does not strike me as a hallmark of the Holy Spirit.”


I think that assumption is badly off the mark with most (if not all) of the posters here. First of all – to be blunt, it’s the topic of the thread. Secondly, many of us believe this topic is paramount to Christian life, and what we’re discussing is God’s ways of communicating His truth and love to us. Of course we want to get it right.


Botolph says: “Oh Catholics and Protestants do indeed differ how Christ teaches, but let us begin with Him, His authority and what He wanted passed down to each generation”


I think your post is pretty good up to this last sentence, where you appear to advocate one thing, and then the other. We differ on ‘how Christ teaches’, but let us begin with ‘his authority’ and ‘what he wanted passed down’? That’s the kind of comment that tends to leave the discussers unclear on what they just agreed on, and the discussion with nowhere left to go.


Why have the conversation? I think “ahem” articulates the reason extremely well, when (s)he writes:


"Isn't it circular reasoning to claim that Scripture is authoritative because it says it is? "


“Yes, it is circular reasoning, and that's one reason--among many--that the church loses many potential Christians; if that is the only reason to believe--because the Bible tells them so--they perceive Christianity as completely illogical. But it need not be.”


“Christianity was vibrant before the Bible, as we know it, even existed. Were that idea to become clear, we'd have a lot more Christians.”


For those of us who want the world – including close neighbors, friends and loved ones - to stop dismissing Christianity because there are 40,000 branches of it, this conversation is neither tribal nor petty.

Paul states the Catholic position on the Church's role with Scripture thusly:
"The Church determined the canon, so the Church is authoritative over Scripture...."

That perhaps is an adequate statement of the Church's relationship to the Old Testament, but the Church--through its members, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Peter, Paul, James and Jude--is actually the author of the New Testament, inspired by god Himself Who is also the Author of both Testaments.

@ Alan,

Most thoughtful Protestants I know don't hold the position you attribute them. Joe certainly doesn't. Nor does what he says entail it.

@ MacGabhann,

Evangelical Protestants do posit an infallible, extra-biblical source of an infallible Scripture: God. Your argument depends on proving that Biblical infallibility requires two infallible sources: God and Church. If God is infallible and Scripture is the Word of God, why must the Church also be infallible in order for Scripture to be? Your position, so far as I can tell, is a non sequitur. There's a missing middle term (or possibly major premise--hard to tell here) to the argument. And here I'm not arguing that the Church is not infallible. I'm only concerned with the relation of Church and Scripture. And, at any rate, if one distinguishes the occasion upon which Scripture becomes authoritative for faith and practice from the ground of that authority, then it wouldn't seem an infallible Church is necessary. Again, this apart from the veracity of your conclusion. It's the argument for the conclusion that I find problematic.

@ Patricksarsfield,

I didn't say (or mean to at any rate) that the position of the RCC is what is contained in the quote. I said that in many exchanges this seems to be the argument of Catholic apologists--especially in this thread. RC apologists in this thread have posited the authority of the Church over Scripture and then given an argument like that for that authority. Now, the Catholic position is one thing, and the arguments folks make for that position, as they understand it, another. I was picking bones with the various arguments rather than the position itself.

Eric E's reply to Joe saddles Joe's argument with the assumption of an internalist epistemology. But Joe's argument doesn't presuppose any such theory of knowledge. If Joe has true belief with respect to the veracity of Scripture and its authority and if that true belief is warranted, then Joe knows that Scripture is true. The testimony of the Holy Spirit would seem to provide warrant. But Joe doesn't need internal certainty that He was testified to by the Holy Spirit for knowledge. It needs only to have happened. Responses like Eric E's amount to something like this: "Joe, how do you know that you know?" Or "How do you know the Holy Spirit testified to you?" But for Joe to know Scripture is true, he need not answer or even be able to answer these questions. Whether or not Joe knows that the Spirit so testified is unnecessary for warrant. Only the testimony of the Spirit is necessary.

I wish many of the detractors would stop assuming Enlightenment epistemologies and stop insisting that arguments such as Joe Carter's live up to such epistemologies. Eric E seems to think Joe's got to be a Cartesian. If Joe's position, and the Protestant position more generally, is wrong, it can't be wrong as a result of arguments like Eric E's.

Moreover, all of the questions posed to Joe by RC apologists can be posed back to them with respect to the Church. How do they know the Church is infallible? How do they know that the Church is authoritative over Scripture? You can't appeal to the Church to establish the authority of the Church without reasoning in a circle. Likewise, you can't appeal to Church pronouncements concerning infallibility to establish that infallibility without reasoning in a circle. And, as Joe pointed out, if you appeal to Scripture to establish that authority, you seem to presuppose that the ground of the Church's claim to authority is Scripture (i.e., the Church has authority because an authoritative Scripture says it does), rather than the other way around. But many of our RC friends here seem to want to reject that proposition.

