In a previous article, I argued that sola scriptura blocks a Protestant from having infallible knowledge of several books in the Bible, including some from the New Testament, like Hebrews, Mark, and James. The reason I gave was that neither Jesus nor the apostles, the only infallible sources besides the Bible for a Protestant, ever gave a complete list of which Jewish and Christian writings were inspired.
But a Protestant might counter: That we can’t discern a complete list of inspired Jewish and Christian writings from Jesus and the apostles is not a problem, because Protestants affirm that the Holy Spirit providentially guided the Church, or the people of God, to recognize what belongs in the canon of Scripture.
Take, for example, former president at Westminster Seminary in California, W. Robert Godfrey. He writes,
As God’s revelation, they are recognized by the people of God as God’s own word. . . . The self-authenticating character of the canon is demonstrated by the remarkable unanimity reached by the people of God on the canon. . . . These actions [by popes and councils] simply recognized the emerging consensus of the people of God as they recognized the authentic scriptures.
Protestant apologist Gavin Ortlund articulated this same response in his debate with Trent Horn.
Now, one might think that by saying the Holy Spirit guided the Church to discern the canon, our Protestant friends are saying the Church’s discernment was infallible, which would be at odds with sola scriptura. This is exactly what a convert from Protestantism recently told me he implicitly believed as a Protestant, and when this implicit belief was made explicit, he abandoned sola scriptura and became Catholic.
But for some, the Church’s historical discernment of the canon is not infallible. And they’re okay with that.
Consider, for example, R.C. Sproul. In his Grace Unknown: The Heart of Reformed Theology, he writes,
Rome believes the church was infallible when it determined which books belong in the New Testament. Protestants believe the church acted rightly and accurately in this process, but not infallibly (p. 58).
Sproul is famous for adopting the phrase, “The Bible is a fallible collection of infallible books.”
Gavin Ortlund, again, put forward this view as his own in his debate with Horn, stating, “The church does not need to possess infallibility in order to recognize infallibility. . . . You don’t need to be infallible to discern that which is infallible.”
So the Protestant claim here is that the Holy Spirit providentially guided the Church to rightly discern what Scripture is, but such discernment wasn’t infallible.
There are basically two targets here at which to direct our responses:
Target #1: The general idea of relying on the people of God’s discernment of the canon of Scripture.
Target #2: The issue of the fallible discernment by the people of God.
Let’s take target #1. There are two responses.
First, Protestants face a problem concerning their thirty-nine-book Old Testament canon.
Consider that there’s an embedded principle in the counter-argument that we’re considering here: Christians can reasonably believe whatever the Holy Spirit leads the Church to believe.
Now, here’s where the problem arises for a Protestant. The Church simply didn’t discern the twenty-seven books of the New Testament to be canonical—that’s to say, inspired by God. The historical record is clear that the Church also discerned forty-six books to make up the Old Testament, which includes the six deuterocanonical books that Protestants reject (Tobit, Judith, 1 and 2 Maccabees, Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus [Sirach], Baruch) along with parts of Esther and Daniel.
Therefore, according to the logic of this counter-argument given by Godfrey, Ortlund, and Sproul, they’d have to say a Christian is safe in believing the deuterocanonical books to be inspired, which, of course, runs contrary to their belief.
A Protestant might counter here and say that the Holy Spirit only led the Church in its discernment of the Christian writings and not in its discernment of the Jewish writings, thereby leaving the Church to err in judging the deuterocanonical books to be inspired. Sometimes the Spirit moves, so it might be claimed, and sometimes he doesn’t. (This seems to be not just a potential counter, but something required for any Protestant who rejects the six deuterocanonical books.)
The problem with this way of thinking is that it ends in self-defeat, at least concerning a Protestant’s belief that he can rely on the people of God’s discernment of the canon.
To say the Holy Spirit led the Church to rightly judge the twenty-seven books in the New Testament to be inspired but didn’t lead the Church to judge the seven deuterocanonical books necessarily implies that there is something other than the people of God that is the measure for discerning which books are inspired. You can’t say the people of God is our final court of appeal for the canon of Scripture, which is what Godfrey, Ortlund, and Sproul argue above, and then turn around and say the judgment made by the people of God on the Old Testament canon was in error.
