However, after much deep thought about how to defend theology with logic and about how to prove its consistency and about how to justify the adoption of beliefs, I have come to believe that the "force" of these questions rests on a number of implicit assumptions which are completely illogical. In asking these questions, I think the questioner is already making a number of false assumptions – and it is because of these that they are running into difficulties. I will here attempt to bring the faulty and illogical foundation of these assumptions to light and examine them, thereby showing that the questions here have no force.

In examining these implicit assumptions, I will attempt to systematically expose their falsity. This discussion will ultimately involve examining the questions of authority, of the relationship between Scripture and the Church, of the meaning and nature of the inspiration of God, and what it means to be infallible.

If you are a conservative Protestant reader then you will probably find many of the ideas here severely challenging to your entire system of thought: I effectively spend much of this discussion systematically demolishing your foundations. I am sorry for what pain it may cause, as I know questioning long-held beliefs is difficult, but I would be more sorry to not have given those who are seeking truth the insights I have had into it.

I spend the second half of this discussion constructing a system with sound logical foundations which is immune to all the attacks discussed earlier. My ultimate aim is to make the your faith stronger, more sensible, and to enable you to have a sure knowledge of why you believe what you do. I also hope that the results will make you more effective in evangelism as well as leading you on to a sounder understanding of doctrine through an improved understanding of our justification for believing it. I hope that not only will my constructed system of theology be seen as logical, but that you will also understand why it is the only logical system.

I do not hold any romantic assumptions that everyone will find my arguments convincing. I merely provide what insights I have had in the hope that they may be useful to some who are willing to accept them. If, at the end of the day, I have done no more than encourage someone to think more deeply about why they believe what they believe then I will be happy. So, imploring God’s help in aiding our understanding, let us turn now to the arguments...

Firstly, let us examine how it is that a person comes to believe the truth of the Christian faith. In my experience it happens in one of three ways. One, a person is presented with the gospel and Christian beliefs verbally by an evangelising Christian, and they respond by believing and praying to accept Christ into their heart, whereupon they join a local congregation and then grow in understanding of what the Christian faith is about. Two, a person is invited along to a church by a friend and is so impressed by the love and fellowship that the Christians have for one another that they want to continue coming back and feel that there must be Truth behind all this as they see the difference that Truth has made in the lives of these Christians. Three, a person is brought up a Christian, and grows up having Christianity as part of their own identity. There are variations on the themes, but I doubt a very significant number of conversions occur outside of this. For example, there are few people who go out themselves and search for religious truth independently of everyone else and then –upon coming to a conclusion that all the Christian doctrines are true independently of any Christian teaching save their own study of the bible– become Christians.

There is a simple lesson in this: few people come to faith in Christianity because of the bible, but many come to faith in the bible because of Christianity. The Christianity everyday non-Christians encounter in their lives is not a scholarly analysis of the bible, but rather they encounter Christians telling them about the Christian message and living it out. The faith is not passed on through the written word of the bible nearly so much as by the word and deed of the Christians. Whether or not my psychological analysis here is correct, the only important point for my argument is this:

Of people being introduced to the Christian faith for the first time: Nobody first believes "the bible is inerrant" and then believes in Christianity because of it. Instead, people first believe in the general truth of the Christian faith and then, because of that belief, come to the belief that the bible is inerrant when they are told that this is what Christians believe.

The foundation on which their faith is being based is not "I believe the bible", but rather "I believe Christianity is generally true". Only after Christians tell the new believer that a central tenet of Christianity is that the bible is the inerrant foundation of the faith does the believer accept that tenet because of their belief that "Christianity is generally true".

As I see it, the central issue is the realisation that the foundation of "the infallible bible" is incorrect and that the actual foundation is "Christianity is generally true". I have already explained one justification for this argument, and I will proceed to explain several more here. At this stage the difference might seem trivial. It might seem that since both the bible and Christianity are true that I am playing pointless word games. However I shall attempt to demonstrate that the results of these two foundations are profoundly different, and that using "the bible" as the foundation is completely illogical and leads to insolvable problems, whilst using the foundation of "Christianity is generally true" is natural, even tautological.

Before going further, let me establish clearly that "Christianity is generally true" is in itself a sound foundation. (With or without the added "the bible is true") That is, all Christians will have the belief that "Christianity is generally true" as their central and foundational point of belief. It is difficult to make an argument in this area, for the proposition is so close to being tautological that there is little to argue. Put it this way: If someone did not believe that Christianity is generally true then they should not call themselves Christian, and if someone does believe Christianity is generally true then they should certainly call themselves a Christian. Thus "Christians" by such a definition believe that "Christianity is generally true". This, therefore, is a belief common to all Christians everywhere and indeed being the primary thing distinguishing Christians from non-Christians.

However, we can go further and say that whatever reason a person has for being a Christian is going to be equivalent to their reason for believing that "Christianity is generally true". If someone has witnessed a miracle in a Christian context, they will immediately think "Christianity is [generally] true". If someone hears the gospel and is convinced they will think "Christianity is [generally] true". If someone encounters caring loving Christians whos lives have been changed then they will think that "Christianity is [generally] true". I put brackets around the "generally" because, though the person is unlikely to think it to themselves, it is implied by their lack of specific knowledge as to exactly which points of Christian doctrine are true. Their experiences do not, for example, tell them whether Calvinism is more or less true than Arminianism or Roman Catholicism. Their experiences only point out that Christianity as a whole is generally true.

There are a few special cases with those who come to faith because of a specific doctrine. For example, a person might study the arguments about the historicity of the resurrection and therefore believe the resurrection happened and that therefore "Christianity is [generally] true, and the resurrection certainly true". Or they might study the argument of the famous "Trilemma" and be convinced that Jesus was certainly God and that therefore "Christianity is [generally] true, and Jesus certainly God".

The only such special case that presents difficulty to my argument is those who study the bible before believing in the truth of Christianity and whos belief the bible can in some way be said to be the cause of. In this special case, the bible is a greater authority that "Christianity is [generally] true" since it is their reason for believing that statement rather than the other way around. Let me first make the quick note that this case is very much only applicable in recent years. Only since the invention of modern printing methods have bibles become particularly widespread.

Now, many people who are uncertain about their belief in the truth of Christianity, study the bible: there is little doubt of that. But, what we need to distinguish, for this argument, are three types different groups of people within this category. One type are those who do not already believe in Christianity, but after an intense study of the bible, come to believe it is inerrant or infallible in matters of faith and therefore that the Christian faith is true. It is only this group that concerns us

Then there are those who do not believe, but after reading some of the bible, think "wow, this is awesome...". Perhaps they were amazed at the miracles God wrought, or they saw the truth that the bible had to speak about the human condition, or perhaps they were stunned by the teachings of Jesus or the writings of the apostles etc. They say "it really touches my heart" and are in some way inclined now to accept "Christianity is [generally] true" by their reading. These people, from our point of view, are similar to the people who got their faith from other Christians via evangelism. In this case those other Christians are just the writers of the bible. These people have no more reason to think "the bible is inerrant or infallible on matters of faith" than a person who has been evangelised thinks "the person who evangelised me is inerrant or infallible on matters of faith". Their study of the bible has not brought them to the conclusion that "the bible is in some way infallible and therefore Christianity is [generally] true", rather it has brought them to the conclusion that "through this study my heart has been opened to realising that Christianity is [generally] true".

Thirdly, there are those who would like to believe, but who want to check out everything for themselves first. Upon hearing Christian beliefs, they are ready to accept them but want to check out everything for themselves. Since they have heard that Christianity is based on the bible to some degree or another, they decide to study it. So they go to the bible and they read part of all of the bible themselves. Either they will conclude that the bible contains contradictions etc and Christianity is not true, or they will conclude "I can see how Christianity’s claims are consistent. It claims to be in agreement with the bible and I think it is. Since it is consistent in it’s claims and I want to believe it: Christianity is [generally] true". In this case the bible to some extent can be said to "impede" their conversion. Even if it has aided their conversion there seems no reason for them to be convinced that the bible is infallible above and beyond their belief in the general truth of Christianity.

