This article grew out of an extended dialogue I had with a Catholic interlocutor about the canon—how it’s recognized, what authority it presupposes, and why the question matters in the first place. I’m sharing the conversation here not to recycle familiar talking points, but to press beyond what I take to be the standard canon argument, which often proves more repetitive than illuminating. My hope is that by following the exchange carefully, we can move past the usual stalemate and get to the deeper assumptions and commitments that actually shape the disagreement.

Catholic Apologist:

Totally. That is why Self-Auth or “sheep here my voice” is by and far the most consistent

Then all the other criteria help to bolster that if you don’t accept the Church as the infalliible authority. Is that your thinking in a nutshell?

Would you also say the Church can be led providentially but not infallibly (and obviously not ongoing) in relation to the canon?

In case it was lost in the thread, my first question is if you’ve read The Canon Question article and the Tu Qouque article?

VincentthefakeGregBahnsen:

I haven’t read them. Only in part but my overall take on its self attesting section of it seems to be that the problem of religious disagreement. Why do various people come to believe different canons if the canon was self attesting? My theory is that you can have fallible beliefs about your infallible knowledge. That you could misidentify things God has caused you to know. Just think about his existence. You and the pagan know the true God but you may have false beliefs about him and the pagan has false beliefs about him even though you both know him.

But I agree with the overall argument of Calvin and the Ridderbos here. That if you create a criterion over divine revelation then that is your ultimate standard

That criterion it is

Catholic Apologist:

Totally. That is why Self-Auth or “sheep here my voice” is by and far the most consistent

Then all the other criteria help to bolster that if you don’t accept the Church as the infalliible authority. Is that your thinking in a nutshell?

Would you also say the Church can be led providentially but not infallibly (and obviously not ongoing) in relation to the canon?

VincentthefakeGregBahnsen:

I’m not sure what you mean by other criteria. Maybe that is to the rest of the article in reference to the Jewish canon theory (which I do hold this theory). I think that bolsters the case but it’s not necessary to have it to know God spoke through such books.

As to the question about the church and Providence, I think when the Apostles departed this world that there’s no office to give us infallible content anymore. So at Acts 15 they were infallible in these events and such. But the only infallibility we have is via divine revelation.

I think the fact that the Church is under divine providence isn’t interesting because we all agree about that. The question is how that providence is set. Such that councils and etc are infallible normative guides or whether it’s just divine revelation. I am on the latter side you’re on the former but I believe the canon argument to be incoherent

Catholic Apologist:

Yeah the other criteria are things that make it more probably true like the Jewish canon theory, apostilicity, that which preaches Christ, etc.

Yeah the providential question is one that RC brought up on a discussion with the “fallible collection of infallible books” statement. When asked if the Holy Spirit guides the church’s witness unto the word of God many other Reformed thinkers will say the Holy Spirit does so providentially (achieves the ends the He sovereignly sets out) but not infallibly (protecting a visible Church from error).

Would you say that is true or something you could agree with?

The Holy Spirit is involved in some way in regards to the canon, it is just a matter as to how and what extent — where we deviate in reards to ecclesiology and authority.

Can you clarify what you mean by ‘I believe the canon argument to be incoherent’? Thanks!

VincentthefakeGregBahnsen:

I think all those conditions are helpful but they’re not sufficient. Just like I know that Jesus rose from the dead by divine testimony but divine testimony doesn’t need independent attestation to be known. But a defense of against a Jesus Mythicist isn’t meant to supplant but point to historical evidence to assists such. So for the canon, these historical arguments are useful but not sufficient.

I think Protestants won’t meet the bar of this requirement you may believe, but yeah I don’t think God ordained a specific visible church to do this work.

I agree that we deviate here (church, authority , and role in canon) and possibly more because I don’t hold to things like natural theology and so forth.

The canon argument is a Methodist epistemological position. It requires divine revelation requires some further criterion to be known but the issue with will result in some absurdity. That’s why I posted that argument to you via Stian

I disagree with Frame, circularity is a bigger problem than he thinks

Catholic Apologist:

Would say that this solution only explains private error? It doesn’t account for how the public, corporate canon becomes a binding proclamation, which is why Protestantism cannot have a closed canon in principle. A bar that is far to high for me to accept as a Christian.

If I can misidentify what’s God’s Word, what authority resolves that misidentification? Otherwise, “self-attestation” remains, in practice, self-assertion.

If I were to go to a non-believer and they were to practically ask me, “I was reading 1 Clement and it is really interesting, I wonder if there were other lost books or things that didn’t make it in.” What would you say? I would also add, it all feels very post hoc from the outside, if I put on my objective viewer hat. But I am sure you have a good retort to this.

I completely agree that the Reformed model isn’t irrational, it’s just epistemically underdetermined — it can’t justify why this canon and not another.

You don’t need to be infallible to recognize something being infallible which I think we both agree on, but you do need to be infallible when proclaiming something is infallible, for perhaps 3 reasons: (1) to provide me as a believer with probabilistic certitude (if you’re more analytically minded perhaps), (2) to move my assent, and (3) to bind my conscience and Christian practices as a believer in an objective way.

VincentthefakeGregBahnsen:

The fact is the revelation just is its own criterion. I think it doesn’t merely explain the error of some specific individual but everyone who possesses the works because the works themselves do grant knowledge of their infallible status. I think it’s top down in a different way. Divine speech just causes people to recognize what it is. People can just have false beliefs about what they know. If you don’t believe that, then you’ll never be able to read Romans 1 was my argument earlier.

It’s hard because not all Christians are in the same positions. We don’t live at the same times and have the same resources. Take a Christian living in the early church. Some didn’t have all the works. So for them they were limited by that but 2,000 years later and we seem to have what God has preserved. Given we have some revelation saying he’ll preserve it. So in that sense, canon is secured by providence. But that still leaves a question of how to adjudicate disputes. The issue is that not every reason are the same. So a person may not believe in a book because they don’t have access to the entire canon. So the solution is to give them access but some add and misidentify books. Those are often due to other false beliefs. So usually the goal would just be to ask why they believe that and respond to those. It’s a person relative process and difficult.

For Clement, I’d have to ask, why do they think it’s divine testimony rather than a letter just from the church in Rome to Corinthians? I’d probably point to the works belief in the phoenix as reason to exclude it.

The articles you sent make the claim that Reformed position is self defeating. So I wonder if you think the RCC is a necessary condition for knowing what divine revelation is

I think one of my pushback is twofold:

First, without already knowing the RCC is true, then what good is it to know they have a particular canon? But apart from already having divine revelation already (or in part) how could you know the church is true? It seems the canon argument makes RCC just fideism.

Secondly, how do you settle disputes with other notable Catholics that think the Canon is still open and that Trent passed over books rather than ruling out all other works?

Catholic Apologist:

Tried to keep this all friendly and terse!

Self-Authentication:
Not only is sola Scriptura not found in the Scriptura, self-authentication is also absent. No biblical text teaches that “Scripture identifies itself” especially in relation to the canon. Any verse you cite as a proof text for this is wholly inadequate and suffers from the issues outlined in The Canon Question, namely to judge divine content, one must already know what counts as “divine,” which assumes the very canon under debate. Even if you could infer it, it would be theological, not scriptural. Self-authentication as a rule of determining canonicity came centuries after as a way to reconcile the canon and sola Scriptura.

Self-attestation if taken as a rule for knowing the canon rests on extra-biblical reasoning, and so undercuts the very foundation of the sola Scriptura it was meant to defend. Just one of the many critiques of self-attestation in that section in The Canon Question article.

If self-attestation were a revealed rule we would expect the early Church to have used It, yet our Christian history shows the exact opposite.

