Truth Unites - Sola Scriptura is Totally Medieval, This Will Blow Your Mind

Episode Date: March 13, 2024

In this video Gavin Ortlund discusses views on the authority of the church and Scripture among Wessel Gansfort and other medieval theologians, suggesting there is medieval precedent for the Protestant view of sola Scriptura. See J.I. Packer's Proclaiming Christ in a Pluralistic Age: https://www.crossway.org/books/proclaiming-christ-in-a-pluralistic-age-hcj/ 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/

Okay, here's a quiz to start the video. Do you know who said this? The Holy Spirit has kept for himself the task of encouraging, quickening, preserving, and increasing the unity of the church. He has not left it to a Roman pontiff, who often pays no attention to it. We ought to acknowledge one Catholic church, yet to acknowledge its unity as the unity of the faith and of the head, the unity of the cornerstone, not the unity of its director, Peter, or his successor. Was that, do you know, have you heard this quote? Was it a Catholic or a Protestant who said this. It was the same person who said this. The unity of the church under one Pope is merely accidental, though it may contribute much to the communion of the saints, it is not essential to it. Here's another hint. It comes in a book, chapter one of which had the following title. So first chapter of the book, the title of the chapter is that the subjects of the Pope are not bound to believe him unless he is right in his belief. Was it a Catholic or Protestant? the answer is it was a medieval Roman Catholic of great stature. I'm going to talk about Sola Scriptura as a medieval doctrine.

A couple years ago, I started a YouTube channel. Never thought I'd get into Protestant apologetics, but that's why I found myself doing a fair amount at the time, and I enjoy it. It's fun. And I hope it helps people hear that side more and the arguments on it. One of the things that we often hear, and I honestly didn't really hear this most. Most of my life, I could assume Protestantism. I'm around a lot of Protestants. But now I'm starting

to understand better how we're viewed by others. And there's these caricatures in multiple directions, just as I've had caricatures of others. A lot of people don't understand Protestantism. They don't really see it in its best light. They just have a caricature. One of the caricatures is Soliscriptura and other Protestant doctrines are novel to the 16th century. They just came out of nowhere or if they had any precedent, it was extremely scattered and rare. This, you know, and so Soliscriptura, by the way, is the idea that basically the scripture's at the top. Scriptures at the top of the pyramid. It alone is, more specifically, it alone is infallible with respect to the rule of the church.

All other rules are fallible. The church is therefore subordinate under scripture. That basic idea, although not the term Soliscriptura, that basic idea, is all throughout church. history, and it's not novel, and that's one of the things I try to help people understand. Church history is actually a lot messier than polemics often allows. So during the early and medieval church, there's actually multiple developing views about the relationship between scripture and the church and the role of tradition and these kinds of questions.

The Protestant position is an organic outgrowth and continuation of one of the views that is alive and well and widely attested throughout the medieval era, with roots back into the patristic era. The Roman Catholic view, same thing. It's an outgrowth and development of one view. What is decided upon at Trent is a tradition of thought that goes back, and then there's other views besides those two. Now, in previous videos, I've talked about the early church, for example, St. Augustine, you know, he's such a pillar on this question. He wrote more about the nature of the church, the question of authority, then all the other church fathers combined, depending on how you reckon that.

That's a defensible statement. So he's significant, and I've talked about, he's just so explicit and emphatic. The scripture is unique. It's above even the ecumenical councils. I'll give an example of that later. But what I want to do in this video is talk about later in church history. Does that idea that the scripture is unrivaled and unique in authority above the church, It's infallible, but the post-apistolic organs of the church are fallible.

It cannot err. These can err. Is this idea? Does it continue? And I want to go all the way up to the dawn of the Reformation to a guy who died when Martin Luther was five named Wessel Gansford. Okay, he's the guy in the thumbnail. I love the thumbnail.

My friend Klaus sent me. Oh, it's so good. 15th century Dutch theologian. you've heard three of his quotes now. By the end of this video, you'll know more about him. A theologian of great distinction, widely respected, lots of communication with Pope Sixtus the Fourth known to other various high-ranking officials

within the Roman Catholic hierarchy in his day. And you're going to be pretty shocked by how Protestant he sounds. We use the word proto-Protestant sometimes. For people who are like forerunners of the Reformation, that's a pretty broad term. Usually it means people who are officially separated from and often persecuted by the Roman Catholic hierarchy, like the Hussites, the Waldensians, so many others. Look up the Wikipedia page on the proto-Protestants.