Therefore, the only group relevant to the argument – who might cause us to think that "the infallible bible" rather than "Christianity is [generally] true" is the foundation of Christian belief are that first group. These people have started off as unbelievers who had no particular motivation to believe in Christianity, and after thoroughly investigating the bible they have concluded that it is infallible. Therefore, they have become Christians. Thus, they believe that "Christianity is [generally] true because the bible is infallible".

Now this group would be a somewhat annoying special case. But actually I wonder whether such people exist. In fact, I don’t believe they do. This is because it is virtually impossible to come to their alleged conclusion on solely logical grounds such as it is claimed that they did.

Is it ever possible to decide that a book is infallible? If you read it and didn’t spot any mistakes – would that make it infallible? You couldn’t be sure – all you’d know is that you didn’t know of any mistakes in it. Only by checking every single claim the book made and finding they were all true would you be able to assert that the book is entirely true. But with the bible many of its claims are theological ones – uncheckable. We cannot verify claims of miracles that God performed to Israel or Abraham thousands of years ago.

Perhaps if a book claims it is infallible, that gives us the ability to say it’s infallible? I assert that everything I write is infallible. Does that make my writing infallible? Does it confer to the reader any extra authority or ability to check that infallibility? I don’t believe it does. The only way I can imagine a person coming to believe a book was infallible would be if a book declared clearly that it was God-inspired and infallible and proceeded to convince the reader that it was indeed God inspired. Then, it seems to me that the reader would be reasonably convinced of its infallibility.

Let us examine then what claims the bible makes about its inspiration, and infallibility. By far and away the most commonly quoted passage in defence of such claims is 2 Timothy 3:16:

"All scripture is inspired by God and is [Footnote - Or: Every scripture inspired by God is also] useful for teaching, for reproof for correction and for training in righteousness..." (NRSV)

We should note that many biblical scholars feel it is very probable that the book of 2 Timothy was not authored by the Apostle Paul. However, the verse still says what it says regardless of who wrote it.

The footnote makes difficult the argument that this verse clearly teaches the inspiration of Scripture. If the verse is indeed to be read in the alternative way then it is making no claim at all about the universal inspiration of scripture, merely talking about the uses of inspired scripture.

But least I sidetrack the issue, let me say this: I believe completely in the divine inspiration of Holy Scripture. Such inspiration has been and continues to be the firm teaching of Christians everywhere and I have not the least wish to doubt this or say anything against such a teaching.

What I will argue against here is the assumption that "inspiration implies infallibility" and argue that this verse is not a claim of infallibility, but merely inspiration (if even that). Firstly, let us note that the sentence does not end in verse 16, but continues:

"...so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work." (vs 17)

We see then that from the writer’s point of view, the entire point of God’s inspiration of Scripture is to equip Christians for good works. This reminds me of a passage in Ephesians which reads:

"For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life." (Eph 2:10, NRSV)

It, says the writer, was to equip us for these good works that God inspired the Scriptures. How does this inspiration equip us to do good? It helps by being "useful for teaching", "reproof for correction" and "for training in righteousness". All these are different ways of saying the same thing: That the Scripture can be used to teach, help, and guide us towards becoming righteous people who do good.

I think no Christian (and few non-Christians) would deny that the bible does this. The Scripture is full of things which can be used as examples of righteous behaviour, sound teachings to help us get there, and demonstrations of how various people have erred along the way.

Some people believe that inspiration must imply infallibility. They believe that since God is completely truthful, anything He has written cannot possibly in any way contain mistakes or error. They perhaps quote the verses about how God’s word accomplishes what He sets out for it to do, or that God’s word is completely truthful. But this is beside the point: Nobody denies these things. Of course God’s word accomplishes His desire for it – God wanted to inspire the Scriptures to provide us with examples, teachings and corrections towards righteousness and He has successfully done so. And God Himself, in everything He does is undeniably truthful. The confusion comes in understanding the concept of inspiration. We believe God somehow inspired the Scripture and yet we know that humans wrote them. The problem comes in understanding this relationship.

One way to understand inspiration –as many do– is to say that God’s Spirit so inspired the writers that they wrote exactly what God wanted, and it was thus without error. But now we see that our conclusion was dependent upon our unsubstantiated theory about how God inspired Scripture. The idea that God’s inspiration worked by God inspiring the writers to write exactly what God wanted is something we have made up ourselves in order to understanding "inspiration".

Unless we can prove the truth of this theory – or show that all possible theories of inspiration imply infallibility, we cannot logically conclude that infallibility is true just because inspiration is. Let me present a theory of inspiration via an analogy, which I believe more accurately resembles the truth¹.

Imagine a kid at primary school doing painting. The kid decides to paint a picture of his teacher. The teacher helps the kid by suggesting corrections – to use a different colour, or to try painting over a certain piece again. Occasionally the teacher reaches over the child's shoulder and takes hold of the brush – not taking it off the child, but gently guiding the child's hand. Eventually the child finishes the picture and takes it home and says "look mum at what I painted!" The picture is the child's – it was not painted by the teacher. The picture is imperfect – it was painted by the child. But the picture is far better than the child could ever have done on its own, because the child had the help of the teacher's guidance. The teacher has brought out the best in the child, helped the child to reach the limits of the child’s abilities. If the teacher had wanted a perfect picture, the teacher could have sat down and painted one themself and given it to the child to take home and look at.

I see the bible as similar to that picture – the bible is part of the portrait mankind has drawn of God under the inspiration and guidance of God. Did God guide the authors? Yes. Did God steal their paintbrush, draw the picture Himself perfectly, then give them the finished result? No. We know that God let human authors write the bible themselves... had He needed the picture to be perfect could He not have –like the teacher– painted the picture entirely Himself and then given it to the child from on high? What is to stop God in His power, presenting all mankind with the perfect word of God from heaven? Nothing, save His will that humankind themselves be the ones to paint the picture, for it to be them who searched for the truth about Him. His actions towards man have been "so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him" declared Paul to the Athenians (Acts 17:27, NRSV). I see the bible as part of this "search for God". Man, guided by the loving God, is inspired to depict Him to the best they can.

Hence I see no reason to accept that inspiration implies infallibility. To me, "inspiration" means fallibility, the very fact that we need to be inspired and helped along in our search for God is a note in itself about the complete fallibleness and incompetency of man when it comes to the things of God. But I see no reason to think God dictated everything inerrantly. That level of Divine dictation is what we find in man-made religions such as Islam or Mormonism. That is obviously man’s standard idea of "how I would do it if I was God". But God hasn’t done it that way – we know that the human authors of the bible didn’t write what they wrote under the direct dictation of an Angel or write hearing the audible voice of God booming out the words. They wrote their insights into the workings of God in the world, they wrote based on the experience of the divine workings that they had seen in their lives, they wrote with the faint small voice of the inner guidance of the Spirit.

The Christian God respects our freedom and encourages our growth: He teaches and guides us with feather-light touches - never stealing our paintbrush or compelling us. We are asked not to "grieve" the Spirit (Eph 4:30) by engaging in wickedness, and also not to "quench" the Spirit (1 Thess 5:19). The Spirit will not force us to do anything against our wishes, rather it asks and guides us lightly. So much so that we have the power to reject it, and grieve it when we wish. That small voice lets us have the complete control to hurt ourselves in any way we wish and it is only saddened by this. Does this sound like a controlling, compelling power – a Force of God that controls humans like puppets making them dictate every word of Scripture according to His exact wishes? God forbid!

Let us not blaspheme God by insisting like pagans that He is utterly controlling or denies us our human freedom. Let us not insist that God forced the writers of Scripture to do His will. Let us not insist that God strips people of their human power to do wrong, to be fallible, to make mistakes. Let us not insist that what Paul really meant when he said that humans "would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him" was that "God irresistibly forces humans to do His will".

