In chapters 2 and 3 we explored the foundational issues of tradition and Scripture. There we observed that the Protestant view of sola Scriptura is often the subject of caricature by Roman Catholic apologists, who contend that the notion cuts Protestants off from the historic roots of Christianity and leaves them with no secure place to stand amid the many winds of doctrine that continually blow about.
Indeed, it is worse, for the claim is often pressed that Protestants are hopelessly inconsistent, that their view lacks objective authority and reduces to subjective individualism. For the church, it is argued, gave us the Bible, so Protestants cannot consistently appeal to the authority of Scripture without acknowledging the prior authority of the church. Consider these lines from Peter Kreeft, a former evangelical, who is now a Roman Catholic. “If Scripture is infallible, as traditional Protestants believe, then the Church must be infallible too, for a fallible cause cannot produce an infallible effect, and the Church produced the Bible. The Church (apostles and saints) wrote the New Testament, and the Church (subsequent bishops) defined its canon.”1 This argument is confused at a number of levels, but for now we simply want to highlight the claim that “a fallible cause cannot produce an infallible effect.” Suppose this is true. Does it follow that an infallible cause cannot employ a fallible instrument to produce an infallible effect? Cannot God as an infallible cause inspire and direct fallible human beings to infallibly convey his truth? Does Paul need to be infallible for God to use him to write, say, epistles that have infallible authority to teach doctrinal and moral truth? It seems clear that Paul need not be infallible for an infallible God to inspire him in this fashion.2
Claims similar to those made about the Bible are made about the classic creeds. Protestants who reject the claims of the Roman church, it may be argued, have no principled reason to insist that the Nicene Creed is correct or to appeal to its authority to fend off heretical claims about Christ.
This basic line of argument is often employed to unsettle evangelicals and other Protestants and to pressure them to convert to Rome. On one level, it is not surprising that these lines of argument are so effective with many such believers. After all, evangelicals love Scripture, and their faith in Christ is the very heart of what gives meaning and direction to their lives. If they become convinced that the only way they can preserve their faith in Christ and the authority of the Bible is by going to Rome, well, they will go to Rome.
But while the appeal of this line of argument, not least its emotional appeal, is undeniable in a number of ways, its rational credentials are another matter altogether. In this chapter and the next, we want to build on the preceding chapters on Scripture and tradition (chaps. 2 and 3) and advance our argument that Reformation Christians can heartily affirm the authority of the Bible and the classic creeds with full intellectual integrity while rejecting the claims of the Roman magisterium. In chapters 2 and 3, we looked at these issues from a historical and theological standpoint. Now we want to focus more on philosophical and epistemological issues involved in revelation, biblical authority, and the status of classic creeds.
So let us begin to do so by looking at this passage from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which spells out the Roman Catholic claims about the magisterium and its teaching authority. “‘The task of giving an authentic interpretation of the Word of God, whether in its written form or in the form of Tradition, has been entrusted to the living teaching office of the Church alone. Its authority in this matter is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ.’ This means that the task of interpretation has been entrusted to the bishops in communion with the successor of Peter, the Bishop of Rome.”3 The first thing we particularly want to underscore here is that the magisterium is identified with “bishops in communion with the successor of Peter, the Bishop of Rome.” So this clearly gives distinctive, if not exclusive, interpretive authority to the pope and those bishops in communion with him. The magisterium alone has the task of “giving an authentic interpretation of the Word of God.”
Consider now this passage, cited earlier, which is particularly significant for our concerns because it encapsulates the issues we will consider in this chapter and the next: “It is clear therefore that, in the supremely wise arrangement of God, sacred Tradition, Sacred Scripture, and the Magisterium of the Church are so connected and associated that one of them cannot stand without the others. Working together, each in its own way, under the action of the one Holy Spirit, they all contribute effectively to the salvation of souls.”4 This paragraph is a paraphrase of a paragraph from the 1965 Vatican II document Dei Verbum, which reads as follows: “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.”5
A few things are worth noting here. First, notice that the phrase “teaching authority of the Church” from the 1965 document is replaced by the phrase “Magisterium of the Church.” That magisterium, recall, is composed of bishops in communion with the pope. So the teaching authority of the church appears to be identified with the Roman Catholic magisterium. Second, notice the claim that one of these three factors, sacred tradition, sacred Scripture, and the magisterium, “cannot stand without the others.” Now it is worth asking whether this also means that no two of them can stand without the third. That is not explicitly stated, but it appears to be the claim.