At the end of the day, Joe's position about the authority of Scripture and the RC position about the authority of the church seem quite obviously to be on the same epistemic footing. Which, to my mind, means discussions about epistemology cannot, philosophically or theologically, settle this debate.

Gibraltar writes:
"I am a Catholic. Scripture attests to the fact that Jesus left us a Shepherd (Peter) but did not leave us further Scriptures. Ever since I realized this, I have not had any temptation to protestantism."

This is exactly right. Christ chose not to spend a single moment of His precious time on Earth writing Word One of the New Testament. He chose a different approach to preserving His Teachings: He recruited and trained His Church--the Apostles and disciples--and then placed Peter in charge as the Shepherd (Feed my lambs; tend my sheep).

Even after His Ascension, Christ's first inspired guidance to the Church was accomplished without a writing. IN guiding Peter on the issue of Cornelius, Christ established the first bit of Tradition in the Church on the question of whether to preach to the Gentiles (Acts 10). It was that divine guidance to the Shepherd of the Church that led Peter (not Paul, btw) to declare himself in charge of the Mission to the Gentiles (see, Acts 15:7-9; significantly, Paul did not gainsay Peter's claim to being in charge of the Mission to the Gentiles). Christ's unwritten guidance to Shepherd Peter likewise led directly to the first promulgated ruling of a Council of the Church (Acts 15:7-16:5, and in particular, the letter issued to Paul by the Council).

Paul,
Scripture is not the Word of God. Jesus Christ is.

Paul,
Scripture is not the Word of God. Jesus Christ is.

MacGabhann,

I'm not an idiot and so of course not that Jesus is the logos of God--I even know that "Word" is a lousy translation of the Greek word "logos." "Reason" would come much closer to the point. But Scripture is, according to ancient Christian tradition, infallible communication from God. Most Evangelicals hold that the infallibility follows from two premises: (1) The doctrine of God, which includes all His perfections--including infallibility in His communication and (2) Scripture is the Revelation of God in written form. My point wasn't merely semantics. And so, of course, your reply doesn't answer the objection to your argument.

But I really think if you attribute the view to Evangelicals and Protestants that you just attributed to me, then your shadowboxing and fighting with strawmen. We would all do better in these conversations if there were less caricature.

(A slightly amended version of the prior post)

MacGabhann,

I'm not an idiot and so of course know that Jesus is the logos of God--I even know that "Word" is a lousy translation of the Greek word "logos." "Reason" would come much closer to the point. But Scripture is, according to ancient Christian tradition, infallible communication from God. Most Evangelicals hold that the infallibility follows from two premises: (1) The doctrine of God, which includes all of His perfections--including infallibility in His communication and (2) Scripture is the Revelation of God in written form. My point wasn't merely semantics. And so, of course, your reply doesn't answer the objection to your argument.

But I really think if you attribute the view to Evangelicals and Protestants that you just attributed to me, then your shadowboxing and fighting with strawmen. We would all do better in these conversations if there were less caricature.

Paul argues:
"And, as Joe pointed out, if you appeal to Scripture to establish [the] authority of the Church, you seem to presuppose that the ground of the Church's claim to authority is Scripture (i.e., the Church has authority because an authoritative Scripture says it does), rather than the other way around. "
No, "Scripture" need not be "authoritative" to establish that the Church is the authority for Scripture. Rather, the "scriptural" support need be no more than a near contemporaneous historical record; yet if it showed that the Church antedated and wrote the New Testament, it would be support for the proposition that the Church is authoritative over that portion of "Scripture." Particularly when other historical documents (e.g., Eusebius's Ecclesiastical History, Athanasius's 365 AD Canon and the historical records establishing that the North African Synods of the 390s adopted Athanasius's Canon as the Church's Canon of a New Testament) show that it was the Church and not an autochthonous or self-generated "scriptural table of contents" that defined the content of the New Testament.

I wish to offer this historical contribution. The attitude of the medieval apologists who are supposedly still revered was entirely different than what we have in the current article. For example Thomas Aquinas (Summa 1.1.8):

Sacred Scripture, since it has no science above itself, can dispute with one who denies its principles only if the opponent admits some at least of the truths obtained through divine revelation; thus we can argue with heretics from texts in Holy Writ, and against those who deny one article of faith, we can argue from another.

(Me again.) A Southern Baptist could have said that. (There is no science, that is no knowledge, above the supernatural revelation in Sacred Scripture.) So why not just get on with reasoning with texts from Holy Writ?

