There are several inaccuracies in this passage. In the early ages of the church, when controversies arose and contradictory traditions were alleged, appeal was not made to the written word, but to the churches founded by St. Peter, or by his immediate authority, that is, to Antioch, Alexandria, or Rome, or to a council, provincial, plenary, or œcumenical, as can hardly be unknown to so learned a theological scholar as Dr. Hodge.[109] But two facts are conceded in the passage: first, that the church for a hundred years or more had only unwritten tradition or the oral instructions of its pastors as its rule of faith; and, second, that the written and the unwritten traditions of the word were deemed of equal authority by the wisest and best of the fathers, and were not as to their authority distinguished, at least not sharply distinguished, before the rise of Protestantism. The professor, then, must prove that the whole church was wrong prior to Luther in recognizing the authority of the unwritten traditions
before he can assert that the Scriptures contain all of the revealed word extant, or maintain the completeness or sufficiency of the Scriptures as the rule of faith. How will he do it, after conceding that they do not contain the whole revelation that was made, nor even the whole extant in the opinion of the church or the great body of Christians prior to the rise of Protestantism? Does the written word anywhere declare its own completeness or sufficiency, and that the portions not recorded are of no importance?
But the difficulties of Protestantism do not end even here. The Bible is no rule of faith except in its true sense, or as rightly interpreted according to the meaning of the Holy Ghost. The author says (p. 183): “The Bible is a plain book. It is intelligible by the people. And they have the right and are bound to read and interpret it for themselves, so that their faith may rest on the testimony of the Scriptures, and not on that of the church. Such is the doctrine of Protestants on this subject.”
But is it true? If so, how happens it that among Protestants we can hardly find two, when left to themselves, without any parental or pastoral instruction, who agree in their interpretation of the written word, or as to the doctrines to be deduced from it? Yet the author himself can hardly believe what he asserts to be the Protestant doctrine on the subject is true. “It is not denied,” he adds (pp. 183, 184), “that the Scriptures contain many things that are hard to be understood; that they require diligent study; that all men need the guidance of the Holy Spirit to a right knowledge and true faith. But it is maintained that in all things necessary to salvation they are sufficiently plain to be understood even
by the unlearned.” What! even by those who are unable to understand a word of the language in which the Scriptures were written, and must depend on the fidelity of translations made by fallible men, and vouched for by no infallible authority? By those who do not know how to read at all in any language? Then how does the professor know what things are or are not necessary to salvation? That the things necessary to the right apprehension of the mysteries of the faith are not contained in those very parts of Scripture which are hard to be understood, or that the proper explanation of those parts is not necessary to the proper understanding of the other parts, which he judges to be intelligible even to the unlearned? The author here must either borrow from the Catholic rule, which condemns his Protestantism, or else admit that he has no satisfactory answer to give to these and kindred questions.
But all these questions are quite unnecessary, for the author obligingly refutes his own rule of faith, and acknowledges that the Scriptures interpreted by private judgment or by human reason itself are not sufficient to give a “right knowledge of the true faith.” Neither learning nor diligent study, nor the perspicuity of Scripture, suffices; for “all men,” he says, “need the guidance of the Holy Spirit in order to a right knowledge of the true faith.” This is conclusive against the Protestant rule; and confesses that no man can arrive at the knowledge of the true faith without the supernatural assistance of the Holy Spirit. Let us hear no more, then, of the Scriptures interpreted by private judgment, or of the ability or the right of every individual to read and interpret the Scriptures for himself and to form from them his own creed.
It is worthy of remark here that our Protestant professor is obliged throughout to adopt the principle of the Catholic rule of faith, only he applies it differently. The Catholic asserts the infallibility of the Pope in matters of faith and morals by virtue of the assistance or guidance of the Holy Spirit; the Protestant professor claims the same infallibility, by virtue of the same supernatural assistance, for each one of the people of God taken individually. But the Pope is a public personage, all the world knows or may know who he is, and can recur to him, and, supposing him to be assisted as claimed, all the world may know from him the true faith; but in the Protestant sense there is no public means of knowing who the people of God are, and, consequently, no public means of knowing what the Spirit teaches, or whom he guides or assists to a knowledge of the true faith, since he guides or assists only private individuals, not a public personage or a public body. It can be no public rule of faith, and, as we have shown, none for the individual himself, for he has no objective and independent rule for determining whether the spirit that leads him is the spirit of truth or the spirit of error. The professor has refuted his own doctrine in his refutation of the Quaker rule of faith. The interior illumination, he asserts, is private, and can be brought to no public or catholic test. Not the church, both because the church the Protestant recognizes is invisible, and recognizable by no external marks or notes, and because the church, according to him, has no teaching authority or faculty. Not to the Scriptures, because it is the test of the right understanding of them that is required, and to take them as the test of this is to reason in a vicious circle.
Protestants, historically considered, arrived at their rule through Protestantism, not at Protestantism through the application of their rule, and the fact is, they cannot logically assert their rule till they have proved or obtained aliunde their Protestantism. They are obliged to prove their Protestantism in order to prove their rule, and they must prove their rule in order to prove their Protestantism. This is a grave inconvenience. But, assuming without proof that the Scriptures are the sufficient and only rule of faith, they conclude, against undeniable facts, that the Bible is a plain book, and intelligible to the people, to even the unlearned, as it should be if intended by its divine Author to be the sufficient and only rule of faith. They find their conclusion untenable, and modify their statement, and say that their conclusion is true as to all things necessary to salvation. But, finding no agreement among Protestants themselves who take the Bible as their sufficient and only rule of faith as to what things are necessary to salvation, they divide. One class declares more or less distinctly that no objective faith is necessary to salvation, and another class, in which is included our author, asserts, while maintaining the right of private judgment, the private illumination of the Holy Ghost as the rule for interpreting the Scriptures, apparently not perceiving that they are in flagrant contradiction with themselves.
The professor objects (p. 127) to tradition as the rule of faith that it is not adapted to that purpose: “A rule of faith to the people must be something they can apply; a standard by which they can judge. But the unwritten tradition is not contained in any one volume accessible to the people and intelligible by them.” This were a valid objection, if the
people had to seek through all history to find and verify the tradition; but is no objection at all, if we suppose an infallible teacher, always present, who preserves and applies the tradition for the people. But does the Protestant escape his own objection by rejecting all unwritten tradition, and making the Bible alone the rule of faith, which is at least as unintelligible to the people as is unwritten tradition explained and applied by duly authorized preachers of the word?