Why Did I Err in My Earlier Reasoning Regarding Sola Scriptura?

In the various accounts I have written up describing my conversion to Catholicism (see here and here, especially), I mention that I used to believe in Sola Scriptura--the doctrine that Scripture alone is infallible--because I took that doctrine to be the logical default position over and against the Catholic point of view that Scripture must be interpreted in the context of an infallible Tradition and an infallible Magisterium.  I describe here my prior Protestant reasoning as well as my recognition of my error and switchover to a Catholic position:

I came to see that I had some unquestioned assumptions at the foundation of my belief in Sola Scriptura.  Sola Scriptura had seemed like the "default" option to me, because I knew I had good reasons to think the Bible is the Word of God, and the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox agreed with me on that, but I didn't think I had any good reason to trust the claims of the Orthodox or the Catholics to have an infallible tradition or an infallible teaching authority.  Since Scripture alone is all that we need, I thought, there is no good reason to accept such claims for further infallibility.  The fallacy here, of course, is that I was simply assuming that Scripture could function alone, without having the context of an infallible tradition or teaching authority.  But I had no basis for that assumption.  I had simply been used to using the Bible in that way as a Protestant, and it hadn't yet occurred to me that I needed to show that this was not misusing the Bible.  It may seem superficially to be safe to stick with Sola Scriptura, but what if God intends for Scripture to be interpreted and applied in the context of an authoritative and infallible tradition?  In that case, a person using the Bible in a Sola Scriptura fashion is likely to go very wrong.  He would be attempting to use the Bible in a way in which it is not supposed to be used, and ignoring crucial aids given to him for the purpose of enabling him to get it right.  Once I realized that I had been working on the basis of an unquestioned Protestant assumption about the sufficiency of Scripture, it became clear that the "default" is actually not with Sola Scriptura but with the "infallible tradition" paradigm held by the Catholic and Orthodox Churches.  Christ founded a church, and he commanded his people to obey its shepherds and preserve its unity.  Therefore, our default should be obedience to the historic church and communion with her.  Not unless we can prove that we have a good reason to defy those leaders or rupture that unity should we do so.  But I saw that Sola Scriptura, and all other Protestant distinctives, could not actually be proved from Scripture or from reason or anything else, and so to embrace the Protestant views at the expense of obedience to and unity within the historic church would be inherently schismatic.

Since this time, I have often pondered the question, Why did I make this error in reasoning?  I go on in the account quoted from (and in most of my other accounts of my conversion) to note that my error stemmed ultimately from a lack of historical awareness.  But how did this work, exactly?  How did a lack of historical awareness lead me to make an error in reasoning regarding the sufficiency of Scripture?

Before 2012, I didn't have a great deal of interest in learning much about Church history.  My focus was more on abstract questions of theology, philosophy, Scriptural interpretation, etc.  In my theological thinking, I consulted Church history only mainly when it became involved in some other topic I was currently considering.  I didn't think of a deeper study of Church history as being terribly important per se in terms of analyzing the truth claims of Christianity or matters of Christian doctrine.  Because of this, I didn't know much about the doctrine of the early Church Fathers on matters regarding Scripture, Tradition, Magisterial authority, and the relationship between these.  The little history I did know had given me the impression that the early Church, at the very least, did not oppose the doctrine that Protestants would later call Sola Scriptura.

Due to this lack of historical awareness, when I came to consider the question of the Protestant position of Sola Scriptura vs. the Catholic or Orthodox position of Scripture/Tradition/Magisterium, I didn't consider this question from a historical point of view but rather more abstractly and logically.  I saw Scripture, Tradition, and Magisterial authority as independent elements that had to be independently evaluated.  Since Christianity is a divine revelation, I knew that it was important to ascertain what the locus of that revelation is.  That is, we must know where we should look to find the Christian revelation.  Protestants proposed Scripture alone.  Catholics and Orthodox proposed Scripture plus Tradition plus an infallible Magisterium to interpret Scripture and Tradition.  I knew enough Church history to see that Scripture had always been affirmed by pretty much all Christians to be at least one primary locus of Christian revelation.  Also, I knew that Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants all agree today that it is such a locus.  So I knew that if there was any locus at all--which there must be, if we are going to be able to follow the Christian revelation--Scripture must be at least one of them.  But I didn't know of any good reason to accept Tradition or the Magisterium as additional loci.  And I thought that, in order to accept these additional loci, I needed additional positive evidence to support them.

