Has this early Protestant already PROVEN Sola Scriptura?

[00:00:00]We can never talk about solar scriptor on this channel enough. It's one of the most important uh points of dialogue that we have as Catholics with non-atholic Christians, Protestants, and evangelicals. So, fire up your Bibles, your pens, and your notebooks because Dave Armstrong is here with me again to talk about something that he has written a ton about, solar scriptor. In fact, he's written two books about this and probably hundreds of blog articles, but I want you to point uh to see his book, Pillars of Soloscriptor, replies to Whitaker, good and biblical proofs for Bible alone.

[00:00:39]And then the second book, which is just newly uh released in a second edition, is 100 biblical arguments against soloscriptor. And again, I always say this, Dave, everyone should have every Dave Armstrong book available on planet Earth in their library. So, everyone get those. Now, this Whitaker fellow, Dave, uh, have you found the most um powerful argument or arguer against Solos Scriptor? Is that isn't that how Whitaker is presented?

[00:01:12]Yeah, I think he's one of the best uh as far >> Yeah, >> from my perspective, you know, defending a falsehood, you can only go so far. I think he does as good as anybody.

[00:01:24]>> Um >> I should have said for solos scriptura.

[00:01:26]>> Yeah, for solos scriptura.

[00:01:28]>> Uh >> I mean these these guys can all be refuted and I think I have done so if I do say so. William Whitaker >> good >> lived from 1548 to 95. He was a Calvinist Anglican apologist and his book called Disputation on Holy Scripture published in 1588 is indeed considered by many Protestants to be the best booklength defense of solos scriptorer of all time. In my book pillars of solos scriptor already mentioned I devoted 173 pages to refuting his arguments.

[00:02:04]This video is drawn from chapter 2. They make the authority of scripture depend upon the church and so do in fact make the scripture inferior to the church.

[00:02:15]Close quote.

[00:02:17]>> Oh, we already start out with a whopper.

[00:02:19]The C council of Trent that Whitaker lived through contradicts this portrayal. This is what it says.

[00:02:28]says, quote, "The cinnid receives and venerates with an equal affection of piety and reverence all the books, both of the Old and New Testament, seeing that one God is the author of both."

[00:02:43]Close quote.

[00:02:45]God being the ultimate author, inspiring the human writers, occurs prior to the canon of the Bible. It's what makes the Bible what it is. The Catholic Church does not pretend to be superior to holy scripture. Yet, it's said all the time.

[00:03:00]It's one of the talking points. The first Vatican Council in 1870 was even more specific about this, right? It says this quote, "These the church holds to be sacred and canonical, not because they were afterward approved by her authority, but because having been written by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, they have God for their author and have been delivered as such to the church herself." Close quote.

[00:03:33]Whitaker in subsequent remarks confuses two things. The following two ideas are logically and categorically distinct.

[00:03:42]Number one, reverence is due to all the books in the Bible because of their intrinsic status as a God breathed that is inspired writing. Everyone agrees with that who still believes in the Bible. Number two, we definitively know what specific books are in the Bible primarily because of the authoritative decrees of the Catholic Church. Number one isn't dependent on number two. It exists on its own. And this is what Catholics contend.

[00:04:10]At the same time, we assert the practical necessity of number two. It's the difference between what a thing is in itself and how human beings receive it.

[00:04:23]Correct. Let's read another quote here.

[00:04:26]We deny that we believe the scriptures solely on account of this commenation of them by the church. The scripture is to be received not only because the church hath so determined and commanded but because it comes from God and that we certainly know that it comes from God not by the church but by the Holy Ghost.

[00:04:50]This is also the Catholic view as already explained. So once again and so often a Protestant apologist is fighting against straw men and not our real belief.

[00:05:02]Catholics don't dispute the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit either.

[00:05:07]It's doubly absurd because Whitaker cites four Catholic apologists uh names on the screen denying what he nevertheless continues to assert about Catholic belief on this matter. Go figure.

[00:05:20]St. Francis de Sales 1567 1622 doctor of the Catholic Church who lived shortly after Whitaker confirms what I have been contending in his Catholic controversy written in 1596. Here's what he says there.