Third, notice the claim that these three factors, working under the direction of the Holy Spirit, “all contribute effectively to the salvation of souls.” So the ultimate aim is soteriological, not merely intellectual or rational. However, we should not in any way draw a contrast between justified dogmatic belief and the salvation of our souls. Indeed, dogmatic belief is essential to our spiritual formation and final salvation: “There is an organic connection between our spiritual life and the dogmas. Dogmas are lights along the path of faith; they illuminate it and make it secure. Conversely, if our life is upright, our intellect and heart will be open to welcome the light shed by the dogmas of faith.”6 Clearly, then, a lot is at stake in the matter of discerning “authentic interpretation of the Word of God” and the dogmas that should bind our minds and hearts.
So here is the important claim we want to examine, that there is some sort of necessary connection or linkage between Scripture, tradition, and the Roman magisterium. Consequently, anyone who wants to affirm any one of them must also affirm the other two, or anyone who affirms any two must also affirm the third. Clearly, this claim is a frontal challenge to Christians in other traditions who do not acknowledge the authority of the Roman magisterium and the claims of papal authority. To consider and assess this claim, we need to get clear on just what is meant by the claim that no one or two of these factors can “stand without the others.”
Just what is involved in failing to stand? Are these three factors like the legs of a three-legged stool, so that if any one of them is removed, the stool cannot stand even for a moment, let alone bear any weight?7 Is the claim that anyone who attempts to maintain or rationally accept the authority of Scripture and traditional creedal orthodoxy while rejecting the claims of the Roman magisterium will inevitably fail? Does it mean that all such efforts will suffer from inconsistency or other rational defects? Is it actually a weaker claim to the effect that any one or two of the factors is less effective without the others? Is it a prediction or a claim about historical inevitability? Does it mean that any effort to maintain the authority of one or two of these factors without the magisterium will fizzle out and eventually come to nothing? Are such efforts inherently unstable and bound to disintegrate?
Exactly what the claim is here is not altogether clear. So we shall proceed by considering and assessing various options as to what it might mean. We shall not, however, attempt to settle which one of these options is the correct interpretation of this claim, since that is up to Rome. We shall begin with a rather strong version of the claim that would entirely discredit Protestant (and perhaps Eastern Orthodox) Christianity. While versions of this strong interpretation are common with popular apologists and bloggers, we shall take as our representative of this view John Henry Newman, a famous convert to Rome who has been very influential in converting others to his view. Indeed, Newman is the patron saint of many contemporary Roman Catholic apologists. In particular, we shall examine his argument in his celebrated book An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine.
In his famous book Newman’s project is to resolve a serious difficulty we have identified several times in this book, that many of Rome’s essential doctrinal claims have scant support at best in the explicit teaching of Scripture as well as the early patristic sources. Indeed, they were articulated much later, often after centuries of development from many historical factors and influences. It is important to be clear that Newman’s whole theory is premised on the reality of this problem. If it were not recognized as a serious problem, there would be no need for his famous theory.
Newman’s ingenious solution, in short, is to argue that these doctrinal developments of later centuries were in fact present from the beginning, albeit in embryonic form. The later development simply brought to maturity the various seeds that were planted in the original revelation given to the apostles. The very heart of Christian orthodoxy, after all, was not formulated in dogmatic terms until the Nicene Creed in 325/381. In a parallel way, Newman argues, later Roman doctrinal developments were simply making explicit and filling in the details of what was there all along in Christian revelation.
The claim that these developments are parallel is not only at the heart of Newman’s overall argument; it is also crucial to his version of what I call the all-or-nothing argument, one that has convinced a number of Protestants to migrate to Rome. So let’s take a careful look at Newman’s rather ambitious argument.
After making his case for development, Newman proceeds to the heart of his argument for the rational necessity to accept the authority of Rome.