I have an idea about that too. Is it possible that the medieval attitude toward Scripture (that Aquinas is but one example of) survived after the Reformation mainly in Protestantism, while from that era onward the mainstream of Catholic thought was rather different?

@ patricksarsfield,

In endeavoring to argue against me, you seem to beg the question. You say Scripture says of itself that it was written by the Church. The evidence you adduce is not Scripture actually saying that but rather Church Synods. But notice how this reply of yours commits the ground-occasion conflation/equivocation I've already elaborated above. It equates the recognition of the authority of Scripture with the ground of that authority--taking Church decisions, manifest through synods, to be both. As I say, I can't imagine the Catholic position is guilty of so basic a logical mistake as many of its defenders here seem to suggest.

As well, I suggest you take a look at Bruce Metzger's work on the canon--probably the best historical work to date. These Church councils at best ratified the existing practice of the vast majority of the Churches.

By the way, I've of course read (long before now) the documents you think would obviously persuade me that my argument is wrongheaded. And I have disagreed for some time with your particular account of their meaning.

I confess, for a life long Evangelical who has studied these matters closely and who has been considering conversion to the Catholic Church, I've found the arguments offered by Catholic apologists here disappointing. I don't see how one can be persuaded to change their mind about the Protestant/Evangelical position here when all the arguments against it are really directed against caricatures. I've read some interesting arguments on both sides that seem to take the right questions head on. But when it comes to exchanges in thread posts, that seems not to happen.

As an example of caricature, take patricksarsfield's comment, which suggests the Protestant view of Scripture is that Scripture is "self-generated." Now, I know of know serious Protestant who has ever maintained any such thing. I realize that Protestants have caricatured Catholic beliefs. But it doesn't help things when Catholics misdescribe the Protestant position so egregiously. And believe me, this depiction of Protestant belief is egregious and reflective of a complete misunderstanding of the Protestant position.

@Paul: I have little to add to your discussion, but thank you for your continued thoughts and please forgive the caricatures. Alas, the anonymity, brevity, and impersonality of message board postings are sometimes rather enormous, frustrating obstacles to mutual understanding. Praise God, we're coming to mutually understand what is caricature and what is reality in each other's positions.

To risk sounding cheesy, let's pray that we may be united, not as we or our communities might want it, but as Christ wants it. And then, perhaps, I might add a prayer for the patience to bear with Him until the task is done. (He sure seems to take His time sometimes...)

Marc wrote:

"To risk sounding cheesy, let's pray that we may be united, not as we or our communities might want it, but as Christ wants it."

I don't think it sounds cheesy at all. I think you have touched on heart of the answer, which is taking into consideration the desire of the heart of Christ.

paul: "but joe doesn't need internal certainty that he was testified to by the holy spirit for knowledge. it needs only to have happened."

this is where paul lost me.... i am asking for clarification:

a. since none of us can get out of our own heads and escape our own consciousnesses, what other kind of "certainty" is there other than "internal" certainty? i am internally certain that 2+2=4. how is this an example of "enlightenment epistemology?"

b. "it needs only to have happened." if not even joe has internal certainty that it happened, how would anyone else know that it did happen?

c. i suspect joe is certain the holy spirit has spoken/speaks to him. which means eric e's challenge is a legitimate one, especially because it also applies to the pope and to the members of the magisterium. for example: how does the pope know when he's speaking ex cathedra and when he is not?

my two cents: i used to be reformed and once held to the westminster confession of faith. on further reflection over several years, the statement that "the infallible rule of interpretation of scripture is scripture itself" gradually became nonsense to me.... others in this thread have covered some of the ground i've trodden. but here are a few more observations:

a. on something as important as "the lord's supper," the bible never steps outside itself to "interpret itself" by stating unequivocally: "when jesus says x, y, and z in john 6 he means a, b, and c, but not d, e, f. don't you dare misunderstand what jesus meant!" if my analysis is correct for this question, how can it then be true that "scripture interprets itself?" if it does, it fails miserably, at least in this instance.... in fact, we wouldn't be having this discussion if the bible "interprets itself," at least in any meaningful sort of way.

b. that scripture is not perspicuous is one of the few empirically observable facts in theology.... there are as many churches as there are city blocks where i live, each claiming to be correct as far as the scriptures are concerned. it seems even jesus' prayers for ecclesial unity sometimes go unanswered.... again, we wouldn't be having this discussion if the bible were perspicuous.

c. claiming to have been touched by the holy spirit is simply not enough.... all manner of loons can claim to have been touched by the holy spirit, and there would be no way of disproving their "encounter."

d. since we're left to our own devices ultimately -- i.e. we can't escape our own consciousnesses and must "internally" discern what is true, good, and beautiful -- i posit that we are left with reason, experience, and authority as tools for the journey of faith. if we do the best we can with these epistemic tools, fallible as they are, we can hope to hear someday: "well done, my good and faithful servant."