It all reads very post hoc/ad hoc just to uphold a seeming consistency with sola Scriptura, which I think Calvin and others realized and therefore opted for self-authentication as the primary way that we could know the nature of Scripture in light of sola Scriptura. Later, presuppostionalism has tried to sharpen it, but it’s still a theory that is non-binding, non-closed, non-objective, non-historical, unfalsifiable, self-referentially inconsistent in light of sola Scriptura, viciously circular, etc.

Clement:
As The Canon Question points out, once you begin appealing to internal content as the criterion for canonicity, you’ve already presupposed an external standard of what counts as “divine” meaning you must know what God’s Word is before you can test writings by it, which makes the argument circular and self-defeating.

Romans 1:
These verses talk about how everyone can know that God exists, not how to tell which books He inspired. A huge leap as a proof text for the self-attesting nature of Scripture, and falls into the problems I’ve pointed out, i.e. non-binding, non-closed, non-objective, etc.

Why RCC:
Catholicism doesn’t begin by assuming “the Church is true” in a vacuum. I begin by affirming Christ is Lord as a historio-supernatural claim supported by evidence, continuity, and testimony that I discovered from History, the Church and Scripture. From that I can then ask how does Christ continue to make His revelation publicly known AND binding? The answer is through the Church He founded and promised to guide (Matt 16:18; John 16:13; 1 Tim 3:15). See the Tu Qouque article for more on this if you are trying to run a type of reductio to show we are both subject to the same circularity.

That’s not fideism, it’s an inference from Christ’s own historical institution. Again a virtuous circle, not a vicious one.

Also, fideism is a sort of canard that I’ve found many use as a way to paint the other person’s position in a poor light, but it is a critique without any content. Pure fideism is a near impossible epistemological state to achieve. Even Reformed theologians operate with reasons, internal criteria, and historical appeals. I too use all of the tools at my disposal to have a practical belief in Christ and His Church.

I wouldn’t say Trent created the canon, it defined what the Church had already been living with over a thousand years. Councils do this when controversy arises: Nicaea didn’t invent Christ’s divinity, it clarified it when it was denied; Trent did the same with the canon when the Reformers rejected certain books. From Hippo and Carthage to Florence, the same list had been used in liturgy, quoted in theology, and treated as Scripture by the faithful. The Church and it’s people had already been functioning as though it had the authority to recognize the canon. Trent simply made that lived reality explicit and binding once it was questioned.

As for Catholics who claim the canon is “open,” I honestly don’t know of any serious theologian who would claim that. But that is not the question. The question should be what binds me as a Christian to a canon that is 1) complete and 2) closed. Both things self-authentication cannot account for.

Trent’s decree was a dogmatic definition, meaning with my paradigm of authority the canon is closed; it’s not a topic of ongoing discernment like private revelation. Scholars can discuss history or lost writings, but doctrinally, the question was settled. Differing opinions on that point don’t carry magisterial weight. Catholics resolve disputes like this not through personal speculation but by deferring to what the Church has definitively taught by charism of the Holy Spirit. That’s the key difference: the canon isn’t open because the Church that recognized it spoke on the matter and I place my faith in Christ’s institution of that Church, again a virtuous circle not a vicious one.
Quick question:

Another point that never made sense to me when discussing this as a Reformed Christian amongst my friends was this: why does self-authentication not apply to the contents of Scripture? Again it just seem arbitrary that it relates to the canon and nothing else. Why have Protestants and Christians throughout the ages not agreed on simple perspicuity doctrines like the nature of the eucharist, the nature of Christ, contraception, etc.? If Romans 1 was talking about clearly knowing God, why does it not mean also doctrinal knowing?
If we chalk all of the doctrinal differences up to sin, it renders our faith as person relative. If we chalk the canon up to self-attestation the rule of faith is person relative and unbinding.

All of this places both the rational and practical bar of Christian belief so high for me that it makes Christian belief seem incoherent and confusing. I would not go so far as to say illogical or irrational, it just simply looks like positing a very weak theory of canonicity simply to avoid a visible authority.

Here’s a few simple questions that might keep the convo going smoothly:

With sola Scriptura as your paradigm of authority and self-attestation as the primary rule of Scripture discernment:

What is the binding rule to prevent me from adding to Scripture or removing from Scripture?,
If the canon is closed, what makes it closed?,
Under self-authentication, what specific criterion do you appeal to in order to persuade me that we possess the entire corpus of Scripture and have not lost what God inspired?,
Is the 66 book canon binding for all Christians and what makes it binding?,
Why is self-authentication not a reliable rule for also clearly knowing doctrine?,
If interpretive differences are blamed on sin or lack of illumination, doesn’t that make knowledge of the rule of faith person-relative and non-binding, undermining Christianity’s public intelligibility?,
When sincere, regenerate, Scripture-loving Christians disagree on doctrine or the canon, what principled authority adjudicates truth other than private judgment?,
Why do Protestant’s by a large margin believe that nearly all forms of contraception are completely morally admissible, whereas the Reformers and all Christians prior to the 1930s would have treated it as an obvious, grave moral sin? What can you appeal to on this matter that is binding on the faithful?

VincentthefakeGregBahnsen:

Not only is sola Scriptura not found in the Scriptura, self-authentication is also absent. No biblical text teaches that “Scripture identifies itself” especially in relation to the canon. Any verse you cite as a proof text for this is wholly inadequate and suffers from the issues outlined in The Canon Question, namely to judge divine content, one must already know what counts as “divine,” which assumes the very canon under debate. Even if you could infer it, it would be theological, not scriptural. Self-authentication as a rule of determining canonicity came centuries after as a way to reconcile the canon and sola Scriptura.

Self-attestation if taken as a rule for knowing the canon rests on extra-biblical reasoning, and so undercuts the very foundation of the sola Scriptura it was meant to defend. Just one of the many critiques of self-attestation in that section in The Canon Question article

That objection confuses the difference between explicit mention and necessary entailment. The Bible doesn’t need to say “Scripture is self-authenticating” any more than it needs to say “God is triune” for the Trinity to be biblical. The principle of self-authentication follows from what Scripture is—the speech of the self-attesting God who cannot lie and who appeals to no higher authority (Hebrews 6:13; Romans 3:4). Since all revelation carries divine authority by its nature, Scripture as revelation bears that same self-authenticating quality.

That assumes the Bible must describe its own recognition process rather than its own nature. But the self-attestation claim isn’t about a method of canon discernment; it’s about the ontological status of Scripture as divine revelation. And as even an Aristotelian ought to recognize, a thing’s epistemology follows from its ontology (how something is determines how it is known). If Scripture is, by nature, divine speech, then it bears divine marks of authority and truth; it cannot be properly known by appealing to something higher, just as sense-perception doesn’t prove itself by appeal to a further faculty but by exercising its own nature.

Right, but that just is Revelational Methodism — the idea that before we can recognize revelation, we must already have a method or criterion for telling what counts as revelation. And that collapses instantly.

First, a method doesn’t give you the thing it’s meant to detect. If you need a “revelation detector,” you already have to know what revelation is in order to build the detector in the first place. The method presupposes the very content it claims to discover. That’s question-begging — it assumes the knowledge it’s supposed to yield.

Second, that demand for an external rule creates an infinite regress. If you need the Church to tell you which words are God’s, you’ll then need something to tell you that the Church’s declaration is from God, and then another standard to verify that, and so on forever. Every judge requires a higher judge. The chain never ends.

The only way to stop that regress is with a final authority that authenticates itself — God’s own speech. That’s what self-authentication means. It’s not arbitrary; it’s the only coherent terminus. If you don’t stop with God’s own self-witness, you end up stopping with a human one.

