Truth Unites - Does I Timothy 3:15 DEBUNK Protestantism?

Episode Date: August 20, 2024

In this video Gavin Ortlund explains why Paul's teaching that the church is the pillar and buttress of the truth" (I Tim. 3:15) supports a Protestant view of the church rather than ecclesial infallibility. Truth Unites exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville. SUPPORT: Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunites FOLLOW: Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlund Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/ Website: https://truthunites.org/

This video is about 1 Timothy 315 and this language where Paul says the church is the pillar and buttress of the truth. We're going to go through what does that mean, and especially with a view to these debates between Protestants and other Christians. And basically the question is ecclesial infallibility. So ecclesial having to do with the church, infallible, meaning incapable of error in certain contexts. And basically the question comes up here is, does this verse mean that the post-apistice, Church has infallibility. And I've often argued against that in favor of a Protestant view that the church is always fallible after the apostles. She must measure herself by the scripture, which is infallible. I've argued for that view from the early church history evidence in this video.

And then I've argued against the other main New Testament passage that comes up, Matthew 16, in this video. And that's where you get into the binding and loosing and the gates of hell shall not prevail and all of that. But here we're going to talk about this. verse. This other, this is the other one of Matthew 16, 1st Timothy 3. These are the two big ones from the New Testament that come up. I'll put up the whole passage. You can read through it if you want. I want to give a Protestant take on this verse and basically say this is not a good proof text for ecclesial infallibility for two reasons. I have two arguments. Number one, being a pillar and buttress of the truth is not identical to, nor does it entail infallibility. So that's the first point.

is just, we're going to get into this language, pillar and buttress of the truth, and say, that just doesn't mean infallible. Okay, so we'll take a look at this verse. I'll put up these two relevant Greek words in the emboldened font here. The Greek word Stulas means pillar or column. It's the same word used in Galatians 2.9, and the reference there to the pillars of the church. The word hedrioma is a rarer word. It means support or base or ground. It could even mean like foundation. Okay, or usually it means either a building's foundation or one of the buttresses that supports it. So basically, you can see these are architectural terms, and you can kind of get the main idea here. The main idea is support or upholding. So the idea is that the church supports the truth, like pillars support a building.

John Stott references the temple of Diana and its 100 columns supporting the building and says, just so the church holds the truth aloft so that it is seen and admired by the world. And he emphasizes kind of two implications from this imagery. First, stability and second, visibility. So pillars and buttresses make something firm, but they also hold it up high for others to see. And that's what the church does with respect to the truth. And the truth that Paul has in mind here likely is basically the truth of the gospel, the revelation of Jesus Christ that he's about to go into his.

in the immediately succeeding verse in this hymn in verse 16. So lots to go on in this passage that we could summarize, but let's make the main point here. The idea of being a pillar and buttress, the idea of upholding the truth does not logically entail infallibility. To be the pillar and buttress of the truth does not logically entail a kind of preservation from error in certain context. that just to get that goes beyond the language here.

The language is underdetermined to get that result. That's a more technical and exhaustive and specific category to get out of this more general language. Now, you know, we can make a long case for this, but I think the easiest way to try to show that is just to show how frequently this same language was used all throughout the early church for fallible entities. Francis Turriton points out a couple of examples,

and there's some other Anglican texts that go through even more. I'll put up some of these on the screen, you can get the idea here. You have Eusebius, the early church historian who references a martyr Attalus, who was a native of Purgamos, where he had always been a pillar and foundation. In his letters, Basel will refer to the defenders of orthodoxy as pillars and foundation of the truth scattered abroad. Gregory of Nazianzis refers to Athanasius as the pillar of the church. And this language doesn't entail infallibility, right? We wouldn't say that, you know, Athanasius is infallible or that Eusebius is trying to say that Atalus was infallible or that Basel's

Orthodox co-belligerents were infallible or anything like that that just wouldn't follow from the language here. Now, to clarify, we're not saying that this is incompatible with infallibility. It's not inconsistent. You could make a case for that on other grounds, just like you could argue that Athanasius was infallible from some other argument. We're just saying this language doesn't get there itself. It's not an implication of the language. And that's important to see because this verse is often touted as if it were. Another way you could see this is you can kind of give a parody argument from the Pharisees.

You could show how the Pharisees could make this exact same kind of argument. There's so many verses in the Old Testament that have similar promises about how Israel or the leaders within Israel are the guardians and upholders of the truth and the light of the world and so forth, and they could appeal to this kind of language and say, therefore, we are infallible. They could quote Malachi 2.7, for example, and say, look, the people should seek instruction from the mouth of a priest because he is the messenger of the Lord. He guards knowledge. Therefore, as the inheritors of that priestly authority, we have a kind of infallibility. We cannot err. Therefore, the traditions that we proclaim as the oral law of Moses must be obeyed by the people of God.

