Approaches to History.

This essay raises an interesting perspective on the Reformation's relationship to history.

The traditional Protestant perspective is that Protestantism is a return to the sources ("ad fontes"); Protestantism scrubs off the barnacles that attached themselves to Christianity during the nebulously defined "Middle Ages." As such, Protestantism is the historic Christianity.

The problem with that approach is that anyone who studies Christian history discovers that the further they go back, the more Christian history looks Catholic/Orthodox. At the beginning of the Second Century, St. Ignatius is talking about the pre-eminence of bishops. St. Clement refers to apostolic succession in the 80s or 90s A.D. The best case scenario for Protestantism is that their "primitive Christianity" lasted for a four week period sometime in 33 AD. The worst case is that it is "turtles all the way down."

So, what do you do about that?

One approach, which I've noted in these pages, is to ignore history. For many people, history a foreign country indeed, and too many people think the Dark Ages ended shortly before they entered High School. The Protestant contribution is to imagine a kind of ahistorical "Bible Time" and then jump forward to today.

The essay argues that some historically-aware Protestants are taking a different approach:

In singing the praises of Protestantism, Leithart repeatedly does so not on the basis of its dedication to a return ad fontes, but because it represents a newer, better, more evolved form of the Church. He admiringly quotes 19th century Calvinist theologian Philip Schaff (one of the coiners of the phrase Reformed Catholic, though certainly not quite in Leithart’s camp) when he says that the “Reformation is the legitimate offspring, the greatest act of the Catholic Church.”

Thus, the partisans of Reformed Catholicity have lit upon a new way for the Protestant to deal with Christian history. The old way was to dismiss it all as so much apostasy. The most common way is simply to be ignorant of it. (“I don’t believe in history,” a fellow priest’s Baptist mother once told him. I don’t believe they’re related to the Fords, however.) And now we have a new way: Christian history is legitimate, but the Church has been improving over time, and Protestant denominationalism is in fact a higher and better version of the Church.

If you think about it, I believe that this really is the only way to hold on both to denominationalism (multiple, competing, contradictory doctrines and communions who are somehow all legitimately the Church) and keeping any semblance of historical integrity. After all, the arguments for apostasy are pretty watery. Once you accept the canon of the New Testament (and most Great Apostasy advocates do), you then have the sticky problem of dealing with all that liturgy and sacraments and bishops and such that seem to dominate the world that canonized the Bible. (One way to get around that problem is to take Joseph Smith’s approach: God gave me new revelation, and the old one was probably always corrupted, anyway. This is actually getting more common these days than we might like to think.)

I really have to hand it to these guys, because this is an ingenious way of dealing with all this data—you get to hang on to your own denominational (or non-denominational) loyalties, recognize those whose doctrines oppose yours as true Christians, and also subsume into your own legitimacy the Christianity of the past. You can even quote the Fathers and stir in a little of their liturgy into your otherwise bare walls echoing with sermons!

Never mind that historic Christianity still actually exists in “earlier forms of the church” whose membership represents the vast majority of living Christians. You can dismiss them as “childish.”

But that’s not the deep problem in this historiographical scheme. The deep problem is twofold. The first is the problem of knowledge: How am I supposed to know the truth? If the Church is always evolving (the real semper reformanda?), how can I be sure I’m actually on the Way? How am I to know that Reformed Catholicity is actually a better, legitimate offspring, “the greatest act of the Catholic Church,” and not just an egg it laid that turned out to be a dud? How do I know that that which has survived (for now) is really the fittest?

The essay is spot on about the attempt to dismiss the early church as "childish." A while ago, Parchment and Pen put up a blog post which made literally that argument, while providing the following illustration:

Likewise, the post-modern, evolutionary approach can be seen in Alister McGrath's "Christianity's Dangerous Idea," which argues that since "private interpretation" is Christianity's "dangerous idea," the advantage that Protestantism has is that it can be anything at all. To quote my review:

McGrath recognizes that "private interpretation" means that there is no teaching that cannot be made Protestant, so he decides to make a virtue of a necessity and decide that this diversity is a really good thing and the strength of Protestantism. As the book progressed, I started to wonder if the "dangerous idea was "the priesthood of all believers" and the fact that Protestantism disclaimed the existence of a "spiritual elite." p. 233. But, again, this is an idea that is honored in the breach by several of the main iterations of Protestantism, such as the Reformed wing, which taught that the 5th Commandment's injunction to love and honor one's father and mother applied to one's pastor. p. 293.

