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In this episode Trent, sits down with Catholic author Casey Chalk to discuss his book “The Obscurity of Scripture” and why Protestant views of sola scriptura are untenable given the need to interpret scripture.
Trent Horn:
The main things are the plain things, and the plain things are the main things. That’s what Protestants have told me for quite some time. It’s this idea that if scripture is a sole and fallible rule of faith, certainly any person learned and unlearned can read it and get the essentials of the Christian faith from it, or can they? Our guest today here on The Counsel of Trent podcast has written an excellent book challenging that Protestant doctrine. His book is called, let me hold it up here for people to see. Look at that. It came into focus right as I was pointing to obscurity. The book is called, The Obscurity of Scripture: Disputing Sola Scriptura and the Protestant Notion of Biblical Perspicuity by Casey Chalk. Casey, welcome to The Counsel of Trent podcast.
Casey Chalk:
Thank you so much for having me on, Trent, it’s a pleasure to be with you.
Trent Horn:
It’s a pleasure to have you. I read this book and I just want to say, I was thoroughly impressed by it. There have been people who have sent me books to endorse, and there have been a few books that I have chosen to not endorse because they either had minimal or no footnotes. And the book was on an academic subject. And I’m not a big fan of books that don’t do their homework, but you definitely did your homework in this book, this study of the Protestant doctrine of the Perspicuity of Scripture covering church fathers, reformation sources, modern sources. My own book pops up in here once or twice I noticed in the footnotes, like that sounds familiar. Oh yeah, I said that. And there I am right there in the footnotes, but along with many, many other works to engage this topic. And it’s really providential actually to have you on the show at this time for a number of reasons.
First, Scott Hahn sent me a copy of this book. He actually wrote the Forward, by the way to this book, the Obscurity of Scripture. So, Dr. Hahn texted me and he said, “Hey, I got to send you a book.” And I said, “Yeah, I definitely want to check that out.” And of course, it’s published by a Emmaus Road Publishing, he’s affiliated with that. He sent me the book, thoroughly enjoyed it, and he sent it to me right after my debate with Gavin Ortlund at the Franciscan University of Steubenville on the subject of Sola Scriptura. And in the debate the ability to derive essential doctrines from scripture, whether scripture is clear, did come up in the debate when I was engaging Gavin in cross-examination. And so I think, and in engaging the debate, I think that while some Protestants will say, “The clarity of scripture is not really an essential part of the doctrine of Sola Scriptura, I think the debate showed it really is. And so I’m super excited to see that you have this book, it’s a nice follow up from that.
And last week on the podcast I interviewed Randal Rauser, who is a Protestant theologian, and we were discussing how Protestants disagree about really essential doctrines and accusing one another of heresy or not belonging to the Christian faith over things, over conflicting biblical interpretations. All that said and done, is kind of the perfect storm to have you here to bring out this book. Why don’t you tell us a little bit what led to you writing this book and what its central thesis is?
Casey Chalk:
The Doctrine of Perspicuity or oftentimes clarity was something that was really instrumental in my own conversion to Catholicism out of the Reform tradition about 12 years ago. It’s a doctrine that is not discussed as much in Protestantism as it should be explicitly. I think if you talk to most Protestants to ask them if they’re adherence to perspicuity, they probably would scratch their heads and say, “What the heck are you talking about?” But as I argue in the book, I really do think it’s foundational to Protestantism, perhaps even more foundational than sola scriptura in some respects, because perspicuity really is the key that unlocks the Bible and thus by extension sola scriptura.
Trent Horn:
And so before we continue with that, just to be clear to our audience, perspicuous or perspicuity means clear. If something is clear and it’s understandable, we say it’s perspicuous, and your book is called The Obscurity of Scripture, and you clarify that not to say that scripture as a whole is obscure or difficult to understand, but perspicuous, the perspicuity means clear, understandable. And if something is obscured, like you think your view out of window is obscured by branches. It’s difficult to see. It’s difficult to understand. And so what you’re saying is that for Protestants to believe that scripture, as Gavin arguing in our debate, is the sole, infallible rule of faith for the church. Whatever this infallible rule of faith is, scripture, it should be clear to understand, it should be perspicuous. And your recent book challenges that doctrine.
Casey Chalk:
Yeah, that’s exactly right, Trent. And this goes back to, I mean the very beginning of the Protestant Reformation. And if you think about sola scriptura and what it argues, this idea that the Bible alone is the infallible rule of faith for Christians, of course it’s going to need to be clear in order to understand it. Otherwise, you have a great book, lots of wonderful wisdom that will change our lives and direct us to heaven, but no way to understand it. That’s why the clarity or perspicuity is so essential. And like I said, it was a really important part of my own conversion story. As I was investigating various strands of Protestantism when I was in college and starting to become acquainted with the Reform tradition or also known as Calvinism, I realized that there was quite a bit of disagreement amongst Protestants, even amongst Calvinists about the interpretation of scripture.
And this, I mean, it was even very personal for me after I got out of college and I met a very nice Reformed Baptist girl, and man, we could not figure out the doctrine of paedobaptism or credobaptism, right? As a Calvinist, a Presbyterian, I was very much in favor of infant baptism. My girlfriend was not. And we read books, we debated, and those experiences led me to start to scratch my head and think, “If something as foundational as baptism draw so many disagreements, even amongst,” I mean, Calvinists is, that’s a pretty narrow branch of Protestantism in of itself. If they’re disagreeing over that, then perhaps there’s something wrong here that I needed to investigate.