Paul was confronted with this very same question by the Corinthian Church. There were, apparently, those who were insisting that when speaking in tongues they were in the grip of the Spirit and that they could not say anything other than what the Spirit wanted them to speak nor be silent when the Spirit was inspiring them. Paul’s response to this is firm: "If anyone speaks in a tongue, let there be only two or at most three.... If there is no one to interpret, let them be silent in church.... If a revelation is made to someone else sitting nearby, let the first person be silent. For all of you can prophesy one by one.... the spirits of prophets are subject to the prophets, for God is a God not of disorder but of peace." (1 Cor 14:27-33, NRSV)

Paul is clear that the believers response to the Spirit can be to speak or not to speak, to act in accordance with its urging or to delay until later (wait your turn), or to never speak (if two or three have already spoken). For "the spirits of prophets are subject to the prophets" (vs 32): Man has control over the Spirit, to obey its urging or not. I see no reason to make distinction between this and what else God inspires, thus I believe that in the inspiration and writings of scripture the spirits of the writers was subject to the writers.

Now, I have here outlined my beliefs about how God’s inspiration works. Under this model inspiration does not imply infallibility – and indeed humanness (as in everything) implies fallibility. We are not God, no matter how spirit filled: Not yet at least. As I alluded to earlier, it would be necessary to prove that in all possible theories of inspiration, inspiration implied infallibility, in order to prove that infallibility was true. I have presented here a theory of inspiration that does not imply infallibility. I believe this theory has great merit, and I have presented several reasons why I believe this. Hence, short of a disproof of this theory and all such similar theories (or a proof of some alternative theory of inspiration), it is illogical to conclude that infallibility must follow from inspiration.

But perhaps someone would say (as I sometimes see written) "God in His inspiration and guidance worked with the writers so that their own free will was preserved, BUT at all times He did not allow error". That seems to me a fairly arbitrary statement. How exactly does He achieve this "not allow[ing] error" without overruling the writer’s free will? Adding the words "so that their own free will was preserved" is a thoughtful addition, and a laudable belief, but doesn’t actually prove that such preservation is possible. It could well just be making the whole idea nonsensical – eg taking a circle and saying it’s "A square circle" doesn’t serve to make the circle square, only impossible.

If we are agreed that inspiration or guidance is not always direct and that an unstoppable degree of force was not always used in the guidance, then why add the seemingly tacked on proviso "but at all times He did not allow error"? There seems no good logical defence of this non-trivial addition. How does this person know that God didn’t allow error? Or is he, as I suspect, making an arbitrary assumption that supports what he'd like to believe was true?

A second major argument I would allege against infallibility is the question of canon. The bible "canon" is the list of the books that are considered Biblical. In the case of infallibility, it is the exact writings that are being claimed to be infallible. Up until this point, I have only considered the idea that a single book was claiming to be infallible – but the bible is an arbitrary collection of books. Even if we were to find all my previous arguments false and establish with some certainty that one book in the bible was both inspired and infallible, what then? "Therefore the whole bible is inspired"? How does that follow?

Let us imagine that the writer of 2 Timothy 3:16 had unambiguously claimed that all scripture was infallible, and that we found some reason to convince ourselves that he was probably right in his claim. That does still not justify the logic that "Scripture is infallible, I call this Scripture, therefore it is infallible". The writer, when talking of "scripture" would have had certain books in mind (namely the Old Testament), and it is only by irrationally projecting our thoughts onto him that we can claim he was thinking of our scripture. We would not even know whether he included books of the Apocrypha or Pseudepigrapha or Ester (these books were not universally accepted in the early church) in his infallible scriptures. This makes any claim that "the bible as I think of it contains exactly all of the God-made-infallible books in the world" a rather difficult claim to substantiate.

About a dozen different lists of bible books survive from prior to the end of the 4^th century AD. Christians did not agree about the books that should be in the New Testament and did not agree about the books which should be in the Old Testament. Today, there are five main versions of the bible in use around the world: Protestant, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox (which comes in both Greek and Slavonic versions), Peshitta (Syrian), and Ethiopian (which comes in longer and shorter versions). Briefly (using the Protestant bible as the standard of comparision): the Roman Catholic’s add a number of books to their Old Testament (the Apocrypha); the Orthodox have a slightly longer Apocypha; the Peshitta claims Aramaic originals for the New Testament rather than Greek and contains five fewer New Testament books (it excludes James, 2 Peter, 2&3 John, Revelation); the different versions of the Ethiopian canons include extra books in both their Old and New Testaments.

It would seem rather prideful to claim with full certainty that the bible that your particular Christian group has taught you is the infallible one and the rest are not-so-infallible to one degree or another. Here we approach another point, namely that the contents of the bible any given Christian uses are determined first and foremost by what their particular church has taught them to use. A very very few Christians might study the different bibles for themselves, but it seems clear that the vast majority of all Christians simply accept the bible as defined by their own group, often without even knowing that different Christian groups use different bibles.

So, in practice, it is church teaching that has defined the bible. In fact the word "canon" means "rule" and is used of any "rules of faith" that the church laid down. Thus church council decisions take the form of "canons", the church can "canonise" a saint, and the books of the bible that a particular church accepts are their "canonical" books

Even if the scripture that God has inspired is utterly infallible, the question confronts us: What scriptures has God made infallible? The choice is being made in practice by church teaching. The church is defining for us the scriptures, and hence defining the infallible word of God – if we were indeed to believe that. But that would mean that the church definition would need to be infallible. After all, what’s the use of believing that God infallibly wrote some books somewhere if you can’t know which books? Obviously a believer of infallibility must believe that their books are infallible, and therefore believes that their church managed to infallibly decide on the right ones.

But what is this: "church teaching" infallible? What about Sola Scriptura? Sola Scriptura, for those who are unfamiliar with it, is the belief that scripture and only scripture – and not church teachings – is authoritative. The Reformers disagreed with what they believed to be corrupt teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. Thus they could not accept that the church had authority to give these teachings and the Reformers began a back-to-the-bible movement. They said that something was only allowed to be a doctrine if it could be proved from scripture and only to the degree that it could be proven and that therefore the Roman church was unjustified in many of its teachings. This doctrine is called "Sola Scriptura" or "Scripture Alone".

Now in saying that the church teaching on the scriptures is infallible skirts dangerously close to disagreement with Sola Scriptura. So let us examine this further. Now, surely God must have inspired this infallible decision that the church made about which books were to be in the bible and which weren't. Or are we to think that sinful man chose God’s infallible word without any assistance from God? So we find that God has apparently been infallibly guiding the church on matters of a least one doctrine. Is there any good reason He would limit His interference to only one matter of doctrine and abstain from all the others? Not that I can imagine.

Now we see the way that the cookie must crumble: In our hypothetical attempt to salvage a doctrine of infallibility we have just crashed into Sola Scriptura and ended up denying supreme authority to the scripture and instead attributing that authority to a church that apparently makes infallible decisions. That’s a rather worrying logical conclusion. But let us now turn to Sola Scriptura itself and examine the merits (or otherwise) of that doctrine.

The belief that scripture alone is authoritative and that Christians should not hold any non-scriptural beliefs and that the church does not have any authority to create doctrine outside of that defined in scripture, is a belief that can be traced to the Reformers. In rejecting their church’s errors they were forced to reject the authority of their church in making those doctrines they believed to be in error. Using this belief that anything Scripture says is true and anything not directly provable from it, isn’t a part of Christianity they were able to attack the teaches of the Roman Church as man-made tradition. I will argue later that their understanding of church authority was incorrect and that they were throwing the baby out with the bath water in this instance.

But for now, let us see how Sola Scriptura (or "Scripture alone") is flawed. I believe the doctrine "self-defeats" in two very simple ways. Both mean that the doctrine is illogical and inadmissible as it doesn’t even make logical sense itself, never mind helping the rest of our theology to be more logical and coherent.

