“No Table of Contents” Is Not an Argument

“But why is there no corresponding table of contents to guide us through the traditions of the church? If we need the traditions of the church, wouldn’t it follow that we would also need to know what they are and where they’re actually located?”

Thus said Douglas Wilson at the beginning of this recent debate with Joe Heschmeyer over the topic of sola scriptura. I call it his “table of contents” argument.

This argument, as he enthusiastically levels and defends it here, seems to assume that, in order for something to function as a genuine authority, it must be bounded, enumerable, and indexable.

But this is an un-argued premise, is it not? Why must we accept this? I think this is worth cutting into, here, because it’s endemic to lots of Protestant hermeneutic – simply, the framework is assumed at exactly the point where it most needs defending.

I think of the common law. Is it not authoritative and binding, even without being reducible to a single document one might flip through? Does its lack of clearly-defined boundaries make it less real, or make us less culpable? One might argue it’s less authoritative and that our culpability is lessened because of its relative ambiguity up against some enumerated alternative, but that doesn’t mean it is not authoritative.

I won’t defend, here, what Heschmeyer says about the Magisterium – that’s beyond the scope of this comment. But the Magisterium, both as it’s conceptualized and as it actually works in practice, functions similarly to the common law – constrained by the deposit of faith, by prior councils, by its own precedent. It can develop doctrine but it can’t contradict what it has already defined. One may insist it hasn’t worked properly, but these are unquestionably real boundaries, both in theory and in reality (the Magisterium has stayed very-much on topic for many centuries, now).

There may be no “table of contents,” but there are guardrails. I suppose they just aren’t the kind Wilson wants.

Wilson’s demand for a particular form of accountability here doesn’t mean that no other form exists. The Magisterium can be held accountable, just not in the way Wilson prefers. He smuggles in an assumption about what authority has to look like and then faults Tradition for not conforming to it. But what authority looks like was not the subject of this debate. The question is whether Scripture alone constitutes the full deposit of divine revelation. If it doesn’t – if God also handed on authoritative teaching through Tradition – then the fact that Tradition is harder to index doesn’t make it less true. It just makes Wilson’s preferred method of doing theology less convenient.

One other problem here is that Wilson keeps circling back to clarity of debate as the chief virtue of sola sciptura: “the table of contents sets the limits of the debate, and it has the virtue of being a clear debate.” But ease of argument is a procedural virtue, not an epistemic one! Isn’t that obvious? Am I missing something? The question isn’t whether we can have a tidy dispute, nor is the “winner” of this issue the one who can show why their alleged authority provides a clearer, firmer ground. It’s nice to have that in an authority, I suppose, but that’s not something we’re promised.

(There’s no “firmest” point, anyways, insofar as anything an authority says requires any level of human interpretation. And of course, this debate isn’t won or lost on the margin of which authority is “firmer.”)

All said and done, Wilson’s paradigm here doesn’t rise high enough to address the actual question that demands an answer insofar as we are serious about identifying (if there is one) the “full deposit” of God’s revelation to man. In what mode can we expect to find that, and why? What modes are out of bounds, and why? What criteria should we use, and why? Some of these answers, I think, require an observation of how various perspectives work out, in the end – their logical terminus and practical consequences. And certainly, we ought to consider the manners in which we arrive at truth (or, at least, decide that we’ve arrived at truth) in other areas of inquiry – what criteria is acceptable elsewhere, and what resources (tradition, a codified infallible source, etc.) prove useful for achieving success (however we might define that)?

These are harder questions. They demand a deeper reflection on the nature of truth, the role of language, and the psychology of understanding than Wilson undertakes here. I don’t think Heschmeyer necessarily engages these, either, but he’s not the one making the claim.

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A final note – not just about Wilson, but about the shared premise underneath (as far as I can tell) this entire debate. This point is illuminated by the debate, but probably transcends its terms.

Both Wilson and Heschmeyer assume we need a particular kind of authority – some infallible source that settles questions. Their dispute is where to locate it. But this assumption doesn’t go without saying. Sure, it’s some authority that makes much theological debate even possible. If we can’t square up our claims against something, then what’s the point in talking?

But must that something be a propositional, verbal authority that comes to us from the sky? To what extent do we construct the need for a guaranteed authority not because God promised us one, but because we find the alternative unbearable? Even if one insists that we must have authority, what kind of authority can we reasonably assert exists? How specific must it be?

(I think the Catholic hermeneutic and “three-legged” stool model of divine revelation is less scandalized by these questions than sola scriptura, and more comfortable engaging with them continuously – especially insofar as those legs are understood to have with wide and liberal bounds. In this way, I think Heschmeyer left a lot on the table.)

My question here isn’t whether authority exists. It’s whether the demand for a certain kind of authority – clean, final, dispute-settling – brings us closer to God or is simply more convenient.