[00:05:37]Yeah, we'll read a long quote which is worth reading. It says, quote, but here is the difficulty. If these books were not from the beginning of undoubted authority in the church, who can give them this authority? In truth, the church cannot give truth or certitude to the scripture or make a book canonical if it were not so. But the church can make a book known as canonical and make us certain of its certitude and is fully able to declare that a book is canonical, which is not held as such by everyone. not changing the substance of the book which of itself was canonical, but changing the persuasion of Christians, making it quite assured where previously it had not been so. For Calvin and the very Bibles of Geneva and the Lutheran receive several books as holy, sacred, and canonical, which have not been acknowledged by the ancients as such, and about which there has been a doubt. If there has been a doubt formally, what reason can they have to make them assured and certain nowadays?

[00:06:47]Except that which St. Augustine had, as we said above, I would not believe the gospel unless the authority of the Catholic Church moved me. And we receive the New and Old Testament in that number of books, which the authority of the Holy Catholic Church determines. Truly, we should be very ill assured if we were to rest our faith on the particular interior inspirations of which we only know that they exist or ever did exist by the testimony of some private persons. Close quote.

[00:07:23]>> Catholics aren't arguing that no one can ascertain a biblical book at all without the church. That's a caricature.

[00:07:30]rather that no one can be certain of the entire canon without the definitive church decree decree as to its contents.

[00:07:39]These are two different propositions.

[00:07:42]But Whitaker continually misrepresents our position as supposedly holding that no one can determine what particular books are biblical and canonical at all unless the church tells him it is so, which is nonsense.

[00:07:57]We don't do that. Whitaker sinks deeper and deeper into wars against straw men and writes downright silly self-refuting false dichotoies like the following.

[00:08:09]Yeah, let's quote him again. He says, quote, I am surprised that Stapleton should have been so stupid as not to see that if it be God who teaches through the church, the authority of God must be greater than that of the church. It does not therefore follow that because the church knows very well the voice of Christ, the authority of the church is greater than that of Christ. Close quote.

[00:08:35]As if any informed Catholic ever claim that the church has more authority than Christ himself.

[00:08:42]That's not the issue at all. But it makes great copy and makes Catholics look ridiculous to supposedly believe such a patently absurd thing, doesn't it? That's why it's done. The idea is to make the other guy look silly.

[00:08:56]Meanwhile, throughout this section, Whitaker ignores the real difficulties.

[00:09:02]What to do when men disagree on the canon, anything else in theology? What do you do? Who has the final say? How do we arrive at complete unity and oneness of doctrine that the Bible so often commands us to do? These are practical issues of supreme importance.

[00:09:20]The Catholic solution which we contend was already the teaching of the Bible is an infallible church guided in unique fashion by the Holy Spirit and apostolic succession. That's how you solve that's how we solve those problems. I would say >> right >> Protestants have not solved that's why they keep dividing and you have chaos and relativism because they believe contradictory things that that cannot be good because that means error is necessarily present in one party or the other or both as I've said many times.

[00:09:55]>> Yeah, >> I like that last little thing you said there Dave. error is necessarily present. And I think you asked in a previous um part of our solos script long solos scrip tour dialogues over multiple episodes.

[00:10:09]>> You kind of put the question out there.

[00:10:11]Did Jesus set up his church this way so that there would be necessary disagreement about the meaning of scripture. Like it would be almost intrinsic to the nature of the church that there would be couple of thousand different denominations all waving their Bibles and saying, "I think you're wrong about the Bible." Did Jesus really set it up that way? You know, on purpose.

[00:10:34]>> Yeah. John 17, he said at the last supper, >> um, I pray that they are one as you and I are one, the father and the son. So I >> I said in my book somewhere, um, the father and the son don't have doctrinal disagreements. They they have no disagreements at all. So if we're supposed to be one like they are, >> that completely wipes out the nominations. That's another topic, but that we have done before. It >> absolutely. I'll just share a couple of final thoughts here, Dave, and we can interact with them if they're interesting to you. one is I've I guess I've experienced kind of what you point out here in this episode that there is this move to try to um to try to say that Catholics want to put the church above Jesus and above the Bible and we won't let you do that. You know the Protestants kind of come I will not let you put the church above Jesus and above the Bible. Well then it's like okay well where do you put it then?