If the Christian doctrine, as originally taught, admits of true and important developments, as was argued in the foregoing Section, this is a strong antecedent argument in favor of a provision in the Dispensation for putting a seal of authority upon those developments. The probability of their being known to be true varies with that of their truth. The ideas indeed are quite distinct, I grant, of revealing and of guaranteeing a truth, and they are quite often distinct in fact. . . . If then there are certain great truths, or duties, or observances, naturally and legitimately resulting from the doctrines originally professed, it is but reasonable to include these true results in the idea of the revelation itself, to consider them parts of it, and if the revelation be not only true, but [also] guaranteed as true, to anticipate that they too will come under the privileges of that guarantee.8
Notice a few things about this passage. First, he distinguishes revealing a truth from guaranteeing it. What exactly is involved in this guarantee that goes beyond revelation itself? Second, he describes “certain great truths” that “naturally and legitimately” result from the original revelation; he claims that these are part of the revelation and consequently share in whatever guarantees pertain to that revelation itself. Now the crucial question here is how we shall identify natural and legitimate development, and whether everything that might be called natural can be guaranteed to be true. Just what qualifies a development as legitimate? We shall come back to these questions, which we now raise in a preliminary way.
Next, it is important to emphasize that Newman advances his argument for an infallible guarantor of revelation in terms of what seems probable or reasonable. Indeed, dozens of times throughout his book he appeals to judgments of antecedent probability, of what seems likely, and so on. Here is how he casts his argument for an infallible guarantor of revelation: “A probable infallibility is a probable gift of never erring; a reception of the doctrine of probable infallibility is faith and obedience towards a person founded on the probability of his never erring in his declaration or commands.”9
He also takes care to point out that infallibility is often confused with certitude and insists that the argument for probable infallibility is not an attempt to achieve certitude.10 Probabilities remain just that: probabilities. Technically, probabilities range anywhere from 0 to 1, and impossibilities have a probability of 0, while necessary truths have a probability of 1. Newman appears to think that his argument for the probability of an infallible guarantor of revelation lies somewhere between 0 and 1, but much closer to 1 than to 0.
Now, with this in mind, we can turn to Newman’s all-or-nothing argument. He proceeds toward this argument by reiterating that the intellectual content of the Christian faith inevitably grew and developed as it was reflected on by many generations of people, and as its implications were applied to various matters and situations. He then writes:
Next, that, if development must be, then, whereas Revelation is a heavenly gift, He who gave it virtually has not given it, unless He has also secured it from perversion and corruption, in all such development as comes upon it by the necessity of its nature, or, in other words, that the intellectual action through successive generations, which is the organ of development, must so far as it can claim to have been put in charge of the Revelation, be in its determinations infallible.11
A number of things are worth highlighting here. First, he reiterates the point that revelation has virtually not been given unless it is secured from perversion and corruption. But notice here the specific sort of developments to which this pertains: “such development as comes upon it by the necessity of its nature.” Now the language of necessity is interesting and considerably stronger than his earlier language about developments that “naturally and legitimately” result from Christian revelation. Indeed, necessity is typically understood along the lines of logical necessity of some sort. So is Newman here limiting his claim to developments that follow with logical necessity from the original revelation?
Although the answer to this is not entirely clear, in the second part of this passage Newman goes on apparently to restate, “in other words,” what he claimed in the first part of it. But notice what he is saying in the second part. For one thing, he identifies the “organ of development” as “the intellectual action through successive generations.” Again, development occurs through reflection on revelation over the course of many generations and even centuries. So here are two accounts of development that Newman takes to be equivalent and to have the stamp of infallibility (D = development):
| D1 | All such development as comes upon the original revelation by the necessity of its nature |
| D2 | All development that occurs as the product of intellectual action upon revelation through successive generations |
Now the notion that these two accounts of development are equivalent is very important. But here is another more significant point: Newman claims that the development in D2 is infallible in its determinations “so far as it can claim to have been put in charge of the Revelation.”
This claim, too, raises a number of questions. What is entailed in being “put in charge of the Revelation”? Is there a clear answer to who can rightfully claim to be in charge of revelation, as opposed to who merely claims to be? And does the responsibility of being put in charge of the revelation really warrant anything more than faithfully preserving and passing it on?