Paul incorrectly notes:

"As well, I suggest you take a look at Bruce Metzger's work on the canon--probably the best historical work to date. These Church councils at best ratified the existing practice of the vast majority of the Churches. "

Metzger? a Twentieth Century source? How anachronistic. Let's go to the historical record. I suggest you read Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea. His Ecclesiastical History plainly establishes that there was not an agreed upon Canon as of the date of His History (i.e., 337 AD). To save you the trouble of looking it up, I shall quote his Ecclesiastical History, Book 3, Chs. 24-25, directly:



"But of the writings of John, not only his Gospel, but also the former of his epistles, has been accepted without dispute both now and in ancient times. But the other two are disputed. In regard to the Apocalypse, the opinions of most men are still divided. But at the proper time this question likewise shall be decided from the testimony of the ancients.Since we are dealing with this subject it is proper to sum up the writings of the New Testament which have been already mentioned. First then must be put the holy quaternion of the Gospels; following them the Acts of the Apostles. After this must be reckoned the epistles of Paul; next in order the extanfinal former epistle of John, and likewise the epistle of Peter, must be maintained. After them is to be placed, if it really seem proper, the Apocalypse of John, concerning which we shall give the different opinions at the proper time. These then belong among the accepted writings. Among the disputed writings, which are nevertheless recognized by many, are extant the so-called epistle of James and that of Jude, also the second epistle of Peter, and those that are called the second and third of John, whether they belong to the evangelist or to another person of the same name. Among the rejected writings must be reckoned also the Acts of Paul, and the so-called Shepherd, and the Apocalypse of Peter, and in addition to these the extant epistle of Barnabas, and the so-called Teachings of the Apostles; and besides, as I said, the Apocalypse of John, if it seem proper, which some, as I said, reject, but which others class with the accepted books."

This is the real history of the Canon, not the fairy tale protestants have made up of spontaneous agreement by all churches, so that they can set the Bible up as above the Church. The truth is that the Church is responsible for the Canon of Scripture and all of the NT books were written by church members either about the life of Christ or about what was going on in the church.

Paul sets up a strawman here:
"As an example of caricature, take patricksarsfield's comment, which suggests the Protestant view of Scripture is that Scripture is "self-generated." "

No, that is precisely 180 degrees from my position. Even the Protestants recognize that Scripture is not self-generated. Rather, all agree that the New Testament was written by members of the Church. In all events, my statement about a protestant belief in "self-generation" concerned the logical point that any "scriptural table of contents" would have had to have been self-generated if Sola Scriptura were in fact to be true.

Paul gets quite close to claiming that when he says that " These Church councils at best ratified the existing practice of the vast majority of the Churches." First, that is UNTRUE. As my quote from Eusebius (in my last post above) shows, several of the epistles, plus the Apocalpse (Revelation) were still not accepted by all local churches 300 plus years after the death of Christ.

Second, even if one assumes arguendo and contrary to fact that the precise canon of Scripture now universally recognized had been accepted by the "vast majority of Churches" at some earlier point than the mid-Fourth Century that would not change the reality that the Canon of each of those local churches was established not as a matter of what "the Bible tells us so," but as a result of the Tradition of those local churches. And, in all events, that precise canon was not accepted by the other churches (the remnant minority) as a matter of THEIR Tradition. It was not until the Universal Church spoke as an institution in the North African Councils that the remnant's traditional canons were castr aside in favor of the Universal Church's Authoritative Definition of the Canon of Scripture. Far from being "self-generated," the New Testament's "table of contents" was a gift from Sancta Mater Ecclesia (Holy Mother the Church).

For whatever it is worth, here is why the Catholic position on the scriptures seems reasonable to me. First of all, Christ made some promises that Christians must believe He kept, such as the following:

I shall ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you *for ever*, that Spirit of truth whom the world can never receive ...
Jn 14:16-17

… when the Spirit of truth comes *he will lead you to the complete truth* …
Jn 16:13

Still, I must tell you the truth: it is for your own good that I am going because unless I go, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I do go, *I will send him to you.*
Jn 16:7

'Anyone who listens to you listens to me; anyone who rejects you rejects me, and those who reject me reject the one who sent me.'
Lk 10:16

And I say to thee: That thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
Mt 16:18

And know that *I am with you always; yes, to the end of time.*
Mt 28:20

(Note that none of those promises indicate there won't be any more men like Judas Iscariot in the Church. There were and still are.)