The "dangerous idea" seems to be the formless, protean essence of Protestantism. According to McGrath, historically, there was not a single Protestantism; Lutheranism, Calvinism and Anabaptism had separate origins and distinctive and contradictory beliefs. What held the Protestantisms together was the fact that they were not Catholic. (p. 132 ("Historically, Protestantism has always needed an "other," an external threat or enemy ,imagined or real, to hold itself together as a movement."

McGrath goes so far as to question whether essential Protestant distinctive such as Sola Fide and the inerrancy of the Bible may not be required doctrines in Protestantism. See p. 250 - 251. McGrath notes that the Protestant commitment to reassessing doctrines in the light of social development has led to "sea changes" in interpretation. For example, early Protestants held to a belief that the "great commission" of Matthew 28:19 to take the Gospel to the ends of the Earth had ended with the apostles. p. 176, 225. This understanding was reversed in the Nineteenth Century. Similarly, early Protetants held to "cessationism" which taught that the gifts of the Holy Spirit ended with the Apostles, but, again, in the 20th Century, with the rise of Pentecostalism, this doctrine too has been reversed.

So, it isn't clear that Protestantism has any particular core of doctrine. Even the adherence to the Trinity is questioned by "oneness Pentecostals." p. 434. Can we say even that the adherence to the Bible only is a core Protestant idea in light of the fact that, according to McGrath, the rise of science was a principally Protestant undertaking engaged in by people who wanted to interpret the "book of words" (the Bible) through the "book of works (nature) as Calvin proposed. p. 373 - 375. Ultimately, what is left of Protestantism, according to McGrath is a commitment to the idea that "all interpretations of the Bible must be regarded as provisional, not final." p. 377. This leaves Protestantism with nothing but a method and the core of Protestantism is the tautology that ends the book, "We have seen that Protestantism possesses a unique and innate capacity for innovation, renewal and reform based on its own internal resources. The future of Protestantism lies precisely in Protestantism being what Protestantism actually is."

Whatever that happens to be.

All in all, this approach seems to be more about making lemons into lemonade, than dealing with history.

Father Barron on McGrath's "Christianity's Dangerous Idea."

The most important doctrine of Protestantism is "private interpretation"...

...except when it's not.

Alister McGrath wrote a massive tome on "Christianity's Dangerous Idea," which apparently was supposed to be "private interpretation," as part of which every believer had the right to their own understanding of the Bible, and which, according to McGrath, paved the way for democracy, tolerance, progress, science, indoor plumbing and free pizza delivery, i.e., in a word, to the modern world.  The problem with McGrath's grandiloquent theory, in my opinion, is that you can't actually spot it in practice when you look at actual history. What actual history looks like is that each Protestant church/denomination/pastor has its own magisterial authority and is as quick to excommunicate and suppress divergent interpretations as they Protestants to allege against Catholicism, up to and including killing those who disagree with the interpretation preferred by the given Protestant church/denomination/pastor (although, admittedly, not so much in the last 300 years more or less.)

One of the reason why I find the Protestant idea - slogan, really - of "private interpretation" to be so problematic are things like this:

A fiery debate has erupted over a leading Southern Baptist apologist's questioning of Matthew 27. The question: whether Matthew's reference to many saints rising from their graves after Jesus' resurrection might not be literal history.


The theological war of words, spurred by high-profile open letters and retorts on the Internet, has raised questions about the meaning of biblical inerrancy. It has also led to the departure of Michael Licona as apologetics coordinator for the North American Mission Board (NAMB).

At issue is a passage of Licona's 700-page The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach, published in 2010 by InterVarsity Press.