One, nowhere in Scripture does it teach the doctrine of Sola Scriptura. The belief that church teachings or traditions are invalid is not found in scripture, nor is the idea that Scripture itself is all that is necessary for a Christian. Paul often reminds his believers at his churches of oral teachings which they have had. In 2 Thessalonians 2:2 Paul says "by spirit or by word or by letter" as if he considers prophetic utterances of the spirit, his own teachings to them in person, and his written (scriptural) letter to them, to all have authority. In 2 Timothy 2:2 he exhorts Timothy to hold fast to the teachings that Timothy had received from Paul – presumably orally rather than through any scriptural authority. In 1 Corinthians 15:1-3 Paul reminds believers of the traditions he passed on to them that he in turn received from others, which he describes as being "of first importance" (vs 3).

"That’s all very well," someone might argue, "but does not Jesus attack the Pharisees for adding their traditions to the Scripture?" Well, yes he does, but it must be remembered that the ground of his attack is that their teachings are false teachings, that they have themselves (outside of any guidance of the Spirit) made man-made laws which opposed God’s will and taught them as true. Jesus, however, proclaims that the Spirit of truth which will guide Christians into truth (John 16:13), and Paul as we have seen recognises tradition and the spirit as valid guides of the truth.

I will discuss the exact authority and nature of this tradition later, but for now it is enough to conclude that Sola Scriptura is not taught in scripture, and thus it self-defeats: According to the doctrine we should not believe anything not taught in scripture, but the doctrine in not taught in scripture, therefore according to the doctrine we should not believe the doctrine.

The second way the doctrine self-defeats is in the definition of the bible. Sola Scriptura presupposes a defined Scripture which can be "Sola". But as we have already seen, the Scripture itself is defined as a result of church teaching. Hence the definition of Scripture is invalid according the this doctrine. Since Scripture nowhere in Scripture defines itself, we must inevitably rely on a definition of Scripture that is external to Scripture. But such external definitions are invalid by the doctrine of Sola Scriptura, and hence the doctrine itself ends up, once again, denying its own validity.

"Ah, but Sola Scriptura is a meta-doctrine. It’s a doctrine about how to approach doctrine which doesn’t apply to itself." Well, all right, insisting it’s not allowed to apply to itself escapes the logical dilemma (though I wonder if insisting that it doesn’t apply to itself counts as a non-biblical teaching and hence illegal by Sola Scriptura – or does that modification not apply to itself either?). But I do have to have serious second thoughts about the validity or use of a doctrine that is so dubious that it rules itself out of court and doesn’t stand up to its own logic. I have to wonder – how on earth could such a doctrine actually be helpful in making the rest of our theology more consistent and logical? I also have to wonder about the arbitrary tacked-on nature that this doctrine is beginning to have. But I think the true tacked-on nature of it goes deeper: I think that the main reason why most people actually want to believe in infallibility is because it is a sure-up for the doctrine of Sola Scriptura.

It’s easy to think that if you accept the infallibility of scripture that the perceived problems with Sola Scriptura will vanish. (Though hopefully not so easy any more to readers of this!) As I see it, the reason that many of the questions that I was asked to address were felt to be so compelling and problematic to the questioner was probably because what you were thinking boiled down to "But Christianity [based on Sola Scriptura] makes no sense without infallibility!". But let’s explore this more. Let’s say that to be a Christian means to "believe in and accept as authoritative" the bible.

However, what does "believe in" and "accept as authoritative" mean? Ultimately, to have any meaningful application, it involves interpretation. At any point where we ask "what does the bible say about what I should do here?" we are implicitly asking "what do I think the bible says about this?". Regardless of whether the bible itself is inerrant, it is only possible to apply our interpretations of the bible to everyday life – which are, of course, fallible. The translations themselves are fallible, our understanding of the Biblical languages themselves is fallible, language itself is subject to ambiguity. Whatever the reasons, there are certainly many passages in the bible where believers have not agreed over what was meant.

We also have the question of "Is what the author meant infallible, or are the words written infallible?". Though we can trivially solve such a dilemma by arbitrarily choosing one or the other, though I do not see how anyone could have certainty in this decision.

Regardless, believers have well and truly disagreed about "what the bible says" and we end up basing our beliefs about "what the bible says" on fallible interpretations of fallible translations regardless of whether the original writings themselves were infallible. Thus those who claim infallibility can be seen to be doing so for the wrong reasons: A claim of infallibility does not save us from private interpretations, nor does a claim of infallibility provide an infallible foundation for doctrine. Those are gone with Sola Scriptura and there is no retrieving them with infallibility.

Even the basic fact that the claim of infallibility is not infallible demonstrates the silliness of the claim. If someone claims the bible is infallible, they might be right or they might be wrong. I ask: what is the point of fallibly claiming infallibility of the Scripture that supports Christian doctrine? Instead of that mess, why not merely claim that "Christian doctrine is true"? Which is easier and more logical: To fallibly claim that "The doctrines of Christianity are true" or to claim fallibly the infallibility of Scripture which can be used to show that the doctrines of Christianity are true.

Why bother with things like infallibility and Sola Scriptura? I have discussed at length the logical difficulties that plague them, and I now argue that at the end of the day they do not help. To claim as doctrine the truth of the Scriptures and to then use them to justify Christian doctrine is no more logically compelling than to simply claim Christian doctrine itself as doctrine; and the latter is certainly much simpler!

"Okay," it is sometimes argued, "you might be right about the problems of interpretation etc, but without infallibility there is never any hope of coming up with the correct beliefs because the texts themselves are fallible." But this seems to me a strange objection, and one that ignores real life. Our newspapers are fallible. Is there "never any hope of coming up with the correct" beliefs about the facts about the news by reading the newspaper? History textbooks are fallible. Is there "never any hope of coming up with the correct" beliefs about history by reading a textbook? Physics lecturers are fallible. Is there "never any hope of coming up with the correct" beliefs about physics by believing what your lecturer tells us. To say these things is plain absurd, and I see no reason to think that stating that "if the bible is fallible then there is never any hope of coming up with the correct beliefs about theology by reading it", is any less so. This argument does not work as applying the same logic to the real world shows clearly.

Indeed, nothing at all that we ever know in this life is "infallible". Everything could be wrong, from our belief that the earth goes around the sun, to our belief that E = MC^2, to our belief that the world wasn’t created 5 seconds ago, to our belief that God exists. In a world of uncertainty we seem to manage okay in everyday life, 24 hours a day 7 days a week, without our universe being infallible. The idea that our theological world would fall on its face without infallibility is hence an idea I find rather difficult to accept. Even if you believe in infallibility, that belief is still fallible, so what’s the point? Why not just say "the following doctrines are infallibly true" and list the Christian doctrines? Or better yet, say "Christianity is infallibly true" or just "Christianity is true".

At the end of the day these meta-doctrines do not help us prove doctrine, for they are in themselves as difficult to defend (if not more!) than the doctrines they purport to be helping to defend. They are hence useless, and complicate the situation. Even worse they distract us from our doctrine. One example of this is the difference between "I believe in the bible" and "I believe in God". The former is a meta-doctrine – a doctrine you believe about how you can prove the important truths of Christianity to yourself, the latter a central truth of the Christian faith. Tying ourselves up in meta-doctrines only serves to change our faith. We end up having our faith stand or fall on the bible rather than on God.

I have talked to many atheists, who are atheists primarily for the reason that they could not bring themselves to accept the infallibility of the bible. Some of them saw what they believed was a logical contradiction in something the bible said. Others were convinced evolution was true. Whether they were right or wrong in these beliefs is irrelevant to this discussion. I have talked to many who I am convinced lost their faith because they could not accept meta-doctrines. Far from helping to support the central truths of their Christian faith, the meta-doctrine of infallibility became for them a stumbling stone. Because they were convinced that this doctrine was of great importance, rather than merely an aid in the defence of the central beliefs, they renounced their faith because of it. Their faith stood or fell on the bible – they believed in "the bible" far more than they believed in God.