But most fundamentally, here is the question that must be pressed: is it really true that D1 is essentially the same as D2? Newman, of course, is arguing that the Church of Rome, particularly the Roman magisterium, rightfully claims to be in charge of the revelation, and thus that the deliberations resulting from its intellectual action are infallible. So we can rephrase the question as follows: can the claim plausibly be made that all the official deliberations of the Roman magisterium represent developments of revelation that are due to the “necessity of its nature”?
Consider now this passage, which comes shortly after the one above. Newman reiterates his argument, in slightly different language: “And if again, Christianity being from heaven, all that is necessarily involved in it, and is evolved from it, is from heaven, and if, on the other hand, large accretions actually do exist, professing to be its true and legitimate results, our first impression naturally is, that these must be the very developments which they profess to be.”12 Notice again the language of necessity, but here the claim pertains to “all that is necessarily involved in” the revelation as well as what “is evolved from it.” Again, it is far from clear what this means. Is Newman claiming that everything necessarily involved in revelation will necessarily evolve from it?
The notion of evolution period, let alone evolution in terms of ideas and religious practices, is not one easily stated in terms of necessity, for things evolve over a long process, typically involving countless subtle changes caused by numerous historical and other causal factors.13 Moreover, beliefs and practices that evolve this way can result in changes so dramatic that the product evolved in later stages is altogether unrecognizable in comparison to earlier ones. Newman contends that if Christianity is from heaven, everything necessarily involved in it, and evolved from it, is also from heaven.
The results of this evolution, Newman is saying, are as much guaranteed as the original revelation. This is what he is claiming when he says that “large accretions” professing to be true and legitimate developments are likely what they claim to be. So again, we have two accounts of development that Newman takes to be equivalent:
| D3 | All that is necessarily involved in Christian revelation, or evolved from it |
| D4 | Large accretions on the Christian revelation that profess to be its true and legitimate developments |
Now the assumption that all the “large accretions” to the Christian revelation in Roman Catholic theology are likely to be true developments is rather generous, to put it mildly, but let us continue to examine how Newman expands his argument. Several lines later in the same paragraph, he writes as follows: “These doctrines are members of one family, and suggestive or correlative, or confirmatory, or illustrative of each other. One furnishes evidence to another, and all to each of them; if this is proved, that becomes probable; and if this and that are both probable, but for different reasons, each adds to the other its own probability.”14 Now this passage is interesting because of the various ways Newman thinks the doctrinal developments can gain rational support and credence. His claims here range from metaphorical suggestions, as when he says the doctrines are “members of one family,” to modest claims that some doctrines illustrate others or correlate with them, to rather general claims about how one or more doctrinal claims may render others more probable.
But then Newman immediately continues as follows. Here I quote him at length to show how strong and wide ranging are his claims about doctrinal development.
The Incarnation is the antecedent of the doctrine of Mediation, and the archetype both of the Sacramental principle and the merits of the Saints. From the doctrine of Mediation follow the Atonement, the Mass, the merits of Martyrs and Saints, their invocation and cultus. From the Sacramental principle come the Sacraments properly so called; the unity of the Church, and the Holy See as its type and centre; the authority of Councils; the sanctity of rites; the veneration of holy places, shrines, images, vessels, furniture and vestments. Of the Sacraments, Baptism is developed into Confirmation on the one hand; into Penance, Purgatory and Indulgences on the other; and the Eucharist into the Real Presence, adoration of the Host, Resurrection of the body and the virtue of the relics. Again, the doctrine of the Sacraments leads to the doctrine of Justification; Justification to that of Original Sin; Original Sin to the merit of Celibacy.15
This is an extraordinary passage, and any moderately attentive reader can hardly help but notice how extravagant the claims are that it advances. Although Newman does not even begin to explain, let alone demonstrate, how all these doctrines “follow” or “come” from the doctrines they allegedly follow or come from, he proclaims that they do with a sense bordering on infallible authority. The number and range of complex issues that Newman pontificates on is nothing short of stunning.