So, what do those promises mean? If nothing else they mean that Christ promised He would build a Church; He promised He would be with it until the end of time; His Holy Spirit would be with it forever and guide it to the complete truth. Twenty centuries later what do those promises mean? If nothing else they mean that there is some institution presently on Earth that can be traced back to Apostolic times that has been basically consistent in the essentials of belief and practice since the time of Christ – beliefs and practices it was led to by the Holy Spirit. What else could they mean? That Church would be just as confident that its official teaching was proclaimed with the approval of the Holy Spirit as were the apostles at the Council of Jerusalem, when they declared, “It has been decided by the Holy Spirit and by ourselves ...” [Acts 15:28]

Whatever that Church officially teaches regarding the Scriptures is what I will believe regarding those Scriptures. (I say *officially* because there is a lot of heterodox, but certainly not representative of official Catholic teaching, “Catholic” scripture scholarship these days) I think my earlier post quoting Vincent of Lerins sums up orhtodox Catholic teaching rather nicely, and his thought was reflected at the Councils of Trent and Vatican I. As Leo XIII put it in Providentissimus Deus:

“St. Irenaeus long since laid down, that where the charismata of God were, there the truth was to be learnt, and that Holy Scripture was safely interpreted by those who had the Apostolic succession. His teaching, and that of other Holy Fathers, is taken up by the Council of the Vatican, which, in renewing the decree of Trent declares its "mind" to be this - that "in things of faith and morals, belonging to the building up of Christian doctrine, that is to be considered the true sense of Holy Scripture which has been held and is held by our Holy Mother the Church, whose place it is to judge of the true sense and interpretation of the Scriptures; and therefore that it is permitted to no one to interpret Holy Scripture against such sense or also against the unanimous agreement of the Fathers."

It has to be that way. The Church can't embrace novel interpretations of the Scriptures that contradict the unanimous consent of the Fathers who were led to their beliefs by the Holy Spirit just as Christ had promised would happen. It can't embrace such interpretations and it won't. It can only do what it does: Acknowledge that the interpretation of the Scriptures the Holy Spirit led it to in the beginning and Who preserved it within the Church over the centuries can only be further developed, not essentially modified. No entirely novel interpretations or essentially changed interpretations can be allowed, nor the discarding of ancient interpretations, in so far as allowing these things would alter the Divinely inspired teaching in matters of faith and morals derived from the Scriptures - derived with the promised guidance of the Holy Spirit. Such changes to the interpretation of Scripture would be a denial that Christ kept his promise that the Holy Spirit would be with the Church for ever and guide it to the complete truth.

Only because of the promises of Christ can the successors of the Apostles still believe that the declarations of their official councils have been “decided by the Holy Spirit and by ourselves ...” Since Christ said “Anyone who listens to you listens to me,” I believe in the official Catholic teaching on the Scriptures. I believe in the promises of Christ. I don't want new teaching. I want the original, ancient teaching. I want what has been preserved by the Holy Spirit from the beginning. The Catholic position on the interpretation of the Scriptures, in my opinion, might be summed up this way: If it is new, it isn't true. If it is true, it isn't new. What I want is what the Apostles and their successors, with the promised guidance of the Holy Spirit, have been consistently teaching for twenty centuries. I am not interested in an interpretation of Scripture that is contrary to that one.

One might object here that the claim to the guidance of the Holy Spirit made by the Catholic Church is no different than that made by every other denomination. Well, it is different. The Church, through Apostolic succession, is linked to the Apostles. Anyone can look into the writings of the Church Fathers and see that the essentials of the liturgy and the theology of the contemporary Catholic Church is the same as was found in the early Church. The way the early Church worked through numerous heresies was to insist on knowing how interpretations of Scripture were the teaching of an Apostolic Church and the successors of its Apostolic founder. Tertullian [born ca. A.D. 155/160] discussed this:

“... if there be any [heresies] bold enough to plant themselves in the midst of the apostolic age, so that they might seem to have been handed down by the Apostles because they were from the time of the Apostles, we can say to them: let them show the origins of their Churches, let them unroll the order of their bishops, running down in succession from the beginning, so that their first bishop shall have for author and predecessor some one of the Apostles or of the apostolic men who continued steadfast with the Apostles.”

Remember Gamaliel's test? “If this enterprise, this movement of theirs, is of human origin it will break up of its own accord.” [Acts 5:39] Christianity wasn't of human origin. The persecution of it by the Jews didn't destroy it. Instead the Jewish Temple was destroyed. The mighty Roman Empire resolved to destroy it and the empire crumbled while the successors of the Apostles, when the dust settled, and after having converted the Roman Empire to Christianity, continued on their long march down through the centuries. It was truly as Gamaliel had warned: “If it does in fact come from God you will not only be unable to destroy them, but you might find yourselves fighting against God.” [Acts 5:40]

Now, let's apply Gamaliel's test to Luther. His movement quickly splintered, breaking up into thousands of versions of Christianity. It looks like the one not acknowledging the old authority ended up being the one “fighting against God” in his case. If Luther had been called to be the herald of a divinely inspired new order of Christianity, the equivalent of the destruction of the Jewish Temple would have happened to Catholicism. Nothing like that happened because Christ keeps His promises. The Church Christ built upon the rock of Peter will last till the end of time.