You'll find a lot, just how many there are. But you can find the term used for people who live and die in full fellowship with the Roman Catholic Church, like Wessel Gansford did. His writings were only condemned several decades after he died in 1529, and then that was reaffirmed at the Council of Trent, and one of the reasons he's not better. known. A lot of times people say, you know, they're not aware of these people and say, how are they not better known? Well, a lot of times their writings were burned. And that happened with Gansford. And he anticipated a lot of the Protestant concerns. He denied purgatory. He denied transubstantiation. He denied indulgences and the role of penance in the church. He affirmed basically in some a Protestant

view of justification. He criticized all the legalism that was going on in medieval spirituality. Not all the good things, too, but there was a lot of legalism, how pilgrimage are being wielded, the emphasis upon virginity, various observations and fasts and requirements that have accrued. We always use the word accretions, this idea. But here I just want to focus on one aspect of Wessel Gansford's thought, and that's the question of how authority works in the church, particularly with a view to the papacy, but also just in general, the authority of the entire church and how it stands in relation

to Scripture. I'm going to read you a number of passages, and the idea here is basically to show the concept of Sola Scriptura is not a novel thing in the 16th century. You can disagree with Wessel Gansford, but you can't say he didn't exist. You know, this idea is out there, okay? There's lots of people thinking like this. In fact, at the end of the video, I'm going to show it's not just Wessel Gansford. He represents a whole tradition of thought that prioritizes scripture over the church precisely on the grounds of its unconstitutional. infallibility. Now, I'm going to go through a bunch of quotes whenever I go through quotes,

especially quotes that puncture what is often present as a kind of naive assumption of continuity in the ecclesialist traditions, where people just have an assumption that the continuity from their church back through history is more clear, and then you point out that it's not, and it's messier. People love to say, I'm quote mining and taking things out of context. those, by the way, those concerns never arise in my academic work that goes through blind peer review process in good journals and good presses. But people on the internet say this to try to discredit me. And I, all I will say about that, I used to kind of get annoyed by this and feel like I want to defend myself. And then you realize people do this.

Then you have to wear it as a badge of honor, basically. because if it's truly an unfair criticism, at times it even goes into the Matthew 5 category where you say rejoice and be glad, you know. But for other people watching on, you just need to know, be discerning when you hear that. The truth is, I don't take things out of context. And if you want to read Wessel Gansford for yourself, read, it's just so amazing the books we have access to the scholarship. read through it. Reading him in context will enhance the concerns that I'm going to put out in this video not to attract from them. Honestly, the biggest struggle in scripting this video, and I'm going to go through it in just a second,

is just choosing which quotes because there's so many to choose from, and his position is very forcefully advocated. So if you watch this video to the end, what you'll get is basically, and then, so at the end of the video, I'm going to go through Gansford, then I'm going to go and I'm going to show he's not alone. I'm going to show how many others are drawing from Augustine and thinking in the same category. Scripture is infallible. Church is fallible. Therefore, scripture is above the church.

That's simple. Really simple and modest idea, actually. Solo scriptura makes us so much sense. Solo scriptura is how many religions work. The founding texts are paramount and unrivaled. The ongoing bodies of authority are subservient under them. A lot of people thought, I'm going to show you, it's not just Wessel Gansford. So by the end of this video, what I will try to show you, even though there, again, I couldn't be exhaustive.

But I will try to show you, Soliscriptura is totally a medieval doctrine. And one other book I want to mention before I dive right in, J.I. Packer did these lectures in 1978. They've never been published. Crossway just came out with them. They're so good. It's published with the title, Proclaiming Christ in a Pluralist Age. It's so good. I was just reading through you as a section on universalism.

If you want a good, did I say it right, in a pluralistic age? I don't know if I said the title right there. I'll put a link in the video description. I'm always trying to commend good resources. And I love Jab Packer. You know, one of the problems in the world right now is in the midst of all the chaos, there's an increase in extremes. So you get a lot of people becoming more fundamentalist.

And then you get a lot of people deconstructing altogether or going way liberal. And like healthy centrist evangelical voices like power. who rock solid on scripture, but also a little more ecumenical, just a good theologian, you know, are less known. This, it's got really helpful stuff on that universalism, pluralism. He talks about the idea of anonymous Christians, that kind of stuff. If you're interested in some of those questions, really great resource. So check it out.

All right, diving in. I want to start with the quote that is the one I started this video with. This is Gansford's practical argument against the papacy as an essential institution. This is really interesting because we often hear a practical argument in favor of the papacy. So, you know, there's the biblical data, there's the historical data, but then there are these kind of philosophical and or pragmatic arguments that people can make in either direction. People often make a pragmatic argument for the papacy and say basically, look, how can you have unity without somebody on the top?

