Nothing Can Satisfy Catholic Demands for an Inspired Table-of-Contents

Early on in Michael Kruger's book Canon Revisited, he makes a very pointed and helpful observation regarding the Catholic complaint that protestants do not have a "inspired table of contents" to determine their canon.

The fundamental claim of the Roman Catholic model is that sola scriptura is untenable because, without some external infallible authority, there is no way to know which books are to be included in the canon. This epistemological challenge in the words of Catholic author Patrick Madrid, is that Christians do not have an "inspired table of contents" that reveals "which books belong and which books do not."  If only Christians had this inspired table of contents, then we would not need the authoritative rulings of the Roman Catholic Church to authenticate the Canon. Although such an argument is made repeatedly within Catholic writings, it proves to be problematic upon closer examination. 

Imagine for a moment that God has inspired another document in the first century that contained this "table of contents" and had given it to the church. We will call this the twenty-eighth book of the New Testament canon. Would the existence of such a book have satisfied the Catholic concerns? Would this allow Catholics to affirm sola scriptura and deny the need for an infallible church? Not at all. Instead, they would simply ask the next logical question: "On what basis do you know that this twenty-eighth book comes from God?" And even if it were argued that God has given a twenty-ninth book saying the twenty-eighth book came from God, and the same objection would still apply: "Yes, but how do you know the twenty-ninth book came from God?" And on it would go. The Catholic objection about the need for a "table of contents," therefore, misses the point entirely. Even if there were another document with such a table, this document would still need to be authenticated as part of the Canon. After all, what if there were multiple table-of-contents-type books floating around in the early church? How would we know which one was from God? In the end, therefore, the Roman Catholic objection is to some extent artificial. Such a "table of contents" would never satisfy their concerns, even if it were to exist, because they have already determined, a priori, that no document could ever be self-attesting. In other words, built into the Roman Catholic model is that any written revelation (whether it contains a "table of contents" or not) will require external approval and authentication from an infallible church (Pg. 42-43).

I recall some time back, someone on Jason Stellman's Facebook page asked him if he had read Kruger's book, (someone, perhaps Jason, had mentioned the supposed Protestant lack of an inspired canon) and he responded something to the effect that any Protestant answer to the question of canon was irrelevant since it begins by begging the question. Chew on that one for a bit, and if you're a thinking person it should trouble you endlessly.  There is no answering someone who has truly decided the magisterium holds all answers, truth, and authority.  But if it were possible, Canon Revisited would be a great place to start.

By the way, Westminster Books is currently selling Canon Revisited for 40% off the regular price.

Kindle Book: The Infallibility of the Church by George Salmon

Back in 1888 George Salmon, a mathematician and theologian, delivered a series of lectures at the University of Dublin. These lectures were later assembled into his book The Infallibility of the Church. Nick Batzig mentioned this book to me yesterday as a fantastic resource for looking at the history of the Papacy from a Protestant perspective.

You can appreciate Salmon's method by looking at the names of the different chapters:

THE CONTROVERSY WITH ROME
THE CARDINAL IMPORTANCE OF THE QUESTION OF INFALLIBILITY
THE ARGUMENT IN A CIRCLE
THE GRAMMAR OF ASSENT
MILKER'S AXIOMS. — PART I.
MILKER'S AXIOMS. — PART II.
THE CHURCH'S OFFICE OF TEACHING
THE CHURCH'S SOURCES OF PROOF
THE RULE OF FAITH
HERMENEUTICAL TRADITION
DOES THE CHURCH OF ROME BELIEVE IN HER OWN INFALLIBILITY
THE HESITATIONS OF THE INFALLIBLE GUIDE
MODERN REVELATIONS
THE BLUNDERS OF THE INFALLIBLE GUIDE
THE GALLICAN THEORY OF INFALLIBILITY
GENERAL COUNCILS. — PART I.
GENERAL COUNCILS. — PART II.
THE PREROGATIVES OF PETER
PETER'S ALLEGED ROMAN EPISCOPATE
THE INFANCY OF ROMAN SUPREMACY
THE PROGRESS OF ROMAN SUPREMACY
THE INFALLIBILITY OF THE POPE
THE POPE'S TEMPORAL POWER

After Nick mentioned the book to me, I immediately went to Amazon to find it and came up completely empty. Usually there is somebody selling a Kindle version of a book like this for a few bucks, but there was absolutely nothing. The book is (I should say, was) only available in olde thyme PDF format, however, and so I took it upon myself to create a very nice version of the book for the Kindle. It's currently up at Amazon for only $0.99. The best I can tell, there is not even a publisher who is carrying this book currently. It's pretty long, and I estimate in print it's somewhere around 400 pages. I also kept the footnotes and transliterated the languages into something that would display on the Kindle screen. On top of that, I created a working and active Table of Contents.

