There he goes

My friend Jason is asking some tough questions about some Reformed articles of faith. The Reformed may brush him off, but I do not see how they can pretend his criticisms have no teeth. The very best that they can do by way of answer is either appeal to their hermeneutical tradition (which is question-begging) or appeal to letting Scripture interpret Scripture. But in one of his posts Jason does exactly that, and things do not turn out so well for the Reformed, I think. The very act of letting Scripture interpret Scripture is fraught with baggage that never goes through the X-ray machines at the airport, and never gets searched either. The assumption behind the act is that we let the “easy” parts of the Bible guide us in the interpretation of the “hard” parts. Unfortunately what I think is easy and obvious may be something that you find obscure (and vice versa). We do not have a guide book that tells us which parts of the Bible are the official “easy ones” and so any specific attempt at letting Scripture interpret Scripture ultimately boils down to one of two things: either it is purely ad hoc and no one has any principled basis for accepting it, or it is done in terms of a presupposed hermeneutical framework or tradition. But this latter alternative is question begging, for it assumes the legitimacy of the underlying tradition, and I have no inclination (nor any good reasons) for granting any of the various Protestant traditons the benefit of the doubt. So as I see it, Jason’s questions are genuine posers for the Reformed.

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Tagged with: apologetics, calvinism, sola scriptura
Posted in Apologetics, Calvinism, Doings on other blogs, Solo Scriptura