Trent Horn:
Right, because what Protestants often tell me is that, ‘Yeah, we disagree,” Protestants have disagreements, but it’s on secondary or tertiary doctrines that Protestants, or it will be qualified, Protestants who are committed to sola scriptura as a way to try to hopefully bracket off people that have very odd views who ultimately will base them on the Bible as the sole and fallible rule of faith guiding them, try to say, “Yeah, we agree at least on the essentials.” But it seems like there is a lot more disagreement and other problems related to applying sola scriptura I hadn’t thought of, but I think you came up with very well in the book. So, let’s talk a little bit about that.
I want to talk about some of the things leading up to the book, because you said at one point you published a review of Kenneth Collins and Jerry Walls’ book, Roman but Not Catholic. And so that’s a book I’m actually, that’s a book written around 2017. It was for the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. It was published at around the same time my book, Case for Catholicism came out, so I wasn’t able to engage Collins and Walls in my book on Catholic apologetics. I’m hoping to engage them in a future book on the church fathers that I’m working on right now. But you wrote a review about their book for the New Oxford Review, and then they replied to that and you offered a reply to them, where you noted that they were making these standard arguments against Catholicism. But underneath, the subtext of all of their objections was this idea of the perspicuity of scripture that they don’t really address. Tell us a bit more about the exchange you guys had in New Oxford Review?
Casey Chalk:
At the time I was associated with a Catholic apologetics website called, Called to Communion, which is primarily folks that come out of the Reform tradition. We were all really excited about getting that book, and I was very excited to read it and review it. And as I was going through it, what I was realizing was that they would sort of hand wave on a lot of Catholic doctrines and say, “Well, of course Catholic teaching on the Eucharist is in contradiction with clear teaching on scripture, or Catholic teaching on Mary or Ecclesiology is in opposition to clear teaching on scripture.” And I kept thinking to myself as I read that, well, we haven’t really even addressed the doctrine of clarity in this book yet. They paper over it, they don’t discuss it at all, but everything that they’re arguing is more or less premised upon this belief that the Bible is clear on these various things. And that enables them to then just kind of hand wave.
But I mean, if you’re going to argue with a Catholic in good faith, then you’re going to have to kind of back up a bit and discuss the tenants that are underlying your arguments, your premises. And in this case, they never really did it. I argued more or less in my review of their book that everything that they were arguing was based on the clarity of scripture. Now, they misinterpreted me and thought that I was saying that their book is about clarity or something like that, but that was not really what I was saying. It was more that every argument that they made just presumed clarity, but they never actually offered an articulation of that belief and addressed Catholic objections or concerns with it.
Trent Horn:
And in seeing parts of their review that are quoted in your book, I was, what’s the word I looking for here? Not disappointed, bemused, I don’t know. I guess I was a bit disappointed. I don’t like seeing when people say things. I think it was Collins who said your review of their book was inchoate and rambling. And I’m very suspicious that your review was that. Because in reading this book that you wrote, it is not rambling. The arguments are built in a very logical and sequential order. A person could say the arguments or inferences are incorrect here or there. I mean, that’s any argument. But I find that’s sort of an emotional response indicative of pointing out a significant error or a failure to address or buttress a certain argument. And then to try to, once again, like you say, hand wave it away. Because I mean, when I read it, I have thought about doing an episode for the podcast, the 10 most embarrassing things in Roman but not Catholic.
In going through the book, they raised a few interesting arguments against Catholic authority, I’ll give them that. But some of the arguments they made against standard Catholic doctrine were embarrassingly bad or poorly thought out. And I’ll back that up. I’ll actually, they were critical of you. I’ll back that up in a future episode, but I like that you address it. Look, this does come down that if you’re going to say Catholics are wrong and scripture’s very clear in all these things, well, how do you know that it is clear? And that gets us to the doctrine of the perspicuity of scripture. And it being fundamental to Protestantism. Why don’t you take a moment now and define what you would say? And here’s hard is that different Protestants will define it different ways. But how do you understand the perspicuity of scripture and what would you consider wrong with it? Because there are all kinds of caricatures out there.
I know a few Protestants were sharing your book cover a few weeks ago, and I saw them on Twitter talking about it, and one of them had the book and said, “How am I ever going to understand Casey Chalk’s book if he’s not there to sit next to me to tell me what it means?” And I’m just like, “Give me a break.” And this is actually a pretty smart guy. I was thinking to myself, “Give me a break.” He’s not saying no, that every written text is hopelessly obscure without an interpreter. And in denying the perspicuity of scripture, we are not saying that the Bible is hopelessly obscure. We have no idea what it means in any part of it. But we are denying a particular Protestant understanding of the clarity of scripture. How would you formulate that, and what in particular are you denying?
Casey Chalk:
Trent, you raised a really good point just from the get-go. Which is that there are different definitions and understandings of what clarity means. Even going back to the initial reformers. I mean, Luther is just such a, in some respects, a frustrating, but also just great rhetorician. He’ll say things at times like, “All of scripture is clear.” But other times he’s a little bit more precise and gets down to what he really means. According to magisterial Protestantism, the most common definition of … By magisterial, I mean the major denominations that came out of the Protestant Reformation, Lutherans, Calvinists, Church of England, is a belief that scripture is clear on you hinted it at an earlier, Trent, the fundamentals, or even more particularly like the Westminster Confession of Faith, a confessional document out of the Presbyterian church in England argues is that it’s clear on everything that is necessary for salvation.
Trent Horn:
Yeah. Now, let me read that actually, and I want to hear you, to continue. This is from the Westminster Confession of Faith. They say, “All things in scripture are not alike, plain in themselves, nor alike, clear unto all. Yet those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed for salvation, are so clearly propounded and opened in some place of scripture or other. That not only the learned, but the unlearned in a due use of the ordinary means may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them.” There’s a lot of qualifiers there. But as you brought up, there’s this idea that what we need to know for salvation is clear in scripture for an ordinary person to get at. But go on, I didn’t mean to interrupt your train of thought.