And that’s the irony: when you say we need a method to recognize revelation, you’re already assuming revelation isn’t self-authenticating — which is the very point under dispute. The objection is circular because it starts by presupposing the falsity of what it’s supposed to prove.

This is also what motivates the charge of fideism. On your scheme, the method itself has no justification. It’s simply chosen — a leap of trust in some external authority without divine grounding. You think you’re escaping circularity, but all you’ve done is push the circle back one step and base it on human opinion instead of divine testimony.

The self-authenticating view doesn’t suffer that problem because it doesn’t pretend neutrality. It admits that revelation must be known as revelation on its own terms. God’s Word, by virtue of being God’s, bears its own authority and is recognized by the Spirit who gave it. Every other view either spirals into regress or ends up grounding revelation in something less than God.

“Even if you could infer it, it would be theological, not scriptural. Self-authentication as a rule of determining canonicity came centuries after as a way to reconcile the canon and sola Scriptura.”

That statement assumes an artificial divide between theology and Scripture. Every doctrine (including the Trinity, hypostatic union, and justification) is theologically inferred from scriptural teaching. If “theological inference” disqualifies a doctrine as biblical, the entire Christian faith collapses. Self-authentication, like the Trinity, is a necessary theological inference from the nature of God’s Word as presented in Scripture.

If self-attestation were a revealed rule we would expect the early Church to have used It, yet our Christian history shows the exact opposite.

It all reads very post hoc/ad hoc just to uphold a seeming consistency with sola Scriptura, which I think Calvin and others realized and therefore opted for self-authentication as the primary way that we could know the nature of Scripture in light of sola Scriptura. Later, presuppostionalism has tried to sharpen it, but it’s still a theory that is non-binding, non-closed, non-objective, non-historical, unfalsifiable, self-referentially inconsistent in light of sola Scriptura, viciously circular, etc.

Doctrinal development under controversy doesn’t imply conceptual novelty. The early Church didn’t formulate homoousios until Nicaea, yet the truth was already scriptural. Likewise, the Church’s progressive recognition of the canon doesn’t mean the principle of divine self-attestation was absent; it means it wasn’t formally articulated amid persecution, linguistic diversity, and limited access to apostolic writings. Recognition is providential and progressive, not instantaneous or mechanical. Yes, there’s debate over which Fathers explicitly speak of Scripture as autopistis (“self-worthy of belief”), but I don’t need to litigate that here. The point stands: truths like the Trinity were binding prior to councils—men were culpable for denying Christ’s deity apart from Nicaea (John 8:24).

“It’s post hoc/ad hoc to prop up sola Scriptura.” That just repeats a chronological fallacy. That later articulation equals invention. All dogmatic clarification is, by definition, post hoc. The real question is what follows logically from God’s nature and God’s speech. Sola Scriptura presupposes that Scripture, as divine revelation, is self-authenticating; otherwise the doctrine collapses into dependence on an external, superior rule. Far from ad hoc, self-attestation is the only epistemic structure consistent with the supremacy of divine revelation.

And your historical demand boomerangs: “If no one stated this principle before, it defeats itself.” But that treats articulation as the condition of truth. If your criterion “no authority unless previously and explicitly stated as such in history” is correct, then the criterion itself fails, since it, too, lacks an earlier infallible statement authorizing it.

Clement:
As The Canon Question points out, once you begin appealing to internal content as the criterion for canonicity, you’ve already presupposed an external standard of what counts as “divine” meaning you must know what God’s Word is before you can test writings by it, which makes the argument circular and self-defeating.

The issue is that there’s nothing wrong with pointing to a book’s internal testimony when asking whether it’s self-authenticating. You’re confusing how we know the canon with how we show the canon. I hold that the canon is known by virtue of its own divine testimony — it authenticates itself because it is God’s Word. But showing that to someone who disagrees is a separate task altogether.

When reasoning with others, I can appeal to Scripture’s internal qualities — its unity, coherence, prophetic fulfillment, and divine majesty — as means of persuasion. But those are not the grounds of knowledge; they are expressions of what is already true. Demonstration and persuasion don’t create the canon’s authority; they invite others to recognize what it already is. Just as one might point to evidences for the Bible’s reliability without those evidences making God’s testimony valid, so we can point to Scripture’s internal marks without implying that such marks generate its authority.

Likewise, you can reason with someone struggling over a specific book’s canonicity. If a friend were unsure about, say, Clement’s inclusion, you could challenge its canonicity based on internal deficiencies — for instance, when I pointed to the appeal to the myth of the phoenix. But that evaluative reasoning doesn’t establish the canon’s authority; it simply illustrates that divine revelation bears unique, self-evident marks distinguishing it from human imitation.

So appealing to internal content doesn’t assume an external standard. It simply acknowledges that divine revelation, by its very nature, bears its own voice and authority.

Romans 1:
These verses talk about how everyone can know that God exists, not how to tell which books He inspired. A huge leap as a proof text for the self-attesting nature of Scripture, and falls into the problems I’ve pointed out, i.e. non-binding, non-closed, non-objective, etc.

Why RCC:
Catholicism doesn’t begin by assuming “the Church is true” in a vacuum. I begin by affirming Christ is Lord as a historio-supernatural claim supported by evidence, continuity, and testimony that I discovered from History, the Church and Scripture. From that I can then ask how does Christ continue to make His revelation publicly known AND binding? The answer is through the Church He founded and promised to guide (Matt 16:18; John 16:13; 1 Tim 3:15). See the Tu Qouque article for more on this if you are trying to run a type of reductio to show we are both subject to the same circularity.

I’m not claiming Romans 1 is about the canon’s boundaries. I’m saying it’s about divine revelation itself—that God’s self-disclosure is sufficient and authoritative in itself. Paul’s point is that all people know God through His revelation in creation, not by inference from an external authority. So when you object that self-authentication is “non-binding” or “non-objective” because people disagree, you’re implicitly denying Romans 1. If God’s general revelation is self-evident yet universally resisted, then divine special revelation being self-authenticating is perfectly consistent with Scripture’s own epistemology.

Your standard would make Romans 1 false. It implies mankind can’t truly know God because disagreement proves ambiguity—yet Paul says the opposite: men “know God” and are “without excuse.” By parity, disagreement about Scripture doesn’t mean Scripture lacks self-attesting authority; it means sinful man suppresses that authority.

Your “historio-supernatural” approach doesn’t actually solve the problem; it just relocates it. You say you start with Christ as Lord based on historical evidence, continuity, and testimony. But if that evidence is reliable enough to identify the true Church, then it’s certainly reliable enough to identify the true canon and therefore to ground Protestantism. If human historical reasoning can discern which community Christ founded, it can just as easily discern which writings the apostles produced.

If, however, you insist that such historical reasoning is insufficient to identify the canon infallibly, then it’s equally insufficient to identify the true Church infallibly. You can’t have it both ways. Your epistemology either collapses into Protestant fallibilism (where evidence yields rational but non-infallible belief) or into an ungrounded appeal to authority (where the Church authenticates itself without proof).

So the dilemma is this:

If your evidential method works, Protestantism stands.

If it fails, then your claim to have infallible knowledge of the Church fails with it.

In either case, appealing to a “historio-supernatural” chain doesn’t get you epistemic closure; it only pushes the same question back one step.

Romans 1 actually undermines your argument against sola Scriptura. You claim Scripture can’t be self-authenticating because people disagree about it, but Paul says disagreement doesn’t erase self-evidence — it reveals suppression. God’s existence and power are “clearly perceived” in creation, yet humanity “suppresses the truth in unrighteousness.” In other words, revelation can be both objectively clear and widely rejected.

