Perspicuity Once More: A Rejoinder to Casey Chalk

This post is rather overdue. In 2023, I gave a Sunday School lesson defending the Protestant doctrine of the perspicuity of Scripture against Roman Catholic critiques (accessible on YouTube and as a modified transcript). Stated simply, perspicuity means that the essential doctrines of Christianity are so clearly contained in Scripture (either explicitly or implicitly) that an infallible interpretive authority is unnecessary. The lesson was designed as a response to the book The Obscurity of Scripture by PCA-to-Catholic convert Casey Chalk, who in turn posted a response to my lesson. (I would encourage readers to first read his response before continuing further.) As with his book, Chalk’s response was measured and gracious. I believe that this is precisely the way to move the conversation forward. Even where our disagreements persist, at least we can achieve deeper mutual understanding. Now as promised, here is my attempt at a rejoinder to Chalk. I’ll address the three central points of his critique.

Authority: individual, church, and state

My initial claim was that, contrary to the common Roman Catholic critique, Protestants believe that the individual possesses not ultimate authority in interpreting Scripture, but rather ultimate accountability before God. That is, not all interpretations are equally valid, and interpreters who contradict the central doctrines of Scripture will be held liable at the final judgment. This is how Protestants hold together both the higher (yet fallible) interpretive authority of the church and also the individual’s right to interpretive dissent. I drew an analogy to the private citizen’s right to exercise civil disobedience against unjust laws, despite the civil government possessing a higher authority.

Now I grant Chalk’s objection that Protestants aren’t necessarily obeying God whenever they interpret Scripture, despite affirming their accountability to God. After all, Protestants also affirm the presence of indwelling sin and ignorance in the believer, even when reading Scripture. But I think Chalk may have misunderstood what I mean by accountability here. It doesn’t mean “simply obeying God.” Rather, it’s an eschatological claim—reminding us that the pretended autonomy of the individual is only temporary.

Chalk’s objection seems to conflate two ideas that need to be distinguished: the present, personal subjection we yield to God on the one hand, and the future, objective accountability that we all bear before God on the other. That is, accountability exists even where obedience does not. Further, I am still accountable to God even (especially!) when my interpretation of Scripture is an act of misdirected obedience. So Chalk’s objection, though true, has no bearing on the affirmation of all humanity’s ultimate accountability before God. And it is precisely because of this accountability that I, as a Protestant, cannot claim ultimate interpretive authority over Scripture. I don’t get the final say. God does—whether I’m right or wrong about my own obedience to his Word.

Roman Catholics, on the other hand, seem unsatisfied with delaying judgment on the wayward interpreter. So they ascribe to the church on earth a prerogative that belongs to God in heaven. By insisting on the interpreter’s accountability to Rome in the present rather than to God in the future, they are in effect “immanentizing the eschaton.” For the Roman Catholic critique to succeed, it would need to be shown why God’s final judgment on interpretive disobedience is insufficient.

For similar reasons, I think the analogy between the individual believer’s right to interpretive dissent and the private citizen’s right to civil disobedience remains valid. Chalk claims that these rights are actually disanalogous, because the citizen lacks ultimate interpretive authority over civil law. But this is precisely my point: in neither case does the individual possess ultimate interpretive authority. Chalk’s objection seems to assume the very premise that I expressly deny—namely, that the Protestant view of perspicuity entails the individual’s ultimate interpretive authority. Thus, by disallowing the analogy, he is begging the question against my own stated position on interpretive authority. But the point of the analogy is to demonstrate that one’s right to interpretive dissent does not necessitate one’s ultimate interpretive authority.

Chalk then highlights another perceived problem with the Protestant view of interpretive authority: it allegedly reduces the institutional church to a mere voluntary association, contingent upon the consent of its individual members. In response, I would again highlight the need for a proper understanding of accountability. On the Protestant view, a church member may secede from a church body he considers guilty of serious error. For its part, a church body may discipline a member it considers guilty of schism. Now in such a case, both sides can’t be right, although both sides will ultimately be held accountable to God. Each party may believe itself to be in proper subjection to God’s Word, but the final judgment will reveal the truth of the matter, and the parties will be judged according to the degree of their respective error. So fundamentally, the Protestant view is simply an acknowledgment that any church can err—even to the point of warranting separation. (Much more could be said here about the Protestant view of the respective sources of civil and ecclesiastical power, but I think that would take us on an unnecessary digression.)

Defining the rule of faith

In my lesson, I defended the central role of the rule of faith (regula fidei) in Protestant hermeneutics. This rule was first outlined in the New Testament, then further developed by leading church fathers, and finally codified in the ecumenical creeds. It sets an objective, historically verifiable guardrail on our reading of Scripture, preventing us from falling into interpretive anarchy which Roman Catholics (rightly) fear.

Chalk’s response was somewhat puzzling. He asks which doctrines actually constitute the rule of faith—as if the early church fathers don’t already tell us. Irenaeus, the first church father to use the term regula fidei, defined it in Against Heresies 1.10.1 as faith in:

One God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven, and earth… and in one Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who became incarnate for our salvation; and in the Holy Spirit, who proclaimed through the prophets the dispensations of God, and the advents, and the birth from a virgin, and the passion, and the resurrection from the dead, and the ascension into heaven in the flesh of the beloved Christ Jesus, our Lord, and His manifestation from heaven in the glory of the Father…

Likewise, in chapter 13 of De Praescriptione Haereticorum, Tertullian defines the rule of faith as belief in “one God,” the “Creator of the world” who “produced all things out of nothing,” and in the “Word [who] is called his Son,” who was “made flesh” in the womb of the Virgin Mary, who preached “the kingdom of heaven,” was “crucified,” “rose again the third day,” “ascended into the heavens,” “sat at the right hand of the Father,” sent “the Holy Ghost,” and “will come with glory” to deliver the saints and to condemn the wicked.

