Lane Keister over at Green Baggins has posted a very good argument by Owen defending the Protestant belief (against RC) about the way in which the canon is discerned. Naturally, we could extend this a fortiori defense to encompass the perspicuity of Scripture and other doctrines relates to sola scriptura. I think, however, one can push the natural/supernatural analogy further and use it to internally critique what generally passes for RC epistemology. Matthew Schultz at BeggarsAll touches on this point in final paragraph of his most recent post on Whitaker's "Dispuations."
RCs predicate the justification of the canon on an allegedly infallible church. Allowing this, by what means do RCs justify their knowledge of an infallible church? If the Magisterium requires no external justification, then we can, like Matthew, ask what distinguishes Scripture from the Magisterium such that the former cannot be afforded the same presuppositional privilege as the latter. [We might also ask what differentiates Scripture from, say, God's command to Abraham to sacrifice his son of promise; Abraham did not need to think about whether or not some omnipotent demon was attempting to trick him. Why? Because God's word is self-authenticating, self-verifying.]
However, I can't recall the last time I asked a RC by what means they claim to know the Magisterium is infallible and received a response which didn't in some way appeal to history. Disregarding the fact many of these responses commit the appeal to antiquity fallacy (not to mention that they are only probabilistic arguments), these are, at the very least, responses which implicitly appeal to natural revelation to justify a belief in an infallible authority. We could modify Owen's argument, then, to read: "if Protestant presuppositional epistemology, grounded on supernatural revelation, is unsound, how much more so is RC epistemology, grounded on natural revelation."
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7 comments:
http://reformedapologist.blogspot.com/2010/11/infallability-canon.html
An interesting post. Then there are passages like Romans 3:2 (OT canon) and John 14:26 (implicit denial of the reliability of oral tradition). I largely agree with him, though I don't understand how he can believe in alternate possible worlds and reject knowledge of counter-factuals... but that is a different topic :)
Speaking of which, I've been meaning to ask if you've given any more thought to the issue of hermeneutics?
Well, you already know that my mind hasn't yet fathomed possible worlds theory, so you'd have to ask Ron about how he squares it with counter-factuals.
I'm working my way slowly through Fairbairn's book, but to be honest, it is going to be awhile before I can devote a lot of thought to the question of hermeneutics, due to work piling up. I would be interested in reading through Fairbairn with you, if you are interested.
The Emory library doesn't have one available and I just blew $90 on Muller's Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics. Maybe I can get a copy in March (I assume you're talking about his book on hermeneutics) for my birthday.
It is online: http://www.archive.org/details/thetypologyofscr01fairuoft
I'm jealous, by the way, of your Muller purchase.
Cool, thanks. I'll take a look, although I have so much stuff I'm reading now I don't know when I'll feel inclined to. I got a Reformation Heritage magazine in the mail the other day and spent 2 hours downloading 20+ free "googlebooks" from it. That was my own, personal cyber Monday.
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