Casey Chalk:
No problem. But there is a problem right from the very beginning in the sense that a lot of Protestants disagree about how much is clear. And I have a little fun with that at the beginning of my book, citing a lot of mostly American Protestants, low church Protestants, who will say, “All kinds of things are clear. All of the Bible is clear. The Bible is clear on parenting, the Bible is clear on any number of things.” And yeah, I didn’t want to go too deep into arguing with a lot of those opinions, because my goal really is to address what I think is the most intellectually robust and classically historic version of clarity as it’s offered by the big names and Protestantism, Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, and then moving forward into contemporary times.
Trent Horn:
But it is a valid critique, because if you’re saying scripture is clear, then why can’t Protestants agree one, about what scripture clearly teaches? And two, even if you say, “Well, we all agree that it clearly teaches the essentials,” that’s why in might debate with Gavin, I asked him, “Well, does the Bible contain a list of essential doctrines?” And he said, “No, it doesn’t.” And I asked him if there’s a church I could go to that has that list. And he said, “No, there isn’t thinking.” Yeah, there is a church I actually can go to that has teaching on them. Maybe it’s not in one page, but it is systematically laid out. It’s not just something that we theorize about. I think that this is important, but you said that it has changed over time. Do you think that since the Reformation the doctrine of perspicuity has been narrowed in order to try to make it more defensible?
Casey Chalk:
Yeah, I think we have seen that. Because I think there was a lot of optimism, obviously in the Reformation from a lot of its main proponents. Thinking that scripture really was clear on a lot of things. But over the generations as Protestants and their churches have divided over and over again over so many different issues, they’ve had to kind of narrow it down to … Yeah, I give it in example in the book of J.I. Packer. And something that he wrote within the last couple of decades talking about, I forget the way he words it, but something like that God save sinners or something like that. But the problem with that is that it’s just so vague and generic, that it doesn’t actually get you much of anywhere in terms of formulating Christian doctrine or being able to identify a church that really teaches that. Because lots of churches will teach something like that, but disagree on just about everything else.
Trent Horn:
And it’s like you can make it so narrow that yeah, it can’t be refuted, but it’s also not helpful to you. If you say, “Well, scripture is clear, not in everything, but it’s clear in the gospel message, or it’s clear in the fundamental truth of scripture, which is that God loves sinners and he sent his son Jesus Christ to die for sinners, so they would have life in his name or something like that. You could get these nuggets that I agree, that if you read scripture, it’s not hopelessly obscure. There are truths related to salvation that you can, a regular person reading it can take from it. Like that, if you believe in Jesus, you will have salvation.
I would ask these people, “Well, should I be Catholic or Protestant?” Because Catholics believe in Jesus. Protestants believe in Jesus, Orthodox believe in Jesus. Mormons believe in Jesus. Jehovah’s witnesses believe in Jesus. You can make it the other elements of who Jesus is, Christology and soteriology, it’s easy to say, we all agree if you don’t specifically spell out all of the articles of faith that are important. Let me jump to into your book where you really articulate your main thesis and drill down to make sure we get our def definition straight. You talk about how you’re arguing against these particular points of Protestantism. This is on page 70 of your book. “That one, scripture is sufficiently clear that any spirit guided faith possessing Christian will be able to determine what is necessary to be saved. Two, that scripture is sufficient in and of itself to resolve interpretive disagreement without an extrabiblical authority. And three, that scripture can unify Christians.”
This gets us to, maybe you can help us tease us through, so we have all the nice setup to move through this. The idea of scripture being sufficient, that Catholics will distinguish material from formal sufficiency. Material sufficiency is that, “Look, scripture has at least all the truths necessary for salvation in it.” Formal sufficiency would say, “Scripture has all the truths of salvation, and they’re presented in a way that anybody can open the Bible and find them if they’re willing to read it.” How would that relate then, you’re saying here is that you’re arguing against the idea that scripture is sufficiently clear, that any spirit guided Christian who is a faithful Christian can find the truths for salvation. How do you relate that to material sufficiency? The truths are there, but they’re not necessarily in the correct framework to apprehend. How do you put all of that together?
Casey Chalk:
Yeah, I talk about that some later in the book in the idea, you’re hinting at it a bit earlier, Trent, with what you said in that the Catholic Church does not teach that the Bible is so hopelessly obscure that Christians cannot intuit the meaning of individual passages, or even groups of passages. The criticism that I’m leveling in this book is more that in order to put together a coherent and systematic framework for understanding all of divine revelation, what God, who God is in his person, how he brings about our salvation, and then how he establishes this church, that all of those things cannot be found in scripture just by an individual person prayerfully humbly asking the Holy Spirit to guide him or her in understanding those kinds of questions.
Trent Horn:
All right. Well, let’s jump into some of your evidences against the claim that scripture is perspicuous or clear in this way. You talk about philosophical problems, practical problems, and biblical and patristic problems with the perspicuity of scripture. Let’s talk about the philosophical problems in the book. One is you say that the claim that scripture is perspicuous or that it’s clear, at least in these essential and main teachings, is that it begs the question, which is a logical fallacy of assuming the very thing that you try to prove. How would you say the perspicuity of scripture commits this fallacy of assuming what it tries to prove?