And what Gansford is saying, and it actually makes sense when you think about it in an age prior to modern technology, modern global communication and so forth, is how, how we're going to, could you have unity with one guy on the top? How can he oversee such a church? Here's how he puts it. The common belief in the absolute rule of the Roman pontiff is untenable in view of the fact that it is impossible for one man to know the territory of the whole earth, which has never been included in the works of any cosmographer. For how shall he judge those whom he cannot know? For how shall he judge the faith of a man whose language he is not acquainted with? Hence we reach the conclusion that the Holy Spirit has kept for himself the task of encouraging quickening, preserving.

and increasing the unity of the church. This is the quote that I read a moment ago. He has not left it to a Roman pontiff who often pays no attention to it. We ought to acknowledge one Catholic Church, yet to acknowledge its unity as the unity of the faith and of the head, the unity of the cornerstone, not the unity of its director Peter or his successor. For what can Peter in Italy do for those in India, endangered by temptation or persecution except pray for them, even though he had greater power than his successors? Or what can be done during the fiercest persecution against the teachers of error in different parts of the world? What decrees of general councils were able to hold the church together even in external unity? Hence it is only the internal unity

of its one essential head that is implied in the words of the Apostles' Creed. For today, in accordance with the very word of the Lord, the testimony of the gospel has been received even at the ends of the earth, and Christians are actually to be found beyond the Hyperboreans, beyond the Indians and the Scythians, beyond the Ethiopians, beyond the Tropic of Capricorn. Now I'm going to pause and pick up reading exactly where I left off in a second. Let me explain these regions. In Greek mythology, the Hyperboreans were a mythical people who lived in the far northern regions of the known world.

And that term came to be used more generally and for real people or for remote places. So think of like northern Russia, northern Europe, places like that, the Hyperboreans that up there. The Tropic of Capricorn will put on a map. It's basically one of the lines of latitude that goes through the southern part of Africa and other areas like that. You can see where that is. So we're talking about very far to the south. And then the Ethiopians, Indians, and Scythians would be pushing west into Africa and Asia. By the way, I did my whole local flood video and that stuff is still rumbling on. This is yet another example of the just scores of examples of how you can find

in the ancient world and leading up even prior right prior to Christopher Columbus and all that. discovery of the new world. This is how people talked. The ends of the earth doesn't refer to places like Australia and North America because they don't know about them, but that's another issue. What he's saying here is there's Christians in all these places. And then he says, to these Christians widely separated in land and tongue, no decrees of a Roman pontiff or of our general counsels of Constance or Basel can be known by any human means. And nevertheless, they together with us constitute one Catholic and apostolic church in the oneness of faith, piety, and true love, even if they do not know that there is a Rome or a Roman pontiff. Now, you might say, I don't

agree with that practical argument. Fine. I'm not here to assess the argument. I just want to point to it and show how he's thinking. And it's significant because not just he's saying the papacy is not essential. He's saying there's only one essential head of the church, and that's Jesus, but because of the alternative construal of the unity of the church referred to in the Apostles' Creed. The true church is founded upon the faith and upon the cornerstone. That's Jesus. Okay? It's not, you can have unity with that church even if you've never heard of Rome or the Roman pontiff.

This is a point I often make when Muslim communities have dreams and they come to Christ, okay? And they're baptized and so forth. and now there's a church there, or when people in a remote village in the jungle get the internet and they come to Christ and a church is formed and they're baptized and they're partying, they have valid sacraments, they're a part of the one holy Catholic and apostolic church. And that's what Gansford is saying. I've given my reasons for that elsewhere from Mark 9, all the other passages that I go through there. So what is clear in Gansford's vision of Christian unity is that it's not necessary. So he has this more like pragmatic,

view of the papacy, like it can help unity, but it's not necessary for it. And he talks about this with respect to the doctrine of the communion of saints. He says, the communion of saints is not dependent upon any sort of institutional parameters. Quote, all the saints share in a true and essential unity, even as many as united they hold fast to Christ in one faith and hope and love. It matters not what the prelates they may live or how ambitiously these prelates may dispute or disagree or wander from the truth or even become heretical. It matters not what distances in space or intervals or years may separate them. It is of this fellowship that we say in the creed, I believe in the communion of saints. Hence all our forefathers have shared in it with us, being

baptized with the same baptism, refreshed with the same spiritual food, and revived by the same spiritual rock as ourselves. This unity and fellowship of the saints is in no wise destroyed by differences or advanced by agreements among those who rule them, for neither the impiety or even heresy of their rulers can injure godly men. On the other hand, it is acknowledged that a truly pious Greek at Constantinople. Okay, pause the video. I'll try to remember to stop the slide and so you can see me again. This is exactly what Luther and Calvin said later that I've drawn attention to in like my five-minute case for Protestantism, videos, things like that. It was the Protestants who were saying the Eastern Orthodox can be saved.

Okay, the schismatics over in Constantinople, that's the Eastern Orthodox. In Gansford's time, the prevailing wind of opinion based upon things like the Unum sanctum, other magistrate teaching is they're damned. You have to be in submission to the Pope to be saved. People, okay, boy, lots of nuances we could get into there, but that's the basic way of thinking. And it was the Protestants or proto-Protestants like Gansford who were saying, no, listen to what he says. A truly pious Greek at Constantinople, subject to his schismatic patriarch, may possibly believe everything that a Latin at Rome believes. How then does the heretical perversion of his rulers harm him?