I assume everyone reading this wants the dismembered Body of Christ to be made whole. The Body of Christ would be much more effective in today's world if it were whole – if it had that unity Christ prayed that it would have: “May they all be one. Father, may they be one in us, as you are in me and I am in you, so that the world may believe it was you who sent me.” [Jn 17:21] The world will not believe the claims of Christianity until we are one. And the world coming to that belief is the only Way to the resolution of the terrible injustices found in it.

For no other reason than to fulfill the desire of the heart of Christ that His Body be made whole – that we would be one – we need to ask ourselves if we really believe Christ kept his promises. And if we do, what would the fulfillment of those promises look like after twenty centuries? There will be an institution that is able to demonstrate the authenticity of its teaching the way the Church founded by Christ did from the beginning, as Tertullian informs us, by demonstrating that it is connected to “some one of the Apostles or of the apostolic men who continued steadfast with the Apostles.” Its theology and its liturgy will have been consistent in their essentials for twenty centuries. Its branches that did not remain attached to the vine should have fulfilled the prediction of Gamaliel and broken up and splintered of their own accord, their breaking away not having been of Divine origin. (That is not to say that the Spirit of Christ is not in the hearts of all sincere Christians. It most certainly is. But only one Church can be the one in which the promises of Christ are kept. This is obvious because contradictory teachings cannot all be from the same Holy Spirit, even if He is present in the sincere hearts of each of those proclaiming these contradictory teachings.)

Finally, as you think about where it is the true interpretation of Scripture has been preserved, consider the original interpretation of chapter six of the gospel of John, which has been preserved by the Holy Spirit to this very day. The following are the words of St. Ignatius [died ca. A.D. 110], bishop and martyr, who knew the Apostle John. From St. Ignatius' letter to the Smyrnaeans:

“Take note of those who hold heterodox opinions on the grace of Jesus Christ which has come to us … They abstain from the Eucharist ... because they do not confess that the Eucharist is the Flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, Flesh which suffered for our sins … They who deny the gift of God are perishing in their disputes. It would be better for them to have love, so that they might rise again.”
Jn 6:53-57:

“I tell you most solemnly, if you do not eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you will not have life in you. Anyone who does eat my flesh and drink my blood has eternal life, and I shall raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood lives in me and I live in him. As I, who am sent by the living Father, myself draw life from the Father, so whoever eats me will draw life from me.”

per harry: One might object here that the claim to the guidance of the Holy Spirit made by the Catholic Church is no different than that made by every other denomination. Well, it is different. The Church, through Apostolic succession, is linked to the Apostles. Anyone can look into the writings of the Church Fathers and see that the essentials of the liturgy and the theology of the contemporary Catholic Church is the same as was found in the early Church. The way the early Church worked through numerous heresies was to insist on knowing how interpretations of Scripture were the teaching of an Apostolic Church and the successors of its Apostolic founder.

that the catholic church's doctrines are generally uniform through the centuries is probably clear to most people who have looked into the question. but harry claims something more in the above paragraph. his argument as i understand it goes something like this:

(1) the apostolic fathers and the present catholic church are in agreement
(2) ergo, the catholic church's claim to being guided by the holy spirit is true

i am not sure (2) follows from (1) at all because the argument depends on the apostolic fathers actually being guided by the holy spirit. but that is the very question at hand, is it not? one may not argue for a conclusion by using the conclusion as a premise.

we can indeed speak of st. peter being "guided" by jesus while jesus was on earth. but after the ascension, how did st. peter know he was guided by the holy spirit v. his own opinions? how did st. paul know he had an encounter with the risen christ and not with some other "spirit?" how do any of us know that we know christ?

i'm not sure there is an easy answer at all. as for me, i can only witness to the existence of ultimate truth, goodness, and beauty before whom i am like a dirty child, unworthy to sit at the table but for the love and grace of the host himself.... how i know these things i cannot specify.

finally, for what it's worth, c. s. lewis once wrote something about believing in christianity because it was the system that answered the most questions with the fewest assumptions. of course, this claim is different from claiming the holy spirit's guidance, but it may be helpful nonetheless.