Casey Chalk:
When people will articulate a defense of the perspicuity of scripture, they’ll just go ahead and say that scripture is clear on various things, but they haven’t actually provided the defense or explanation for how that is so. What you end up getting is a lot of arguments, kind of what I talked about in regards to that book by Collins and Walls, where they will make lots of arguments for why things are biblical and true. And it’s because it’s clear, but they’ve never actually been able to defend that more fundamental claim that it’s clear. And so you just get going around and around because it’s a circular form of argumentation that, and they’ll cite a Bible verse, but they don’t actually engage with alternative opinions and traditions that disagree with them. So, that’s the way that it’s question begging.
Trent Horn:
Or they’ll cite biblical passages that they interpret to say that the Bible is clear. We’ll talk about some of those passages here a little later, because there is no Bible passage that says the scriptures are clear and easy to understand for all of salvation or anyone can read them. There’s no scripture passage that parallels the seventh article of the Westminster Confession or something like that. But even if there were, that would beg the question, right? It’s like, “Well, why is scripture clear?” “Because scripture says so.” Well, how is that any different from saying, “Why do you believe scripture is the Word of God?” “Well, because it says so.” Okay, that’s another circular argument. Imagine if someone who’s defending the Koran said, “Look, the Koran is perfectly understandable. It’s perfectly clear in everything it teaches.”
Well, why should I believe that? Well, look at the [inaudible 00:23:23]. It says here, “The Almighty Allah will make the Koran perfectly clear.” You’re taking the very thing you’re trying to prove from to be able to prove the point. So yeah, I agree with you. I think that it begs the question, and I think to get around that. Now, for me, I do think that we have a non-circular way of affirming the Bible’s authority and our ability to derive truth from it. And we can do that because we don’t subscribe to something like sola scriptura. Our data of divine revelation, our infallible data of divine revelation does not come from scripture alone. But I think what they’ll sometimes do is they’ll say, okay, well, they’ll make these other arguments. It’s funny. They’ll say, “Why do you believe scripture is clear?” “Well, because they don’t give a biblical argument. They give a philosophical argument, similar to a philosophical argument for sola scriptura.”
And I’m glad you brought this up in the book, because the argument seems to go like this, scripture must be clear in what it teaches or perspicuous for salvation, however you want to cash it out. Because if it were not, God would’ve failed in his mission to reveal himself to us. And of course, God can’t fail in his mission to reveal himself to us, therefore scripture must be perspicuous. So what’s wrong with that argument?
Casey Chalk:
Well, it’s actually another form of question begging in a way, because it’s immediately presuming that God want has established his salvific economy in such a way that he wants every individual person to be able to have that kind of direct communication of his revelation in such a way that they’re all almost like individual popes. It sort of presumes from the very beginning that the Catholic paradigm is off the table, but God can set up his means of salvation in establishing his church in any way he wants. He could have established that way, I suppose. In another world he could have established one where every single person is kind of like their own magisterial authority. Although, I mean, I don’t think he would do that because it’d be a mess. So, he has every right to establish a system whereby there are intermediaries who are able to serve as authoritative witnesses and interpreters to that divine revelation.
Trent Horn:
Oh, I’m going to do it again. Well, Protestants get very irked when I do this, but I’m standing by my thesis, because I do believe it’s true. I just published my book, When Protestants Argue Like Atheists, and I was watching The Dividing Line, and James White was, he was just so upset. He says, “It’s one of the dumbest or foolish arguments he’s heard that will Protestants argue just like atheist.” And yet that philosophical argument for the perspicuity of scripture sounds like a particular argument for atheism. And I’ll explain why. This idea that, well, if God is all good, he would ensure that his message is clearly understood. Therefore, it must be clearly understandable in scripture because God can’t fail. Therefore, it is clearly understandable in scripture. Now, atheists take a similar argument, but tweak some of the premises. They might make say something like, “If God is perfectly good, he would make his existence perfectly clear to everyone, and his existence is not perfectly clear to everyone. Therefore, God is either not all good or he does not exist.”
I think that’s a very similar argument. So, where Protestants would just say, “God is good, he would make his revelation clear, and therefore it is clear, it must be clear. So it must be perspicuous in scripture.” They would just say, “Well, anyone who says it’s not clear in scripture, they just must be incorrect in that regard, or they’re sinful or something like that.” And we’ll get to that shortly. Whereas an atheist would say, “God would make his existence clear.” And some Protestants would respond to that. They do respond to that in a similar way. They would say, “Yeah, God is all loving and good. He has made his existence clear to everyone, and people who don’t believe in God are just wicked, or they’re sinful or there, or they’re rebelling.” Whereas an atheist might say, “No, maybe he’s not all good, or he doesn’t exist at all.”
I think that that kind of question begging, just as an atheist, begs the question in assuming God would make his existence clear to every single individual, rather than clear through a particular church or divine revelation. A Protestant begs the question in a similar way by saying, “Yeah, God would make his revelation clear, but not necessarily to every single individual who reads the Bible. Maybe he would make it clear by giving the revelation in scripture and through, oh, I don’t know, an interpretive authority to help us to understand it.” I don’t know, I’m pulling that together off top of my head, but did that make sense?
Casey Chalk:
Oh, yeah, it makes perfect sense to me. I think you’re right that there’s a lot of overlap here in the sense that that is a classic example of how atheism is similar to Protestantism, that they both, they start from a premise of, “God must be whatever I would want him to be, and then therefore, whatever, therefore perspicuity must be true. Or there can’t be a God because he won’t allow terrible things to happen to children.” Something like that.
Trent Horn:
Right, because God is who I said he is, for a Protestant, he would say, “Then he definitely did this,” even if the evidence from reason and practical observance of the world like disunity and Protestantism says otherwise. And an atheist will say, “God has to be this way, but we look at the way the world is, therefore God isn’t that way or he doesn’t exist.” Then let’s move forward then to the practical problems with the perspicuity of scripture, that this is actually empirical. This is a doctrine that we actually have empirical evidence against. Because if you go back to the Westminster Confession of Faith, it claims, “All things in scripture are not alike plain, but the things that are necessary to be known, believed in observer salvation are clearly propounded in some place of scripture or the other. Not only the learned, but the unlearned in a due use of ordinary means can understand them.”