But as extraordinary as this passage is, Newman’s conclusion to this paragraph is even more so: “You must accept the whole or reject the whole; attenuation does but enfeeble, and amputation mutilate. It is trifling to receive all but something which is as integral as any other portion; and on the other hand, it is a solemn thing to accept any part, for, before you know where you are, you may be carried on by a stern logical necessity to accept the whole.”16 Recall that earlier in this very paragraph, Newman mentioned a number of relatively modest support-relations that may obtain between various doctrinal claims, ranging from suggestion and illustration to one or more claims making others more probable. Here, all those modest claims are left behind, and Newman insists that one must accept all these claims or none of them, that they are connected by nothing less than “stern logical necessity.” Probability has miraculously been transformed into logical necessity, though to all appearances his actual argument rests entirely on various probability judgments and alleged connections between different doctrines, many of which are highly contestable.
Whoever accepts any part must beware, for before realizing what is happening, that person may be led inexorably to accept the whole. It will not help Newman to defend him against his extraordinary exaggeration to notice that he says only that one “may” be carried on in this fashion. For it would not even be possible that one could be carried on by stern logical necessity to accept the whole unless such logical necessities actually held among these various claims. If Newman is right, then, a Christian apparently cannot coherently accept the Nicene Creed while rejecting the Roman view of the Mass, the see of Rome as the center of the church, the merits of the saints, indulgences, and so on. It’s all or nothing. And thus by a sort of magisterial wave of the wand, all Protestants who want to be coherent are transformed into Roman Catholics.
Conflation, Confusion, and Caricature
This long paragraph we have examined in some detail above encapsulates in many ways both the charm and the deep flaws of Newman’s classic book. On the one hand, he appeals to a number of plausible principles and mounts an argument that, at best, gives us a result with some degree of rational probability. On the other hand, he not infrequently gets carried away with his own rhetoric and makes claims that far outstrip his evidence and arguments. Moreover, he conflates and equates his more plausible claims with his more ambitious ones, as observed in some of the examples above, and the former lend a false and confusing sense of credibility to the latter.
We see him doing the same sort of thing at the beginning of his next chapter, after the one we have just considered. After reiterating the notion that the entirety of Roman Catholic dogma and practice goes back to the apostles, at least in nascent form, he writes as follows about that body of doctrine:
Moreover, they are confessed to form one body one with another, so that to reject one is to disparage the rest; and they include within the range of their system even those primary articles of faith, as the Incarnation, which many an impugner of the said doctrinal system, as a system, professes to accept, and which, do what he will, he cannot intelligibly separate, whether in point of evidence or of internal character, from others which he disavows.17
Notice again how the all-or-nothing claim is articulated. If one accepts the incarnation, one must accept the whole Roman panoply of dogmas and practices, and it is impossible for “impugners” of Roman theology to “intelligibly separate” the incarnation from that larger body of claims. As Newman puts it a few lines later, “We have to choose between this theology and none at all.”
Before concluding this section, it is worth recognizing how Newman tries to bolster his claim by suggesting that Protestantism will inevitably end in some sort of heresy.18 The essence of Protestantism, he seems to think, is private judgment, so it is doomed to come to a bad end. For instance, here is his take on Calvinism: “Calvinism has changed into Unitarianism; yet this need not be called a corruption, even if it is not, strictly speaking, a development; for Harding, in controversy with Jewell, surmised the coming change three centuries since, and it has occurred not in one country, but many.”19 Newman likely would be surprised to see the resurgence of Calvinism in the contemporary church and the vitality it enjoys not only in America but in other parts of the world as well.
For another instance of his treatment of Protestants, consider his comments on John Wesley: “One of the chief points of discipline to which Wesley attached most importance was that of preaching early in the morning. That was his principle. In Georgia, he began preaching at five o’clock every day, winter and summer. ‘Early preaching,’ he said, ‘is the glory of the Methodists; whenever this is dropt, they will dwindle away into nothing, they have lost their first love, they are a fallen people.’”20 One would never guess that Wesley was an Oxford don whose works fill over thirty large volumes, or that he was one of the great preachers and practitioners of scriptural holiness, or indeed that he had any other principle besides preaching early in the morning. No, Wesley is reduced here to a cartoon figure to advance Newman’s narrative that Protestant Christianity is destined to “dwindle away into nothing.” Newman would likely be surprised to see Pentecostal Christianity, which has roots in Wesleyan theology, flourishing worldwide, especially in South America, which has historically been dominated by Roman Catholicism.