This is a simple challenge to us as Christians – is Christianity centred on the written word of the bible, or in a relationship to a living God? Do we "believe in the bible", or do we believe in the one who inspired it, who leads us all to Himself, who created us all, who sustains us all, who is above all and through all and in all? Does our faith consist of giving our lives to Him each moment in a continual prayer of communicating with Him by living in love and turning to Him in everything we do, by being filled with His spirit and reflecting His nature as we strive to grow in compassion and attain His likeness? Or does our faith consist of "believing the bible" and believing it can be used to justify a number of doctrines about God? I suggest that if all our faith is in the written word of a two thousand year old book then it is dead, but if our faith is in the Spirit and truth of God as He is today then we are truly alive.

Finally, why is it, that a Baptist, a Jehovah’s Witness, a Brethren and a Methodist read one and the same bible and come to such different conclusions? The simple answer is: Sola Scriptura. They each believed that the Scriptures alone were authoritative and that they themselves had the right to interpret it in accordance with their own understanding. What was it Jesus said about a tree and its fruit? "every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit... Thus you will know them by their fruits" (Matt 7:18-19,21, NRSV) What would happen if we judged Sola Scriptura by its fruits – would it be a good tree or a bad? I challenge anyone to say that the endless splitting of the church which has resulted in 24,000 or so denominations, this endless shredding of the body of Christ is a good fruit. The fruit of this doctrine has been nothing more that complete and utter disunity. If there ever was a bad fruit, the splitting that has happened to the Church is it. If the world even paid the Church any heed any more, and if the situation wasn’t old news, we would be a laughing stock and all Christians in tears at what has happened to Christ’s body. But what happens to bad trees that bear bad fruit? "Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire." (vs 19). Let us do exactly that².

I have been entirely negative so far, and I apologise somewhat for that even though I feel it was necessary. It must certainly be troubling for anyone who feels I have spent 7000 words criticising and shredding their cherished beliefs! Let me now be a bit more positive. We have seen what doesn’t work and why it doesn’t work, well let us now turn to what works and use what we have learned in the previous discussion to understand why it works. Then we shall be in the much better position of not only having true and logical beliefs, but also understanding why they are true and logical, and the pain of the previous negative arguments can result in spiritual growth and maturity.

If you think back to the start of my argument, I discussed the difference between the belief that "Christianity is [generally] true" and "the bible is infallible, therefore Christianity is [generally] true". We saw that the vast majority of people come to believe the former for whatever reason, while very few indeed take the latter path and believe in Christianity because of the infallibility of the bible. Also we have seen the difficulties that "the bible is infallible" presents us with when it comes to the foundation of doctrine. The obvious next step then is to explore the validity of "Christianity is [generally] true" as a foundational statement.

We have seen that "Christianity is [generally] true," is the conclusion that the vast majority of people reach before deciding to become Christians, thus it makes sense that whatever other theology we build, should be built upon this common foundation. Indeed, we saw that for many people this belief in the general trueness of Christianity is the only belief they have about Christianity – so it follows that everything they believe about Christian doctrine must arise as a consequence of this belief.

In most cases what happens is that the new convert goes along to a church and just accepts any doctrines that this church tells them, on the assumption that these teachings constitute "Christianity" and that "Christianity is [generally] true". But we can look at the issue in a more general sense. Let us go beyond what happens in practice, for not every church a new convert goes to teaches perfectly logical and consistent doctrine. We need to answer the question "what is Christianity?" and then we will be able to combine this answer with "Christianity is [generally] true" to be able to start drawing logical conclusions.

At this point, I am aware, many people would like to insert their own definition of Christianity – perhaps it might be "Belief in the death and resurrection of Christ", or "An acceptance of the truths about God and His Son as presented in the Holy Scriptures", or perhaps much longer statements of faith – some well known creed, perhaps. But by such arbitrary routes we are never going to arrive at a definition that everyone accepts – nor is our authority for that definition going to be adequate. The whole point of trying to systemise our theology is to make it clearer, more logical, easier to understand and remove areas which involve hand-waving such as this. Let us look, instead, at how words are defined in the world, and then we can apply this general observation to the case of "Christianity" and see where it gets us.

We know that language is defined by its use. Languages change over the years and the meanings of words change. The Old-English used in the Middle Ages or for the King James bible, for example, is barely decipherable today by most English speakers because many of the words which are still used from then have significantly changed their meanings. This tells us that if we want to know what a word means, we need to look to what it is being used to mean – therefore, we need to look at who’s using it.

With the word "Christianity", this task is relatively straightforward: Christianity is what people who call themselves Christians believe, it is used to denote "the beliefs and practices of Christians [in general]". If we accept this definition of Christianity, then our modified foundational statement reads "The beliefs and practices of Christians [in general] are [generally] true". Given that Christianity is based on what people who call themselves "Christians" generally believe and do, we need to look more at exactly how we can go about determining what these things are.

Well, firstly, there are those beliefs common to all Christians everywhere (or nearly all) – things that have been believed by 99.9% of all people who have called themselves Christians or been called Christians throughout history. Things such as the existence of God, the incarnation, the death and resurrection of Christ. Such things, for example, as are common to all the major creedal statements in church history and are found strongly taught throughout the bible. Whatever surety we have for believing that "Christianity is [generally] true" translates into surety for believing these central tenets – beliefs shared by all Christians.

In fact, I propose that we can say this: To the extent that a belief has found acceptance (or rejection) among believing Christians throughout history, to that same extent we are justified in believing it (or rejecting it) (because of our belief that "Christianity is [generally] true")

This is an incredibly powerful premise which allows us to construct the rest of our theology. This virtually tautological statement provides the logic and consistency needed in building our theology that we saw earlier that Sola Scriptura sorely lacked. But in case any readers are unconvinced, let me proceed to defend this statement.

We saw that a person might come to have the belief that "Christianity is [generally] true" and therefore want to be a Christian. In fact we established that "Christianity is [generally] true" was going to be a belief common to virtually all Christians, and hence a good point to base our systematic theology upon. We saw that since words are defined by how they are used, and that the word "Christianity" is universally used to describe "the beliefs and practices of Christians [in general]", that this provides us with a natural and universally accepted working definition. Hence we found that using this definition our original statement becomes "The beliefs of Christians [in general] are [generally] true". Now this statement does not tell us directly which beliefs held by Christians are true, it only tells us that the system of belief as a whole is generally more true than not. Now, if there was a doctrine that was absolutely and utterly central to Christian beliefs, then if that doctrine were not true, it would be misleading to say that Christianity was generally true – Christianity would be, in fact, generally false, with only its comparatively unimportant teachings true. Hence our belief in Christianity’s general truthfulness would tell us that such a doctrine must be true, not false. And the degree to which we are justified in believing the truthfulness of that doctrine would be the same as the degree of force that had caused us to believe that Christianity was true in the first place. (Throughout this discussion, it must be kept in mind that I am implicitly assuming there are no conflicting factors – for example, if a miraculous vision of Jesus saying "I am Jesus Christ the risen Son of God" caused you to believe in Christianity your belief in such doctrines as the resurrection would be more strongly supported than the logic I am giving here takes account of.)

A similar logic can be applied to less central doctrines. Say there are a large number of not quite so central doctrines – but none of which are true. That is, except for a very few central doctrines, the remainder and majority of Christian teachings were plain false. Then, would it be fair to say that "Christianity is [generally] true"? Not really, and so our belief in the general truth of Christianity can give us some degree of surety that these teachings are not all false. Thus we see that our degree of surety of the truth of any given teaching is based on how central it is to the faith.

A similar line of logic can be used to see that our degree of surety of the truth of any given teaching should also be based on how widely accepted among Christians such a belief is. If Christians are virtually unanimous in agreement over some belief, then to think that "Christianity is [generally] true" is to think that they are probably right.

