Thread by @StMichael71

Gavin Ortlund proposes a commitment to the principle: "Scripture is the only infallible rule of the Church."

NB: Ortlund is proposing as an authoritative rule: that Scripture is the only authoritative rule. But this rule is not Scripture. The rule is therefore not authoritative.

What looks contradictory is stating that the Bible is an authority on the basis of the principle, which seemingly needs to be an authoritative rule in just that same sense.

Ortlund should weaken the principle to avoid the problem.

Ortlund could say our judgments about Scripture, including judgment that 'sola scriptura' is true, are fallible.

But this weakened principle looks uninteresting.

It is not uniquely Protestant to think all human judgements could (in theory) be false, if God didn't protect them.

The idea is likely Scripture gets its authority from God directly, and is inspired/inerrant, whereas neither the principle nor anything else gets its authority from God directly. But there seems to be an implicit equivocation on the term 'authority'.

Scripture cannot be an authority *in the same sense* as a dogmatic authority would be, since Scripture cannot make meta-Scriptural judgments about itself that dogmatic authority is supposed to provide (e.g., the canon is not determined by Scripture).

If Scripture could not be an authority *in that sense*, and we rule out anything infallible other than Scripture, I suggest Ortlund ought to state his principle thus:

'There are no [public, human] judgments about Scripture which could bind us. Only what God judges can bind us.'

Ortlund's principle, stated this way, looks consistent. It would hold that no judgments about what God says are infallible, whether made by myself or anyone else, but only judgments made by God. This seems to me pretty close to how JH Newman and Karl Barth understood this rule.

But there is a problem which Barth and Newman recognized with this principle, even restated: Scripture is not identical with God or His judgments.

So, either Scripture cannot then bind us in conscience, or we apprehend Scripture's binding character 'directly'.

Both Barth and Newman rejected evidentialist answers on which we would be bound to accept Scripture on the basis of a further factor, like the rational force of evidence. The evidential bar is too high for ordinary Christians, who do not prove to themselves all these facts.

Newman argued that, if we were only bound by what we can 'directly' apprehend requiring Scripture's authority, we could only be bound by private revelation. Since we don't have that, this principle would dissolve Christianity, including Scripture's unique truth and authority.

Barth seems to have thought that God *does* do something like directly reveal Himself to everyone. For Barth, we experience God's judgments in & through Scripture, even though Scripture is not identical with God. Scripture is the unique sacramental occasion for encountering God.

I think there are at least two problems with Barth's position.

First, Barth recognizes his position would require ruling out that anyone can have a comparable experience (at least today) apart from Scripture. But I see no way he can argue for this non-circularly.

Second, the experience of God is fallible. Barth admits that no human judgement is infallible, whether about Scripture or even those judgments made in Scripture itself. But how do we differentiate experiences of God that are veridical/non-veridical?

Barth has no good answer.

Newman rejects we need infallible experience or evidence to think we might be obliged to confide our conscience to an external authority that transmits God's will to us reliably. We cannot rule out that God does this. We thus have a good 'externalist' answer to the problem.

For Newman's story to work, though, we would need reliable access to God's testimony. But we don't have direct access to the prophets, Christ, or His apostles today. We have public access only by means of testimonial transmission. So, we need normative conditions on the way...

...Scripture is externally transmitted to us, such that those conditions can be authoritative, generating for us a moral obligation to believe the testimony of another as coming from God.

Newman concludes we need an objectively reliable transmission of testimony by the Church.

I think Newman's account is much better than Barth's, and that there are no other good options.

I work out Newman's view in my forthcoming book, 'Whoever Hears You Hears Me: Dogmatic Authority as Testimony'.

routledge.com/Whoever-Hears-…