So, the claim is that, whatever ordinary means are, which I’m sure you’ll facilitate that if you make that broad enough it undermines sola scriptura, that the learned and the unlearned. But what’s interesting is that when you look among learned Protestants. I mean, when you look at Gavin Ortlund, Jordan Cooper, Mike Wininger, William Lane Craig, you look at … Even on YouTube, Protestants who read and read and read, they’re learned people who disagree on fundamental issues, including issues that are related to salvation. This seeing the disagreement and how it’s fractured since the Reformation provides empirical evidence against perspicuity.
And you raised a really neat point in the book that I hadn’t thought of before in that one of the practical problems of sola scripture, of the perspicuity of scripture is that the only option it leaves you to explain the disunity among Protestants is that those who disagree on scripture, one or more of the parties must be engaging in sin or maybe under demonic influence. That if learned and unlearned are socio disagree, the options you only have left for explaining the disagreement is really impugning these really bad motives to other people, and that’s just not great for the body of Christ. Tell us a bit more, I really like this part of the book?
Casey Chalk:
That was something that I noticed, even when I was a Protestant, when I would read people like Luther and Calvin and other early reformers is that not that Catholics at the time couldn’t also be a bit ornery sometimes in attacking their opponents, but-
Trent Horn:
At the time, try going on Twitter now.
Casey Chalk:
Well, yeah, sure, true.
Trent Horn:
Yeah, yeah.
Casey Chalk:
But I noticed that when Luther, you see this in his battle with Zwingli in particular. And Zwingli, when he engages with other people is they accuse their opponents of the worst motives, or just being stupid. Or like you said, somehow influenced by the devil or something like that. But I think you’re, ultimately, anybody who abides by perspicuity is forced into that corner. Because if scripture really is so clear that any person guided by God should be able to understand it, well, then obviously if you disagree with me, then you’re not guided by God. And perhaps there’s some sort of evil demonic influence that’s leading you to this alternative interpretation.
And I’ve seen that, and not that I’ve done it nearly as much apologetic work as you have, Trent, but in my work with Called to Communion over the years, I noticed that so much of the time when my debates with Protestants, it would just reach a point where the Protestant would just say, “Well, you must be influenced by Satan.” Or just say, “Well, you’re just too stupid. You just can’t understand these things.” And like you said, that we as Catholics, we as Christians need to be motivated by charity and always presuming the best of our opponents and presuming the best of their motives. And clarity really works against that at a fundamental and visceral bubble.
Trent Horn:
Yeah, because I try most of the time to assume that when I am engaging another Christian or an non-Christian apologist and we disagree, I think not all the time, but I think many times the reason we disagree is that person has made an error in their logical inference. They have over trusted a particular intuition. They have a way of already framing the evidence beforehand that distorts it, that prevents them from seeing it in the correct light because they failed to take something into account of understanding it. They’ve made a false assumption. They’ll read a biblical passage with a particular false assumption about what a certain word or phrase means, and they’ll run with that throughout their entire argument. But the problem here is that if you leave that option open, so the question is, if scripture is clear, perspicuous, why do Protestants disagree? If you allow it to say, “Well, they disagree …” If you defend perspicuity, you don’t really have the option of, “Well, there are important doctrines related to salvation, but they’re not highly attested.”
Take for example infant baptism. Should I baptize my baby to get him or her to heaven? The ordinary means to get him or her to heaven. That’s an important salvation issue. But scripture does not speak about infant baptism as you saw the baptism of households. And that’s why you have Jordan Cooper and Gavin Ortlund disagreeing about infant baptism, for example. And of course, paedobaptism and credobaptism and disagreeing about that for 500 years. But you don’t really leave open for yourself this option of, “Well, scripture is ambiguous, or there’s not a lot on this subject here in scripture, or there’s not entirely clear because perspicuity says that that can’t be the case on doctrines related to salvation.” If you leave it open to, “Well, they disagree because people haven’t fully used their ordinary means. They haven’t read the right commentaries, or used the right ways of looking at scripture.”
But to me, that really cuts against the classical understanding of sola scriptura, which is that Protestant reformers are saying, “You don’t need an institution like the Catholic Church or really any church to be able to understand what scripture means.” I know Protestants will say it’s a caricature. Well, we’re not saying, “It’s me and my Bible under a tree.” Okay, you also should bring into account the creeds and the traditions. And you bring up a great point in your book in response to that, which ones am I supposed to pick? There’s a lot of them out there to help me filter the Bible I’m sitting with under a tree. I think that that runs into a huge problem if you’re using defending the perspicuity of scripture to try to explain disagreement by saying, “Oh, well, you’re not using the right traditional hermeneutic to look at it.” Does that make sense?
Casey Chalk:
Yeah, it makes. That’s, yes, and that is exactly what I argue, which is when we get down to what constitutes ordinary means, we immediately get into disagreements again about which means are we going to choose? Some commentaries are approved by certain Protestant groups or seminaries or individual pastors, and others are not. Some, take any particular means that a Protestant would want to leverage, an individual pastor sermon, and you’re going to find some other pastor’s sermon that fundamentally disagrees with that. And how do you determine which one is the one that helps you to get closer to the understanding that fundamental truth of scripture?