With all of the attention that has been given to Roman Catholicism lately, it is good for everyone to have a good historical overview of the Papacy. So if you're in the mood for a polemical, rigorously argued case against the infallibility of the Roman Church, this is your book. Even if I hadn't been the one to make this, I still would have written this post to tell you to get it, it's that good. Get it here.

PS: I've said this before, but you don't have the money for the book, just Facebook message me or email me, I'll give the eBook to you for free. I've started posting these books on Amazon for the cheapest price they allow because it actually has a much wider audience on Amazon than it does over here at our little niche blog.

Rome's Infallibility Brought to Rubble

124 years ago, George Salmon wrote a book asserting that the Catholic Church is not infallible. This book, The Infallibility of the Church is a fantastic resource for those interested in a polemical work directly dealing with the papacy. As I was reading the book, I came across this golden nugget of a quote. One might call it a 'Nostradamus' moment. In the book, he is discussing the Galileo episode. I will include the larger quote for context, but I will italicize the part which holds a special interest for us:

The present case is one of the most unpleasant that Roman Catholic controversialists have got to meet, for they cannot but be conscious that the best apologies they can offer are extremely unsatisfactory. They could save themselves all trouble if they would frankly say, 'Our Church made a great mistake two hundred and fifty years ago. She then imagined statements to be heretical which we now know were not only not heretical, but were perfectly true. She is a great deal wiser now.' Perhaps the theory of development may be improved into a form which will allow that confession to be made. But if that time comes, we need dispute no more about the Church's infallibility; the whole claim will then have been given up. Meanwhile we have to consider whether any of the attempts have been successful that have been made to free the Roman Church from the responsibility of mistakes which her rulers confessedly made at the beginning of the seventeenth century.

George Salmon could not imagine a time when a robust version of the papacy would be able or willing to admit its wrongdoing in the Galileo affair without yielding up its claims to infallibility. Fast forward to 1992. I include a quote from New Scientist magazine:

At a ceremony in Rome, before the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, Pope John Paul II officially declared that Galileo was right. The formal rehabilitation was based on the findings of a committee of the Academy the Pope set up in 1979, soon after taking office. The committee decided the Inquisition had acted in good faith, but was wrong.

I know this is old news, but it's never too late to point out the inperspicuity and errors of the Papacy. Woe to one who puts their faith in such a supposed 'vicar of Christ.'

What is Monergism?

In the comment section of this post, Evan posted a link to an article by a Roman Catholic on monergism. This article starts off by offering a definition of monergism.

Monergists, i.e. Calvinists and some Lutherans, claim that man cannot cooperate with God in salvation, because that would detract from God’s glory.

And this is where the problem begins. The Reformed (and Lutheran) understanding of monergism is particularly concerned with regeneration, and not all of salvation. A simple look at the five solas of the Reformation should make this clear, one of which is sola fide or "by faith alone." The Reformers taught that believers must have faith to be saved. This is something the believer does. Granted, faith is a free gift from God and it is not meritorious in any sense, but it is still something that the believer does. In regeneration, on the other hand, the believer is completely passive. In other words, regeneration is something that happens to the believer and the believer does nothing for it to happen. In John three Jesus likens the new birth with the first birth. So, just like a baby is born without doing anything, so too a Christian is born again (i.e., regenerated) without doing anything.

Monergism.com defines monergism as: "In regeneration, the Holy Spirit unites us to Christ independent of any cooperation from our unregenerated human nature." Notice there is nothing about salvation as a whole. I think the problem here might be with the term "salvation." This term can refer to an aspect of the total work God does in the elect (i.e., justification) or the whole of God's work. In theological discourse, however, especially when critiquing another view, a person ought to be a careful as possible and offer the best the other side has to offer, not the worst. It is easy to pick the low hanging fruit off a tree. Thus, by confusing the terms salvation and regeneration, our Roman Catholic blogger is able to make the Reformed faith seem unbibilical, when in fact the view he is interacting with is not the Reformed view at all. He would benefit from a better understanding of the view he is attempting to decry. Straw men are easy to knock down, I guess that is why theologians enjoy building them.

United Around What?

