Bahnsen on sola scriptura

The late Greg Bahnsen was a man that I revered when I was a Protestant. I did not agree with everything that he said, but I believed that he was a faithful and godly man who did his best to serve God.

Today I came across a link at Carrie's place labeled "A Biblical Defense of Sola Scriptura." The link is to a transcript of a speech given by Bahnsen titled "Is Sola Scriptura a Protestant Concoction?" Earlier today I worked through it. I don't know if the title on that page is one that he gave this talk or not. I must say that I am rather disappointed with the quality of Dr. Bahnsen's argument. If it had not been a speech but rather an essay, perhaps it would not suffer from the defects that it does. My notes are somewhat lengthy, but here is a distillation of them.

He has two or three main points (two if you judge from how they are numbered on that page, but it seems to me that there are really three).

The first point is that we must not rely upon human wisdom when it comes to our understanding about God and how we are to live. Instead we must rely upon God's revelation of himself. This is really a point that any Christian can readily concede, and I certainly do. Dr. Bahnsen makes a good case for this point from the Bible. The only question that might arise is: where may we find this revelation?

[Update 2007-08-28: I would like to qualify what I said in the previous paragraph. If Bahnsen wants to say (as he probably would have done) that there is absolutely no place for reason in coming to an understanding of God, but that we are completely dependent upon reason, then I would have to disagree. See: Summa Contra Gentiles. I will readily concede that we need God's revelation of himself to us, along with his grace, if we are to achieve our last end. It is not the case that we can say nothing about God from reason; it is not the case that we know literally nothing about God from reason. It is that reason is insufficient by itself. - RdP]

[Update 2008-01-04: I would like to thank "Anonymous" for pointing out the typo in the update from 8/28 above. The second sentence should read: "If Bahnsen wants to say (as he probably would have done) that there is absolutely no place for reason in coming to an understanding of God, but that we are completely dependent upon revelation, then I would have to disagree." - Sigh. It's pretty pathetic when one injects fog when attempting to add clarity! - RdP]

His second point attempts an answer. Divine revelation, he says, was found in both oral and written form. He argues this on the basis of 2 Thessalonans 2:15, "So then, brethren, stand firm, and hold the teachings that you have learned, whether by word or by letter of ours." Now of course Dr. Bahnsen has no choice, historically speaking, but to acknowledge this point, as surprising as it might superficially seem in coming from a Protestant. Because, after all, the revelation preceded the scriptures of the New Testament by a number of years. So this is not really much of a concession. To the contrary, he would have insuperable difficulty in explaining the growth of the Church after the Resurrection of Christ until the time that the New Testament was written (to say nothing of the additional time until it was recognized as God's Word). But now he has conceded what Catholics have always said. How then will he disqualify what the Church teaches about Tradition?

This is what he says. First, he says that the content of oral and written revelation was identical. Secondly, he says that we no longer have access to the oral tradition, because the apostles are dead.

With regard to the first point, it has to be pointed out that Bahnsen makes no argument for this whatsoever. He simply asserts it to be so, on the basis of 2 Thess. 2:15. Of course, that is simply absurd. The very most that one could possibly get from the text of that verse as written is that oral and written traditions are of equal authority: again, something that the Catholic Church has always maintained. But it simply does not follow from what St. Paul wrote that the two are co-extensive. To the contrary, I can readily say this about the passage by way of interpretation: it doesn't matter whether you heard something from us when we were there in Thessalonica, nor whether you learned something from what has been written down: it is all God's revelation. This makes no less sense (and, it seem to me, it actually makes more sense) than what Bahnsen suggests. I would also point out that on the basis of what John wrote in his gospel (21:25), we already know that we don't have a written record of everything that Jesus said or did. It's simply question-begging to say that in spite of this fact we do have a written record of everything that he taught (and, indeed, it stretches credulity to suggest it, since "not even the world itself...could hold the books that would have to be written" to contain the full record of all that Jesus did). So not only does 2 Thess. 2:15 not prove that oral and written tradition were identical, but we have good reason for believing that the oral tradition contains things not found in the Scriptures!

But as I say, Bahnsen addresses none of this. He settles for a bare assertion, and a thoroughly unsubstantiated one, when he says that the two are identical.

Moving on to his second point: that because the apostles are dead, we no longer have access to the oral tradition. Unfortunately, Bahnsen has once again resorted to bald assertion rather than to argument. Because rather than proving that we no longer have access to it, he simply repeats over and over: the apostles are dead. The apostles are dead. Of course, this is no argument. And in particular it is no argument against the Catholic doctrine of apostolic succession, which explains exactly why and how Sacred Tradition has been preserved from the Apostles' day down to our own. In fact, he never even mentions apostolic succession. How then can it be said that he has proven anything? Obviously it can't, because he hasn't.

Having completed his argument, Bahnsen goes for his conclusion: since we cannot trust in human wisdom, and since the oral tradition (which was identical, he claims, to the written one) is no longer accessible, we have no choice but to resort to the Bible for our access to divine revelation.

But of course his conclusion depends entirely upon the second and third points (and really upon the third). But he made no argument in defense of them. He merely asserted them. But these are precisely the issues on which he should have devoted most of his time (rather than on irrelevant sniping at Catholics as he occasionally does on the speech, or on arguments about whether Peter is the rock or not - where, by the way, his argument does not shine, either). Rather than developing these things, though, he simply assumed them.

In sum: this is not Dr. Bahnsen's best work. One wonders, as I said at the outset, whether he might have made a more thorough case if this argument had started life as an essay rather than as a speech. As it is, the Catholic doctrine is quite unscathed by anything that he has said here, and the only way that this article could possibly qualify as a biblical defense of sola scriptura (pace Carrie) is if one has already made the same assumptions as Dr. Bahnsen. But we have no rational basis for doing that.