The unity of the church under one pope is therefore merely accidental, though it may contribute much to the communion of the saints. It is not essential to it. So he's not saying the Eastern Orthodox aren't in schism. he's a Catholic. But at that time, this was his position that, oh, yeah, absolutely they can be saved. And the grounds for that is that the papacy as an institution is not essential to the doctrine of the communion of saints. People are, I know people are shocked by this because, again, they bought into the naive assumption of continuity. I'm going to call it.

And it's like, they're like, what? People in the 1400s are talking about the papacy as an accreted human institution that's, that's, that's, that's, that came to be, but need not be? And the answer is, yes, not just Gansford, lots of others, as I will show. Not everyone goes as far as Gansford, then I'm going to quote, but the essential idea of Solo Scriptura, scripture on top, church underneath, scripture's infallible, church, post-apistolic organs in the church fallible, that's really strong. It's wide. I'll show that. So then you say, well, what's the papacy doing there then? And his answer is, it's entirely pastoral and not at all judicial. It's just there to help, but it is not necessary.

Quote, the canons and statutes of prelates have no more, by the way, prelates, just high-ranking officials, high-ranking clergy, have no more authority than they contain wisdom. Again, I just, you know, I could give you stronger quotes than that. He's saying this, these are like, a lot of these kinds of statements are like the titles to chapters. To show that it's not just me who takes him this way, here's one study on his view of church authority, summarizing his thought, the unity of the church under the Pope is accidental and by no means necessary. The church spread throughout the world into a worldwide unity of faith, piety, and love before Rome, or the Roman pontiff was known. With such presuppositions, Gansford reduces the significance of the pontiffs to

little more than practical administrators of the church. He will often cash out this conception of the relationship between the hierarchy of the church and the laity of the church in terms of a compact or an agreement between a doctor and a patient. So in his treatise on ecclesiastical dignity and power, the first section, the title of chapter one is, this is the third quote I read at the beginning of this video, that the subjects of the Pope are not bound to believe him unless he is right in his belief. He's going on and on. He's just railing away at this. And his whole paradigmatic biblical passage for this, though he appeals to many is Galatians 2. He says, look, Paul had to resist Peter in order to be faithful to the gospel.

To be faithful to the gospel of Jesus Christ, he had to resist Peter. And he says, that's a paradigm for the church. Whenever that can happen, sometimes to be faithful to God, you have to resist the doctor, if the doctor is just making you more sick. He says with respect to Galatians 2, it was done not merely on Peter's account, but by the grace of God plenarily for the comfort of the entire church in every age. From Peter, the wise all learned, what should be done? with the salt of the earth if it should happen to lose its savor. Then here's his theory.

All ecclesiastical authority is as a compact between the physician and patient. That is, it depends upon an agreement between both. And then he's basically saying over and over, hopefully this gives you a flavor of his thinking. He's saying, when the doctor isn't healing you, but is actually making you more sick, you don't have to keep treating him as the doctor. And this is what was happening in 15th century, of course, as I've talked about a lot in this video, the prelates were abusing and ravaging the people. The bishops and other church leaders were more often than not eating the sheep, abusing them financially and physically. That was happening. And when that's happening, you know, he's saying basically it's kind of like when you have a justified divorce because let's say the

husband is beating and cheating on his wife. It's utter cruelty to send the wife back and say, no, you still have to live under that tyranny and abuse. Gansford is saying the same for the church. You don't keep on living under the abuse. Quote, when prelates teach or command in accordance with Christ, they must be heeded as though wisdom herself were speaking. Otherwise, they are not to be heated, just as Paul did not heed Peter when he became a stumbling block. Now, you might say, what about the keys of the church? Didn't Christ promise that that would never happen? Didn't Christ promise the Holy Spirit would guide the hierarchy of the church. They have the keys. They're never going to fall off the rails,

all this kind of thing. Gansford says, the Holy Spirit's work in the church, the guidance of the church by the Holy Spirit, is conditional upon her faithfulness and her piety. You don't just get to assume that no matter what that's going to happen. No, there's no guarantee of that. And he even applies this to the keys of Matthew 16, Matthew 18, and elsewhere. Quote, the Lord Jesus delivered the keys of the kingdom of heaven to Peter and the apostles, but there is a wide difference between them and our prelates. However much they might strive for the key of authority, and for this they rightly strive, since indeed it is a key, there is the greater and truer key of piety, without which the key of authority is of no avail, and wherever it is, it always finds

the key of authority joined with it. That's an interesting final sentence there. So this is what's going on in the 15th century, and that's why he's comparing the priests, and bishops of his day to the Pharisees. At one point, this is a common comparison too. He's saying it's just like today what it was in the first century with the Jewish people. He says those who sit in Moses's seat are to be honored and obeyed only insofar as their teachings accord with those of Moses. So you see the idea here.

