Edward Feser has started an interesting debate regarding the validity of relying on text alone (Sola Scriptura), the bible in the Christian case, versus having an authority (i.e. the Catholic Church) to interpret it and dictate religious matters. The discussion starts from Feyerabend’s criticism of empiricism, which turns out to be isomorphic with the sola scriptura doctrine in its problems. More importantly, for me, the matter does not apply just to Christianity, but to most religions, and also to most ideologies and matters where text is to be interpreted to draw decisions from, such as debates about the American Constitution. It seems that it’s hard to justify relying on text alone, but at the same time all the authorities and alive tradition have degenerated and cannot be relied upon either, so we’re at a difficult situation.
Feyerabend on empiricism and sola scriptura
Feyerabend and Feser on Sola Scriptura
First, there is no passage in any book regarded as scriptural that tells you: “Here is a list of the books which constitute scripture.” And even if there were, how would we know that that passage is really part of scripture? For the Catholic, the problem doesn’t arise, because scripture is not the only authoritative source of revealed theological knowledge in the first place. It is rather part of a larger body of authoritative doctrine, which includes tradition and, ultimately, the decrees of an institutional, magisterial Church. This larger context – tradition and Magisterium – is analogous to the larger context within which both common sense and Aristotelianism understand “experience.” Experience, for common sense and for the Aristotelian, includes not just sense data – color patches, tactile impressions, etc. – but also the rich conceptual content in terms of which we ordinarily describe experience, the immediate memories that provide context for present experience, and so forth. Just as modern empiricism abstracts all this away and leaves us with desiccated sense contents as what is purportedly just “given,” so too does sola scriptura abstract away tradition and Magisterium and present (what it claims to be) scripture as if it were just given. And just as the resulting experiential “given” is too thin to tell us anything – including what counts as “given” – so too is scripture divorced from its larger context unable to tell us even what counts as scripture. The modern empiricist inevitably, and inconsistently, surreptitiously appeals to something beyond (what he claims to be) experience in order to tell us what counts as “experience.” And the sola scriptura advocate inevitably, and inconsistently, surreptitiously appeals to something beyond scripture in order to tell us what scripture is. Second, even if what counts as scripture could be settled, there is still the question of how to interpret it. Nor is it any good to claim that scripture itself interprets scripture. If you say that scriptural passage A is to be interpreted in light of scriptural passage B, then how do you know you’ve gotten B itself right? And why not say instead that B should be interpreted in light of A? Inevitably you’re going to have to go beyond scripture in order to settle such questions. Similarly, even if the modern empiricist can settle the question of which contents count as “experience” – again, color patches, tactile impressions, or whatever – there is still the question of what significance to attach to these contents. Should we interpret them as properties of externally existing physical objects? Should we interpret them instead in a phenomenalist way? Is there some “natural” set of relations they bear to one another, or are all the ways we might relate them sheer constructs of the human mind? However we answer such questions, we will be going beyond anything “experience” itself, as the modern empiricist construes it, could tell us. Third, even if you can settle the questions of what counts as scripture and of what each scriptural passage means, scripture itself cannot tell you how to infer anything from scripture. For example, when applying scriptural principles to scientific issues and practical problems, which background empirical, historical, and philosophical assumptions about the world should we employ? In drawing inferences, should we use a traditional Aristotelian system of logic, or a modern Fregean one? Which system of modal logic should we use? What should we think about quantum logic, free logic and other such exotica? Scripture itself obviously offers no answers to such questions. Again, in drawing inferences from scripture we will be going beyond anything scripture itself says. Similarly, “experience” as the modern empiricist construes it tells us nothing about how we are to infer anything from experience, so that in doing so we will thereby be going beyond experience.