From:   MX%"manutter@grove.iup.edu"  7-JUL-1997
To:     MX%"nemo@ludens.elte.hu"
Subj:   Re: Sola Scriptura

:Good to hear from you again after so long a time :)

:I am not sure, from your letter, whether you are admitting or denying that
:the infallible teaching of Scripture is something that exists separate and
:apart from the fallible human understanding of Scripture.  Sometimes you
:seem to admit it, but mostly you seem intent on defending the idea that
:human understanding ought to rest upon and rely upon the the Scriptures.
:It is well that you do so, of course, for we always ought to look to the
:words of the Lord Jesus and His Holy Apostles for guidance.  Unfortunately,
:that's all rather beside the point of my question, for I never said or
:implied that anyone should make it their goal to erect barriers between the
:Scriptures and human understanding, as though prevent human understanding
:from accessing God's Word.

Theoretically, the infallible teaching of the Scriptures could "exist
separate and apart" from our understanding thereof, but it never does.
Whenever someone starts to speak about the Bible, or about the teaching
of the Bible, or about the existence of the teaching of the Bible, it
immediately gets connected with his understanding. Yet you insist on
its sheer and naked "existence" as if the Bible itself weren't designated
for the Church to read, explain and obey, and for heretics to deny,
misinterpret and disobey. God is separate of our perception of Him
but the Bible isn't, on account of its being written in human languages.

You can dwell on its hypothetical "correct interpretation" which exists
somewhere in Plato's ideal world, but this you can do without reading
even a jot or a tittle of the Bible. The unjust step is when you begin
to point at your leaders as ones to whom this ethereal entity is allegedly
entrusted. No opportunity to challenge them whatsoever: they will say,
"We are right by definition." Papalists have managed to mitigate the chaos
resulting from here with an auxiliary assertion "And the guard of the
abovementioned infallible interpretation is the pope". You who are without
such an effective organ of truth, have to betake yourselves to generalities:
"We follow the universal councils of the undivided Church" or "We follow
the tradition of the Fathers". The first falls when the so-called indulgences
are investigated into, as none of the councils spoke regarding them. The
second is ineffective because no one can refute the doctrine of the so-called
purgatory with patristic arguments. What is left for the Orthodox is the
mere blunt denial.

:All I was pointing out was that when some uninspired person reads the
:Bible, what they come away with is not the infallible teaching of
:Scripture, but rather a fallible human understanding of the infallible
:teaching of Scripture.  Note I did not say an *erroneous* understanding of
:Scripture--it is possible for our understanding to be correct, even when it
:is fallible.  Nevertheless, it *is* fallible, and is something that is
:therefore distinct from the infallible teaching of Scripture.

But such a difference doesn't cause much trouble if one of the parts is
a tangible thing, just expressed in word of mouth, and the other one is
just a hypothetical sidereal entity. It's not too meaningful to contrast
my fallible interpretation with a thing which you yourself fail to know
and identify.

:This may seem to you like a hair-splitting philosophical quibble, but I
:assure you it is not.  The reason there are tens of thousands of different
:Protestant denominations is because there have been tens of thousands of
:men and women who thought they had the infallible teaching of Scripture
:when in fact all they had was their own fallible understanding of the
:infallible teaching of Scripture.  Had they borne in mind the distinction
:between infallible teaching and fallible human understanding, they would
:not (one hopes) have been so quick to charge off and start a new
:denomination, in rejection of all the others.

Schism in externals is an undesirable thing, but still better than internal
heresy. Scripture-centered investigation into the will of God is much more
profitable than a denomination-centered method. This we openly profess eg.
when dropping some outdated opinions of the Reformers, and so do you when
you make Gregory of Nyssa an ecclesiastical freethinker. But we do have
solid grounds, ie. advancing exegesis, to do so - whereas you don't. You
cling to the opinions of the ancients, so you mustn't call an unchallenged
opinion of them heresy on the mere score that your denomination later
declared them heresy. All heresies, as you yourself said, were discovered,
fought against, and defeated. Why do you still maintain that the so-called
purgatory is not part of the Apostolic Tradition? Because later your
denomination learnt the truth about it? This would make the ancients
totally unreliable and you yourself the infallible pope.