That ultimately in all things, all of this, and I argue this again in the book, in the same chapter that we’ve been talking about, is that ultimately perspicuity leads to a radical individualism. Because we all are reliant ultimately on ourselves to understand basically everything about God and about scripture itself. And that’s remarkable and scary to think that that’s where it leads, because I don’t know, I don’t trust myself to be able to put together an entire Christian tradition. And again, that gets back to my own conversion story. That was a lot of the reason why I realized that it couldn’t possibly be me on my own trying to figure all this out.
Trent Horn:
Well, I’m really grateful that you wrote this book. I think it contributes well to the discussion on the doctrine of sola scriptura, especially, and I noticed this in my debate with Gavin, and I’ve seen it online, in the past 30 years I think Protestants have retreated to a minimal definition of sola scriptura at a statement. So 30 years ago, the definition of sola scriptura would include the doctrines of the sufficiency of scripture, that scripture contains everything that we need to be saved or even everything we need for faith in life, or everything God wants us to know. And it would be clear for us to understand when you read the older works like James White, for example, Norm Geisler, it’s very clear about that, but newer definitions of sola scriptura will just say, “Well, it’s just the sole, infallible rule of faith.” And so it makes it very minimal, but there is this assumption of the perspicuity of scripture in order for it to be the sole, infallible rule of faith. Even if you restrict it to those things necessary for salvation.
It’s funny, I was reading your book and I was really happy, but at first I was concerned, because I had an idea for a book after the debate with Gavin. And I was like, “Oh man, did Casey BB to the punch with it in the book?” And no, your book is awesome and it covers it, but I’m thinking about writing a book that really thoroughly explains all of the essential doctrines Protestants disagree about. You do a great job covering perspicuity here and you referenced some of these, but if you sat down and made a list and say, “No, these are essential.” If you take, for example what’s essential for salvation. How much of Christology is involved? How much can you misunderstand the Trinity before you’re no longer Christian?
Or take morality, so scripture teaches us what we need to be saved. One of the things we need to be saved is knowing which moral actions are compatible with the Christian life and which are not. But as you reference in the book, what do you do with the United Methodist Church, or Episcopalians, or other Protestant denominations that split on homosexuality? If you pick the wrong one there, you could pick a church that is teaching you a doctrine that could lead you to damnation, or on divorce and remarriage, or abortion. You would think if God gives us the truths to salvation, the truths about what the moral life ought to be on these applied moral issues, because we can get to about morality here more general shortly, that that should be clear, but we don’t really see that, right?
Casey Chalk:
Yes, it’s all exactly right. And yeah, the Methodists, I think are a prime example of perspicuity in action in a way. But yeah, my friend Bryan Cross, one of the guys from Called to Community, a professor of philosophy, he talks about a lot of this as by comparison to shooting an arrow and then drawing the target around it. And that’s what your belief system is and how you understand issues regarding morality and whatnot. And yeah, that’s an entirely subjective way of doing things. And it also means that you may have to ultimately shift your target multiple times in your life if the denomination or church that you’re a part of shifts on something that’s really important to you where you’re not willing to give any ground. You’re a member of the Episcopal church, and you joined at a time where it still held a particular belief on sexuality or contraception, and then within your lifetime it changes. “Oh, yes, I better find a new church that I can redraw my target around.”
Trent Horn:
Actually, there is a name for that fallacy, and I love it because I live in Texas now and it’s called the Texas sharpshooter fallacy. And so it’s the idea of you find commonality in a reference class after the fact and try to say that they’re all in common. The reference comes from the story of Texas’ greatest gun slinger who would shoot random holes into the side of a barn and then paint targets around them to make it seem like he was a great shot. And so you try to say, “Well, do Protestants agree on the essential doctrine?” Well, of course they do. Well, what’s that? Well, the essential doctrine is all the things we can manage to find Protestants agreeing about. So wait, how did you know these are the essential doctrines before you knew Protestants already agreed about maybe the most basic Christianity or not? So it becomes fallacious in that way.
Let’s move towards to the Bible a little bit, because you would think if the Bible were perspicuous and it was clear, it would teach this doctrine for people, it would teach that it’s clear. And you have a good chapter in the book where you go through the proof text that people could use for or against perspicuity. What are your thoughts about what the Bible says about whether it is clear or not? How should we approach that?
Casey Chalk:
Yeah, so this was a complicated and sticky part of the book to write in a way, because I wanted to avoid more or less falling back into the same epistemological crisis that Protestants are in, namely trying to find Bible verses to substantiate my own opinion. But thankfully, the Catholic Church has been around much longer than I have, and already has a very strong interpretive tradition and understanding for how scripture and individual person and the community relate to one another. So more or less, I’m just drawing from Catholic tradition and how to understand scripture. And it’s not that the Bible, that the Catholic Church, like you said in the beginning, Trent, it’s not that the Bible, the church teaches the Bible, is fundamentally obscure, but that all of scripture needs to be read within the hermeneutic of the church itself in community and not just any community, right?
Because Protest, a lot of magisterial reform Protestants say, “Oh yeah, of course the church needs to be read in community, but my particular community.” Whereas the Catholic Church’s claim is more in reference to apostolic tradition, the episcopacy, and of course, the papacy as well. If we’re going to even have a conversation about those parts of the Bible that seem to support the Catholic tradition rather than the Protestant one, it’s not because I’m trying to say, “These particular Bible verses clearly prove the Catholic tradition,” but more trying to present to the reader, “Hey, if you want to understand what the Catholic tradition says about how we understand scripture and how we relate to it, it’s coherent in and of itself. You’re not going to be able to read the Bible and just immediately get all of Catholicism on your own.” I mean, by a miracle you could, I suppose. But that’s more or less what I’m doing here. And then going through and explaining some of the problems with the Protestant interpretations of scripture more or less on either on exegetical grounds or historical and cultural grounds.