So the fact that people dispute Scripture’s authority no more disproves its self-authenticating nature than atheism disproves God’s self-revelation. Romans 1 teaches that God’s general revelation is sufficient to render all people “without excuse.” By the same logic, His special revelation — Scripture — bears its own divine marks and authority, regardless of human resistance.

And this cuts both ways: you can’t appeal to fallible historical testimony to establish an infallible, self-interpreting Church without undermining your own standard. The Protestant position simply applies the same epistemic structure that Romans 1 describes to special revelation. The Word of God, like the God who speaks it, bears its own witness.

That’s not fideism, it’s an inference from Christ’s own historical institution. Again a virtuous circle, not a vicious one.
Also, fideism is a sort of canard that I’ve found many use as a way to paint the other person’s position in a poor light, but it is a critique without any content. Pure fideism is a near impossible epistemological state to achieve. Even Reformed theologians operate with reasons, internal criteria, and historical appeals. I too use all of the tools at my disposal to have a practical belief in Christ and His Church.

I’m not saying you personally hold to fideism. I’m saying your argument entails it. If the canon argument you’re defending were true, theology would reduce to fideism by necessity.

Here’s why: if divine revelation cannot be known apart from the Church’s identification and interpretation of it, then the believer’s faith is ultimately placed in the Church’s testimony rather than in God’s. You can call that “historically mediated,” but in practice it means your confidence in divine revelation rises and falls with the credibility of a human institution. You don’t know God’s Word; you trust that someone else knows it for you. That’s the very definition of fideism—faith resting on authority without personal or rational access to the thing believed.

The moment the Church becomes the necessary precondition for recognizing revelation, theology ceases to be an act of knowing God and becomes an act of trusting the Church about God. Revelation is no longer self-disclosing; it’s opaque until the Church renders it visible.

I wouldn’t say Trent created the canon, it defined what the Church had already been living with over a thousand years. Councils do this when controversy arises: Nicaea didn’t invent Christ’s divinity, it clarified it when it was denied; Trent did the same with the canon when the Reformers rejected certain books. From Hippo and Carthage to Florence, the same list had been used in liturgy, quoted in theology, and treated as Scripture by the faithful. The Church and it’s people had already been functioning as though it had the authority to recognize the canon. Trent simply made that lived reality explicit and binding once it was questioned.

The problem is that, unlike Christ’s deity, there was never anything in Scripture that identifies its own canonical scope. Clarification presupposes something already revealed but misunderstood. Nicaea could clarify the Son’s divinity because Scripture already contained the material for that doctrine (John 1, Hebrews 1, Colossians 1, etc.). But no such material exists for the canon. The Bible never gives a list of inspired books. So if Trent was merely “clarifying” what was already known, then there should’ve been a stable, identifiable canon beforehand — which the historical evidence completely contradicts.

Even if we grant that Trent believed it was reaffirming a long-held list, that assumption still creates a serious theological problem for Catholic views of tradition. On the material-sufficiency model (that all revealed truths are found in Scripture), the canon should be materially contained in Scripture itself. But the Catholic “canon argument” denies that Scripture can identify itself. That means if material sufficiency is true, the Catholic canon argument refutes itself — because the canon would already have to be discoverable in the self-authenticating Word.

If, on the other hand, the view is partim–partim (part of revelation in Scripture, part in tradition), then the canon is nothing more than a floating tradition that just happened to be fixed at Trent. That makes the canon a product of post hoc historical consensus rather than divine revelation publicly given “once for all” (Jude 3). In that case, there’s no objective way to verify that Trent’s list corresponds to what God actually inspired.

And the historical details make this even worse. The regional councils of Hippo (393) and Carthage (397, 419) were local synods, not ecumenical, and merely recommended their lists for ratification in Rome — which never formally happened. Their enumerations depend heavily on Jerome’s Vulgate and Augustine’s writings, but Jerome and Augustine didn’t even agree on how to identify the Ezra/Nehemiah/Esdras books.

Jerome, following the Hebrew canon, recognized one Ezra book in two parts (Ezra and Nehemiah) and rejected Greek 1 Esdras (the “Guardsmen story,” where three bodyguards debate what is strongest). Augustine, however, explicitly quotes that story as Scripture (City of God 18.36) and clearly viewed it as canonical. That means the African councils Augustine attended probably followed the Old Latin/Greek tradition, in which the “two books of Ezra” referred to 1 Esdras and 2 Esdras (Greek Ezra–Nehemiah) — not Jerome’s Hebrew-based division.

So when Carthage listed “two books of Ezra,” it almost certainly meant something different than what Trent later canonized. Trent (1546), following Jerome’s numbering, canonized Ezra and Nehemiah as two parts of one book and excluded Greek 1 Esdras entirely. That means the “Ezra” books of Carthage and the “Ezra” books of Trent are not the same canon.

If Hippo and Carthage were binding, then Trent infallibly rejected a book once treated as canonical by Augustine and his own council. If those councils weren’t binding, then Rome’s appeal to them as evidence of an unbroken canon collapses. Either way, Trent didn’t “clarify” anything — it replaced one textual tradition with another.

And the confusion didn’t stop there. In medieval manuscripts and early Vulgate printings, 1 Esdras (Greek) was often labeled 3 Esdras, and 2 Esdras (Latin Apocalypse of Ezra) as 4 Esdras. This caused centuries of renumbering chaos. The Council of Florence (1442) even listed “two books of Esdras” without clarifying which ones it meant. Trent inherited that ambiguity but silently followed Jerome’s Hebrew order, effectively rejecting Augustine’s usage without ever acknowledging the change.

So even on Rome’s own historical record, the canonical tradition on Esdras was never uniform. If the African councils are binding, Trent contradicted them; if they’re not binding, Rome’s narrative of a continuous, authoritative canon is false. Either way, Trent didn’t “clarify” a settled revelation — it closed an unsettled question by decree.

So the dilemma remains: if material sufficiency is true, then the canon must be self-authenticating and knowable by Scripture’s own marks. If partim–partim is true, then the canon is a free-floating, unverifiable tradition. In either case, the Catholic appeal to Trent as a mere “clarification” fails both theologically and historically.

As for Catholics who claim the canon is “open,” I honestly don’t know of any serious theologian who would claim that. But that is not the question. The question should be what binds me as a Christian to a canon that is 1) complete and 2) closed. Both things self-authentication cannot account for.

Trent’s decree was a dogmatic definition, meaning with my paradigm of authority the canon is closed; it’s not a topic of ongoing discernment like private revelation. Scholars can discuss history or lost writings, but doctrinally, the question was settled. Differing opinions on that point don’t carry magisterial weight. Catholics resolve disputes like this not through personal speculation but by deferring to what the Church has definitively taught by charism of the Holy Spirit.

There actually are Catholic theologians and apologists who have suggested that the canon could, in principle, be open—precisely because the Church’s magisterium retains the living authority to define revelation. But even if no one currently argued that, it wouldn’t solve the problem, because the real question isn’t whether anyone does, but whether anyone can.

On your own paradigm, the canon’s closure depends entirely on an ecclesial act, not on the nature of revelation itself. Trent’s decree closed the canon because the Church said so; that means it could just as easily reopen it by the same authority. Nothing intrinsic to divine revelation prevents that possibility—only the Church’s present will. So the canon is “closed” in the contingent, procedural sense, not the metaphysical or revelational one.