"Based on my reading of the Greco-Roman, Jewish, and biblical literature, I proposed that the raised saints are best interpreted as Matthew's use of an apocalyptic symbol communicating that the Son of God had just died," said Licona, former research professor of New Testament at Southern Evangelical Seminary in Charlotte, North Carolina. Licona voluntarily resigned from the seminary on October 4 after the print version of this article went to press.

In a series of open letters posted online, Norman Geisler, distinguished professor of apologetics at Veritas Evangelical Seminary in Murrieta, California, objected to Licona's characterizing the passage as a "strange little text." Geisler accused Licona of denying the full inerrancy of Scripture. He also called for Licona to recant his interpretation, labeling it "unorthodox, non-evangelical, and a dangerous precedent for the rest of evangelicalism."

In a 2,800-word blog post, Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, praised Licona's book as "virtually unprecedented in terms of evangelical scholarship" and "nothing less than a masterful defense of the historicity of the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead."

Yet Mohler devoted most of the post to criticizing what he called Licona's "shocking and disastrous argument" concerning the bodily resurrection of the saints.

Licona replied to Geisler that additional research has led him to re-examine his position. "At present I am just as inclined to understand the narrative … as a report of a factual (i.e., literal) event as I am to view it as an apocalyptic symbol," Licona wrote.

In the wake of the controversy, a number of leading evangelical scholars came to Licona's defense—some publicly, others privately.

"I know a good number of evangelical seminary professors who have privately expressed support for Mike Licona but cannot do so publicly for fear of punitive measures," said Paul Copan, an apologist and president of the Evangelical Philosophical Society.

And this is a good point, and the reason why the claim to submtting to the "bible alone" is a great slogan, but makes no sense in practice:

Daniel B. Wallace, New Testament professor at Dallas Theological Seminary, said he disagrees with Licona's interpretation but considers the issue hermeneutical, not a challenge to biblical inerrancy.


"If we view our own interpretation to be just as inerrant as the Scriptures," he said, "this could ironically elevate tradition and erode biblical authority."

Wallace is both right and wrong. To say that someone, anyone, is wrong in their interpretation of the Bible is to say that your interpretation is right, and, therefore, your interpretation is necessarily the correct interpretation of the Bible and, as such, your interpretation is inerrant and, dare we say it, infallible.  But Wallace is wrong if he thinks that he can ever separate a text from interpretation.  Apart from a trivial claim that they exist as physical structures, texts do not exist except to the extent that they interact with a mind. The purpose of a text is to interact with the mind. If a text is not interacting with a mind, then it is no more a text than a rock is a text.  That means that texts are texts only insofar as they are interpreted.

So, just as "words are not crystals with fixed, invariant meaning; words are the living skin of thought," texts are the living skin of thought, and, therefore, getting the interpretation right is getting the text right. Moreover since we interpret in light of a tradition, getting the interpretative tradition right is important.

Saying that all interpretations equally right in order to avoid elevating tradition means that saying that a text is "inerrant" and "sufficient" is absolutely meaningless. Inerrant how? Sufficient in what way? "Inerrancy," "sufficiency" and "perspicuity" may be great slogans, but in practice if there is no interpretative tradition that is sufficiently trustworthy to make the inerrancy, sufficiency and perspicuity of the text known, they are meaningless words.

According to Christian Smith in "Making the Bible Impossible," Evangelicals find themselves in a state of cognitive dissonance between theory and practice.

n.b. - the actual quote by Oliver Wendell Holmes is -

"A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged, it is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and the time in which it is used."

Amazon Review - Are Mormons Protestants?

Christianity's Dangerous Idea by Alister McGrath.

In "Christianity's Dangerous Idea," Alister McGrath attempts to come to grips with the fundamental question of defining Protestantism. Is Protestantism a set of ideas? Is it the product of an historical event? Is it simply a reaction against medieval Catholicism? Does it even have a core set of beliefs? Is Protestantism in any sense a single phenomenon?


