This section of the linked essay above I found useful in regards the distinction between solo and sola scriptura.
Keith Mathison is responding to a critique of his book by two Roman Catholics respondence Cross and Judisch who come from a Reformed background and are relatively recent converts to Roman Catholicism.
The Alleged Contradiction Internal to the Sola Scriptura Position
The second subsection of section four is titled “The Contradiction Internal to the Sola Scriptura Position.”
In this subsection Cross and Judisch note first that I say all appeals to Scripture are appeals to interpretations of Scripture. They then note that I say Scripture is the final authority. They then explain how these two ideas are supposedly contradictory:
But, if all appeals to Scripture are appeals to interpretations of Scripture, then it follows necessarily that either someone’s interpretation of Scripture is the final and authoritative norm of doctrine and practice, or Scripture itself cannot be the final and authoritative norm of doctrine and practice.
The conclusion does not follow. Interpretation is inherent in all communication and occurs whether we are consciously aware of it or not. Yet interpretation does not eliminate authority. If Jesus is standing before you and tells you something, the fact that you must interpret what He says in order to understand it does not mean that you have more authority than Jesus. But here is where the church comes into play and where one difference between sola scriptura and solo scriptura can be seen. Imagine Jesus is standing before you and thousands of other believers, and imagine that he commands all of you to turn a certain direction and march to a certain city. Now imagine you turn right and start walking only to notice that everybody else turned left and started walking. If you are an adherent of solo scriptura, you aren’t going to pay any attention to what anybody else did. You heard what Jesus said. There’s no interpretation involved. If you are an adherent of sola scriptura, you are going to notice that everybody else started marching in a different direction and you are going to stop and ask whether you misinterpreted what Jesus said because you realize that interpretation is involved in all communication and that as a sinner, you might have misinterpreted what He said. In any case, the fact that interpretation of Jesus’ words is necessary does not mean that those hearing and interpreting His words have more authority than Him.
According to Cross and Judisch: “Mathison’s position thus creates a dilemma for himself that cannot be resolved without ceasing to be Protestant.” As explained above, the dilemma they create is a false dilemma. Cross and Judisch continue:
There is no middle position between the Church having final interpretive authority and the individual having final interpretive authority. Mathison recognizes that all appeals to Scripture are appeals to interpretations of Scripture, and denies that the individual has final interpretive authority. But at the same time, as a Protestant, Mathison maintains that the individual can appeal to his or her own interpretation of Scripture to hold the Church accountable to Scripture, even to walk away from the Church (and thus treat himself as the continuation of the Church), otherwise Mathison would undermine the very basis for Protestants separating from the Catholic Church in the sixteenth century.
These sentences are based on Cross and Judisch’s already mentioned false assumption that the interpretation of an authoritative speaker somehow transfers that speaker’s authority to the hearer. One also sees in these sentences the assumption of Rome’s claim to be equivalent to the Catholic Church, when in fact, the church of Rome was one local church among many. Finally, Protestants did not separate from the Catholic Church. The papacy did that. The bishops deserted the flock. If the action of the Protestants is separation, it is separation from the local church of Rome, a branch that had become diseased to the point of death.
Is the Idea of Derivative Authority a Delusion?
Cross and Judisch state their objective for the next section of their paper in the following words:
We showed above how Mathison argued that the proponents of solo scriptura do not recognize the secondary (or derived) authority of the Church and of the creeds. But here we want to show that Mathison’s own position is essentially equivalent to the denial of secondary authority.
They explain:
Mathison claims here that the authority of the creeds and other judgments of the Church “derives from and depends upon their conformity with the inherently authoritative Word of God.” But recall that according to Mathison, all appeals to Scripture are appeals to interpretations of Scripture. Therefore, the notion that the authority of the creeds and other judgments of the Church “derives from and depends upon their conformity with the inherently authoritative Word of God” entails that the authority of creeds and other judgments of the Church depends upon their sufficient conformity to the individual’s interpretation of Scripture. In other words, Mathison’s position entails that the creeds and other judgments of the Church are ‘authoritative’ only insofar as they agree with the individual’s interpretation of Scripture.
No, as we observed above, the fact that all communication involves interpretation does not automatically change the locus of authority. To repeat, if Jesus is speaking to you, the fact that you have to interpret his words, does not mean that you are a higher authority than Jesus. If you are a soldier in the army listening to orders from your commanding officer, the fact that you have to interpret his words does not mean you are a higher authority than your commander. Furthermore, if you reject your commanding officer’s words, that does not mean that his authority is not real.
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