And historically, Trent’s act wasn’t exhaustive. The council passed over several books known in early Christian use—like 3 and 4 Maccabees, the Prayer of Manasseh, Psalm 151, and portions of Esdras found in the Septuagint. Later Catholic scholars, especially in ecumenical discussions with the Eastern Churches, have floated the idea that such books might yet be received or at least reconsidered. Others have argued that since the Church’s magisterium is living, the canon’s closure is “practical,” not absolute—open in principle but closed in practice.

If an absolutely closed canon is necessary for your case, then Rome hasn’t even provided it. The canon is “closed” only in the sense that the current Magisterium says it is, not because divine revelation itself has reached its terminus. In principle, the same authority that defined it could redefine it. So I find the complaint about Protestantism lacking a definitive canon more than a little hypocritical

Quick question:

Another point that never made sense to me when discussing this as a Reformed Christian amongst my friends was this: why does self-authentication not apply to the contents of Scripture? Again it just seem arbitrary that it relates to the canon and nothing else. Why have Protestants and Christians throughout the ages not agreed on simple perspicuity doctrines like the nature of the eucharist, the nature of Christ, contraception, etc.? If Romans 1 was talking about clearly knowing God, why does it not mean also doctrinal knowing?

If we chalk all of the doctrinal differences up to sin, it renders our faith as person relative. If we chalk the canon up to self-attestation the rule of faith is person relative and unbinding.

Because coming to know doctrine isn’t the same thing as comprehending divine speech. In revelation, God acts — He makes Himself known directly. In doctrine, we act — we interpret, reason, and organize what God has revealed. Revelation is immediate; theology is mediate.

So when I talk about Scripture being self-authenticating, I’m talking about the object — God’s Word bearing its own divine authority. But when we move to doctrine, we’re dealing with the subject’s reception of that Word, which inevitably involves human limitations — language, context, aptitude, sanctification, and sin. The Word itself is clear and perfect; our understanding of it isn’t.

That’s why doctrinal disagreement doesn’t disprove self-authentication any more than atheism disproves God’s self-revelation in creation (Romans 1).

Catholic Apologist:

I will just quickly add a small detail: the problem I continue to see throughout Vince’s responses is that my paradigm of authority is that the Church is merely a human institution, but if we just shift slightly to the fact that the Church is a visible institution bestowed with a charism of authority through apostolic succession then I think a lot of the critique doesn’t apply. We can then debate if that is true and is it self-referentially consistent.

The objection assumes that Catholics only follow the Church as long as they personally agree, which would make the individual the real authority. But that misunderstands what Catholics are actually assenting to. A Catholic does not submit to Rome because he agrees with every doctrine. He submits because he believes Christ founded a visible Church, commissioned it to teach in His name, and promised to protect it from error John 16:13, Matt 16:18, 1 Tim 3:15. The assent is not to doctrines, but to an institution grounded in Christ’s own authority.
Once that assent to Christ’s Church is made, true submission begins at disagreement. If I only submit when I happen to agree, that is not submission but confirmation. Catholics, however, remain bound (by the Holy Spirit) even when a teaching challenges personal preference or individual interpretation. In this way, a Catholic’s relationship to the Church mirrors the Protestant’s relationship to Scripture: both accept an authority greater than themselves, because they believe it is divinely established, not because they find it subjectively agreeable.

But here’s the essential difference: a written authority without a living interpreter obviously fractures. History has shown that appealing to Scripture alone results in competing doctrines and denominations, each claiming biblical fidelity. A text cannot resolve disputes because without a living, binding authority, interpretation is just individual judgment.

My assent to a paradigm of authority holds that Christ did not leave His Church with a book alone, but with a teaching office capable of definitively guarding and explaining that book. Without such an authority, Scripture is still infallible, but becomes in the practicing life of the Christian confusing, as it produces endless division. A living authority, therefore, is not a rival to Scripture but its necessary guardian, preserving binding authority where private interpretation cannot.
| The believer’s faith is ultimately placed in the Church’s testimony rather than in God’s.

Referring to statements like this ^^^
A quick aside, this was not meant to disprove self-authentication in relation to the nature of Scipture, just to show that is seems very ad hoc where and when it can be applied in the life of the Christian.

Meaning the analogy you use to refute it (atheism) is not applicable.

VincentthefakeGregBahnsen:

What is the binding rule to prevent me from adding to Scripture or removing from Scripture?,

God’s own authority.

If the canon is closed, what makes it closed?,

God’s covenantal speech culminated in Christ and the apostolic witness.

Under self-authentication, what specific criterion do you appeal to in order to persuade me that we possess the entire corpus of Scripture and have not lost what God inspired?,

My entire thesis is there is no further criterion. That scripture just is it’s own particular case and it’s own criterion.

Is the 66 book canon binding for all Christians and what makes it binding?,

Yes and divine authority.

Catholic Apologist:

Also, another blunder that I pointed out at the beginning is not that none of this discussion has anything to do with my needing to be infallible or you needing to be infallible. Our discerning the Truth has nothing to do with my epistemology. I see people make this mistake all the time.

The Holy Spirit uses His people (the Church)—who are fallible—but, have the charism of infallibility bestowed on them. I then as a believer in the visible Church can recognize the canonical process was done infallibly. See the difference?

We need to take into account this very important distinction between recognizing, discerning, and proclaiming/what is binding.

These statements I am referring to:

If it fails, then your claim to have infallible knowledge of the Church fails with it.

If, however, you insist that such historical reasoning is insufficient to identify the canon infallibly, then it’s equally insufficient to identify the true Church infallibly. You can’t have it both ways. Your epistemology either collapses into Protestant fallibilism (where evidence yields rational but non-infallible belief) or into an ungrounded appeal to authority (where the Church authenticates itself without proof).

VincentthefakeGregBahnsen:

Too save time:

Why do Protestant’s by a large margin believe that nearly all forms of contraception are completely morally admissible, whereas the Reformers and all Christians prior to the 1930s would have treated it as an obvious, grave moral sin?

Because Christians prior nearly universally believed in natural law, but significant challenges arose to it in the Reformed camp by the Neo-Reformed movement.

“What can you appeal to on this matter that is binding on the faithful?”

You should rely on Biblical principles. If a form of birth control acts as an abortifacient, then it is prohibited, since both murder and manslaughter are wrong.

I understand that Catholics believe the Church is not merely a human institution but a visible body protected from error by divine promise. But that doesn’t actually resolve the problem I raised. The issue isn’t whether Catholics believe the Church has this charism — it’s how that belief is known and why it’s supposed to be necessary for accepting the Catholic canon.

The canon argument itself makes the Church epistemically prior to divine revelation. If you can only know what counts as God’s Word through the Church, then the Church’s authority becomes logically and epistemically superior/prior to divine testimony. That collapses the entire appeal to revelation as a grounding principle. You can’t appeal to Christ’s promises or apostolic succession to prove that point, because those promises are known only through Scripture—the very thing you say can’t be known without first trusting the Church.

So even if we grant your claim that Christ founded a visible institution and promised to protect it from error, you can’t know that apart from the canon you say the Church must first authenticate. The argument becomes self-defeating. You’re left saying, “I believe the Church is infallible because the Church told me it is,” which is exactly the kind of vicious circularity.

And that’s why I don’t think this has much to do with doctrinal particulars. The real question is whether the Church functions as a divinely protected debate-resolution mechanism. Saying, “the assent is not to doctrines but to an institution grounded in Christ’s authority,” doesn’t change anything, because that claim itself is a doctrinal assertion you’ve already chosen to believe. The framework is still fideistic: faith in God’s Word is reduced to faith in the Church’s testimony about God’s Word.

So the canon argument makes the institutional claim superfluous—or worse, incoherent. You can’t know that the Church has divine authority unless divine revelation is already self-authenticating. Otherwise, the Church’s authority becomes the foundation for believing in revelation itself, making revelation dependent on human certification rather than on divine self-disclosure.

