[Music] there have been many times throughout the history of Catholic theology where absolutely great arguments get lost the strongest best defended arguments refuting heresy and vindicating the Catholic faith have far too often been left in old books that don't get read anymore worse yet sometimes only caricatures and remnants of these strong arguments are passed down to contemporary theologians and apologists taking away from the eminent credibility that Catholic theology should always possess before all men the case is not at all different when it comes to solar scriptura in ages past we gave arguments that were rigorously
demonstrative and refuted the Very Foundation of this Protestant heresy but unfortunately this argument has been replaced with what amounts to a rhetorical trap first we need to begin by defining our terms what do Protestants intend to communicate when they affirm solar scriptura for them solar scriptura means that the only infallible rule of faith and the Supreme judge of all controversies is scripture alone thus the lien synopsis this scripture alone is the principle from which and the substance from which all saving truth is to be deduced the Canon and Norm by which every true and so
every false doctrine of things Divine must be measured end quote this video is not meant to directly attack soul scriptura but a more fundamental Doctrine upon which so scripture is based that is the sufficiency of scripture it is important to realize that the relationship between solar scriptura and the sufficiency of scripture is non-reciprocal this means that solar scriptura depends on the sufficiency of scripture but the sufficiency of scripture does not depend on solar scriptura in order to understand why this is the case we need to understand how Protestants Define the sufficiency of scripture they Define
the sufficiency of scripture as the doctrine that all things that have been publicly revealed for the church is contained either expressly or implicitly in scripture thus leonardus rinus States the question is not as to all Traditions historical and ritual Traditions are given also Divine and Apostolic ones that is dogmas handed down by Christ and the apostles the question is as to dogmatic and ethical Traditions whether such are given over in above scripture which we deny end quote so obviously if scripture doesn't contain all public Revelation for the church either implicitly or explicitly then obviously scripture
cannot be adequate for the task of being the sole infallible rule of faith and supreme judge of all controversies on the other hand even if I were to concede that scripture is sufficient for such it is not impossible for there to be another infallible rule of Faith thus if the sufficiency of scripture is refuted so also is Sol of scriptura further it is also important to realize that Catholics do not deny all forms of the sufficiency of scripture I go over this in much more detail in another video for example the great Saint and doctor
of the church St Augustine of Hippo writes in his work day doctrina Christiana that quote those matters that are plainly laid down in the scriptures whether rules of life or rules of Faith are to be searched into more carefully and more diligently and the more of these a man discovers the more capacious does his understanding become for among the things that are plainly laid down in scripture are to be found all matters that concern faith and the manner of life to it hope and love of which I've spoken in the previous book end [Music] quote
if you look into the previous book that St Augustine mentions it becomes clear that he simply meant to say that those essential matters that are necessary for bringing about the virtue of faith and the virtues of Charity and hope are found plainly in scripture this is a much less audacious claim than the Protestant makes and is conceited by the Roman Catholic not only for the entirety of scripture but even for parts of scripture such as the individual gospels Catholics will go so far as to say that this is even true for the Creed in the
ten commandments so when it comes to the Protestant version of the sufficiency of scripture upon which the Protestant doctrine of solos scrip Torah is based is it coherent from a consideration of the issue of the inspiration of the books of the Bible I think I think any reasonable person would have to say no to understand this we need to understand a distinction between what is naturally knowable and what is above nature those things that are naturally knowable are proportion to our intellects and we can reach them by our natural Powers thus by the natural powers
of our intellect we can reach the fact that God exists on the other hand there are certain things that are above nature and cannot be known by our natural Powers these are called Supernatural truths truth when it comes to these we cannot use our minds to reason up to them but they need to come down to us by divine revelation and divine revelation happens through the public witness of the prophets and the apostles thus St Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 2 the things also that are of God no man knoweth but the spirit of God
now we have received not the spirit of this world but the spirit that is of god that we may know the things that are given us from God which things also we see speak not in the Learned words of human wisdom but in the doctrine of the spirit we can call this proposition of truth from God the objective aspect as an analogy the objective aspect of receiving Supernatural truth is like the words of the teacher being presented to the student on the other hand not only must these Supernatural truths be presented to us from the
apostles and Prophets who are inspired by God but we must also be strengthened and elevated to be able ble to understand these truths since they are beyond the powers of our intellect this comes by the light of Faith thus St Paul writes in the same chapter the sensual man perceiveth not these things that are of the spirit of God for it is foolishness to him and he cannot understand because it is spiritually examined but the spiritual man judgeth all things and he himself is judged of no man for who hath known the mind of the
Lord that we may instruct him but we have the mind of Christ we call this strengthening of our minds the subjective aspect as an analogy the subjective aspect of receiving Supernatural truth is like the natural light of reason that we have which is able to understand what our teacher presents to us therefore both the presentation of the teaching the objective aspect which is divine revelation and the strengthening of our intellects the subjective aspect which is the light of faith are necessary in order to know any Supernatural truth if we are not strengthened by God no