Thus we see that the degree of strength of belief that we have in any Christian doctrine is dependent upon three things: The degree of force we have for our belief that Christianity is true, the importance of the doctrine within the Christian faith, and the extent of agreement among Christians over this doctrine. In practice this is simplified for us because we can measure the second by using the third. Every Christian probably has their own slightly differing opinion on precisely how important each doctrine is and exactly how it compares in importance to every other doctrine they believe. But by looking to the whole of Christian history and teachings we can gather an idea of the "average" importance of this doctrine to Christians, and thus to Christianity. Therefore, I conclude that to the extent that Christians throughout history have agreed about a doctrine and to the extent they have felt it was important, we are justified in believing it.

At this point I wish to bring in a second line of argument, which results in the same conclusion. Some Christian readers are no doubt thinking by now (assuming they’ve reached this point without falling asleep!), that I’ve somewhat neglected the Holy Spirit and the bible in the approach I am constructing here – how do they fit into all this?

Let us firstly deal with the activity of the Spirit. "When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth" (John 16:13, NRSV). As Christians, we proclaim the reality of that same Spirit and the truth of its dwelling within believers. If we really accept that there is any power in the Spirit, any benefit to be had from its working in our lives, then I suggest we accept that it plays an active role of guiding us into truth. As discussed earlier, when I say an "active" role, I do not mean a forceful one where it somehow takes over us and forces us to do its will. As we saw "the spirits of prophets are subject to the prophets" (1 Cor 14:32), and we are quite capable of "grieving" or "quenching" or completely ignoring the Spirit’s guidance or inspiration when it suits.

That said, we would be foolish to ignore the reality of the Spirit within the lives of believers and the life of the Church. This means we can look to believers throughout Christian history for truth that has come through the guidance of the Spirit.

Let us first examine this passage:

"First of all you must understand this, that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, because no prophecy ever came by human will, but men and women moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God." (2 Peter 1:20-21, NRSV).

Now, it is probable that the writer means we need to recognise the power of the Spirit at work in us when engaging in any sort of theological interpretation or search for truth, which is in agreement with what I have just said. Something the writer may or may not have thought of, but which I understand to be a logical outworking of his words, is that such an endeavour for truth should not be a matter of one’s own interpretation. Individually we are entirely human and entirely fallible. Even if we are trying to open ourselves to the Spirit and allow it to teach us the truth, we can still screw up quite easily, suppressing the Spirit’s guidance unconsciously and hearing only what we want to hear. None of us are perfect –not this side of eternity anyway– and I know of no one who is 100% sure of their own ability to know the perfect truth in everything.

If we recognise that we as individuals are entirely fallible for a moment, and stop insisting that our own interpretation and understand "must" be correct. Then we can, with all due humility, look to what other Christians are saying. We can say to ourselves "the Spirit has been working in the lives of Christian believers throughout history every bit as much as it has worked in my life, what has it lead them to say on this issue?" The way the unity of the Church has been so shattered in the past few centuries is mute testimony to the complete disregard for this principle.

24,000 Christian denominations? Well, I’m fairly skeptical of that commonly quoted figure, but I certainly know of a few dozen major denominations in my small country alone. Either way you look at it, that’s quite enough to be getting on with. What went wrong, what caused this mess? In short, it was every Christian putting their own knowledge of the truth above everyone else’s. Every Christian thinking they were infallible in their own beliefs and interpretations, that the Spirit had revealed the full truth to them and withheld it from the rest of believers. This is equivalent to than the Pope’s claims of infallibility. In fact it is worse, for the Pope actually has a logical argument (though a bad one, in my opinion) about his God-given infallibleness, whereas the average believer is declaring themselves infallible in their own opinions and interpretations without any logical justification for this at all – other than pride their own spiritual pride. They use their misguided belief that scripture is infallible to convince themselves that what they believe the bible says, is the infallible truth. Is there then any difference between Protestants and Roman Catholics on this? The Roman Catholics have their infallible Pope and the Protestants reject that Pope in order to make themselves their own infallible Pope, whereupon they then have infallible disagreements with what all the other infallible Popes are saying and promptly split the Church until it is in shreds. This comes across as blatant stupidity and arrogance. What would Paul have said? "Anathema"? What would Jesus have said? "Hypocrites"?

I hope we are agreed that it is absolutely and certainly impossible for it to be the case that every Christian who has ever split the Church under the belief that they know the real Truth, was actually correct. It is flatly impossible given the differences between different Christian groups for everyone to be correct. The error that hence needs guarding against is the idea that any one Christian or any small group can be guided by the Spirit to the real Truth and deny the Truths of Faith that the Spirit has lead the larger body of Christians through history to declare. For "no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation": we must submit our own personal opinions in all humility to the Spirit guided teachings of the wider Church. Instead of arrogance, and thinking of ourselves more highly than we should, we need to accept that we might well indeed be wrong and that we are not the only ones in the history of the world to be true Spirit-guided Christians. For as we have seen it is certainly the case that not every Christian who has been utterly convinced they were right, was actually right!

This brings us back to our earlier conclusion, but from a completely different line of argument: To the extent that a belief has found acceptance (or rejection) among believing Christians throughout history, to that same extent we are justified in believing it (or rejecting it) (because of our belief that the Spirit will guide believers into truth).

Now, I certainly do not propose that we should all be brainless zombies and go around saying "what the church teaches is true... what the church teaches is true... I have no will of my own..." Given that I am writing this, I think it is probably fairly clear that I –of all people– would never advocate any sort of non-thinking when it comes to Christian beliefs!

If anyone has a disagreement, that is fine, let them write a book about what they think, let them submit their arguments and thoughts to the wider body of believers. And let them leave the ultimate decision about the truth of their teachings to that wider body. Great Christian figures of the past certainly taught doctrines which aren’t universally accepted: Origen taught universalism, Augustine taught the necessity of Baptism for eternal salvation, and so forth. They wrote their ideas and the wider body of believers has since critically analysed their writings and via much reflection on them with the guidance of the Spirit has accepted much of their teaching as valuable, helpful and true, and let other parts fall by the wayside or rejected them outright.

On the central points of our Christian faith, let us have the unity of what has been taught and accepted as truth by the vast majority of Christian believers throughout our history. On those points where it has not been universally established what the truth is, let us tolerate each others opinions and submit our own arguments in all humility to the wider body of believers to consider, not thinking of ourselves more highly than we should, but instead recognising the activity of the Spirit beyond our own selves and its active role in the wider body of believers which will serve to critically analyse our ideas and act as a guard against that which does not conform to the Truths we have all already received.

Now, let it be clearly understood, that I certainly do not propose that we arbitrarily pick a church and decide to believe everything it teaches. We need instead to delve deep into the writings of all Christians through history and see what they believed, what they agreed upon and to what extent. Let us call this united stream of Christian beliefs and teachings, the "Christian Tradition". We should not fall into the trap of thinking of "Tradition" as merely something man-made, nor think that "Tradition" means doing things as they have always been done because everyone is too lazy and stupid to change them. Instead, in terms of the "Christian Tradition", our "Tradition" has come from God by the power and guidance of the Spirit working to inspire all believers everywhere into truth about God, and our "Tradition" does not change to the extent that truth does not change. Our understanding grows and develops throughout our life, we start by thinking as children and our understanding grows and matures until we reach maturity (1 Cor 13:11), but the Truth we are understanding does not change. In the same way, our Tradition is like that mustard seed, which started off small and grew until it was a great tree, providing shelter for all the birds of the air. (Mark 4:30-32) But it always is, and remains, a mustard plant: the Truth never changes.

In the bible we see that seed of Truth laid with Abraham is grown and grown. The prophets of Israel (guided by the Spirit) revealed to the people a greater understanding of God’s Truth. Jesus speaking to the disciples and the Spirit inspiring their work, revealed to them a greater understanding of God’s Truth. And in ourselves, blessed with all this and the inspired writings of Spirit-filled Christians over two millennia, we have had revealed in this great stream of Tradition an even greater understanding of that great Truth. That kernel of faith, that mustard seed laid with Abraham, has grown into a Church which covers all the world and the promises of God that Abraham would have many nations as his descendants and that Israel would be used as a light to the nations have been gloriously fulfilled.