In the preface of his work De Principiis, Origen says that the apostles “delivered themselves with the utmost clearness[!] on certain points which they believed to be necessary to every one.” What exactly are these points that are so clear and necessary? Origen writes:

First, that there is One God, who created and arranged all things…. Secondly, that Jesus Christ himself, who came (into the world), was born of the Father before all creatures; that… he… became a man, and was incarnate… born of a virgin and of the Holy Spirit… and did truly suffer… did truly die; that he did truly rise from the dead; and that after his resurrection he… was taken up (into heaven). Then, thirdly… the Holy Spirit was associated in honor and dignity with the Father and the Son.

I could also mention Hippolytus, Novatian, Cyril of Jerusalem, and Augustine—all of whom defined the rule of faith in similar terms. There is a consistently Trinitarian and Christological pattern in all of their definitions. So the Protestant appeal to the rule of faith is neither arbitrary nor ad hoc, but rather a faithful reflection of a well-established patristic consensus.

It should also be noted that the rule of faith is fully consistent with the Protestant teaching on the sufficiency of Scripture, properly understood. It adds nothing to the content of what must be believed for salvation, but rather serves as the mode by which that content is historically received. Stated precisely, while Scripture is materially sufficient for orthodoxy, the rule of faith is formally necessary. Francis Turretin uses the analogy of a scale ruler, which may be sufficient for drawing perfect straight lines, but still requires the architect’s hand for its application (Institutes of Elenctic Theology I:141).

Chalk then asks, what is the basis of our confidence that the Nicene Creed is an accurate representation of apostolic teaching? My answer, in short, is the Protestant doctrine of the perpetuity of the church. Christ promised that the true church would never perish from the earth (Matt. 16:18; 28:19–20). The true church, by definition, can never deny essential doctrines of Christian orthodoxy. Therefore, the rule of faith can be defined by those core doctrines that have persisted in unbroken continuity throughout church history. Nicene Trinitarianism meets that definition. By contrast, anti-Trinitarian churches have not existed in unbroken continuity throughout history. That is why anti-Trinitarian sects today, such as Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses, see themselves as restorationist movements: they purport to recover forgotten but essential articles of the faith. But such a claim comes at the cost of the perpetuity of the church—thereby denying Jesus’s own promise to the church.

Perhaps my biggest concern with Chalk’s argument here is the implication that, without an infallible interpretive authority, an anti-Trinitarian reading of Scripture would be just as valid as a Trinitarian reading. Does Chalk really believe that Scripture is so opaque that, apart from an infallible magisterium, Athanasius’s handling of Scripture is no better than Arius’s? If so, I would simply invite readers to read both authors, juxtapose both sets of exegetical arguments, and see for themselves which side makes the stronger biblical case. We must each make our choice—but God will be the judge. (For more on the continuity between Athanasius and the Protestant “ruled reading” of Scripture over against Arianism, see Brandon Smith.)

What kind of circular reasoning?

Lastly, Chalk says I commit a logical fallacy in affirming a certain kind of circularity in my argument for biblical perspicuity. To be sure, I believe that such circularity is inevitable when appealing to any ultimate authority. An ultimate authority, by definition, must be self-evident and self-authenticating, or else its authority would depend on appeal to another, higher authority, leading to an infinite regress of authorities. But this doesn’t mean that one must accept perspicuity simply because I believe Scripture says so (though I do believe it says so!).

According to Thomas Aquinas, something can be “self-evident” in one of two ways: either “in itself” (per se notum secundum se) though not to us, or in itself and “to us” (per se notum quoad nos). Self-evidence, says Thomas, simply means that a predicate belongs to the essence of a subject. Thus Thomas can argue that God’s existence (which is the same as his essence) is self-evident, even if not everyone knows it. Chalk appears to take a contrary view: “We believe in the existence of God because His existence conforms to reason communicated via arguments, not because He is ‘self-evident.’” For Thomas, this is a false dichotomy: God’s existence can be both self-evident and supported by rational proofs. I would say the same thing of perspicuity, which belongs to the essence of Scripture and is therefore self-evident, but can be further supported by rational and evidential arguments (some of which I provide in the preceding lesson of my Sunday School series). Such arguments may indeed be useful in shifting perspicuity from self-evident only “in itself” to self-evident “to us,” but they are necessarily subordinate in authority to Scripture itself. So while Chalk faults my position for being fideistic, I would counter that his own position errs in the opposite direction of rationalism, due to his insistence that Scripture depends on external proofs for its justification.

Another way of testing the perspicuity doctrine without falling into vicious circularity would be to assume the premise for the sake of argument, and see whether it fits with other accepted beliefs. This can demonstrate whether the Protestant system of belief possesses internal coherence, which can then be weighed against the relative coherence of the Roman Catholic system. The latter system, resting on the authority of the papal magisterium, requires accepting certain doctrinal innovations—such as veneration of icons and Mary’s bodily assumption—and doctrinal reversals—such as the exclusivity of salvation in the church and capital punishment. In these respects, I would argue that the Roman Catholic system coheres poorly with the patristic rule of faith, which allows doctrinal development but not innovation or reversal.

Conclusion

In sum, I think that the Protestant view, properly understood, can adequately address the concerns of our Roman Catholic critics. We affirm the final accountability of every individual (whether obedient or disobedient) before God in biblical interpretation, we affirm the patristic rule of faith as the hermeneutically authoritative summary of Christian orthodoxy, and we affirm the superiority of Scripture over all of its supporting rational proofs. Holding these principles together, anyone should be able to discern the saving truths of Scripture without need of an infallible interpretive authority. So let us embrace the clarity of God’s Word and restore it to its rightful place in the Christian life.