[00:11:38]Well, we put it as invisible. The church is invisible. Um, so nobody really knows where the church is or who the church is. Only God does. And therefore, no authority can be vested in something called a the church. Um, and so it's every man with his Bible and Jesus. And that's what they want. Like they want that to be what Christianity actually is. And so um they attack in a sense what Jesus established namely the church which we talked about in the previous episode as his government. The the church over which Jesus is is king and lord which has officers and governors and always will. And so one of my favorite scriptures about this whole theme, which I think really connects here, um, and and pushes back on that attempt to make the church invisible, is Ephesians chapter 4, um, uh, beginning at verse 11, which says, "So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors, and teachers to equip his people for works of service so that the body of Christ may be built up." And then this great word verse 13 begins with until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the son of God and become mature attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. And I always want to ask well when when did that happen so that we don't need these guys anymore? Because that's what Jesus gave us. That's what he set up. Final thought on this one we'll bundle it all together. So therefore, the Catholic Church looks at scripture and the church that Jesus founded as being inseparably with each other, one serving the other, the church serving the word, the word being that um uh resource and source through which God communicates. But never without the bride, never without the church. I don't know what you think about that.

[00:13:43]Well, I was just thinking about stuff how uh so of course Protestants always appeal to the Bible. Say, "Wow, we don't need a church. We have the Bible. The Bible's inspired."

[00:13:54]So, right, >> Catholics says, "Yeah, okay. We agree with that."

[00:13:58]>> Now, our question to you is, "What do you do when you disagree with each other?"

[00:14:03]>> Exactly. Simple question.

[00:14:05]>> My example I use over and over again, I did in my first book was baptism. You have five ma major different views among Protestants and the Bible 14 times says that baptism is related to salvation and regeneration.

[00:14:21]Um you have people who deny that it does that at all. It doesn't save people that don't believe in the sacraments. You have denominations that don't baptize period. That would be Salvation Army and I believe the Quakers.

[00:14:35]Um then you have those who believe in adult regeneration that be churches of Christ and disciples of Christ.

[00:14:44]Um so what do you do? They contradict each other.

[00:14:48]In other words, >> yeah, >> you can't just say, well, we have the Bible. You know, that's like the end of the story. Well, it immediately has to be interpreted. And that's why we have differences because people interpret differently.

[00:15:02]And you have to have a final court of appeal just like you do in civil law.

[00:15:06]You have to we have the Supreme Court that takes care of all these questions.

[00:15:11]It goes up the ladder and and they make the ruling.

[00:15:15]>> Um seems to me we need something like that in the church.

[00:15:19]>> But uh >> yeah. Amen.

[00:15:21]>> We're always hearing these caricatures.

[00:15:23]Another one uh is the idea that the Catholic Church is supposedly telling you how to interpret any individual Bible passage. You know, like there you look up in a book and says, "Well, this is what the church says that that means." In fact, this is really funny. There's only like I think it's eight eight passages that you must believe a certain thing there. Um Jimmy Aken wrote an article about that.

[00:15:52]Catholic apologist for those who haven't heard of him. Um yeah, he he detailed that and there is very few.

[00:16:00]So in other words, we're we're as free as anyone else to go to the Bible and try to determine what it means. The only point Catholic Church makes is that you have a framework of orthodoxy within which you interpret like the broad, you know, you can't you can't say there's four persons in the trinity or Jesus isn't God or something. Um >> then the church will say you can't do that just as Protestants do. It's really not that different in that respect, >> right? Um, I use the example of Calvinists.

[00:16:37]The Calvinists have the five points of tulip. I won't go through all that, but that's what it's called. It's five different things and it's the acronym tulip. So, if you're in a Presbyterian Calvinist Reformed Church and you start denying two or three of those, um, so like it won't go very well for you if you go and talk to the elders or pastors, whatever it is. See, I don't believe in LP. you know, they're going to say, "Well, you're no longer a Presbyterian and good standard.