In any case, throughout his book are numerous similarly tendentious accounts, as well as utter caricatures of other Christian traditions, including the Eastern Church.21 To be sure, Newman could be more ecumenical in other contexts, but not in this book. His accounts of other Christian traditions here are designed to discredit them and to serve his larger contention that Rome alone can coherently maintain orthodoxy, so we must embrace Rome or be left with no viable place to stand.
If these really are our only options, it is altogether understandable why many lovers of Jesus, the Son of God incarnate, will choose to go to Rome. But this claim that we cannot have Jesus without Rome is a classic case of rhetorical overreach as well as deeply confused thinking, and Newman’s argument does not even come close to demonstrating it.
Leaner Versions of the All-or-Nothing Argument
But perhaps, it might be suggested, Newman was on the right track, even if his particular all-or-nothing argument was far too ambitious and bloated with excess. After all, not everything Newman cites as part of the body of Roman Catholic doctrine has the official stamp of infallible dogma. Not everything he includes is the product of an infallible conciliar determination or something the pope declared ex cathedra. So perhaps there might be a more promising argument along the lines Newman attempted if we restrict our claims to infallible dogma.
Recall the passages from the Catechism we quoted at the beginning of this chapter, which assert a connection between Scripture, tradition, and the Roman magisterium such that no one of them can stand without the others. Recall too the claim that “the task of giving an authentic interpretation of the Word of God, whether in its written form or in the form of Tradition, has been entrusted to the living teaching office of the Church alone.” The claim that the magisterium alone has the authority of “authentic interpretation of the Word of God” is a far-reaching one with large implications. Consider now this claim: “The Church’s Magisterium exercises the authority it holds from Christ to the fullest extent when it defines dogmas, that is when it proposes, in a form obliging the Christian people to an irrevocable adherence of faith, truths contained in divine Revelation or also when it proposes, in a definitive way, truths having a necessary connection with these.”22 And here is one more passage with large implications for the role of the magisterium in Christian knowledge. Here the Catechism is expounding the Roman view that revelation comes to us both in the form of Scripture and in the form of tradition, including oral tradition. “As a result, the Church, to whom the transmission and interpretation of Revelation is entrusted, ‘does not derive her certainty about all revealed truths from the Holy Scriptures alone. Both Scripture and Tradition must be accepted and honored with equal sentiments of devotion and reverence.’”23
Notice here in particular the claim that the church “does not derive her certainty about all revealed truths from the Holy Scriptures alone.” To the contrary, according to Rome, the church also derives its certainty about some revealed truths from tradition. Indeed, the claim appears to be that the truths derived from tradition are as certain as those derived from Holy Scripture, since both “must be accepted and honored with equal sentiments of devotion and reverence.”
Now these various claims from the Catechism give us the material to construct a more rigorous all-or-nothing argument. Think about the implications of these claims for Rome in relation to other Christian traditions. The Roman magisterium allegedly has exclusive authority to provide “authentic interpretation of the Word of God,” whether in the form of Scripture or tradition, including oral tradition. Moreover, dogma, which is defined “in a form obliging the Christian people to an irrevocable adherence of faith,” is equal in authority and certainty whether derived from Scripture or tradition. These binding truths, again, may either be contained in revelation or have a “necessary connection” with such truths.
So consider the Nicene Creed, the paradigmatic instance of a conciliar dogmatic determination that not only Roman Catholics but also many other believers, including many Reformation Christians, would accept not only as an authentic interpretation of Scripture but also as having binding authority. Now consider another dogma that Roman Catholics believe has the same sort of authority: the immaculate conception of Mary, a dogma the pope has declared ex cathedra to be infallible truth, but is typically rejected by Christians in the Reformation traditions.24 The question is whether one can coherently affirm the creed as a true interpretation of Scripture while rejecting the dogma of the immaculate conception. A closely related question is whether it is a coherent position to affirm the creed but deny immaculate conception given Roman Catholic claims about magisterial authority.25
As we have noted, Roman Catholics often argue that Protestants cannot consistently accept or believe in the authority of the Bible and the classic creeds if they reject the authority of the Roman magisterium. So consider the following argument as a more rigorous version of this sort of all-or-nothing argument.