Trent Horn:
Yeah. Well, I think it was really helpful, and I think when I asked Protestants, “So where does the Bible teach the perspicuity of scripture?” I don’t get a lot of responses, or I get a lot of responses more from the Old Testament than the New Testament, such as references to Deuteronomy 30 when Moses says, “Oh, this is a command I shall write down for you. It is not difficult for you to understand.” But I think in a lot of these cases, and this is my personal interpretation, which could be wrong, you never know, is that in a lot of these cases it’s talking about how particular moral commands are easy to understand. Specific rules in the Ten Commandments are easy to understand. “Thou shall not murder, thou shall not commit adultery, thou shall not steal, thou shall not worship other gods. Thou shall not take the Lord’s name in vain.” That these things, “Thou shall not offer your children up to Moloch.” That when these commands are given in scripture, there’s no excuse, they are easy to understand.
I think the problem becomes, and we see this with Protestants, when you try to apply the commands to different contexts or things that are not envisioned in scripture, is how do we apply scripture to new technologies like in vitro fertilization, newer contraceptive technologies to modern homosexual relationships that people will say are not like the ones condemned in scripture. I do think it gets a little bit different with that.
I want to bring up one other one verse though, I didn’t notice you mention it as much. I always thought that this was a pretty big piece of biblical evidence against the perspicuity of scripture, and that’s II Peter 3:16 where the author of II Peter says of Paul’s letters, well, verses 15 and 16, “Our beloved brother Paul wrote to you according to the wisdom given him. Speaking of this as he does in all his letters, there are some things in them hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction as they do the other scriptures. Well, I don’t know. I could share my thoughts on why I think this is evidence against perspicuity, unless you want to comment on it first, it’s up to you?
Casey Chalk:
Well, I will, just going back to your point about the interpretation of various moral commands in the Old and New Testaments. It’s not just you, I even talk about this in the book that, I mean, you have Bellarmine and you’ve got Aquinas on your side. Also-
Trent Horn:
It’s always nice to hear.
Casey Chalk:
That’s right. In terms of that passage from St. Peter in the New Testament. I mean, certainly what he seems to be implying is that a good part of the Pauline Corpus is very difficult to understand. And I mean to we’d ask St. Peter himself, which versus, or books in particular he had in mind. But yeah, it would be very problematic for Luther and Calvin if some of those perhaps included large chunks of, I don’t know, Galatians, Ephesians, or Romans where they’re drawing most of their-
Trent Horn:
Oh, well, clearly Romans is an easy book to understand. Have you never read it? I mean, yeah. I think that should be clear to anyone who has ever tried to start studying with Paul’s rhetorical style in the Book of Romans, where sometimes it’s hard to tell when you’re reading Romans, where does Paul end and his imaginary interlocutor begins? What’s being referred to? Well, for me, when I read this passage, a few things stand out to me. One, there’s two things because some, a Protestant might say, “Yeah, there’s things that are difficult in Paul’s letters, but the things we need to know to be saved are crystal clear.” But Peter is saying, the author of II Peter is saying, “Well, wait, there are things people misinterpret, not to just get trivial, wrong answers, but they misinterpret it to their own destruction. “Which to me would seem like this is dealing with essential matters, not tertiary doctrines. And that would be one point.
The second point is some people, some Protestants read this as saying, “Oh, the, it’s not the fault of Paul’s letters, but these ignorant, unstable people twist it and distort it, and they’re being the bad guys here.” But I don’t see that, or at least I think that’s being imposed on the text in Greek, it’s [inaudible 00:48:03], which means undisciplined and astériktos, which means ungrounded. If anything, it’s, these are people who are kind of novices to the faith, who read Paul’s letters without the proper guidance and can quickly go off course. Even though if perspicuity were true, that shouldn’t be the case. So, those are my thoughts there. I don’t know if you have any more thoughts on scripture, we can talk about that, otherwise we can move into a few closing thoughts, if you want?
Casey Chalk:
Sure, yeah. Happy to discuss whatever.
Trent Horn:
Yeah, let’s do that. Well, we’ve been going here for a while. Actually, let’s just get to a final objection that people might raise. I can see a lot of Protestants might say to you, “Well, look, all the objections you raise about the Bible, how it could be difficult and we don’t have interpretation. How is that not the same problem you’re going to address? If you need an interpretive authority to understand the Bible? Do you need an interpretive authority standing over your shoulder when you read a magisterial text, for example, or the catechism? And then do you need an interpretive authority for that interpretive authority? And it becomes some kind of an infinite regress and it shows your argument is problematic. How would you respond to that objection?
Casey Chalk:
With many things when it comes to Christianity, I think that Chesterton is often the most quotable. I think he said something to the effect of, “You can’t put a book in the dock.” And I think that kind of hints at one of the important ways to understand the difference between the Protestant and Catholic paradigm.
Trent Horn:
And for our listeners, by the way, the dock would be, I’m going to get this. It is not a boat dock. It is the place where you would interrogate someone in a courtroom, I believe.
Casey Chalk:
Yeah, that’s exactly right.
Trent Horn:
Because Lewis uses a similar example, “God in the dock,” and it’s not a boat on the water.
Casey Chalk:
Right, right. So yeah, the idea behind the Chesterton quote is, the Bible can’t speak for itself. I mean, we can read it and try to understand what it means, but we can’t say to it, “Hey, I’m really curious about what you think about,” the example you gave Trent about technology, transhumanism. I’m really curious, New Testament, can you tell me about contraception? And then have a dialogue back and forth. Whereas in the Catholic tradition, we have something like that, it’s called the magisterium, and it has been addressing all kinds of questions from the very practical to the very esoteric Theological going back to the Council of Jerusalem, which is described in the Book of Acts itself. That makes much of the difference between the Catholic and the Protestant paradigm that we’re able to continue to keep asking. This is how so many wonderful doctrines have been worked out over the course of church history is people have started to disagree about, “Well, Jesus, his nature, does he have two natures? Does he have one? Is he one person or two persons? How are we to understand veneration of images or Mary?”