[00:17:06]>> Find another church."

[00:17:07]>> Yeah. You ought to leave.

[00:17:08]>> Yeah.

[00:17:09]>> Um, >> right.

[00:17:10]>> So, when it comes down to it, everyone has a framework >> of orthodoxy beyond which you can't go.

[00:17:17]That's why Protestants have confessions and creeds just as we do.

[00:17:20]>> So, it's a bum wrap.

[00:17:22]>> Like, we do the same thing and we have a little more authority because it's stronger than their view. And then they just caricature that so that they they can dismiss it when in fact it's just a stronger version of what every Protestant does.

[00:17:39]Yes, it is. I guess my final observation is somewhat similar to the first but more of an analogy. Um and that is inside of this argument by by Whitaker is not only an argument about the nature of scripture. So it's not in that sense just a Bible argument.

[00:17:59]It's also an ecclesial argument. In other words, it's a you could say it's a war against the nature of the church itself and what the church actually is.

[00:18:09]Wants to make the church into something else so that the Bible um can be what what Whitaker and his folks think it is for the Catholic. Now I've been Catholic for seven years now, Dave, as the make as of the making of this video. The longer I'm Catholic, the more I guess I understand the Catholic intuition to wse at this because we have uh when we've shared this on the channel before, our our view of ecclesiology is that it is a nuptial relationship, a bridegroom and bride relationship, if you will, a father and mother, a husband and wife, parents with children. All of those images are inside of our biblical ecclesiology. So to some degree when I listen to Whitaker, it sounds a little bit like the child telling its mother, "You can't tell me what to say. You're not dad." That's what it sounds like to Catholic ears when you hear a guy like Whitaker say, "Well, the church wants to say what the Bible is and what it means or or or whatever he might be saying.

[00:19:11]The church isn't God. The church isn't Jesus." And we want to say, "Wait a second. Jesus is in a one flesh relationship with his bride, the mother of all the children. She has authority.

[00:19:25]Paul spoke of himself. Uh am I not an apostle? He said he referred to himself and the other apostles as quote stewards of the mysteries of God. So that's Catholic ecclesiology.

[00:19:41]So again to repeat it, my final observation is it is like a child saying to his mother, "You're not my dad, so you can't tell me what to do." I don't know what you think of that analogy.

[00:19:54]>> Yeah. Well, at bottom, that's true. Now, the Protestant will protest because I've heard this many times say, "Well, >> you guys caricature us. You act like we have no authority and we have no uh pastors and scholars and so forth."

[00:20:10]We're not denying that. But the fact remains in the final analysis, I've said this for 35 years, every Protestant can act like Luther did. What did Luther do? He said, >> "Unless I'm convinced by scripture and plain reason, you know, so he disagreed with some stuff in the Catholic church turned out to be 50 things that I've documented um at least."

[00:20:35]But why? So if he could do it, if he could do it against the whole Catholic church, the complete history of Christianity up to that time, what's to stop any individual Protestant from saying, "I'm going to do a Luther and say, I don't agree with what you're telling me, you know, Presbyterian or Methodist or Lutheran, whatever it is, Baptist, you know, I say the scripture says something else. I don't care what you think."

[00:20:58]>> Right?

[00:20:59]>> It's no different in essence from what Martin Luther did who started the whole thing. And that's that's the problem with the system is it has no internal um guidelines and framework when they start disagreeing with each other >> because the differences were there from the beginning and they condemned each other as we have documented in videos.

[00:21:22]>> Uh Luther called different people damned and stuff that fellow Protestant leaders like Zingly um and vice versa. So anyway, right, >> I could talk forever about this stuff.

[00:21:34]>> Yeah. I mean, no, it's it's true. And to your point, Dave, I guess my final observation is this. If you're watching this video and you're a Protestant or evangelical, well, even if you're a Catholic, if you just Google all the churches in your city, any anyone can do this, all the churches in my city, you know, or in the zip code, I guarantee you this. If you went and interviewed all the pastors of those churches and you said, "How did your church here, you know, First Baptist of whatever town or Horizon Church of this town or Gateway Church of that town, how did it start?"