This argument is valid, so its conclusion does in fact follow from its premises with “stern logical necessity.” The more interesting question, obviously, is whether all its premises are true, and whether it is thus a sound argument, as well as a valid one. The key premise, upon which the entire argument turns, is the first one. The other premises (2 and 3) are straightforward propositions that must be accepted by anyone who understands the teaching authority Rome claims for itself, and knows the pope has declared ex cathedra that the dogma of the immaculate conception is infallible truth. Premise 4 follows from 1 through 3 (by extended hypothetical syllogism), and 5 follows from 4 (by contraposition).
Protestants will deny premise 1, and in chapter 5 we will show why Protestants have excellent reasons to affirm the truth and authority of the Nicene Creed on their own principles. But the question remains whether this premise fairly states what Roman Catholics are committed to. Is this what is entailed in the claim that Scripture, tradition, and the magisterium are so connected that one cannot stand without the others?
I will not attempt a definitive answer to that question: that is up to Rome. But here I want to identify some other variations on the argument that might be suggested instead of the one above. Another, slightly weaker claim would be the following:
1a. We can be rationally certain that the Nicene Creed is a true interpretation of Scripture only if we believe that the Roman Catholic magisterium has infallible teaching authority.
The argument would be rephrased accordingly, and the conclusion would be the following:
5a. If we do not believe that the dogma of the immaculate conception of Mary is infallible truth, we cannot be rationally certain that the Nicene Creed is a true interpretation of Scripture.
Notice that the claim here pertains to rational certainty, not consistency. That is, it might be argued that one is not, strictly speaking, inconsistent in rejecting the claims of the Roman magisterium while believing that the Nicene Creed is a true interpretation of Scripture. But one does not have solid grounds for rational certainty.
Another, stronger version would be the following.
1b. We can know that the Nicene Creed is a true interpretation of Scripture only if the Roman Catholic magisterium has infallible teaching authority.
Again, the argument would be rephrased accordingly, and the conclusion would be as follows:
5b. If the dogma of the immaculate conception of Mary is not infallible truth, we cannot know that the Nicene Creed is a true interpretation of Scripture.
This version is stronger because it claims that the very possibility of knowing that the creed is a true interpretation of Scripture hinges on the Roman magisterium having infallible authority. The issue here is not whether one can be consistent or rational or rationally certain in believing that the creed is a true interpretation of Scripture if one does not believe that the magisterium has infallible teaching authority. What is at stake in this claim is not the consistency or rationality of anyone’s beliefs but the very possibility of having knowledge about the true interpretation of Scripture.
Before moving on, it is worth noting that these various all-or-nothing arguments so beloved by Roman Catholic apologists are strikingly similar to certain arguments sometimes deployed by conservative, usually fundamentalist, Protestant apologists. Consider this argument and the ways it is parallel to the ones above.
While the parallel is not exact, the fundamental similarity is that this argument, like the ones preceding it, appeals to a far-reaching claim about infallible authority, and on this basis it tries to establish that certain doctrines are equally supported by this authority.27 Those doctrines are consequently on an epistemic par, and we have no rational right to accept one without accepting the other. To do so is to fall into irrationality or inconsistency of some sort.
The fundamental similarity of these arguments explains why many Roman Catholic apologists, like their fundamentalist counterparts, are so driven to try to demonstrate some glaring contradiction in the views of the persons they have targeted for conversion to their position, or to claim that their position alone is fully consistent. (It is perhaps telling that many of the most zealous Roman Catholic apologists are former Protestant fundamentalists.) Although this argumentative strategy unsettles many people who naturally want to maintain their cherished beliefs, and many convert under the pressure of thinking they need to do so in order to preserve their faith, the sense of settledness gained by such “consistency” is fragile. Indeed, we suspect that those who employ these all-or-nothing arguments, by insisting that one cannot affirm the creed without affirming these distinctive claims of Rome, realize those distinctive claims are on tenuous grounds otherwise. Unfortunately, this strategy for shoring up those beliefs puts the whole faith in jeopardy.