In arriving at his answer, McGrath engages in a broad survey of Protestantism. In three broad sections, McGrath examines the breadth of the Protestant experience. In the first section he looks at Protestant history; he examines its multiple origins in Germany and Switzerland, the emergence of the "Reformed" wing of Protestantism, and the eventual fissiparous "evolution" of many strands of Protestantism in the 19th and 20th centuries. In the second section, McGrath looks at Protestantism's contribution to culture; he examines the effect of Protestantism's insistence on recognizing the Bible as the sole, or maybe merely the highest, authority, the working out of the logic of the "priesthood of all believers, its relations to the arts and sciences, and its "mutations" into American evangelicalism. He finds evidence that Protestantism uniquely led to - or reinforced - the development of natural science and democracy, but also secularism and atheism. See e.g, p. 374, 429.) In the third section McGrath looks at Protestantism's future, and finds great potential for Protestantism in the "consumerist" model of American evangelicalism and the re-introduction of the sacred into the mundane represented by Pentecostalism.

McGrath's answer to the question "what is Protestantism" is that Protestantism is a "method" by which believers constantly examine their assumptions against the Bible and are willing to jettison or modify their beliefs without regard to the conclusions reached by prior generations. As such, McGrath feels, Protestantism is a uniquely democratic engine of adaptation, mutation and evolution. McGrath is quite explicit in his use of biological metaphors, particularly evolutionary metaphors, to describe Protestantism. (See e.g., p. 466 ("The capacity to adapt is the birthright of Protestantism."); p. 463 ("One pattern that emerges from the development of Protestantism is what seems to be an endless cycle of birth, maturing, aging and death, leading to renewal and reformulation."); p. 400 ("Protestantism is not a static entity, but a living entity whose identity mutates over time. Yet that mutation leads to a variety of outcomes - among which some flourish and others wither.")

As an attorney who has represented many local Protestant churches in their efforts to disaffiliate from their denominations - and as a Catholic for whom such a notion would be unthinkable if it involved churches in my faith tradition - I am on record - (literally, I made this argument before California's Fifth District Court of Appeals in California-Nevada Annual Conf. of the United Methodist Methodist Church v. St. Luke's United Methodist United Methodist Church (2004) 121 Cal.App.4th 754, 767 [17 Cal. Rptr. 3d 442] in 2005) - as having the highest admiration for the radical democratic energy of my Protestant brethren. These are people who will literally rip themselves out of the safety and comfort of their traditions when they feel that they cannot compromise their biblically-informed conscience. In America today, one of the most significant and, yet, unnoticed religious events is the implosion of the traditional mainline Protestant denominations as large numbers of basically "conservative" local churches walk away from their "liberal" denominations. I think that it is safe to say that while Catholics might walk individually from their church, such an organized, communal departure from tradition would be largely unthinkable (albeit I realize that it has happened on very rare occasions.)

So, I don't have problems with McGrath's overall thesis, but although I found the book worthwhile as a survey of Protestantism and gained many useful insights into Protestantism, I found myself irritated with the book concerning specific areas and disappointed with the book as a whole.

I was disappointed with the book because I thought that it was about "private interpretation." The flyleaf and title implied that "Christianity's Dangerous Idea" was the idea of "private interpretation," and there are many times when McGrath says as much. However, McGrath really does not follow up on this notion to any great extent by developing the idea of "private interpretation" and what it means and how it differs from other kinds of, presumably, non-private interpretation. For the most part, McGrath simply assumes that everyone knows and agrees that Protestants engage in "private interpretation" and that we all know what it means.

Well, I don't, and the reason I bought the book was because I wanted to know how "private interpretation" differed from what I presumably do as a Catholic as a matter of practice and not as a slogan. I felt all I got from McGrath was more slogan and very little application.

McGrath doesn't explicitly define private interpretation. In fact, the index does not have an entry for "private interpretation" which seems like a strange omission for a book about "private interpretation," (although "basketball" does get an entry in the index. However on page 208 he offers what I think is his definition, which goes as follows"

"In its formative phase, Protestantism was characterized by a belief - a radical, liberating, yet dangerous belief - that scripture is clear enough for ordinary Christians to understand and apply without the need for a classical education, philosophical or theological expertise, clerical guidance or ecclesiastical tradition, in the confident expectation that difficult passages will illuminated by clearer ones."