We struggled earlier with the issue of the bible, we saw difficulties with Sola Scriptura and its infallibility. But now we have a simple framework into which to place it: inside the one great stream of Inspired Christian Tradition. The bible contains the beliefs of the earliest Christians and pre-Christian writers. It is the very heart of our Tradition, the very most ancient record of what Christians (and our predecessors) have learned of God’s Truth, what they have believed and taught and seen of the nature and workings of God. But it is only within this greater, and living Tradition, that the bible becomes relevant. By itself, a set of two or more millennia old documents are useless, but when incorporated into a stream of living water that is the Christian Tradition flowing out into the world today, it becomes powerful and relevant.

The doctrines taught by Tradition, I suggested were that which the majority of Christians had found acceptable. But what exactly do I mean when I speak of the "majority" of Christians, and submitting to their opinion? It might be understood that I think the Church is a democracy which decides truth by vote. Hardly. Truth is not decided upon arbitrarily, nor is truth changeable by any amount of voting. The truth is still what it is even if all humanity were to together declare otherwise. However, if we really think the Spirit guides believers to truth, then those in the minority should be very much reconsidering their position. Indeed, people should think it over ten times or more before challenging an established teaching. At the same time those in the majority should not use this fact as some sort of God-given sanction to their beliefs. If that minority is of any considerable size then it should severely damage everyone’s surety that they are right. Remember my conclusion is that we are justified in accepting a belief as true or false only to the extent of agreement.

Another difficulty is that the majority is not necessarily counted in numbers. Two hundred ignorant people who simply believe what they have been taught and have never seriously investigated and understood the evidence and the arguments for both sides of the question are worthless compared to the one person who has diligently studied and thoughtfully investigated the issues. The second, more subtle, difficulty with mere majorities is that we need to take into account the difference between those who have learned from Tradition and those who have not. This is an offshoot of the first point – those who have seriously investigated and understood the evidence are worth innumerably more than those who simply bring their own beliefs to the discussion. Thus those who have given reference to Tradition, who have learned from the other Christians throughout history about how to understand our theology and doctrines and practices are more informed and therefore more reliable than those who have thought themselves above such reference.

Sadly, Protestants by introducing their doctrine of Sola Scriptura excluded all Tradition but the Scriptures and then attempt to derive a system of belief from scratch from them without any reference to how other Christians had understood them. There are many dangers in this approach, all of which Protestantism has subsequently highlighted. Now frankly, I wouldn’t at all care how people got to their conclusions if they all got to the same correct conclusion. As it is, many Protestants have come to quite a large number of random conclusions by picking a position and then finding a bible verse to support it or vice versa. We end up with the very stupid situation that large numbers of Protestant groups sit quoting bible verses at each other which "prove" their positions clearly. Each group is so convinced in their own mind that their own verse is "clear" and "obvious" and wonders not everyone else agrees with them. The trouble is, they’re often both right... both verses say what they say, and they do say the opposite to each other.

The major problem in theology is that all individual verses and ideas must be understood within the context of some wider theological understanding. The reader’s entire understanding of theology results in them coming to various conclusions about a particular verse: That the author is meaning the statement as an exposition on ultimate theological truth, that the statement is meant practical advice but not ultimate truth, that the statement is depicting what man’s point of view is, that’s it’s exaggeration, that it’s a metaphor etc. One obvious issue that serves to highlight this is the Scripture speaking of God’s "palm" or "wings" or calling Him a "shield". We are universally agreeing in taking these things as metaphorical. But imagine if a group of Christians picked one of these verses at random and said "the bible is inerrant, this verse is literally true". Such a situation would result in chaos. And it has! This is exactly what has happened in theology: with innumerable less clear cut passages, believers have picked some they decide are literal theological truth. Now one advantage of not having inerrancy, as I alluded to earlier, is that they should people far less justified in doing this: knowing that their proof text could be wrong.

A major distinction in theology that needs to be made is the distinction between objective and subjective truth. By these I mean the truth from God’s omniscient perspective and the truth from an experiential perspective. One example is the Sun "rising". Now the Sun doesn’t actually literally "rise" each day, it is the result of the planet Earth spinning that makes it appear to us as if the sun were rising. Therefore in describing it we say that "the Sun is rising". And we are speaking the truth. The "subjective truth" here is no less true than "objective truth" and the bible often uses each at different times as virtually all theological truths can be understood in both a subjective and objective sense. Another example is the question of providence. When God intervenes in the natural order to cause a "coincidence" to happen, we can either point to the natural events which man perceives as leading up to and "causing" that event (and this would be a subjective truth), or we could say the event was caused by God (and this would be the objective truth). On virtually all theological matters the bible uses subjective truth in some places and objective truth in others. It is not, then, at all surprising that the Protestants – despite reading the same bible – have managed to divide themselves on virtually all theological issues.

To understand which truth is being used in a different passage entails already knowing theological truth. The troubles between conflicting theologies usually come when one group latches onto a subjective truth and the other onto an objective truth and they both (rightly) find passages in the bible supporting their beliefs (because both are true). But the subjective/objective distinction is not the only problem. One group can mistake a subjective truth for an objective truth yes, but they can also mistake practical advice for a statement of theology, or an exaggerated metaphor for literal theological truth. In short, it is impossible to expound sound theology from the bible without first knowing sound theology. To know whether to interpret something objectively or subjectively, practically or theoretically, metaphorically or literally, involves knowing the truth about the relevant theology. To understand how something fits into the bigger theological picture involves knowing that bigger picture.

Many Protestants advocate the idea of hermeneutical methods. They believe that if everyone will follow the same procedure in interpreting the bible, everyone will happily come to the same conclusions. Rarely though do hermeneutics get past such common-sense things as "look at the context" and "check how the writer uses the words elsewhere", and occasionally far more dodgy things like "find other relevant biblical passages and make sure your interpretation harmonises them because they couldn’t possibly be in real disagreement". Now I certainly do not object to people being taught to use common sense when understanding their bible, I merely object to the idea that people should be taught to think that such a system provides them with an infallible way of finding truth. Indeed, the only truth they find with such a system is their own, because any systematic algorithm of interpretation simply cannot deal with the more difficult tasks of the objective/subject, practical/theoretical, metaphorical/literal distinctions. This has been well demonstrated because despite the fact that Hermeneutics is taught across a wide range of Protestant denominations, they are all still busy finding their own truths with it. It is very clear that it is very easy to use proof-texts to find ones own beliefs in Scripture.

Indeed today many Protestants seem to have given up the idea that they can actually do any systematic theology from the bible. Instead, the post-modern trend appears to be that denominations should ignore their differences (most probably because few members of each denomination actually knows what those differences are) and unite together around the bible. "Perhaps," it seems to be thought, "if the bible is declared loudly enough we can ignore the fact that no two of us agree on what it says." The irony of the situation is that the failed Sola Scriptura (and its associated sure-up of infallibility) is the one doctrine they actually all agree upon, when it is this very doctrine that is causing all these other problems in the first place.

Thus we come back to the earlier point that those who attempt to derive their own beliefs directly from Scripture are not a trustworthy or reliable part of the Christian Tradition. Those, however, who have given reference to Tradition, who have learned from the other Christians throughout history about how to understand our theology, doctrines and practices can easily solve any objective/subjective, practical/theoretical, metaphorical/literal problems they come across – for knowing the wider theological system that has been proclaimed by Christians since the beginning, they can soundly understand individual passages.

Those following Sola Scriptura use a bottom-up interpretation: in attempting to understand wider theological Truth they examine individual passages and attempt to understand the wider truth from the individual ideas, and using those small truths as they interpret them they attempt to build up a larger idea. Whereas those following Tradition use a top-down interpretation: knowing the theological truths accepted by Christians they can interpret individual passages knowing how these truths each fit into the wider Truth.