Now, final quote from him to really speak to someone's heart out there. I get emails constantly with the almost exact same scenario. Someone is deep in ecclesial anxiety. They're kind of like halfway. They're kind of leaning away from remaining in one of the non-Protestant traditions, especially Catholicism, Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy. And they are genuinely worried that they will be damned if they leave. Because this is one of the cruel teachings that is put upon people.

And those of us who are Protestants can have love and respect and appreciation for many fine Christians in these traditions while still having this deep concern that this way of teaching is a way. it's like the Pharisees yoking people. Like, you know, and people are deep in anxiety and they're wondering what to do. And I just want to say, let this Wessel Gansford quote, the final one I'm going to read to you right now, give you hope and give you a perspective. Because I really think the answer is in some ways this simple. I'll say the answer first is I would, here's how I would pastor someone. Follow the truth with all your heart.

Seek Christ with every fiber of your being. repent of your sins, surrender your whole life to him in this very process of ecclesial angst, let that be an occasion for which you to surrender more deeply to Christ in every way that you can. Join the church that you truly believe is where God wants you. And then trust that Jesus will not damn you for that. Trust Jesus. And he won't. You know, Jesus is never going to say yes to you and then some ecclesiastical power,

whatever it be, is going to be able to say no. He is the one you put your trust in. He is the one. In fact, you might say, but that feels a little risky. No, no, no, no. That's the only safe way to place your eternal fate. Everything else but that is risky. I'm not saying that our role in the church has no importance,

but I'm saying the ultimate place of our trust must be in Christ himself personally. And not only will you be saved, but in this life, the Holy Spirit will breathe peace and certainty and sweetness into your very heart. Here's a final quote from Gansford to this effect. The communion of saints is an article of faith from which the Pope can exclude no one against his will, nor should he do so. Each man in the degree of his own love and calling in God and the Lord Jesus has his measure of communion or exclusion, and it is through no decision or decree of the Pope,

that he has more or less communion with the saints or excluded from it. All right. Now look, a lot of people can respond. That's a brief survey. There's so much more we could say. I mean, this is just a drive-by. I just want to introduce Wessel Gansford to people in this video. And the point is, look, you can say Gansford is wrong.

You can say he's a heretic. You can say whatever. But you can't say that Sola Scriptura was invented by the Protestant reformers. Okay? because while Martin Luther is two years old and three years old, this is a view being propounded in the church. What's amazing is how similar Gansford is to Protestant convictions not only on questions of church authority, but across the board, almost without exception.

This is all the more remarkable in light of the fact that Gansford is in the low-lying countries. his writings were often burned, so Luther did not know about him until around 1520 or maybe a little after that, well after his reform initiatives are underway. Yet so great is the harmony between Gansford and later Protestant theology that Luther, who is no soft ecumenist, as we all know, when he discovered his writings, could say this, if I had read his works earlier, my enemies might think that Luther, that's himself, had absorbed everything from the vessel, so his spirit is so in accord with mine. Sometimes people call him by different names, by the way, John Vessel or Johann Vessel, people call him that too. So that's actually really

important to know if you're wanting to read more about him. So another, and then Luther took, I'll put up this, what he says, Luther took great comfort in the fact that this other person, and many others actually, as I'll show in a moment, despite living in a completely different context, had basically the same theology even at points down to the very wording. Other reformers also drew greatly from Gansford and appreciated him and noticed the similarity. The reformed theologian Martin Bucer, another early reformer, actually preferred Wessel Gansford to Luther. And he followed Gansford very closely, virtually repeating a lot of the same arguments. He gave the same prudential argument for decentralization of pastoral care.

he says basically if the shepherd, shepherd stops feeding the sheep, he forfeits his right to function as a shepherd. If the bishops of Rome want to be seen as the successors to the Apostle Peter, they must demonstrate this and prove this by grazing Christ's sheep. Don't starve them of the word of God. Don't inflict pain and damage on them at every level of their being, which was happening. So in his study on Gansford's influence on Busser, because it was huge, Marin de Kroon, who wrote this fascinating book that I'm going to draw a lot from throughout the latter portions of this video, he's a Dutch scholar, he notes that Bucer didn't even go as far as Gansford. Quote, Wessel is even more radical than Bucer in the demands he makes on the function of ecclesiastical office as he views all power in the church in terms of reciprocal relationship.

Then he quotes Wessel Gansford, and then he says, this idea is absent in Bucer's thinking. So here you have a situation where Protestant reformer is clearly, explicitly following in the tracks, set for him by this 15th century Roman Catholic theologian, but he's dialing it back a notch. Now, okay, fine. Someone might say, okay, big deal. We got this weird, weird theologian in the 1400s, who sounds kind of Protestant, big deal. We're still, that's just one tiny little thing. You know, we have this huge castle.