:Reading of infallible Scriptures does not impart infallible understanding.
:That's all I'm saying, and I think you have to agree that this is so.

I agree. But we don't need "infallible understanding" at all. We need
correct understanding. Don't try to extract too much of us: we are no
popes.

:Yet Sola Scriptura requires us to treat our understanding of
:Scripture as though it, too, were infallible.  Does it not?

No, it doesn't. It requires of us that we treated the Scripture
as infallible, and obeyed it. Why would obedience deem the slave
greater than his master?

:How else could we use our reading of Scripture to justify separating
:ourselves from the Church founded by Jesus and the Holy Apostles?

Traditionalists, however good-willed, tend to consider their denominations
"the Church." I could easily evade the question by demanding that the two
major traditionalist denominations first decided by whatever means which
one of them the Real Church is. But this I had been doing with no success
in our former correspondence, as you never parried it.

So let me try to wake up your polemic sense in another way. You tend to
identify the Church with the visible appearance which she had assumed over
the centuries, so that you could triumphantly slap in our face: "you contra-
dict the Church", while we are doing nothing but contradict you. Together
with the patriarchs, bishops, monks, and church fathers, you have your
notion of "the Church" as a clearly visible society on earth. But even
you can't deny that those external attributes along which you are bound
to define "the Church" are subject to constant, and which is worse: quite
unnoticeable change.

Yet bigger leaps than a man's life reveal curious things about the much-
claimed historical continuity. First we had the council of Elvira forbidding
the use of religious images, and this mysteriously resulted in the second
council of Nicea almost commanding it as a divine precept. My former letters
abound in such details. Eg. someone in the fourth century tearing apart a
saint's picture would have not separated himself from the visible community
(it really happened with Epiphanius, bishop of Salamis acting as a Gideon -
see Jerome, Ep. 51,9) while it would be a schismatic move 400 years later.
This will suffice about continuity.

:How else could we take a verse or
:a passage and say, "The Church says this means X, but I think it means Y,
:and therefore the Church is wrong"?  If we do so, are we not going to claim
:that we have compared the Church to an infallible standard of Truth, and
:found the Church to be wanting?  We claim that the Church has gone against
:something infallible, but all that it has *really* gone against is our
:understanding of the Scripture.

We Protestants very seldom accuse "the Church" of serious error. From this
kind is our lamentation over the Constantinian turn. Most frequently we
say "medieval papacy exploited the gullible populace for base traffickings"
or "pope Gregory the Great acted very inappropriately when introducing the
practice of praying for those in the so-called purgatory." We also have
our references at the bottom of the page, pointing to certain historical
events. While we tend to excuse things with the circumstances as much as
possible, we, even from the standpoint of a fair historian, can't give the
sanction (even of posterity) to whatever had happened.

A glaring example of this could be the books of Kings in the Bible: the
author criticizes the kings and the people based on the precepts of the
Law. Hence you have to judge the prophets with the same standard with
which you measure Sola Scriptura adherents, namely that they, when opposing
their religious governors with their "obey the Law" speech, were just
voicing their mere private interpretation of the Law. Yet it was faithful-
ness to the Law that authenticated true prophets, and not their own words.

And the prophets, totally independent of the contemporary religious system,
and sometimes being harassed by it, proved to have been right in this debate.
Jeremiah, against whom the people plotted, saying "We are the stewards of
truth" (see Jer 18:18), was among those whom our Lord commended for their
faith and endurance. Having such examples, I think very few of some mitra'd
pseudo-bishop's anathemas - I go on studying Scripture with all possible
tools, so that I might be conformed to God's will revealed therein.

:The Orthodox approach is not to merely check whether the Church has gone
:against one individual's personal understanding of Scripture, but rather to
:examine what the understanding of the Church has been throughout time,
:going back to the Lord Jesus and His Holy Apostles.  Our approach has not
:been to "discover" and then argue for new doctrines, but rather to preserve
:"the faith delivered once for all to the saints."

We do the same. What do you think: why do we read the Bible if not because
God speaks through it? In the meantime, we examine the understanding of
the primitive Church. Do you know a better source to draw water from?

:No matter how
:well-argued a doctrine, no matter how charismatic (in the social sense) the
:proponents, if the doctrine is one the Church has never heard before, it's
:not part of the Apostolic Teaching.  No matter how many Scripture verses
:you can line up behind it, no matter how well it fits in the modern
:intellectual and cultural climate, if it's a doctrine that the Church has
:not heard before, it's not part of the Apostolic Teaching.