I'm going to ignore patricksarsfield's comments since he seems to make my position up as he goes along. I'll say only that if he didn't mean to saddle Protestants with the view that Scripture is self-generated, then its really unclear to whom one of his remarks was generated--namely, that remark in which he states that Scripture is not self-generated. Why say that, in a critical comment, if no one in the debate actually holds that position? I should also note that patricksarsfield fails to address the philosophical objections directly. So he doesn't seem to argue with me so much as some caricature of me based on selective quoting. No point, then, in replying to such comments--or the apparent condescension. The sort of exchange in which he engages seems to me more rhetorical bullying than open dialogue. And I confess at the end of the debate, I've found myself less inclined to the Catholic position than when it began. Which is why I really must excuse myself from going back and forth with sarsfield. It will be the only way to arrive at an honest conclusion.

I appreciated the comments from Marc and Andrew. As to Andrew's reply, I can only say this--Knowledge is one thing and certainty another; the former can be present even when the latter is not. You're reply simply presumes that Joe must hold something like a modern epistemology--or classical foundationalism of some sort or other. But there's no reason for Joe to be committed to such an epistemology. In fact, there's good reason for him not to be--for classical (epistemic) foundationalism is self-referentially incoherent. As a result, it is possible for person X to know Y as a result of the testimony of the Holy Spirit even in those cases where X is uncertain that Y was born witness by the Spirit. All that matters is that the Spirit testifies to Y and that X believes that Y. We know something when we have warranted true belief where the warrant is supplied by the proper functioning of our cognitive faculties in a proper environment. Whether we know that we are in the right environment or that our cognitive faculties are functioning properly is wholly beside the point. The problem with your argument, as I see it, is that equates X's knowing that he knows Y with X's simply knowing Y. In reality, you don't need the former for the latter. It was folks like Descartes and Locke who made certainty a requirement for knowledge. Why maintain that Joe's arguments must live up to Cartesian certainty. And why are Catholics here, who reject Descartes, demanding that Joe's arguments live up to a standard they reject? It's a fair question given this exchange, I think

Hi, Andrew,

You summed up my argument as follows:

“(1) the apostolic fathers and the present catholic church are in agreement
(2) ergo, the catholic church's claim to being guided by the holy spirit is true”

You felt this was a non sequitur. Let explain my thinking.

If the official teaching of the Church founded by Christ has been protected by the Holy Spirit (it must have been Christ's intention to protect its teaching if He can say to His Apostles, “He who hears you hears me.”) and if that Church will last till the end of time as Christ promised, then there has to presently be a Church that has been consistent in the essentials of its belief and practice since the time of Christ. That is why it is significant that, as you put it, “the apostolic fathers and the present catholic church are in agreement.” The Church whose official teaching has been protected by the Holy Spirit from the beginning must, therefore, have a consistency in its teaching that can be traced to Apostolic times. If the Catholic Church is the only one that can demonstrate that consistency in its teachings, then, as you put it, “the catholic church's claim to being guided by the holy spirit is true.”

The Church's official teaching on contraception is an example of its maintaining the traditional Christian view of human sexuality when the world and many denominations have abandoned it in this regard.

When I saw the first sentence of this article, my mind leaped instantly to Bertie Wooster. Remember how he used to take every opportunity to mention that Scripture Knowledge prize he won during his school days, even as his valet was thinking up new ways for him to blackmail Roderick Spode?

After divesting myself of the previous comment (which was all I really had to say about the article itself), I went to look at the multitude of comments that other people had left, just to see what they could have had to say about such an inoffensive article. (Apart from the sheer incongruity of a Baptist posting on "First Things", and, hey, if David Goldman can do it, why shouldn't they?)

I'm not sure why there's such opposition to Mr. Carter's thesis. Surely, there's nothing unorthodox about receiving personal assurance of the truth of God's Word, is there? I mean, it must have happened at least once or twice in the early Church; St. Peter, for instance, identified St. Paul's letters as Scripture several centuries before the Fathers of Carthage were even born. (See 2 Peter 3:16.)

To be sure, since the Bible is the common possession of the whole Church and not meant simply for the personal edification of selected individuals, the Holy Spirit also has to find a way to assure the Church in general of its inspiration, besides telling some people individually. It's a weakness in his argument that Mr. Carter doesn't mention this; one might get the impression, from his article, that the Bible was something like Mary of Agreda's "The Mystical City of God", a book that could be read profitably and without danger, but wasn't really necessary for salvation (and might not even be inerrant, in the full sense of that word). However, in general, I think the article is on much sounder doctrinal ground than its readers are giving it credit for.

paul,

i think our positions are beginning to coincide. some thoughts:

(1) there is at least some knowledge of which we can be certain -- knowledge such as "2+2=4," "raping babies is wrong always and everywhere," etc.

(2) even for "2+2=4" and "raping babies is wrong always and everywhere," we may not be able to explain how we are certain, at least not with the complete force of logic.