I think that this is what is meant by my Protestant friends when they talk about "private interpretation."

The problem from my point of view, and the reason I wanted help from McGrath, is that while I hear these words, I don't see them in actual practice. What I see are appeals to having to read the text in the original Greek and Hebrew, as well as appeals to traditional interpretations by people who deny that they are making any such appeal. On the whole, I find myself concluding that there is a whole lot of cognitive dissonance going on in the minds of people who think that they are engaging in "private interpretation." I am willing to be disabused of this notion, which was my reason for turning to this book.

What I learned, however, was that not only was McGrath of no help, his book compounds my sense that "private interpretation" is based on cognitive dissonance. Thus, McGrath points out that early Protestantism almost immediately realized that the average person could not be trusted to interpret the Bible correctly based on nothing but the Bible without coming to some wildly wrong conclusion and so early Reformers quickly developed an industry of commentaries, lectionaries, translations, catechisms, marginal notes and sermons to make sure that individual Protestants came to the right conclusion. See e.g., p. 202. Luther started cranking out catechisms as soon as he realized (a) that Zwingli was not on the same page as he was over the "Lord's supper." Likewise, the Reformed wing developed its own method of pragmatically limiting "private interpretation," as McGrath observes concerning the Geneva Bible, which was hotly contested among English Protestants because of its marginal notes: "The marginal notes of the Geneva Bible provided its readers with clear explanations of the meanings of important and yet potentially obscure biblical texts." p. 135; See also p. 355 ("We have already noted the importance of the Geneva Bible (1560) to help its readers understand what it euphemistically termed the "hard places."). How is this different from the Catholic practice of publishing bibles with notes in order to explain difficult passages, other than the fact that the Catholic Church doesn't teach its followers that the Bible is "perspicuous" when it provides the "proper" interpretation of scripture? see p. 203.)

McGrath does acknowledge the existence of "authority structures" as being necessary to any human enterprise and that Protestantism does have its authority structures outside of the Bible which control the Protestant's understanding of the Bible, but he doesn't explain what effect these authority structures has on "private interpretation" or how in a "private interpretation" either fits in his definition or works as a practical matter.

McGrath also defines private interpretation as the right of the believer to interpret the bible for himself. p. 209 ("...every Protestant has the right to interpret the Bible...")), but again this seems to be an assumed slogan rather than a reality. For example, if one is attentive to the book, although McGrath never explicitly identifies it as happening, one can see a whole lot of "imposing" of Protestantism and particular interpretations of the Bible going on. Thus, McGrath acknowledges that apart from the Anabaptists, the magisterial reformers were supported by a state actor that imposed the reformers interpretation on the population, e.g., Luther in Wittenberg and Zwingli in Zurich. This imposition was not all love and light; Zwingle had one of his former closest associates, Felix Manz drowned in the River Limmat for refusing to recant his belief that there was no biblical warrant for infant baptism. (p. 71. Likewise, the religious wars did not result in a victory for "private interpretation," rather they resulted in the local prince choosing the interpretation for his domain. Similarly, the English monarchy in its Reformation didn't permit "private interpretation" - the interpretation permitted to English citizens was that which the King permitted. Even the Reformed wing got into the act of imposing the proper interpretation when it had the power such as banning the eating of plum pudding on Christmas Day. (p. 142.)

But even after the separation of church and state, where is this "private interpretation" as a practical matter? If a member of a denomination dissents from the core interpretation of the denomination, then they can be "excommunicated." Even in non-denominational churches, presumably if an individual in a Trinitarian church decides to opt for a "private interpretation" that Jesus was a creature, presumably that person would be shown the door.