I was directed earlier today to this blog and found the video that is posted below. There are many things in this video that are worthy of a response, but the one that seems most pressing to me is the claim of unity that the Roman Catholic Church makes. This video claims that unity must come from unity as being must come from being. However, this is a category error. That is, unity is not in the same category as being. Rather, unity is something that can be ascribed to being. In other words, being can be unified or fragmented. In the case of biblical unity, the Bible calls us to be unified in our understanding of the faith. Take as one example Philippians 1:27 where Paul commands his readers to be of "one mind."

All that to say this, the Bible does not want unity for unity's sake, but rather the Bible wants the Church to be united in her thoughts (or doctrines). Thus, though the Roman Catholic Church claim to have biblical unity, in fact they fall quite short of it. The Roman Catholic Church is not "one mind" with itself on many key issues. For one example, Catholics cannot agree on the doctrine of predestination. The only unity the Roman Catholic Church possess is a structural or ecclesiastical unity and this is not the unity that Jesus prayed for in John 17. For Jesus' prayer was that his followers would be one as he and the father are one. The unity that he is asking for is not a structural unity, for the father and the son do not have that kind of unity, rather he is asking for a unity of mind and will. This is biblical unity.

Bucey on Modern Reformation

I found this article by Camden Bucey on Feeding on Christ to be interesting, so I wanted to pass it along. It does seem interesting that Modern Reformation, which is associated with Mike Horton, would have a Roman Catholic write an article on a view of Calvin's doctrine of union with Christ that is seemingly different than Horton's. I was wondering if they were trying to paint Richard Gaffin's view, set forth here, as Roman Catholic, which makes one wonder.

Is Protestant Unity (Oxy)Moronic?

Any talk from Reformed folk about inter- and intra-denominational unity can be viewed by some as utterly disingenuous. To Roman Catholics, for example, the very notion of "Protestant unity" is moronic at worst, and oxymoronic at best.

I've been thinking lately about the arguments of Covenant Seminary graduate Bryan Cross, whose spiritual pilgrimage has taken him from Presbyterianism to Anglicanism, and then finally to Roman Catholicism. His recent posts argue that all Protestant versions of Sola Scriptura are necessarily individualistic. Even the so-called Reformed position of "Tradition 1," which (contra evangelicalism's view of Solo Scriptura) insists that the Bible is the church's book and therefore must be interpreted collectively rather than individually, is, according to Cross, individualistic.

Here's how Cross's argument works: Even the confessional Reformed believer who submits his personal beliefs to the authority of the Westminster Standards is ultimately guilty of individualism, albeit of a masked variety. The reason for this is that before he bowed in submission to the Confession and Catechisms he determined within himself, as a result of his personal Bible study, that those documents best comported with his own individual understanding of Scripture.

In other words, one's "submission" to the church is somewhat suspect when he first spends a year on the Internet searching for the church that already agrees with him. Such submission, Cross argues, is tantamount to shooting an arrow at the wall and then drawing the target around the point where the arrow happened to land. Simply put, it's kind of hard to miss the mark that way. To interpret the simile, the Protestant understanding of Sola Scriptura makes it virtually impossible for the individual believer's theological views to actually be challenged by the church and found wanting.

There are only two real options, Cross argues: individualism or apostolic succession. All claims of Sola Scriptura necessary devolve into the former, and all true respect for ecclesiastical authority necessary demands the latter.

How would you answer this charge?

Transubstantiation and Jon 6.

I am not a huge fan of posting link to other blog articles. I guess if you wanted to read other blogs, you would go to them on your own and read them. However, I opened up my RSS reader this morning and found a really good article on Transubstantiation and John 6 on one of the blogs I subscribe to, Parchment and Pen. This blog is in the broad stream of Evangelicalism and often has good articles. This particular article about the Roman Catholic understanding of John 6 and Transubstantiation had a very good exegetical feel to it (I think that is the main reason I liked it as much as I did). One of the points that I thought was most interesting was this excerpt, mainly because I never point this point together in my own mind.

Another important factor that Keating and other Catholic apologists fail to take into account is that John does not even record the central events of the Last Supper at all Obviously if we took the Catholic interpretation of John 6 and believed John included this passage to communicate that believers must eat the literal body and blood of Christ in order to have eternal life, you would expect John to have recorded the events that it foreshadows. You would expect John to have a historical record of the Last Supper, the inaugurating meal of the Eucharist. But John does not. What an oversight by John! In fact, John is the only Gospel writer that did not record the Last Supper. Therefore, it is very unlikely that in John’s mind, a literal eating and drinking of Christ body and blood are essential for salvation. Remember John wrote the only book in the NT that explicitly says it is written for the purpose of salvation and he does not even include the Lord’s Supper.