matter how much God presents the supernatural truth to us we cannot grasp it further if God does not let us know the truth it doesn't matter how much we are strengthened we are not going to somehow Discover it as a side note if you want to help support me consider buying my new released merchandise which is based on St Thomas aquinus thank you for any support now let's apply this this to the case at hand the fact that a certain book of the Bible has been inspired is the inspiration of an apostle something that is
a natural fact or a supernatural fact clearly it is something that is Supernatural inspiration isn't something that you can taste or touch it isn't something that you can see inspiration is something that happens by the extraordinary working of God within the mind of the Prophet further simply by picking up a book and reading it you cannot determine that it is something that is inspired or not rather just like any other Supernatural fact the inspiration of books must be revealed to us one of the greatest theologians of the 19th century Cardinal Johan Baptist franzelin comments that
quote inspiration is a supernatural psychological fact in the mind of a man which like other internal facts immediately known to God is known only to the inspired person the external effect of inspiration is none other than the writing itself and the written book yet there is no inherent Mark in it which of itself manifests the inspiration as a necessary cause therefore the fact of inspiration cannot be known to others except by testimony worthy of Faith end quote if we are to know that first John is an inspired book then the fact that first John is
inspired needs to be told to us or else it is the type of fact that cannot be known there needs to be the objective proposition of this truth now this basically leaves us with three options first it is revealed in scripture second it is revealed to each person individually third it is revealed in sacred tradition the first option is obviously not true since scripture does not explicitly or implicitly talk about the inspiration of quite a few books of the Bible for example where does Scripture explicitly talk about the inspiration of Esther or Thor John the
second option is possible but absurd when we consider that this simply doesn't happen the third option is the correct option and accepted by the Catholic Church the fact that certain books are inspired was publicly revealed by either a prophet or Apostle and then handed down yet the problem with this is the fact that this contradicts the sufficiency of scripture outlined above yet Protestants will have five proposed solutions to this problem first some of them will claim that the total number of inspired books is actually found explicitly in scripture such as David prus an early 17th
century reform Scholastic this is obviously absurd ordinarily they will point to texts like all scriptures God breathed now most people are able to see that this is insufficient since it does not tell you which books are God breathed but only that it is a quality of scripture that it be God breathed for example if I said that all my children are descended from me I would be telling you a certain quality of my children not enumerating my children individually second some of them in connection with the last point will justify this by arguing that everything
that a prophet or Apostle writes is scripture thus if a prophet or Apostle wrote a certain book it is implied in divine revelation that it is scripture this is insufficient for two reasons first it is not true that everything that an apostle or Prophet writes is scripture an apostle could write a homy or a private letter or a grocery list and it wouldn't somehow necessarily Be Inspired second it is not true that each book in its text implies authorship from an apostle or Prophet this is the case for books like Esther or every one of
the synoptics for the title of the synoptics is not included in the inspired text any more than the chapter and verse numbers are although as an aside while it is conceded that there are certain criteria of canonicity which include certain attributes that canonical books share in all or most cases the question at hand is not about these criteria but about what definitively leads us to know whether the book is canonical or not third some will point to ecclesiastical authority to solve the problem yet this does not solve the issue either for how did the church
come to know about the Canon was it through receiving divine revelation if that's the case then our position is verified was it through the discernment of natural means this is impossible as was stated above due to the nature of inspiration as to the second point we do have a position for the church but this presupposes that it is revealed fourth some point of certainty interior attributes of the text such as its loftiness or good spiritual effects yet with both of these the qualities present are also present in other texts and therefore while they are criteria
they cannot be a definitive Criterion just as we said above with the apostolic office lastly some will point to verses like my sheep hear my voice arguing that this implies that True Believers are able to hear and discern which books are true and canonical and which are not putting aside the fact that this simply doesn't happen we can also see that this is impossible for either this text is referring to some sort of subjective strengthening on our part or it is referring to the discernment of some sort of quality in the text if the first
then we know from above that correlative to the subjective strengthening is the objective proposition of the fact ascented to so this still doesn't solve the problem at hand if the second then it is impossible for there is nothing unique about the produced text to where we would be able to have some sort of sense that we could pick up on its inspiration since the effect that is the text does not necessitate a spiritual cause as frelin demonstrated above therefore Protestants have no ability to utilize solar script Torah without affirming the very Cannon of scripture which
is made known only through the Catholic church that Christ established thank you for watching if you enjoyed the video please like And subscribe and if you want to help support the channel consider becoming a channel member as always God bless