To understand my point of view at the time, consider this scenario:  You are a Christian.  You are trying to follow the Christian revelation.  You know you have the Scriptures as the Word of God and therefore as a locus of that revelation.  But then someone knocks on your door.  When you open it, the person at the door introduces himself as Bob and announces that he is an additional locus of divine revelation.  "What you need," he says, "is not just Scripture, but Scripture plus me."  Bob claims to have been given by God the gift of being an infallible interpreter of Scripture.  "You just can't get Scripture right without following my teaching," says Bob.  Now, why should you pay any attention to Bob?  You've never heard of him before.  He has just shown up at your door out of nowhere and made his claim.  What if you find that you can't directly prove Bob's claim wrong?  Bob argues that if you can't prove his claim wrong, you have no basis to reject his claim and rely on Scripture alone.  "After all," he says, "if Scripture really is meant to be interpreted in light of my teaching, as I claim, you are likely to go seriously wrong if you ignore me and try to interpret Scripture without me."

So what are you going to do?  It seems evident, doesn't it, that you will reject Bob's claim?  Sure, you can't directly prove him wrong, but it seems foolish to add Bob in as an additional locus of divine revelation merely because you can't prove him wrong.  You know that Scripture is the Word of God, but Bob has just come out of nowhere.  It makes more sense to stick to Scripture alone until Bob can provide some further positive evidence for his claim.  If you accept Bob's claim, you must do so arbitrarily.  Bob argues that if you reject his claim, you are also acting arbitrarily.  But you must go one way or the other.  At least for the present, until further evidence arises, you have to either accept or reject Bob's claim, for it makes an important difference in terms of how you should use the Scriptures.  But, given your options and the available information, surely it makes more sense to stick to the Scriptures alone, since you know that they are reliable, and not to add Bob on as an additional locus of revelation until he can provide further evidence for his position.

That was basically my reasoning for rejecting the Catholic point of view and embracing Sola Scriptura.  Of course, the analogy is not perfect.  I knew that the claims of Tradition and the Magisterium to be additional loci of divine revelation had a better historical pedigree than Bob's claim has in my imaginary scenario.  But I did not think they had enough of a better pedigree to give them the leverage needed to oust Sola Scriptura.  I knew that Scripture was God's Word.  But I could not verify the claims of Tradition and the Magisterium.  Therefore, it seemed to me to make the most sense to stick to Scripture alone rather than to randomly and arbitrarily admit the claims of Tradition and Magisterium and add them on as additional loci of revelation.  Without additional evidence, I wasn't just going to start trusting the Catholic Church implicitly to tell me how to interpret Scripture.  I would listen to what Catholics had to say, but I would evaluate it myself in light of what I could find in reason and in Scripture.  I would make use of what I knew until I was provided with evidence to add something else.

This position was overturned as I learned more Church history and eventually came to realize that the Catholic view was the view of the historic Church.  Protestants had to break from the Church's earlier established position in order to advocate for Sola Scriptura.  They had to break with the continuity of the faith as handed down through history, and they had to break the unity and defy the established authorities of Christ's Church.  As I've argued elsewhere, since Christianity is a divine revelation handed down to us in history, and since Christ established a community to which he gave leaders and which he commanded to preserve unity, we must default to the continuity, unity, and authority of the Christian faith and the Christian Church.  We cannot break from these without positive and conclusive justification.  So the default is actually on the other side from what I previously thought.  The question is not, "Do I have a justification to add Tradition and the Magisterium as loci of revelation additional to Scripture?"  The question is, "Do I have a justification to take Scripture out of its original context within the threefold package deal of Scripture/Tradition/Magisterium in order to establish Sola Scriptura?"  It wasn't a matter of adding Tradition and the Magisterium.  They were already there.  It was a matter of retaining or rejecting them.  To refer back to my earlier analogy, it is as if Bob did not come out of nowhere, but rather had been the original, official conveyer of the divine Scriptures to me in the first place, and from the beginning the Scriptures had been bound together with Bob's role as official interpreter.

For more, see here, here, and here.

Published on the feast of St. Fidelis of Sigmaringen