and as it turns out, they did say something like that, and Jesus rebuked them for that and said they are nullifying the word of God by their traditions. And the reason, if they had made that argument, is that that's just getting too much out of Malachi 27. Malachi 27 doesn't entail infallibility. In fact, if you just read Malachi 2.8, you see just how fallible the guardians of knowledge and truth in Israel were. And so I'm just trying to make, kind of help someone see how we, as Protestants are looking at 1 Timothy 3, we're saying the point is that a particular entity being a guard or upholder of the truth doesn't necessarily entail infallibility. You would need more information to get that. Well, what does it mean? What does 1 Timothy 315 mean in a Protestant view? Very simply,

that the church has been entrusted with upholding and supporting and maintaining the reveling, of God given to us in the gospel of Jesus Christ. She has this task with respect to the gospel that pillars and buttresses have with respect to a building. So Francis Turriton lists five different ways that this plays out, but they seem to basically boil down to two functions, preservation and proclamation. The church's task is to preserve from death the truth of God, given to us in Jesus Christ and his revelation, and to proclaim to the world that truth.

and that is, you know, that, that, how did we do that? So many ways, everything from manifesting the reality of the Holy Spirit through exercising spiritual gifts, protecting the scriptures during times of persecution, translating the scriptures into new languages, proclaiming the gospel in new languages, ordinary evangelism and preaching in the ongoing ministry of the church, our corporate love for one another, John 13. The whole life of the church has as its object this, to uphold the truth. of the gospel. And we are like pillars and buttresses of the truth in that sense. John Calvin and his treatment of this passage emphasizes the ministry and offices of the church, especially for its

preaching. And he gives us a parallel passage, Ephesians 4, where these various offices of the church are serving this purpose, of promoting and preserving the church, or the truth. You can read this passage if you want. So that's what it means to be a pillar and buttress. It doesn't mean infallible. That's the first argument that has to do with what the words pillar and buttress mean. The second argument has to do with what the word church means. Very simply, the word church here does not refer to any infallible entities that are claimed by contemporary churches. In 1 Timothy 315, Paul gives no indication he's talking about a particular office in the church, any particular occurrences in the church like ecumenical councils.

He's speaking about the church as such, of which the Ephesian Church, that Timothy serves as one manifestation. There's an older Anglican text surveying this passage where he goes through, you know, over a dozen or so examples of where Christians in the early church are using this language of pillar and buttress of the truth for fallible entities. And he says, they hereby plainly declared what they understood by these words of St. Paul and that they looked not upon this as a privilege peculiar to any one bishop or any one church, but common to all churches. I would go so far as to say every single faithful local church is a pillar and buttress of the church, of the truth, just as every single faithful local church is a display of the wisdom of God,

Ephesians 310, manifests the presence of Christ, Matthew 18, 19, through 20, and so forth. But if a contemporary church wants to come along and say, our particular mechanism of infallibility is what's in view here, they would need additional arguments to get there because that's not in view in 1st Timothy 3. In this chapter, you just get the two offices that Paul mentions, overseers and deacons. So in other words, you know, people are skipping over steps of inferential reasoning that would be needed to get to their particular understanding of infallibility. Take the Roman Catholic view as an example.

For the Roman Catholic position, the entity that is entrusted with interpreting the Word of God is the Magisterium of the Church. This is basically the Pope in communion with all the bishops, and that authority can then be expressed in an infallible way, in various ways through an ecumenical council, through an ex-cathedra statement from the Pope, many other ways as well. But the question then is, well, why should we think that when Paul says church in 1st Timothy 315, he's referring to that very particular mechanism, the Roman Catholic Magisterium in those capacities? Number one, that goes way beyond what the text says, and number two, in its essence. actual execution and practice, it doesn't look like it is upholding the truth of the gospel.

It looks like it's adding on. You know, what is yielded by that particular mechanism of infallibility is stuff like the bodily assumption of Mary and papal infallibility and the immaculate, immaculate conception of Mary and so forth. And these beliefs give every impression of being unknown to Paul, unknown to Timothy, unknown to the Ephesian church that Timothy served, just completely, kind of obviously way later than that. So, the notion of upholding or supporting the truth implies that there's something already there to be supported. But what it looks like is happening through the Roman Catholic Magisterium is not the upholding of the truth that's been entrusted to the church, but adding on new layers. In other words,

this doesn't look like a buttress or a pillar for the truth of the gospel. It looks like, you know, at the bottom of the building or the foundation, it looks like another floor on the top of the building, adding, making it more heavy, and so forth. So that's, hopefully that metaphor makes sense what I'm trying to say there. So, you know, I would conclude by saying, I think it's telling that these are the best verses you can get to try to prove ecclesial infallibility from the New Testament. It's very weak and inferential. You know, the words pillar and buttress don't mean infallibility, and the word church here doesn't correspond to what is claimed to be infallible by the contemporary options on the table. And this is really surprising, because if the church could be

infallible, this would be the single most important thing for the New Testament to tell us. We've got a lot of passages in the New Testament, like in 1st Corinthians 1228 and following, in Ephesians 4 that are telling us about the offices of the church and how they serve the unity of the church. It would be very surprising if we had some sort of office or mechanism that could actually speak infallibly to guarantee the unity of the church, and it just never came up in the founding of our religion. What do you think? Let me know what you think in the comments. Short video, hopefully it helps address this passage. Thanks for watching everybody.