You have this tiny little shack. This is how it often comes against us as Protestants. So now what I want to show to finish the video is that Wessel Gansford was not novel and Wessel Gansford was not alone. In fact, here's the truth. This is going to, church history is fascinating. It is absolutely fascinating how much you can find out there. It's like a whole new world. When my book Theological Retrieval for Evangelicals, I posed this scenario.

Imagine if the Lost Island of Atlantis was actually discovered. imagine how the flood of excitement historians would feel to discover it. It's kind of like church history. It's like that. There's so much to be discovered. There's a whole world to explore in church history. That's why when people make comprehensive claims about church history, it's often very unwise and often goes way too far because it's so much more multifaceted and counterintuitive than you often expect. Here's the reality. Okay, are you ready for this? Wessel Gansford represents a tradition of thought that is alive and well throughout the medieval era and ultimately has roots in the church fathers, especially Augustine. To prove this, let me interact a little bit with Augustine.

Now, usually, and draw from Augustine, and what I want to do now is show how other medieval theologians interpreted Augustine. Now, I often cite from this passage on baptism against the Donatist because it's just so clear in Augustine where he's saying the scripture is unique. It's confined to its own limits. The nature of its uniqueness is infallibility. We know for sure that it's true. And therefore, it is superior to the church. It is in contrast to this increasing chain of authorities in the church, even the plenary councils formed for the whole Christian world, which are corrected by subsequent councils. So elsewhere, Augustine just says, there is a distinct boundary line separating all productions subsequent to apostolic times from the authoritative canonical books of the Old and New Testaments. No, I'm not taking it out of context. The only, the way people say about these quotes that you're taking them out of context is if they assume the context is a Roman Catholic paradigm. But in his own context, there's nothing there that militates against the point I'm making from Augustine, namely that he places the scripture above any post-apostolic organs in the church. The scripture is

infallible, everything subsequent to the apostles is fallible. It can err. Okay, so it's underneath the scripture. Okay, so I've talked about that a lot with Augustine. I've been done a whole videos on that. Now what I want to show is how Augustine was interpreted in the medieval era. And to do that, I want to show how the most problematic passage from Augustine, for my view, was interpreted by them. This is where Augustine says, basically, he wouldn't believe in the gospel apart from the authority of the Catholic Church. Now, I was asked about this. This was the first question that came up in the audience Q&A time in my debate in Steubenville, hosted by Pines with Aquinas with Trent Horn on Solo Scriptura. Here's what I said then. This question is for Gavin. So you said that St. Augustine would be on the side of your position. today I read a quote from him which says something to the effect of

I only believe Holy Scripture is infallible and inspired because the Catholic Church has said so have you heard of this quote do you know of it and like what would you say to that thank you for the great question since we have so many in line I'll try to be as succinct as possible I do have a video on this where I address that exact question it's the first of two response videos on the Augustine's solo scripture videos so the brief answer is I actually want to clarify. I don't think I said, and I wouldn't say Augustine is just generally on the Protestant side of scripture in every way. Obviously not. Look at his view of the canon. But on the specific question of Soliscriptura, where do you locate

infallibility with respect to the rule for the church? I think he's explicit and clear. It's only in the scripture. It's not even in the ecumenical councils. For that passage, that's in his reply to Faustus. That is affirming something we can and do agree with as Protestants, the necessity of church. In that video, I go through a number of the 17th century Dutch reformed theologians who basically expounded a number of different ways that the scripture, excuse me, that the church is necessary for the scripture. We wouldn't have the scripture without the church, protecting it during terms of persecution, discerning the canon, preaching and proclaiming it. So we would agree with Augustine, but that isn't the precise question of Soliscriptura, it seems to me.

The precise question of Soliscriptura is, where do you look? locate infallibility with respect to the church's rule. The video unpacks it all more. Hope that helps. So a comparison that Protestants often make is with John the Baptist as a witness unto Christ. He is subordinate to Christ, even though he is a necessary witness. To make this point as conceptually simple as possible, I try to boil it down really simple to explain how this passage in Augustine does not contradict saying the scripture is above, the church is to say necessity is not the same as equality. A being necessary for B does not logically entail that A is equal to B. And you can think of lots of metaphors. I forgot to think of a metaphor. I was going to think of a

metaphor. You can probably think of one. It's pretty clear, actually. So that's what I think about this passage in Augustine. But now what I want to show is that's what a lot of medieval theologians thought, too. I'll start with Gansford, then we'll go to others. The statement in Augustine, which you quote, he's writing this in a letter. Concerning the gospel in the church does not prove more than it contains. It is a statement with regard to the beginning of faith which does not imply any comparison. I would not believe the gospel if I had not believed the church, just as each one of the first multitude of believers might well have said, I would not believe the gospel if I had not