(3) does "not being able to explain how we are certain" = "being uncertain?" if i read you correctly, i think you would answer "yes." but i posit that we may be certain of knowledge without being able to explain how we are certain, which is a variant of your position.

in sum, i think you and i would agree that we may not be able to explain logically how we are certain of some types of knowledge. where you and i would disagree is that perhaps you'd call that predicament "uncertainty" and i'd still call it "certainty." a kind of "self-evident," "starting point" certainty.

(4) therefore, i think joe could say that he's certain the holy spirit has spoken/speaks to him even without knowing how he's certain. if it were i, it seems i'd be more certain that 2+2=4 than of the fact that the holy spirit speaks to me.... but maybe this need not be the case.

hello, harry,

for the reasons you list and for other reasons, i believe the apostolicity of the catholic church and the truth of her doctrines. i am catholic.

but these are the questions at hand in this section of the thread: how does joe carter / the pope know when the holy spirit is guiding him and when the holy spirit is not guiding him? how does the pope know when he's speaking ex cathedra and when he's not?

i'm not sure there's a satisfying answer.

finally, i emphatically agree: on the issue of contraception, either the catholic church is insane or she's absolutely right. there's no question in my mind she's right.

Hello, Andrew,

You wrote:

"how does joe carter / the pope know when the holy spirit is guiding him and when the holy spirit is not guiding him? how does the pope know when he's speaking ex cathedra and when he's not?"


“It has been decided by the Holy Spirit and by ourselves ...” [Acts 15:28]

The scriptural account of the Council of Jerusalem indicates that the declarations of an official Church council have the approval of the Holy Spirit. The primacy of Peter and the Church of Rome is documented in the writings of the Church Fathers. An "official" Church council is so because it is recognized by the successor of St. Peter, Bishop of Rome.

There have only been a handful of "ex cathedra" pronouncements. Such pronouncements are not the core of the Church's infallibility. The core of its infallibility is that it is the Body of Christ, which, like all living bodies, is animated by a spirit. It is the Holy Spirit, Who animates the Body of Christ and is the One speaking in its official pronouncements regarding matters of faith and morals, that is, of course, infallible.

Joe Carter seems to be a very good guy. I am sure he often speaks on matters of faith and morals with the approval of the Holy Spirit - as do you and I. But none of us have a formal guarantee that we will always have the approval of the Holy Spirit when we speak on such matters. Such certainty belongs only to the Body of Christ animated by the Holy Spirit, Who is the one speaking in its official teachings -- the vast majority of which have never been the subject of ex cathedra statements. These teachings are, nonetheless, infallible due to the promise of Christ to the Apostles. "He who hears you, hears me."

Regarding the "circularity" of the argument(s), I think they are indeed circular.

But it is very important to have an adequately large circle. The circle must include Scripture, Tradition, and Magisterium. (Maybe it's a triangle and not a circle.) They all bear witness to eachother.

Scripture was handed down as a Tradition by the Magisterium.

At the councils, the Magisterium confirmed certain texts as Scripture (Revelation, Hebrews) and rejected others (Barnabas, Shepherd of Hermas). (This was not mere ratification, even if mostly ratification.)

Written in the very pages of Scripture are descriptions of both Magisterium (Acts, Timothy, Philemon, Titus) and Tradition (Thessalonians).

The Magisterium wrote some NT scripture: Peter,1,2, James, Jude, John, Letters of John, etc. (But also did NOT write some: Luke, Mark, Acts. Here I am assuming that Mark was not a bishop when he wrote his Gospel. Naybe he became bishop near venice later?)

Circularity is not a bad thing, but you need a big enough circle. You need the circle Jesus gave us, and must not pit one part of the circle against another.

The idea of Scripture alone being the sole and final authority - and self-authenticating at that - has always, as far as I can see, had the central flaw of Scripture not being codified for four centuries after the time of Christ. There simply wasn't a library of books to point to or check against each other. It tweaks the intellect a bit to have to just accept that God didn't provide the sure means of knowing truth for the first four centuries of Christianity. For those of us who want the world including close neighbors, friends and loved ones - to stop dismissing Christianity because there are 40,000 branches of it, this conversation is neither tribal nor petty.

'Look now: here are some folk suffering from daimones' (for there were present some who were troubled by demons and had come to him; so he brought them forward, and went on). 'Either cleanse these men by your logic-chopping or by any other skill or magic you wish, and calling on your idols, or otherwise, if you can't, lay down your quarrel with us and witness the power of Christ's cross.' "how does joe carter / the pope know when the holy spirit is guiding him and when the holy spirit is not guiding him? how does the pope know when he's speaking ex cathedra and when he's not?"