Catholic Apologist:

I am not referring to abortifacients.

What are the Biblical principles I can appeal to on this matter and are they binding on the faithful?

VincentthefakeGregBahnsen:

This actually veers off into another issue entirely — the so-called interpretation argument. At this point you’ve quietly abandoned the canon argument and moved to a new one, which is just as contentious. You’re no longer explaining how we know which writings are divine revelation, but rather who gets to interpret them. Those are not the same question, and switching to the latter doesn’t rescue the former.

More importantly, this move simply reproduces the same methodological error under a new label. It’s just Revelational Methodism applied to interpretation. You’re assuming that God’s Word, by itself, is insufficient to make itself known or understood, and therefore that we need an infallible “debate-resolution mechanism” in the form of the Magisterium. But that’s precisely the same structure as before: revelation can’t reveal unless a method tells us it has revealed. The “method” just happens to be the Church instead of a philosophical criterion.

Catholic Apologist:

Yeah I’d figured you’d say that.

I know they are not the same

VincentthefakeGregBahnsen:

The claim that “a text cannot resolve disputes” misses the nature of divine revelation. The reason divine testimony can settle disputes isn’t because of some mechanical property of text but because God is sufficient to communicate. When God speaks, He doesn’t merely offer data for human speculation — He reveals reality as it actually is. Divine revelation gives us what you might call a God’s-eye perspective on truth. It is not one finite interpretation among others; it is the Creator interpreting His own creation.

So this doesn’t solve the epistemic problem — it simply relocates it. If you need the Church to tell you what Scripture means, you’ll need something to tell you that the Church’s interpretation is correct, and something to validate that higher authority, and so on. The regress never stops. The only way to terminate it is to begin with self-authenticating divine revelation, not with a human method of adjudication.
Namely, just that don’t kill babies and it’s fine

Catholic Apologist:

So all forms of artificial contraception are fine? And is that belief binding or non-binding for the faithful?

VincentthefakeGregBahnsen:

I don’t know all forms of artificial contraception. It isn’t necessary to being a Christian. It should be believed by all Christians because it is true, but it isn’t a requirement.

Catholic Apologist:

Condoms, vascetomy, voluntary hysterectomy, artificial sterilizations to name a few.

I know this is not about the canon but it points out the issue with un-bindingness and Stian likes practical stuff so I figured I could just show how sola Scriptura is practically very weak.

If no authority can bind moral teaching, Christ’s command becomes unenforceable. Including the canon. Protestantism cannot preserve Christian morality. It can only suggest it based on the same texts that everyone is reading. The issue isn’t whether Scripture binds, it does! It’s whether anyone can speak authoritatively about what Scripture binds. If moral truths like contraception “should be believed because they are true,” yet cannot bind, then Protestantism has reduced divine law to suggestion. An infallible book without a living interpreter has no power to bind. It just inspires endless debate. Christ did not establish a debating society. He established a Church that can say, “It has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us” Acts 15

Without that authority, doctrine becomes non-binding and moral truth becomes opinion.

“Teach them to obey everything I have commanded.” Matt 28:20

“Teach them whatever the Bible says is true, but if they disagree, it’s non-essential.” Vince 1:1
I will make sure to respond to the other things later
Neither you or are I prone to a regress. Its a moot point as I pointed out in my article:

It’s [basic] epistemology to think that one needs an explanation of the explanation, ad infinitum — especially if we are operating within a Theistic paradigm — the buck stops with God as the authority.
I agree that divine revelation must terminate the regress. Catholics agree. But revelation is not an abstract text floating in history… it is Christ’s own Word entrusted to a living Church. The problem is not whether God can communicate infallibly, but whether He appointed a living authority to preserve and interpret that revelation. You say disputes must be settled by “self-authenticating” revelation, yet thousands of sincere Protestants, all appealing to Scripture, reach contradictory conclusions, i.e. you did not and cannot say that contraception is a grave moral sin or that its morally admissible, just that its not necessary to be a Christian… this is why SS is practically a bad doctrine. Its objectively a bad answer.

This proves the text alone is not functioning as a final authority. Catholics avoid regress not by appealing to human authority, but by resting in Christ’s institution which is a Church guided by the Spirit to speak with His authority. The regress ends not in text or method, but in a person: Christ and the Church He founded.

Trust (or faith) is the operating factor, and that at a fundamental level, neither Protestants nor Catholics can go beyond trust (historio supernatural faith) in divine revelation.

Here’s the crux: It’s what or whom we trust as the divinely authorized vehicle of revelation.

The Protestant trusts that the individual or community can correctly recognize God’s Word and doctrine through Scripture alone and are bound by that. I trust that Christ’s Church — a living, visible body — is the divinely appointed guardian and interpreter of revelation.

Both involve faith beyond pure rational proof, yes. But only one offers a public, binding, authoritative channel for that faith.

I think the confusion here is one that I have seen a number of times and is outlined in the CtC articles:

You’re assuming that Catholics place the Church epistemically prior to divine revelation, but that’s not our claim. Divine revelation remains ontologically and epistemically primary; the Church is not the source of revelation, but the divinely appointed means by which Christ preserves and publicly identifies it. We do not first believe the Church instead of Christ, we believe Christ through the visible Body He founded and promised to guide, which is itself an article of revelation known from both Scripture and Tradition together. The circle is not vicious but Christological or virtuous. Authority terminates in Christ’s own act in history, not in private judgment, which is precisely why this is not fideism, but faith anchored in divine institution that has binding clear authority as to what is and is not Scipture.

VincentthefakeGregBahnsen:

If no authority can bind moral teaching, Christ’s command becomes unenforceable. Including the canon. Protestantism cannot preserve Christian morality. It can only suggest it based on the same texts that everyone is reading. The issue isn’t whether Scripture binds, it does! It’s whether anyone can speak authoritatively about what Scripture binds. If moral truths like contraception “should be believed because they are true,” yet cannot bind, then Protestantism has reduced divine law to suggestion. An infallible book without a living interpreter has no power to bind. It just inspires endless debate. Christ did not establish a debating society. He established a Church that can say, “It has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us” Acts 15

Without that authority, doctrine becomes non-binding and moral truth becomes opinion.

The standard Catholic objections on this front lean heavily on natural-law reasoning and Magisterial decree—neither of which I find compelling. The natural-law arguments themselves aren’t self-evident, and the Magisterium’s moral pronouncements have no inherent authority unless you already assume Rome’s framework. I’m as epistemically obligated to those claims as I am to the Watchtower’s—namely, not at all.

The deeper problem is what you mean by “binding.”
If “binding” means sufficient to inform the conscience before God, Scripture already does that. But if it means coercively enforceable by an infallible oracle, then you’re no longer talking about biblical authority—you’re talking about bureaucratic control. God’s Word binds because God speaks; the Church persuades, exhorts, and disciplines under that Word. “Teach them to obey” (Matt. 28:20) doesn’t mean “set up an institution that can never err.”

And besides, the Catholic Church doesn’t even function as that kind of debate-resolution mechanism in practice. If that’s what you mean by “binding authority,” then the entire dispute is precisely whether such a mechanism exists at all. You’re assuming the very thing under debate—defining the target in Catholic terms and then congratulating the system for meeting its own requirements.

And if God’s own Word can’t bind a person’s conscience, no human institution (even if you add the fact that providence/promises) can. Adding a man—or a council—doesn’t solve anything. Moses didn’t make murder wrong by telling Israel it was wrong; the finger of God did. So if divine speech can’t compel obedience, neither will a bishop’s hat or a curial decree. For any skepticism of Divine speech’s sufficiency is reason to doubt those who supposedly can clarify divine speech in some non-verifiable way.