McGrath recognizes that "private interpretation" means that there is no teaching that cannot be made Protestant, so he decides to make a virtue of a necessity and decide that this diversity is a really good thing and the strength of Protestantism. As the book progressed, I started to wonder if the "dangerous idea was "the priesthood of all believers" and the fact that Protestantism disclaimed the existence of a "spiritual elite." (p. 233. But, again, this is an idea that is honored in the breach by several of the main iterations of Protestantism, such as the Reformed wing, which taught that the 5th Commandment's injunction to love and honor one's father and mother applied to one's pastor. (p. 293.)

The "dangerous idea" seems to be the formless, protean essence of Protestantism. According to McGrath, historically, there was not a single Protestantism; Lutheranism, Calvinism and Anabaptism had separate origins and distinctive and contradictory beliefs. What held the Protestantisms together was the fact that they were not Catholic. (p. 132 ("Historically, Protestantism has always needed an "other," an external threat or enemy ,imagined or real, to hold itself together as a movement."

McGrath goes so far as to question whether essential Protestant distinctive such as Sola Fide and the inerrancy of the Bible may not be required doctrines in Protestantism. (See p. 250 - 251. McGrath notes that the Protestant commitment to reassessing doctrines in the light of social development has led to "sea changes" in interpretation. For example, early Protestants held to a belief that the "great commission" of Matthew 28:19 to take the Gospel to the ends of the Earth had ended with the apostles. (p. 176, 225.) This understanding was reversed in the Nineteenth Century. Similarly, early Protetants held to "cessationism" which taught that the gifts of the Holy Spirit ended with the Apostles, but, again, in the 20th Century, with the rise of Pentecostalism, this doctrine too has been reversed.

So, it isn't clear that Protestantism has any particular core of doctrine. Even the adherence to the Trinity is questioned by "oneness Pentecostals." (p. 434) Can we say even that the adherence to the Bible only is a core Protestant idea in light of the fact that, according to McGrath, the rise of science was a principally Protestant undertaking engaged in by people who wanted to interpret the "book of words" (the Bible) through the "book of works (nature) as Calvin proposed. (p. 373 - 375. Ultimately, what is left of Protestantism, according to McGrath is a commitment to the idea that "all interpretations of the Bible must be regarded as provisional, not final." p. 377. This leaves Protestantism with nothing but a method and the core of Protestantism is the tautology that ends the book, "We have seen that Protestantism possesses a unique and innate capacity for innovation, renewal and reform based on its own internal resources. The future of Protestantism lies precisely in Protestantism being what Protestantism actually is."

Whatever that happens to be.

I found the book irritating in a host of areas, most of which involve mischaracterizing Catholicism. For example, McGrath depicts the medieval Catholic Church as corrupt, declining and stagnant for pages before tossing in a paragraph that, of course, this is not an accurate description of the actual circumstances of the period, rather Luther extrapolated from his local situation and "as historians have rightly pointed out, the evidence simply does not sustain Luther's picture of the medieval church as totally doctrinally corrupt or out of touch with the New Testament - a fact that helps us make sense of the mixed response to his demands for reform." (p. 58. The backwardness of Catholicism is an annoying trope that I find in most books on the Reformation, and while McGrath is to be complimented for providing some balance, this comes only after nearly 50 pages of handing out the stock picture of the decadent Catholic Church that most people have.

McGrath also depicts Luther as being forced into schism. McGrath asserts that Pope Leo "dithered" from 1517 until 1520 when it found it politically expedient to excommunicate Luther (see p. 49.) But he follows this up on the next page in a separate chapter by explaining that in the interim there had been formal disputations between Luther and Catholic representatives.

Likewise, McGrath constantly interjects from early in his historical narrative that Protestantism was "democratic" when no such idea was in play and, in fact, Protestantism's immediate political effect was to consolidate and centralize power in the hands of undemocratic institutions. Prior to the Reformation, German princes could not dictate to their subjects what religion they would follow, but after the Reformation, those princes saw their power expand substantially as they became the controllers of the churches and could exercise the power to determine the religion of their subjects. McGrath notes the role of "nationalism" in the rise of Protestantism but gives that factor nowhere near the role in the success of Protestantism than he gives the putative decadence of Catholicism. McGrath notes in passing that Lutheranism became a territorial religion, and that Korea's movement toward Presbyterianism was strongly nationalistic, but spends pages on the Western Schism. (See pp. 18 - 20; 87; 447 - 449. Apparently, a scandal from a previous century was much more important than a movement that played right into the hands of the emergence of centralizing states.