So the people of God’s discernment of what constitutes Scripture ends up not being the testimony upon which a Protestant can rely after all, which is at cross-purposes with the general view that we’re considering here. Therefore, this counter ends in self-defeat, at least regarding the general idea that the Holy Spirit led the people of God to discern the canon of Scripture.
The question now becomes, “What is the measure by which the people of God’s judgment is in error?” What authority must we rely on to determine when the Holy Spirit was guiding and when he wasn’t?
That’s something a Protestant would have to answer, lest he be guilty of an arbitrary selection as to what the Holy Spirit accurately guides the Church in.
Here’s our second response for target #1: The logic of the argument demands an openness to the Spirit having led the Church to accurately recognize other things that pertain to divine revelation.
Recall the above principle: Christians can reasonably believe whatever the Holy Spirit leads the Church to believe.
Well, there are other things that pertain to divine revelation that the Church came to believe—for example, baptismal regeneration, the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, the supreme authority of the Church of Rome, prayers for the dead, etc.
Therefore, according to the above principle, Christians can reasonably believe these teachings, too, along with the teaching as to which Jewish and Christians writings are inspired.
But this creates a problem for Protestants who reject these doctrines. Such Protestants would have to either give up their argument that they accept the canon of Scripture on account of the testimony of the people of God or say a Christian can reasonably believe these doctrines, like the canon of Scripture.
Now, if a Protestant says the Spirit didn’t guide the early Church concerning these issues, and that’s why the early Christians erred, then we’re back to the question, “How do you know?” What testimony are you relying on to know that the Holy Spirit wasn’t leading the Church in teaching these doctrines?
Again, a Protestant must answer this question lest he arbitrarily select which teachings the Church got right and which ones it got wrong.
What about target #2—the fallible discernment by the people of God?
The first thing we can say is that this view, at least as articulated by Sproul and Ortlund, focuses on discerning “infallible authority” when the argument should focus on “inspiration.”
Sproul and Ortlund are correct in saying that fallible creatures can recognize infallible authority. We do this with Christ and his apostles.
We rightly recognize Jesus as having infallible authority because he vindicated his claims through the miraculous, and he gave such authority over to his apostles, commanding them to speak on his behalf. And given this authority, the apostles’ writings take on the very same infallible character, which would allow us, who are fallible, to have a collection of infallible books.
But infallible authority is not what the Church was after throughout its years of discernment as to what constituted Jewish and Christian scriptures. The Church wasn’t trying to discern whether Old Testament prophets and Christ’s apostles were infallible teachers with divine authority. That was already believed. Rather, the Church was discerning what was inspired—that’s to say, which Jewish and Christian writings had God as their primary author.
And for that, you do need an infallible testimony, whether God himself or a voice to speak on behalf of God, to tell us what God has authored, lest you’re left with a mere subjective guess as to what Scripture is.
Our second response to target #2, and perhaps the most important, is that if Protestants acknowledge that the Church erred in its judgment concerning the deuterocanonical books, then that means the Church could have erred in its judgment about those books that Protestants do accept to be God’s word. And with that potential error come grave consequences for a Protestant who adheres to sola scriptura.
Jimmy Akin states the problem this way:
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—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.
Now, a Protestant, following Sproul, might say the Church, although subject to error, didn’t in fact err in its judgment about the twenty-seven books of the New Testament. But again, how would he know that? What is the measure by which he measures the Church’s judgment to be in fact accurate in these cases? Again, a Protestant would have to answer these questions lest he be guilty of arbitrary selection.
In the end, I don’t think this route, taken by Godfrey, Ortlund, and Sproul, is favorable for a Protestant. If it’s safe to trust the people of God’s discernment of the New Testament canon, then it’s also safe to trust their discernment in other things—like the forty-six-book Old Testament canon and other revealed doctrines that many Protestants reject.
And if the discernment is fallible, then there’s a real possibility they were mistaken concerning the twenty-seven books of the New Testament and the thirty-nine books in a Protestant’s Old Testament canon. Such a margin of error is not a good foundation on which to build a belief that involves looking to those same books as your sole infallible rule of faith.