When Protestants say that they have a “fallible list of infallible books,” they run into disaster. How so?
If the canon list of Protestants is “fallible” or “potentially wrong,” then it’s also technically possible that Protestants have books in their canon that God didn’t inspire. Thus, they can’t even say that they have “a fallible list of infallible books,” as that would be presumptive. They should instead say, “We hope to only have infallible books in this fallible list.”
This is a disaster. Many protestants, for example, use 1 Timothy 2:12 against women being pastors: “I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent.” Most biblical scholars today, however, do not think Paul wrote 1 Timothy and the other two Pastoral Epistles (2 Timothy and Titus).
Philip H. Towner, who spent his academic career responding to the arguments of the scholarly majority, ultimately admitted that “it is not possible to prove the authenticity of the letters to Timothy and Titus.” To be clear, Towner did not deny Pauline authorship. He just stressed that the case against the skeptical side isn’t a knockout. In other words, the available evidence allows for valid and reasonable disagreement among Protestants.
But a Protestant might respond that I’ve misrepresented them. They too affirm that the Church has an important, albeit fallible, role in giving us the canon. A Protestant might argue that the general consensus of the Church or God’s people throughout history has affirmed the canonicity of the Pastoral Epistles, and so the matter is basically settled.
This won’t work. Since the Church’s process for determining the canon of Scripture is still fallible, according to Protestants, it can be questioned on evidential grounds. In other words, the consensus is only as good as its reasons. This is in fact how some Protestants argue against the consensus of Christians before the Reformation on matters like the veneration of Mary and the saints.
Consider 2 Peter. There are even conservative Protestant scholars today, like Richard Bauckham, who don’t think Peter wrote 2 Peter. If the historical consensus on the canonicity of 2 Peter rested on the assumption that Peter wrote the text, then that consensus can be dismissed if that core assumption is debunked.
So why should Protestants keep 2 Peter in their canon? They might try to appeal to Christian consensus, but why treat consensus as though it were infallible when Protestants affirm that consensus is fallible? Adding that God guided the process doesn’t really help their side when they still admit that the process is potentially wrong.
There is a better Protestant alternative: God guided the Church to the canon without error, but we just have fallible knowledge that this is true. This is almost indistinguishable from Catholicism. Although we are fallible as human beings, Catholics nonetheless affirm through faith that God has protected the Church from error in, for example, ex cathedra statements from the pope. Protestants would just distinguish their position by saying that infallibility isn’t something the Church can invoke on command. or even regularly.
This is still a massive concession, because it reveals that Protestants need the Church to be infallible through divine protection on certain matters. Catholics happily agree! Strictly speaking, then, sola scriptura is wrong, or at least it needs to be significantly nuanced: Scripture is the only infallible authority for Christians, except when the Church gave us the canon.
If a Protestant chooses this alternative, then he needs to stop saying that the canonization process is fallible. The humans involved in that process were fallible, but God providentially protected them from error when they presented us the canon. It is God who ultimately made the process’s conclusion infallible. Similarly, the pope in his ordinary life is fallible, but Catholics believe that God providentially protects him from error when he irreversibly settles a matter.
At this point, Catholics can press on when exactly Protestants think the Church “gave us” the canon. Protestants can’t just assume their own canon and then cherry-pick moments where it appeared. But they’ll eventually have to admit that the Church “invoked infallibility on command” at least one time. They can’t say that the Church “gave us” the canon and then never specify when.
Catholics can also begin pressing Protestants to accept more instances where God protected the Church. It would make good sense for God to do so. Thus, the debate is no longer whether the Church can be infallibly protected, but how many times this has happened.