Sola Scriptura as a Humanistic Principle

My conversion to the Catholic Church is surely not unusual in that one of the initial goads I suffered was a realization that "sola scriptura" is an invalid principle by which to hope to learn the truth of divine revelation. Aside from the problem of uncertainty, which is an inescapable concomitant of sola scriptura (well, either uncertainty or a terrible dilution of any realistic sense of the unity of the truth), something I think I've come to understand a bit more clearly is that sola scriptura is an intrinsically humanistic principle. Consequently it is fundamentally alien to Christianity. Or so it seems to me.

In saying this I do not mean to suggest that Protestants are non-Christians. Let's get that out of the way now. I do not think that, nor have I ever thought it. But it's one thing to be Christian by virtue of one's Baptism (which is, of course, that which constitutes one as a Christian) and another thing entirely to subscribe to the Faith as it has been passed down through the ages. It's no secret that Protestant belief is marked by errors that have been condemned by the Church, but this does not mean that properly baptized Protestants are not part of the Body of Christ. They certainly are.

Furthermore, it should be said that Protestants believe the Truth about a variety of things. So when I say that sola scriptura is a humanistic principle, this should not be construed to mean that I think Protestants' use of it always and everywhere results in them arriving at false results. Notwithstanding these caveats, it still remains the case that sola scriptura is not a fundamentally Christian principle, as far as I can see.

The reason for this is that sola scriptura necessarily implies that some human being is resorting to the Bible and making judgments about what it teaches: man is making himself the measure of the truth in God's Word; he is deciding for himself what the content of divine revelation is. This is intrinsically humanistic.

It should not be surprising that this is so. Protestantism arose during the Renaissance. How could it be that Protestantism, in rejecting the authority of the Church, was somehow not doing so thanks to the humanistic influences of the age? It's unreasonable to think that Luther & Co. successfully separated themselves from the spirit of the age entirely. Luther was an Ockhamist as even Bainton admitted. And as I observed in that post, it's not credible to suggest that Luther's training did not influence his theology.

Private Interpretation is Baptized Humanism

I was reading St. Thomas' Exposition of Boethius' On the Trinity this morning (sorry; I cannot find this online, but the part that is relevant to this post may be found in this book). In Q2 A1 (pages 126-129 in that book, but especially 128), he discusses errors related to the question whether it is licit to attempt to reach knowledge about God by way of reason. He says that it is, but with a number of qualifications and distinctions. He also warns against certain errors, including:

Second, the error that in matters of faith reason precedes faith not faith reason, such that one wants to believe only what reason can discover, when it should be the reverse. Hence Hilary: 'Begin by believing.' ... Third, pushing oneself beyond the way in which one is capable of scrutiny into divine things; as Romans 12:3 says: 'Let no one rate himself more than he ought, but let him rate himself according to moderation, and according as God has apportioned to each one the measure of faith.'

While considering this passage, it occurred to me first of all that what he is describing is really humanism: man as the measure of all things. If man cannot understand it, then it cannot be true. Not only this: if something positively transcends the ability of man even to grasp, it will be rejected out of hand. But as I considered further, I realized that this same criticism applies to the Protestant notion of private interpretation.

Protestants of course believe in sola scriptura, so that they deny both that there is an infallible interpreter of divine revelation, and also that such an interpreter is necessary. Instead, they adhere to the two ideas of private interpretation and the ultimate primacy of the individual conscience. Because humans make mistakes, and because they say that this proneness to error inheres even in the Church and in Sacred Councils, they refuse on principle to say that a man must submit ultimately to any human institution (which, in their view, includes the Catholic Church or any denomination of their own): to do so would almost certainly mean obliging him to submit to error, since no human institution is infallible. In consequence, the Protestant must and does assert that nothing may bind the individual conscience: if you disagree with some tenet of your denomination, and if you are convinced that your position is what the Bible teaches, then you are free (and even morally obliged) to refuse to submit to what they say. Hence this is called private interpretation (because a man may (and even must) stand upon his own personal interpretation of the Bible over against what any institution might say), and it may also be described as the ultimate primacy of conscience.

(In passing we will concede that some Protestants at least will admit that one's conscience may err; but even these do not recognize the devastating consequences of such an admission for their position: not only may others err, but I might do so too! So really what this leaves me is no certainty whatsoever.)

So...if a man may or must stand upon his own interpretation of the Bible...then what he believes is dependent upon his ability to understand it. In other words: he does not believe in order that he may understand, but he seeks to understand the Bible in order that he may believe what it teaches. This is precisely the error against which Aquinas warns in the passage I quoted above. It is humanism. Let us imagine a man whose exegetical capabilities are limited. Because of these deficiencies (and I do not mean that in a pejorative or moral sense, but only in the sense that it is a weakness), it is inevitable that he will fail to understand parts of the Bible correctly, because parts are difficult:

Just as our most dear brother Paul also, according to the wisdom given him, has written to you, as indeed he did in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things. In these epistles there are certain things difficult to understand, which the unlearned and the unstable distort, just as they do the rest of the Scriptures also, to their own destruction (2Pet. 3:15-16)

So, when he makes a mistake, and yet he is convinced that he is right, what happens? To whom will he listen? If his pastor attempts to correct him, will he listen? Does he care about his denomination's confessional standards (if they have any)? No. He has made himself the measure of the truth. He has acted as a humanist.

But this is no less true for the brilliant scholar as well as for the average untrained layman: he too may make mistakes. But if he insists that he will only believe what he understands the Bible to teach, he has committed the same error: he has become a humanist. He has subjected divine revelation to the limitations of his own capacity to understand.

Against this we must stand. The truth is not contingent upon my comprehension. If I say X, and the Church says Y, I am wrong. If I am 100% convinced by my own research that the Bible says ABC about doctrine D, but the Church says that the truth about D is really EFG, I am the one who is wrong. I am not the measure of all things. No man is.

But is not the Church a human institution?

NO.

The Catholic Church is not a human institution. This is a fundamental point. It is the Body of Christ.

Christ and his Church thus together make up the 'whole Christ' (Christus totus). The Church is one with Christ (CCC 795; italics in original).

The comparison of the Church with the body casts light on the intimate bond between Christ and his Church. Not only is she gathered around him; she is united in him, in his body (CCC 789; italics in original).

But if the Church with Christ is Christus totus, then to say that the Church may err is the same as saying that Christ himself may err. And that is blasphemy. Since, then, Christ cannot err, and because the Church is united to him as his Body, it is no mere "human institution" even though its members are humans. It is Christ's Body, and this union ensures that she cannot err in matters of faith and morals.