DAY 352
CHALLENGE
“We don’t need the Church to infallibly settle the canon of Scripture; we have a fallible collection of infallible books. Further, the Catholic Church didn’t even attempt to define the canon for centuries.”
DEFENSE
There are several responses to this challenge.
First, if you want to claim we have certain knowledge that all the books included in the canon belong there, then you do need an infallible authority. Although some Protestants have been willing to say our knowledge of the canon is fallible (“a fallible collection of infallible books”), many find this prospect profoundly disturbing.
Second, it is particularly disturbing from a Protestant point of view because of the Protestant claim that theology should be done sola scrip- tura (Latin, “by Scripture alone”). If that is how to do theology, if you have nothing else authoritative to rely on, then the question of what belongs in Scripture takes on special urgency.
If there is the possibility that books have been included in Scripture that shouldn’t be there—and multiple books were in doubt in the early centuries (see Day 314)—then the foundations of Protestant theology are uncertain. False elements may have been introduced into data it rests upon, with potentially grave consequences. Similarly, if some inspired books were left out of the Protestant canon, important data would be missing, again with potentially grave consequences. Determining, precisely and with certainty, what belongs in Scripture is thus a critical priority for sola scriptura.
Third, we elsewhere cover various practical problems with sola scrip- tura that indicate it could not have been proposed before a certain stage in Church history (see Day 16). The urgency of knowing precisely what belongs in the canon points to another such practical difficulty. That is, nobody would have proposed sola scriptura in an age before people thought they knew the boundaries of the canon with precision, making sola scriptura again an anachronism of a later age.
Fourth, the reason the canon was able to remain undefined for centuries was precisely because the early Church did not employ sola scriptura: In addition to Scripture, it relied on apostolic Tradition and the Church’s living Magisterium. As long as these were available, the question of the canon’s precise boundaries was not critical. Tradition clarified some questions, and the Magisterium could settle new pressing questions as they arose.