believed Peter. So in my case today, if I had not first as a little boy believed the members of my household and afterwards my teachers in school, and finally the clergy, I would not believe the gospel today. In his statement, therefore, Augustine does not compare the authority of the church with the worth of the gospel. Aglavi, the scholar I mentioned earlier, summarized this by saying there's a practical priority, but not a metaphysical priority for the church. The church is simply the repository for the gospel. It's where people hear the gospel. So you can summarize this by saying this is a kind of instrumental or testimonial view of the necessity of the church. It does not mean

that the church is equal to the scripture with respect to infallibility. So the church is necessary, but subordinate under scripture. Let me document how common that is in the medieval era. I'll just give four or five examples. Thomas Nutter, an important 14th and 15th century scholastic theologian said, the authority of the universal church is subordinate to the authority of the scriptures of both the Old and New Testament. So then he asked the question, well, what about this statement in Augustine?

you know i would not believe in the gospel apart from the authority of the church he says this is not contradictory because witnesses are one thing the actual testimony itself is quite another and he's not happy with those who wield this statement from augustin to elevate the church too highly he quotes it and then he says i do not approve of the supercilious tone that some people adopt at this point they take the statement as a cue to claim that the things decreed by the fathers and the church bear greater authority, validity, and weight than the authority of Scripture. This is not only inaccurate, but foolish. For these people would then have to say that Philip was greater than Christ,

when he brought Nathaniel to believe that Christ was indeed the one whom Moses had written. He's talking about, I think it's John 1, end of John 1, if my memory serves me. Again, instrumental, testimonial kind of necessity. He also gives the example of the Samaritan woman in John 4. She's, you know, the village would not have believed without her testimony. doesn't mean she's equal to Christ or something like that. He then stipulates, since the purpose of all ecclesiastical authority is to bear witness to Christ and his laws, it must be inferior to the laws of Christ. It is thus necessarily subordinate to the sacred scriptures. Elsewhere, he says,

the authority of the Holy Scriptures is thus by far the greatest. It exceeds the authority of all the doctors, even of the entire Catholic Church. Notwithstanding this, however, the Catholic Church must attest the authority of the Scriptures. So that's a common way of interpreting Augustine's dictum in the medieval era. The church is necessary for, but subordinate under the scripture, because it's infallible, so she must hearken to its voice. The people of God are accountable to reform themselves in response to the word of God. It's very modest view, if you understand.

So, you know, this is why it grieves me how it's so often caricature. This is how many religions operate. The founding texts are paramount. We have to keep coming back to them. We're underneath them. We don't have anything that's ongoing that's like them. There's a deposit. Here's another example.

Gregory of Romini, 14th century scholastic theologian. He starts off writing the principles of theology which are acquired through theological discussions are the truth of the sacred books themselves. He's talking about the scripture. But then, of course, that brings up Augustine's statement because Augustine has huge influence over the medieval church. So, of course, you're going to wonder, what about this? And he says, Augustine does not say that he believes the gospel because he

finds agreement with some other principle that demonstrates or proves by means of a syllogism that the gospel is true. No, he merely states that for him the authority of the church is a compelling cause to believe the gospel. This manner of speaking amounts to the same thing as if someone were to say, I would not believe in the gospel if the sanctity of the church did not move me to do so. Or if in Christ's own day, a believer had said, I would not believe the gospel, were it not that the miracles of Christ move me to do so. In these sort of statements, one can discern, indeed discern a certain stimulus to believe the gospel, but not some sort of first principle that would give grounds for believing the gospel. So you see the distinction he's drawing there. See the word stimulus there. This is a

testimonial view of the necessity of the church. Again, think of the comparison with John the Baptist. This is roughly in the ballpark of a Protestant view, Protestant way of looking at things, historic Protestant way of looking at things. Again, you don't have to agree with these people. I'm not trying to say, I'm not trying to justify their arguments or say they're right. I'm trying to document that this is a common perception in the medieval. era. Here's another one, Pierre Daly, another 14th and 15th century theologian, also a cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church, had a similar view. He even said that even the individual Church of Rome is not the head of the universal church, nor does the aforementioned authority reside in it,

that's aforementioned as in the Augustine quote, except on the condition that the Church of Rome did itself receive this true faith from the Blessed Peter, but this does not mean that it could not lose it. Once again, what about the Augustine passage? You know, everyone's got to reconcile themselves to Augustine in the medieval era because he's like this huge authority. He says, as far as Augustine's authority is concerned, he is speaking, as was said above, not about the individual church of Rome, but about the universal church. This is evident, first of all, because it would be absurd to say that we should accord the authority of any individual church more credibility than the gospel. Secondly, it is clear from Augustine's words, for after all, he speaks of

the church, which has been in existence from the days of Peter to his own time, which means that it includes Peter and the other apostles and evangelists and all the saints who have received the gospel and propagated the teachings of Christ. And in this sense, the authority of that church is greater than that of the gospel. The idea that Augustine is speaking of the universal church here is also reflected in William of Ackham, who cites this passage from Augustine and then claims for church, in this sense, includes the authors of the gospel. and all the apostles, as has been shown. Therefore, the authoritative words of Augustine, if understood correctly, cannot be taken to mean that the Pope, who drew up ecclesiastical