Now strictly speaking, the problems we have discussed don’t make bible interpreting impossible for the follower of Sola Scriptura, it merely means that it has to be done in an iterative spiral shape: Read bible -> get main ideas continuously repeated throughout -> establish very basic and vague theology -> read bible -> get more ideas as the basic theology will help us to see how a few more ideas fit into the wider theology -> establish slightly better than basic theology -> read bible -> get a few more ideas about how components of the system fit together -> better theology -> read -> ideas -> better theology -> read etc. Of course, this entire process probably takes more time and thinking than the average person has to spare in a lifetime, and probably requires more God-given insights that are given to the average ten people put together. However, this tedious process can be circumvented by looking to Tradition. Christian theologians have been doing this process for two millennia now, each building upon the findings of the others. In this way each Christian can learn from those before and correct any errors made by those before, rather than have to start from scratch themselves and being plagued by their own mistakes. If the combined power of two millennia of Christian theologians each understanding the contributions of those who have gone before them then critically analysing them and having new insights, has not been able to produce the right answers out of Scripture then no one ever will. The best any individual might hope to do by coming to Scripture outside of an understanding of Tradition is to get most of the main points right.

Those ignoring Tradition show something of an arrogance and a denial of God’s guidance. Are we really to accept that the Christian writers of the second and third centuries hadn’t truly understood the theological paradigm of the faith they had received from the Apostles. Are we really to allege that for 1400 or 1900 years no Christians really understood the truth about what the writers of the bible were really meaning until the Reformers or you yourself came along and corrected us? Did it really take one and a half millennia for God to reveal the real truth about Christianity? Did it really take one and a half millennia for Christians to understand what the bible really said? Did the successors to the Apostles, the early Christian writers in the second century and third centuries really not receive the true Christian message that the Apostles have taught? And did the Reformers, writing some one and a half-millennia later, speaking a different language and living in a totally different culture, really understand the truth of what the New Testament writers had meant, when the early Christians who lived a mere hundred or so years later and lived in the same culture and spoke the same language had not understood them properly?

Put this way, it seems like untold arrogance to say such a thing. No one would ever want to admit to doing this. But this is exactly what Protestants have been doing in deed. That is, after all, exactly the point of Sola Scriptura and inerrancy. These were exactly needed so that the believer could feel justified in constructing their own theology without reference to the teachings of the Church.

We should not, as some have done, try to see the bible in opposition to Tradition, as if they were different truths that conflicted. For the bible is a part of Tradition. It was believers who wrote the bible, it was believers who chose which books would be put in the book we call "the bible", it is believers who have studied and used the bible, and it is believers who interpret meaning the bible. The bible is part of this great stream of Inspired Tradition which includes everything believers have ever believe, taught, written or done.

If I may quote Vladimir Lossky, a 20^th century Russian Orthodox writer, on this:

"In opposing Tradition to Holy Scripture as two sources of Revelation, the polemicists of the Counter Reformation put themselves from the start on the same ground as their Protestant adversaries, having tacitly recognised in Tradition a reality other than that of Scripture. Instead of being the very "hypothesis" [this word appears in Greek characters and a footnote indicates this word has been taken from the writings of St Irenaeus in the 2^nd century: Against all Heresies I:1:15-20] of the sacred books – their fundamental coherence due to the living breath passing through them, transforming their letter into "a unique body of truth" – Tradition would appear as something added, as an external principle in relation to Scripture....

The [Roman Catholic] defenders of tradition saw themselves obliged to prove the necessity of uniting two juxtaposed realities, each of which remained insufficient alone. Hence a series of false problems, like that of the primacy of Scripture or of Tradition, of their respective authority, of the total or partial difference of their content, etc....

Thus [in the case of the misguided Roman Catholic theologians] we find on the one hand Scripture or the Scriptural canon and on the other hand the Tradition of the Church, which in turn can be divided into several sources of Revelation.... But can this still be called "Tradition"? Would it not be more exact to say, with the theologians of the Council of Trent, "the traditions"? This plural well expresses what is meant when, having separated Scripture and Tradition instead of distinguishing them, the latter is projected onto the written or oral testimonies which are added to the Holy Scriptures accompanying or following it."³

Now I earlier argued that the Protestants did the wrong thing when they threw out Tradition. But what ought they have done instead when Tradition taught doctrines they saw were false? This question wrongly understands Tradition and confuses it with "what the institutional church hierarchy currently teaches". The way to oppose such authoritarian traditions is with the real Tradition itself and to attack recent inventions with the authority of the Christian Traditions of the ages. In rejecting "Church" authority, the Reformers confused the authority of the institutional church of their day with the authority of the body of believers throughout history. Instead of rejecting both in favour of Scripture alone, they should have used the second to correct the first, They should have insisted that the authorities of the institutional church had no authority to simply invent new doctrines and practices, especially not those out of accordance with those always accepted by the Church throughout the ages.

The Reformers should have insisted that the institutional authorities should not overrule Tradition rather than doing away with all traditions. However, in all fairness and honesty, by the time of the Reformers it was almost too late for this, so I do not mean to be overly harsh on them. The Roman Church had for five or so centuries before them been putting the authority of the institutional church above Tradition as it showed by the Filoque and its Papal claims. The schism between Rome and the Orthodox in 1054 had ultimately endured because the Orthodox were not prepared to accept Rome’s claims about the authority of the institutional church hierarchy.

As Lossky points out, by the time of the Reformation both sides had come to think of tradition as being the teachings that the institutional church had developed by its own authority. In the case of the Reformers the real issue had been the selling of indulgences in order to finance the Pope’s political campaigns. The church had found it convenient to declare the donations to the church would have spiritual significance and aid in the forgiveness of sin. It is these sort of "traditions" which the Reformers really meant to attack, and power of the institutional church to instate these sort of traditions which the Roman church was defending. This is not Tradition as we understanding it, and as Lossky points out, such an understanding causes many problems. The defenders of the "traditions and Scripture" have to try and defend the differing "traditions" and explain their interrelationship and the need to have both. Whilst the defenders of "Scripture" have to answer such problems as I have posed here, and deal with the fact that it was "tradition" that decided which books to call Scripture.

All such problems are solved if we think of the Tradition, as I have been here, in the Orthodox sense of the sum of all the Christian beliefs and practices through the centuries. Now this Tradition is certainly not infallible – by no means! We have already discussed at length the fallibility of humans, even inspired believers. But it is trustworthy, and if we to consider ourselves a "Christian", if we are to think that we accept the truth of Christian beliefs, then we accept that Tradition. And if someone was to reject that same Tradition, then I might well ask what reason or justification the person has for calling themselves a Christian or supposedly believing "Christianity" in the first place. If they reject Tradition, their "Christianity" is not Christianity but their own made-up beliefs they have based upon the Scriptures which they have stolen from our Tradition.

Now we have come the full circle and I think our theological foundations are well established. We have examined the possible foundations of Christian Theology and discussed the logical outworking of each. We have seen that Tradition forms this foundation, and it is within the Inspired Tradition that the Holy Scriptures finds their place and within which we can properly understand and formulate our Christian doctrine without logical contradiction. We have also, I hope, been struck by the comparative simplicity of merely arguing that "Christianity is true" rather than "Christianity is true, therefore the bible is infallible, therefore Christianity is true" and seen that it is important to focus on and defend the essentials of Christianity rather than on meta-doctrines which merely complicate matters, provide stumbling blocks for some, and which serve to distract us from Him who is the centre of our faith. We have seen that the bible provides a record of the beliefs of the early Christians and pre-Christians. We have seen that it is only by looking to Tradition that we can hope to have unity and to come to know truth. We have seen that it is these unchanging but ever-growing inspired Christian Truths which we hold which make us who and what we are: Christians.

1. The source of this analogy is James Hannam in personal correspondence.
2. This argument is taken from Deacon John Whiteford’s, Sola Scriptura: In the Vanity of Their Minds. Several other arguments in that work are similar to some of those I use here. However with this one exception, all arguments here are my own thoughts as I did not encounter his work until after writing the majority of this.
3. Vladimir Lossky, Tradition and Traditions. The English translation of an assortment of Lossky’s essays, the one quoted here included, is titled In the Image and Likeness of God.