Neither you or are I prone to a regress. Its a moot point as I pointed out in my article:

It’s [basic] epistemology to think that one needs an explanation of the explanation, ad infinitum — especially if we are operating within a Theistic paradigm — the buck stops with God as the authority.

That just declares the issue resolved rather than actually addressing it. The regress problem isn’t about whether God is the ultimate authority — we both agree He is. The question is whether His revelation is epistemically sufficient to terminate the chain of appeal. And that’s exactly where your canon and interpretation arguments fail.

Both assume that divine testimony by itself is not enough to grant knowledge — that we need a Church or Magisterium to interpret or identify revelation before it can function as revelation. But that makes divine revelation epistemically impotent until man certifies it. So appealing to “the buck stops with God” doesn’t help if, in practice, you deny that God’s own Word can actually stop the buck.

My call is simply for consistency. If you truly believe in the omni-God of Scripture — the One who creates, sustains, and speaks with perfect authority — then you can’t also maintain that His speech is insufficient to grant knowledge unless an institution ratifies it. That’s a contradiction in theological epistemology. You can’t affirm divine omniscience and then build a system that requires an infallible middleman to make divine speech knowable.

I agree that divine revelation must terminate the regress. Catholics agree. But revelation is not an abstract text floating in history… it is Christ’s own Word entrusted to a living Church. The problem is not whether God can communicate infallibly, but whether He appointed a living authority to preserve and interpret that revelation. You say disputes must be settled by “self-authenticating” revelation, yet thousands of sincere Protestants, all appealing to Scripture, reach contradictory conclusions, i.e. you did not and cannot say that contraception is a grave moral sin or that its morally admissible, just that its not necessary to be a Christian… this is why SS is practically a bad doctrine. Its objectively a bad answer.

This proves the text alone is not functioning as a final authority. Catholics avoid regress not by appealing to human authority, but by resting in Christ’s institution which is a Church guided by the Spirit to speak with His authority. The regress ends not in text or method, but in a person: Christ and the Church He founded.

Trust (or faith) is the operating factor, and that at a fundamental level, neither Protestants nor Catholics can go beyond trust (historio supernatural faith) in divine revelation.

Here’s the crux: It’s what or whom we trust as the divinely authorized vehicle of revelation.

The Protestant trusts that the individual or community can correctly recognize God’s Word and doctrine through Scripture alone and are bound by that. I trust that Christ’s Church — a living, visible body — is the divinely appointed guardian and interpreter of revelation.

Both involve faith beyond pure rational proof, yes. But only one offers a public, binding, authoritative channel for that faith.

I think the confusion here is one that I have seen a number of times and is outlined in the CtC articles:

You’re assuming that Catholics place the Church epistemically prior to divine revelation, but that’s not our claim. Divine revelation remains ontologically and epistemically primary; the Church is not the source of revelation, but the divinely appointed means by which Christ preserves and publicly identifies it. We do not first believe the Church instead of Christ, we believe Christ through the visible Body He founded and promised to guide, which is itself an article of revelation known from both Scripture and Tradition together. The circle is not vicious but Christological or virtuous. Authority terminates in Christ’s own act in history, not in private judgment, which is precisely why this is not fideism, but faith anchored in divine institution that has binding clear authority as to what is and is not Scipture.

First, contraception isn’t a grave sin — I’m not Catholic and not convinced by the arguments for it. But to claim it’s definitional to Christianity is absurd. It’s nowhere in apostolic teaching or creedal confession. And when I look at Rome’s record on moral and doctrinal “developments”—its reversal on the death penalty, its dogmatization of papal infallibility, and its ballooning Marian theology—I see not an indefectible authority, but a historical pattern of theological flat-earthism.

Second, appeals to the reliability of the Roman Church just beg the question. How do you know Christ instituted an indefectible Church? You know it, supposedly, from history. But history can’t tell you that a mass apostasy is impossible—it can only tell you what’s happened so far. If you then appeal to Scripture to prove indefectibility, the argument collapses, because you don’t know what counts as Scripture until you already know what the Church decided was Scripture. It’s epistemic bootstrapping all the way down—an endless passing of the buck from text to Church and back again. And that’s exactly why the tu quoque arguments still land.

Yes, God is the ultimate authority. The question is how we have access to Him. I say through His writings—the self-authenticating Word of God. You say through the Roman Church, which tells you what counts as His Word and what it means. But that’s not faith in divine revelation; it’s faith in an institutional interpreter.

Third, you’re missing what I mean by Revelational Methodism. It’s not about whether you say revelation is “ontologically primary.” Every theist can say that. The issue is epistemic priority—what has to be known first for revelation to even count as revelation. On your own view, you can’t know what counts as divine testimony until the Church tells you. That means the Church is epistemically prior, no matter how much you insist otherwise. You’re building the rules for knowing revelation before you’ve encountered revelation itself. That’s the heart of the problem.

So the real divide isn’t about whether God can communicate—we both agree He can. It’s about whether His communication is sufficient to make itself known, or whether it needs a human certification process to become revelation for us. I think the latter guts divine sufficiency and turns faith in God into faith in an office.

Catholic Apologist:

Yeah it turns faith in God into faith in an office that God appointed… is that unbiblical? You’re confusing God’s power to reveal with our ability to know what He revealed. The Church doesn’t make God’s Word true at all. It helps us recognize it. Saying “God can’t fail” skips the real question: how do we know, with enough certainty to bind the conscience in an objective way what counts as God’s Word?

The question is how we have access to Him. I say through His writings—the self-authenticating Word of God. You say through the Roman Church, which tells you what counts as His Word and what it means. But that’s not faith in divine revelation; it’s faith in an institutional interpreter.

This is the most clear thing you have stated and is the crux of our disagreement.

The Catholic claim is not that revelation is insufficient, but that our access to it is mediated through the means Christ instituted (the Church). To say otherwise assumes that divine speech automatically yields human certainty that is also binding, which is clearly shown to be false by the historical fragmentation of interpretations, i.e. that contraception was universally known to be a grave moral sin and in the 1930s became normative.

First, contraception isn’t a grave sin.

Ok… says who?

Just pulled this from Chat btw. I think you may be either A) uninformed on this as a point of moral theology or B) are purposefully dodging it. Again I know it does not have to do with the ontological nature of Scripture but it does have to do with bindingness which I think may be what we are actually arguing about.

The Early Church,

All early Christian writers who mention the topic reject contraception outright.
• St. Augustine, St. Jerome, St. John Chrysostom, and Clement of Alexandria all condemn the deliberate prevention of procreation, often equating it with forms of homicide or grave lust.
• The early Church inherited this from Jewish moral teaching and Natural Law reasoning — the act of sex was ordered toward both unity and procreation, and intentionally separating the two was viewed as rebellion against God’s design.

⸻

Medieval and Reformation Eras
• Thomas Aquinas classified contraception and related acts under sins against nature (Summa Theologiae II-II, Q.154, a.12).
• The Eastern Orthodox, Catholic, and early Protestant Reformers were completely united on this point.
• Martin Luther called Onan’s contraceptive act “a most disgraceful sin.”
• John Calvin called it “monstrous” and “a crime which is doubly monstrous.”
• John Wesley likewise condemned it as a violation of the created order.,

There was no moral divergence among Christian traditions on this issue up through the 19th century.

So the question is… what can we both appeal to within Protestantism to bind the conscience on this matter?