Consider, again by way of comparison, the young persons who are convinced that their basis for believing in the bodily resurrection of Jesus has the same ground as their belief that the world is only thousands of years old. When confronted with powerful scientific evidence that the earth is in fact much older, their faith in the resurrection of Jesus is thereby threatened. They face the unsettling choice of rejecting that scientific evidence or having their faith in the resurrection of Jesus undermined. The same situation is faced by those who are convinced by Newman’s all-or-nothing argument. To doubt anything is to begin to doubt it all, to reject any of that panoply of claims he listed in that remarkable passage quoted above is to reject it all. The same problems face the leaner, more rigorous versions of the argument, and this may be true for any substantive claim holding that Scripture, tradition, and the magisterium are so connected that none can stand without the others.
So I conclude this section with key questions: Can a person who accepts the Roman claims of authority question the immaculate conception of Mary without raising corresponding doubts about the doctrines affirmed in the classic creeds? Are these doctrines so connected that the incarnation cannot stand without the immaculate conception? If one doubted transubstantiation, would doubts about the Trinity inevitably follow? If one looked into the historical foundations of the papacy and found them wanting, would that person’s faith in Christ crumble as well?
It is important to emphasize that more is at stake here than an intellectual debate about logical consistency. This is a pastoral issue as well as a philosophical and theological one. Believers who think their right to believe in the resurrection of Jesus depends on their believing that the earth is only several thousand years old, or who think their right to believe in the incarnation and atonement of Jesus requires them to believe in the immaculate conception—such Christians are caught up in a position that is not only intellectually dubious but also spiritually precarious as well. The “right” to believe the saving truths of the gospel should never be held hostage by other beliefs that are peripheral at best. Those who press such arguments on vulnerable believers in order to pressure them to “convert” to their church or theological position are setting them up not only for intellectual implosion but for spiritual shipwreck as well.
1. Cited by Gregg R. Allison, Roman Catholic Theology and Practice: An Evangelical Assessment (Wheaton: Crossway, 2014), 95n62.
2. As Gregg Allison states, no one ever claimed that Israel had to be infallible to produce the OT Scriptures. Ibid.
3. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1994), par. 85. The sentences quoted in this paragraph come from the Vatican II document by Pope Paul VI, Dei Verbum: Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, 1965, sec. 10; for a translation, see http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19651118_dei-verbum_en.html.
4. Catechism, par. 95.
5. Pope Paul VI, Dei Verbum, sec. 10.
6. Catechism, par. 89.
7. Gregg Allison uses this image to explain the claim of the Catechism. See Roman Catholic Theology and Practice, 80.
8. Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989), 79–80.
9. Ibid., 81.
10. Ibid., 81n1.
11. Ibid., 92.
12. Ibid., 93.
13. Physical evolution could be thought necessary on the assumption of all-encompassing physical determinism. It could be claimed that all physical events and states of affairs are determined by laws of nature and previous states of the universe.
14. Newman, Essay, 93.
15. Ibid., 93–94.
16. Ibid., 94.
17. Ibid., 99–100.
18. Recall that one proposed interpretation of the claim that Scripture, tradition, and the magisterium stand or fall together was a claim about this sort of historical inevitability.
19. Newman, Essay, 175.
20. Ibid., 184–85.
21. See ibid., 54, 96, 181, 192–93, 198, 205, 306, 353–54.
22. Catechism, par. 88.
23. Ibid., par. 82. The passage quoted is from Dei Verbum, par. 9.
24. It is, however, accepted by some Lutherans, who find some support for the doctrine in Luther himself.
25. Apparently Pope Pius IX, who dogmatically defined the doctrine of the immaculate conception in 1854, did not think so, as indicated by these words that followed that definition: “Hence, if anyone shall dare—which God forbid!—to think otherwise than as has been defined by us, let him know and understand that he is condemned by his own judgment; that he has suffered shipwreck in the faith; that he has separated from the unity of the Church; and that, furthermore, by his own action he incurs the penalties established by law if he should dare to express in words or writing or by any other outward means the errors he think in his heart.” Pope Pius IX, The Immaculate Conception, 1854, Papal Encyclicals Online, http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Pius09/p9ineff.htm.
26. Thanks to Kyle Blanchette for suggesting this more efficient version of my argument, which has fewer steps than my original construction.
27. Claiming the Bible teaches that the earth is only thousands of years old depends on a rather literalistic reading of the OT chronologies. Yet the young-earth view probably has more direct biblical support than the immaculate conception. On such a literal reading, Archbishop Ussher’s famous chronology dated creation at 4004 BC.