[00:22:10]Like, take me all the way back to when it first began. Some of those churches are going to say, "Well, Pastor A and Pastor B had a falling out about what the Bible meant." So, Pastor B took a few guys from this church and started this church down the street so that they would really teach the Bible the right way as it ought to be taught. And it ends up being a fight about what the Bible means. And you could count do that over and over and over again. And uh and I'm not exaggerating. It is the reason why many many congregations among evangelicals and Protestants exist today because they're doing the Luther thing that you talked about. Well, unless I'm convinced.

[00:22:54]>> And the trajectory of the trajectory of that is kind of like I've used this analogy in other places. It's kind of like showing up to an accident scene and seeing a shattered windshield on the pavement broken into a thousand pieces.

[00:23:08]That's the ecclesial landscape of Protestant and evangelicalism because of solos scriptorera. It it would be impossible at this point in my life to convince me otherwise.

[00:23:20]>> Yeah, it can't it cannot be resolved. It never has been for 500 years. All the divisions be >> because solo scriptor is fundamentally flawed from the outset >> they will never solve.

[00:23:33]>> They'll never become unified. I mean they are broadly the Protestant will say oh yeah see we all believe in the trinity and we believe in >> salvation by grace alone.

[00:23:44]>> Uh yeah you have broad agree agreement but you also have some very serious disagreements.

[00:23:50]>> Um and again that's not good because where there's contradiction there's necessarily error and that's falsehood >> which no one argues is a good thing. So >> yeah, >> at least we present the Catholics present one unified view. What agree or disagree? At least this is it. You know, >> you either accept it or you don't.

[00:24:11]>> Yeah.

[00:24:12]>> Instead of having 50 different views on one thing or something.

[00:24:17]So >> yeah, I mean the fact that the fact that we have a history of ecumenical councils going all the way back to Acts chapter 15, >> yeah, >> tells you Catholics Catholics are not running from the fact that Christians disagree with each other at all. Like that's normal. It's it's a thing. It's real. It's recorded in the Bible that that is happening right inside of the the Apostolic Church of Scripture. Um so that's not the issue. The issue is who says how do you sort that out? And that's why I love these ongo this ongoing and growing series of of um chats with you Dave on solos scriptor. I I honestly don't think we can talk about it enough because I think it's the thing. uh it's the you know it's the root cause of of so much division and and it's also when people get over um get over it then they become open to listening to the Catholic claims and so so I'm really grateful we can talk about solos scriptor anytime you want you've talked about it a lot in your books and I want to mention those again because everybody should have them of course the book that we referenced the beginning of the episode pillars of solos scriptor TRA. You can grab a copy of that. And of course, the newly released second edition of Dave's book. 100 biblical arguments against Soloscope Tura. Should be on the top shelf of every Catholic Apologetics library. Lots of articles.

[00:25:45]If you haven't clicked like yet, do it.

[00:25:47]Subscribe, comment, support the channel, share this video if you think it would be a blessing to someone. Dave, any final thoughts before we sign off, my brother? Um, I just wanted to mention that uh this will be the beginning of a series from that book. So >> awesome.

[00:26:05]>> I like I like doing that because you're interacting with supposedly the best defender of Solos Scriptor. So we're saying, okay, right, >> bring on the best one you got, you know, like a boxing match or something.

[00:26:17]>> Bring it >> bring your best and we will >> bring out Goliath.

[00:26:20]>> Yeah, we'll reply to it and, you know, let the better man win. Let the let the viewer decide who has the better case.

[00:26:28]Uh that's what I like to do. I like I like to find the best opponents, not the dumbest and the you know people that a lot of people try to find someone who doesn't know what they're talking about and pretend that they represent the other view. Um that doesn't cut it. You have to find the best. So that's what I'm doing here.

[00:26:52]>> Good Dave. What a what a blessing man.

[00:26:54]Always a joy to chat with you. You are a terrific blessing to the channel and to our viewers and and everyone. So really great. Stick around when you see us again for more Soloscript Tour in the future. Thanks for joining us everyone.

[00:27:09]Dave, thanks for being here again. God bless you man.

[00:27:12]>> Same to you and everyone watching.