This is no better than Sola Scriptura, as the method is the same. We cling
to the Biblical canon. You cling to the canon which includes the patristic
writings up to 1054, and the universal councils. Roman Catholics hold
strongly to the oracles of their Roman chief. We all have our canons.
But you traditionalists, having more material at your disposal, ie. more
stumbling blocks, more contradiction, more errors - have to wriggle more
intensely to disentangle yourselves from the bounds you wrapped yourselves
into. And this all is the result of an overly curious spirit which didn't
cease to seek knowledge even there where God's lips are closed.

:Sola Scriptura has no defense against the errors inherent in turning a
:blind eye to the history of doctrine in the Church. Under Sola Scriptura,
:we're not allowed to include the historical, theological context of the
:Scriptures (beyond a limited linguistic-only context).

These are paltry and unjust cavils. Sola Scriptura can not only place
things in their such-and-such contexts, but as well evaluate many external
influences which go on posturing in the role of "theological context."
Who could have been the most fitting expounders of the Old Testament, on
your showing, if not the Pharisees, sitting in Moses' seat? Yet you, for
some unclear reasons, abandon their insights, and claim authority for
much later ones.

:Anyone who can
:marshall a reasonable list of verses and passages can "prove" their point
:of view to be Scriptural, regardless of how well or how poorly it fits with
:what Christianity has been since the days of the Holy Apostles.

And the debate can flare! One of the parties has to deny the principle
Sola Scriptura. But you, unable to silence heretics, resort to the easiest
method: you declare that you are right by definition, regardless of how
well your beliefs are in line with Scripture.

:Focus on
:"how *we* understand the Scripture," rather than on "how *the Church*
:has always understood the Scripture," and you get tens of thousands of
:incompatible denominations, from the Baptists to the Jehovah's Witnesses
:to the lesbian priestess, ultra-liberal "mainline" denominations.

If you want to blame it on Sola Scriptura, let me blame the Inquisition
and crusades on traditionalism. It would be a at least as justified a
charge as yours. The very principle which maintained external unity in
traditionalism was meticulous pharisaism in dogmas, treating conciliar
definitions as Scripture, various cultural reasons, and last but not
least, the sword of the Emperor.

:It is inevitable.  The Sola Scriptura approach blurs or erases the crucial
:distinction between the infallible teaching of Scripture and the fallible
:human understanding of Scripture, and such a seed cannot bear any fruit but
:chaos.

This chaos is the result of many unchristlike dogmas having been accepted
in the Church, eradicating which undoubtedly hurts the feelings of many.
(infant baptism, expiatory Mass etc.)

:By the way, I was interested in your claim that "Sola Scriptura" was an
:infallible teaching of Scripture.  My test for something being a teaching
:of Scripture is that, first of all, it must be written in Scripture, and
:therefore you should be able to state the doctrine using only direct,
:verbatim, un-commented quotations from the Bible.  I do not believe you can
:do so with Sola Scriptura.  If you try to state Sola Scriptura using only
:verbatim Bible quotes, you will either fail, or you will wind up with a
:doctrine so vague that it does nothing to refute the Orthodox understanding
:of the importance of Scripture.  You are welcome to try, of course, but I
:think you're going to be very disappointed when you look for verses with
:the words "only" or "alone" actually written there (as in "only the written
:Word is authoritative").

Every word of God is pure: He is a shield to those who put their trust in
Him. Don't add to His words, lest He reprove you, and you be found a liar.
Proverbs 30:5-6.

:I, of course, believe that the Holy Apostles sternly charged us:  "Stand
:firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught, whether by word of
:mouth or by letter from us."  (II Thess. 2:15, NASB).  That's a verbatim
:quotation from the Scriptures, and I am pretty sure my understanding of it
:is correct, since it conforms both to the words actually written in the
:Bible and to the understanding of it which the Church has held ever since
:St. Paul wrote it.

Your denomination errs, together with you. What have you, in the 20th
century, learnt from the lips of Paul? Nothing. So this verse exhorts the
Thessalonians to keep all what we now know to be contained in the Bible.