McGrath makes two factual mistakes that caused me to grind my teeth. The first was his statement that "the Latin term missal literally means "a service." (p. 260. It doesn't; it literally means "depart" or "go" and comes from the last words of the Mass, i.e., "ite, missa est" - "Go, it is the dismissal." In fact, we can see "missa" in the word "dismissal", e.g., "dis -MISSA -l."

The second was McGrath's statement that Catholicism recognized seven sacraments including "the mass." (p. 259. The "Mass" is not a sacrament; the eucharist, the host, the blessed sacrament, the body, blood, soul and divinity of Christ, is the sacrament. The Mass is simply the public prayer that surrounds the sacrament.

These are small points, but weirdly basic for someone writing about historical Protestantism with its implicit compare and contrast to Catholicism. They also make me somewhat reluctant to quote McGrath without first independently verifying his facts.

McGrath also reaches for the moon in claiming that Protestantism was an essential precursor to the rise of natural science by its insistence on reading the Bible literally and not figuratively. Basically, McGrath argues that the habit of reading the Bible "naturally" rather than as though it were a puzzle hiding a deeper meaning was translated into the natural sciences by Protestants who looked at nature "naturally." This is an interesting argument, and one that I will check out, but I think that Etienne Gilson in From Aristotle to Darwin & Back Again: A Journey in Final Causality, Species and Evolution makes a better argument, namely that modern natural science eliminated the "Final Cause" - the "why" question - from its consideration, and that it did so in order to prevent scientists from being distracted by issues that had nothing to do with the practical issues of how things work.

After working my way through this review, I find myself realizing that I learned a lot about the subject and got more grist for the mill of contemplation. I was going to give this book three stars, but, on further reflection, I give it four stars subject to the understanding that it really isn't about "private interpretation."

Now playing on Facebook - a diatribe about what Private Interpretation is and is not.

... and put here because I don't want to have to rewrite it.

Let's talk about some basic concepts -


Authority - Scripture is authoritative. The Church is authoritative. You can disagree with the latter, but it is supported throughout the texts you accept as authoritative. See e.g., The church is the pillar and bulwark of truth. 1 Tim. 15 - 16. The Church is also visible. See John 17 and other passages.

The notes in the Ignatius study bible are not "authoritative" because they were written by Scott Hahn. Insofar as they have authority, they are authoritative because a bishop of the Church has inspected the notes and determined that they are free from doctrinal error.

That doesn't mean that Hahn's notes are scripture or that they define the only truth. What it means is that are within the range of orthodox opinion.

Private Interpretation - I suspect that Private Interpretation does not mean what you think it does - I suspect that you think that Private Interpretation means "reading the Bible, using your mind, consulting other sources, and coming up with the 'correct' interpretation."

Of course, the devil is in the idea of "correct." How do Protestants come up with the "correct" understanding. The answer is that as a practical matter, they do exactly what Catholics do - they consult tradition and delimit what is "correct" by the answers that their tradition has given in the past.

The only difference between what Protestants and Catholics do is that Catholics are honest about it.

But what "Private Interpretation" really means is that there are no "correct" interpretations. "Private Interpretation" is vaguely defined. I note that Alister McGrath doesn't offer a definition of it in his "Christianity's Dangerous Idea," but he does say that the core of Private Interpretation is that "the interpretation of Scripture is the right and responsibility of every Christian."

What this idea connotes is that everyone has the same shot at interpreting scripture correctly, because if that wasn't the case, then we couldn't say that the interpretation of scripture was the right and responsibility of everyone; rather, we would say that some people should listen to those with the more correct interpretation.