And the church convenes a council and works through it. And then if there are additional questions, maybe a 100 years later, we will have another round to get through it. Thankfully now we also have a lot of other offices that the church uses in order to help explain a lot of these things, like the congregation for the Doctrine of Faith and whatnot, which can provide, it’s certainly not real time. It’s not like logging into a company’s website and saying, “Hey, I have a question about your product,” and then getting an immediate response. But certainly we can get answers to these kinds of questions and-
Trent Horn:
Sure.
Casey Chalk:
… get clarity.
Trent Horn:
Well, think about even something like what is the baptismal formula? The Bible does not explicitly say what the baptismal formula is. And the Great Commission in Matthews gospel, Jesus commands for people to be baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. There are Protestants who baptize though in Jesus’ name as described in the Book of Acts. But even there, what formula is valid to allow the sacrament to be efficacious? Can you say, “We baptize you in the name of the Father, Son, the Holy Spirit?” Or does it have to be I, or does it have to be I, or can it be we, or can it be another passive formula? In the Eastern churches, they say, “The servant of God is baptized.” But can I say we instead of I, we’re the community?
Well, the congregation can come down and say, “This has been happening. This is not valid. This is a invalid formula.” You’re right, we have an authority that can dialogue back and forth to be able to say that, especially on questions that are crucially important. Most Protestants believe in the ordinance of Baptism, and they would say there’s certain ways you can baptize that are valid in other way ways that are not.
Last question, I guess I have on all of this, and this deals with more objections. How would you respond? I think some Protestants say, “You accuse us of being, having a lack of unity, but a pox on your own house, don’t throw stones in a glasshouse, glass cathedral because you’ve got Catholics that disagree. You’ve got heretical theologians, you’ve got the German bishops going off the rails here. How are you guys really any different than us in this regard? How would you respond to that final objection?
Casey Chalk:
There are a number of things that I would say. One is that we still have a principle of unity, namely the pope. And the magisterial authority of the church more broadly in terms of ecumenical councils and whatnot. As much as various Catholics, we may disagree amongst ourselves, we have this principle of unity that holds all of this together. And when necessary, and maybe sometimes we would hope there would be more timely than it oftentimes is, but can rule upon various heretical practices or beliefs that are happening in the church. I think it is. But in a sense though, Trent, I think that it is very valuable to take a moment and actually kind of accept that criticism at a certain level that there is a lot of disunity in the Catholic Church right now amongst a lot of people who are throwing quite sling, quite a bit of mud at one another.
And yeah, I think that Catholics need to think a little bit about what that looks like. Even if we’re able to go to mass together and receive the Eucharist and Commune together and be united when we say the Nicene Creed and submit ourselves to the magisterial authority of the church and to the Pope. We can do all of those things. But if we’re at the same time also writing blog posts or articles or whatever that more or less treat our fellow Catholics, brothers and sisters as heretics, then that has a really damaging effect on our ability to witness to those outside the church.
Trent Horn:
No, I agree with that. I think you’re right, we should take stock of this, but also at the same time, acknowledge the crucial differences. For example, if you have Protestants who have a high view of scripture, like someone like Matthew Vines for example, not people who just throw out the Bible and say, “Oh, it’s just a book of human fables.” Who try to redefine it or reinterpret it against a traditional view, like on homosexual conduct, you’ll have … Those who dissent from the traditional view will say, “The Bible teaches what I believe. It’s just these other Protestants don’t recognize it.” Whereas among Catholics, if you have someone say, “Well, homosexual conduct is moral,” they don’t say, “The Catholic Church teaches that.” They’ll say, “Yeah, the church doesn’t teach it. At least it doesn’t teach it yet.” And they’ll have a vain hope that it might be taught in the future, but they at least recognize that what they believe is that variance with the authority they are under, which would be the magisterium, the teaching office of the church.
But among Protestant Christians, when they disagree about scripture, I don’t know very many Protestants to say, “Yeah, the Bible teaches X, but I believe Y, I believe not X.” I rarely hear Protestants say, “Yeah, the Bible teaches that people are going to hell, but I don’t believe that.” They’ll just say, “No, I interpret it differently.” I do think there is a difference with having that living authority you can put in the dock and you can have that dialogue with, so. Great. Well, I’ll leave last question to you if there are any other thoughts that you wanted to add or anything else you think is helpful? Otherwise, where can people get your book and where can people read your other writings?
Casey Chalk:
My book is featured at the website for Emmaus Road Publishing, the publisher for it, which is a fantastic publisher. They do really great books, so I was really excited that they would publish it. This is my second book. I had a previous one called, The Persecuted, about the persecution of the church in Muslim lands. My website is caseychalk.com and I write for lots of different Catholic and non-Catholic publications. Folks can check out my writing, just Google my name and you’ll find a lot of my most recent writing, including for Catholic Answers. Thanks so much to Trent and for Catholic Answers more broadly for featuring my work as well.
Trent Horn:
All right, well, Casey, thank you so much. And [inaudible 00:57:23] reminder, guys, go and pick up a copy of the Obscurity of Scripture by Casey Chalk. I really enjoyed the book. I think you’ll enjoy it as well. A excellent addition to your apologetic library. Thank you so much for being with us here today. Thank you guys for listening, and I hope that you all have a very blessed day.
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