laws, is more to be believed than is the gospel. This, again, now there's other views out there. So in saying this, William of Avaugham is opposing legal scholars of the papal court who are trying to interpret Augustine's dictum as a support for papal authority. And William Avocan is saying, no, no, no, no, no, this is not the church in that sense. It's a church in the sense of the universal church, which goes back through time and is inclusive of the authors of the New Testament. It's not a particular hierarchy within the church or something like that. William Avoccan was followed in that interpretation in many respects by Gabriel Beale. You may have heard of him. Most of these other ones are pretty obscure. He says, the church can be taken to me not only the

congregation of all the faithful who are now alive, but also of all those who have ever. lived from the time of Christ and the apostles right up until our own day. It is distinct from the synagogue of Moses. This is the sense in which Augustine speaks of the church in his epistola fundamenti, where he says, I would not believe the gospel, where it not that the authority of the church compels me to do so. So we get stuck at more examples, but hopefully I'll stop there. This book is great discussion on a lot of these. The point is that there's a stream of medieval thought following Augustine and others from the patristic era, the church fathers, that is placing the authority of scripture over that of the church. The scripture is paramount. The church is subordinate under

the scriptures. The scripture will never be wrong, but the church can err. The church is a necessary witness, but she is subordinate under scripture. That's not just Wessel Gansford. He is representative of this tradition of thought. Let me just mention Oglovy's study again. She mentions John Giler of Kaisersburg and John Pupper as two other 15th century examples that have a similar position to Gansford. And she basically concludes her whole article on Gansford's view of church authority saying that he's expressing views which circulated among reform-minded circles in the 15th century and as such are hardly new. And she calls him unoriginal. So the idea of that, again, say that's wrong. Okay, fine. It's not novel to Protestants. So if this position

that emphasizes scripture as uniquely paramount over the church is incorrect, it is not incorrect because it is novel to the 16th century. Simple point, but it actually is going to help us get some traction in our dialogues because we hear this so much. If you're involved in these conversations, I'm sure you've heard that. The Protestant position is the organic development of one medieval view with serious patristic roots. And among the church fathers, you find a lot of statements emphasize. They often will emphasize something in a polemical context. That's why I try to be careful how you wield something. It's easy to kind of take something and just run with it, but it's powerful. So what's the upshot? Solo Scriptura. It's medieval. Of course, it's not the medieval view.

Me, these people are fighting about this. It's a medieval view. You've got heavy-hitting theologians saying, the scripture is above the church because it's infallible and she is not. Protestants didn't make that idea up. And we believe it because we think it makes a lot of sense. You know, the scripture is actually unique. It's the inspired word of God.

We don't have anything like that. And we're trying to do what Jesus basically does in Mark 7. Because when Jesus corrects the Pharisees, he doesn't say, oh, you've just got the wrong. traditions, you elevated human traditions up too highly as if they were divine traditions. He corrects their inflated view of tradition as such because it nullifies the Word of God. And it's not just one thing. It's many such things you do, he says, in Mark 713. So this is a tendency of the Pharisees, and it's a perennial temptation for any group that has roots

in a genuine work of God to try to usurp authority and claim more authority than it has. What easier way to do that then appeals to oral tradition? Because they're so, easy to make. Anybody can just say. It's like in the second century, everybody can just say, no, no, no, our position on the date of Easter controversy, that's the one that's the apostolic tradition. Everybody can say that, but mutually exclusive claims are being made almost immediately in church history on that basis. That's why we want to measure things by the scriptures. All right, that's the video. Modest point. By the way, someone in a non-Protest tradition could completely agree with everything I just said. There's no false fires here.

This is just at the street level. We just got to make progress in understanding these things. This is just for people to understand. But a Roman Catholic could totally say, yeah. Solo Scriptura was there. It hadn't been decided upon yet. But it'd be nice to at least get to see that and to see some of the historical record.

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a way to do that. I always say this, only do that if it would be a source of joy for you. God is taking care of me. I'm fine, but it would help because I would like to be able to get a little help. I kind of do everything by myself, and it's exhausting, but I love doing it. But I'd like to be able to get a little help. It really would help me to get some more support. but I would just say only if it's a source of joy for you and if you believe in what truth unites is about and what it's doing. All right, everybody, thanks for watching. Let me know what you think in the comments. This will be an interesting video, kind of a really random specific topic, but I'm curious how people will respond to it. Don't worry, there will be a rebuttal.

But yes. I feel honored when there's lots of rebuttals, though, because it means people are thinking my work is worth engaging. So that's nice. All right. We'll see you in the next one. Take care, everybody.