Here you can see why my idea that Augustine might be an abler interpreter of Scripture than a bunch of guys on the internet was attacked with vehemence. I was suggesting that not everyone had the same ability, that Augustine might just be a more worthy interpreter than some dude writing on Facebook in 2011.

Consider the responses that I got. I was told that everyone had the same access to the Holy Spirit - which is nonsense - and that people today had better access to information because of the internet than Augustine - which is equally nonsense, as I demonstrated.

Private interpretation is intellectual nihilism that denies that there is a correct interpretation that we can know with any certainty. If everyone has the same access to the Holy Spirit, and is sincere and diligent in their efforts to understand scripture, and if they come up with radically different understandings, then there is no basis under Private Interpretation to say that one interpretation is right and another is wrong. They are all equally right FOR THE PEOPLE DOING THE INTERPRETING!

Hey, does that sound like the history of Protestantism at all?

Do you deny that?

In fact, does that sound like modernity and relativism at all?

The contrary to Private Interpretation is to say that there is an objectively correct interpretation that can be reached through reason over time as defined by the Church. This doesn't mean that all of scripture is given a single interpretation. That would be impossible because scripture is always succeptible to different interpretations. But it does mean that the Church can define certain interpretations as wrong. For example, it is wrong to deny that the Son is consubstantial with the Father. Generally, so long as that is understood, we are free to interpret subject to that limitation.

So, non-private interpretation does not mean that there is no interpretation. It means that interpretation must be done within the broad guidelines of defined doctrines.

Epistemology - So, having framed this anaylsis, the answer should be clear. How do we know certain doctrines as being true? The exact same way that you and other Protestants know it - because the Church - our church - told us. You don't hold to the Nicene doctrine because you started with the Bible and got there yourself. You accept the Nicene Creed because of a long-series of argument that sought to make sure that the Nicene doctrines "fit" with the rest of Christianity.

We don't have to re-invent the wheel. We can rely on the church which is the pillar and bulwark of truth and which is led by the Holy Spirit into all truth.

The question is, do you trust the Church? I do. I know that my church was founded by Jesus Christ. I can follow an unbroken linkage of bishops back to the beginning. I trust the promise of Christ that the Church will prevail against the gates of Hell.

Since Protestants can't make that claim, they tend to get sucked into a circular argument where Scripture is the only authority because it is Scripture. Of course, why it's scripture or who said it is scripture is simply an issue that gets dropped into a Protestant "blind spot."

Now, I ask you, did I do "Private Interpretation" in accepting the authority of the Church? The answer is "No." I wasn't interpreting the Scripture. I was looking at history.

Once I get to the point of trusting the Church, I now reject Private Interpretation. It is not primarily my right or responsibility to interpret scripture. It is primarily the right and responsibility of the Church to interpret Scripture. My right and responsiblity is secondary to that of the Church. I am not deluded that my interpretation would be better than that of the Church or of the great thinkers of the Church.

Now, reflect back on the CAA diatribe. My point was that whether the Old Testament epiphanies where appearances by God - as everyone seemed to believe - or by Angels - as Augustine argued - was all within the limits of orthodox belief. The church has offered no definition on the subject. So, we can argue about the issue. I offered Augustine as a possible interpretation. Not a single Protestant bothered to read Augustine. Not a single Protestant said, "hey, that's interesting." Why was that?

The answer was that they didn't think they needed Augustine. I was told repeatedly that Augustine might be great theologian, and no one was saying that they were as good as Augustine, but their opinions were really as good as Augustine, ALL WITHOUT EVER READING OR ADDRESSING WHAT AUGUSTINE WROTE!

That is just disappointing from any group that claims to be intellectual. Augustine, as I said, might be right, he might be wrong, but, heck, he ought to have some persuasive authority in an area that is unclear.

Interpretation - As I said, there are places where the Bible is unclear. There are places where Augustine is clear. My questions to you were (a) do you deny that? and (b) if you admit the obvious, what does that do to your claim about needing interpreters to interpret Augustine?

Scientist Roger Penrose Criticizes Stephen Hawkings' Recent Book.

"M-Theory" isn't a theory.

Here is the site.

Here is the video.