VincentthefakeGregBahnsen:

Yeah it turns faith in God into faith in an office that God appointed… is that unbiblical? You’re confusing God’s power to reveal with our ability to know what He revealed. The Church doesn’t make God’s Word true at all. It helps us recognize it. Saying “God can’t fail” skips the real question: how do we know, with enough certainty to bind the conscience in an objective way what counts as God’s Word?

I think you’re still missing the point. Interestingly enough, what you’ve said here is a textbook example of what philosophers call the Problem of the Criterion—the question of how we can know anything unless we first know how we know, and how we can know how we know unless we first know something. This was famously raised by thinkers like Chisholm and refined in later epistemology.

You probably know of Agrippa’s Trilemma, but the same structure applies here. If you say, “We can only know revelation if we first know the right method or authority for identifying it,” then you’ve already lost, because you’ve placed method before revelation. That’s what I’ve been calling ecclesiastical methodism. It’s the idea that before we can know divine revelation, we must first adopt an interpretive or institutional method that tells us what counts as revelation. But that’s epistemically impossible: you can’t design a revelation detector before you know what revelation looks like.

The Reformed position doesn’t deny that we need a principle of knowledge; it denies that the Church can function as that principle. Revelational epistemology recognizes that God Himself is both the particular we know and the principle by which we know. Knowledge of revelation is non-inferential because revelation itself is self-disclosing. When the Spirit illumines the mind through the Word, the knowledge of its divine origin arises directly from contact with that revelation, not from a prior human method or ecclesial filter.

Jimmy Stephens expresses this well:

Revelational epistemology cuts through the horns of Methodism and Particularism. Unlike Methodism, it begins with a particular—the triune God known through His covenantal self-disclosure. Unlike Particularism, it provides a principled system—God’s revelation is not a bare datum but a structured Word, embedding us in a covenantal framework where meaning, knowledge, and justification cohere. Revelation is both content and method; knowing God as covenantal creatures unites the principle and the particular in the same act of divine communication.

Catholic Apologist:

Ah I see. Ok I think this is the confusion on the Catholic position and I was crafting a further response that might address this, in part:

You’re assuming that recognizing revelation is the same as receiving revelation immediately, but that confuses ontological primacy with epistemic mediation. The Catholic isn’t saying the Church creates revelation; we’re saying it is the divinely instituted means of identifying and preserving what God has revealed. God’s Word is always ontologically prior, but human recognition of that Word has always been mediated, even in Scripture itself, through prophets, apostles, and the visible Church.

When you say “I know God’s Word because it’s self-authenticating,” you have already inserted an interpretive act: you are trusting your own recognition of divine qualities. That is an epistemic mediation too, just an individualized one rather than ecclesial. The Canon Question shows that this appeal is circular: to recognize “divine qualities,” you must already know what counts as divine, which presupposes the very canon in dispute. (edited)Tuesday,
The Catholic appeal to the Church does not place faith in an institution instead of God. It places faith in Christ’s own promise to guide and preserve His Church (Matt 16:18; John 16:13). The Church is not epistemically prior to revelation but derivatively authoritative within it, serving as the divinely established means by which revelation remains public and identifiable. The Church doesn’t add to revelation, it makes revelation knowable as such, safeguarding the possibility of its recognition. If revelation is to be public and binding, it must have a visible means of identification, or it’s just private judgment.

So the question is not whether God’s communication is sufficient… it is. The question is whether we can know, with enough certainty to bind the conscience, which communication is His. The Church, grounded in Christ’s commission, does not stand before revelation, it is under it ensuring that divine revelation, which is ontologically perfect is not left epistemically inaccessible.

You keep lauding claims that are also tu qouques, or arguments from ignorance/appeal to possibility, i.e. the point that the Catholic Church could defect or could change the Canon (which it can’t in principle) would prove to me otherwise that it was not the true Church, at which point I would find another visible Church or revert to Protestantism.

The principles in place for someone who believes in a divinely instituted Church are clear on these fallacious appeals to possibility, whereas the principles in place for Protestantism are non-existent, i.e. what binds the Canon under self-attestation? Your answer was a tu qouque if I am not mistaken.

VincentthefakeGregBahnsen:

The Catholic claim is not that revelation is insufficient, but that our access to it is mediated through the means Christ instituted (the Church). To say otherwise assumes that divine speech automatically yields human certainty that is also binding, which is clearly shown to be false by the historical fragmentation of interpretations, i.e. that contraception was universally known to be a grave moral sin and in the 1930s became normative.

The problem with that line is that you’re treating disagreement as proof that divine revelation is epistemically insufficient. But that’s exactly what Paul rejects in Romans 1. The fact that people suppress or distort God’s revelation doesn’t mean it fails to yield knowledge; it means they resist what’s clear. I’m not a fallibilist or an infallibilist in the modern analytic sense—I simply hold that when God intends to make something known, His revelation succeeds.

So your argument from “fragmentation” just repeats the same error as the atheist argument from religious disagreement: people differ, therefore revelation must be unclear. By that logic, you’d have to deny Romans 1 or qualify it beyond recognition, since Paul explicitly says that God’s self-disclosure in creation leaves all men “without excuse.” The same principle applies to Scripture. If divine revelation can be self-authenticating in creation despite human denial, then human denial of Scripture’s meaning or moral implications doesn’t prove insufficiency either. That kind of reasoning is basically the same as those who deny objective morality because people disagree about ethics. The fact that moral agents differ doesn’t mean there are no moral truths.

Catholic Apologist:

Again Romans 1 is about general revelation with the very different question of how divine revelation is recognized and interpreted. Romans 1 teaches that all people can know God exists through creation, but it says nothing about how believers identify the canon or interpret doctrine. The Catholic point is not that revelation fails because people disagree, but that revelation requires a divinely guided means of recognition otherwise epistemic access to revelation is private judgment. As a Reformed person I would have used perspicuity in the same way: “when God intends to make something known, His revelation succeeds” but it merely begs how do we know what He intended to reveal and how do we settle a dispute amongst sincere believers that is also binding? History shows that sincere Christians have profoundly disagreed on essential moral and doctrinal issues, not because they suppressed truth like the pagans in Romans 1 but because the interpretive principle of self-authentication is not accessible, non-binding, non-objective, etc. The modern Protestant acceptance of contraception which was universally condemned by all Christians before 1930s is a super clear example: if God’s moral revelation in Scripture were self-evident and sufficient, how did virtually the entire Christian world get it wrong that it was in fact a grave moral sin for nineteen centuries? That historical reversal exposes the inadequacy of claiming that divine revelation “succeeds” apart from an visible divinely instituted Church, because without that visible interpretive body, revelation remains true in itself but is functionally confusing or unknowable in practice.

VincentthefakeGregBahnsen:

You’re assuming that recognizing revelation is the same as receiving revelation immediately, but that confuses ontological primacy with epistemic mediation. The Catholic isn’t saying the Church creates revelation; we’re saying it is the divinely instituted means of identifying and preserving what God has revealed. God’s Word is always ontologically prior, but human recognition of that Word has always been mediated, even in Scripture itself, through prophets, apostles, and the visible Church.

When you say “I know God’s Word because it’s self-authenticating,” you have already inserted an interpretive act: you are trusting your own recognition of divine qualities. That is an epistemic mediation too, just an individualized one rather than ecclesial. The Canon Question shows that this appeal is circular: to recognize “divine qualities,” you must already know what counts as divine, which presupposes the very canon in dispute.

That actually misses my argument. I’m not accusing Catholics of claiming the Church creates new revelation. I understand that Rome teaches it only clarifies and preserves the apostolic deposit. My point is that your argument requires a method to ratify divine content before it can be recognized as such — and that’s precisely where the problem lies.

You can call it “epistemic mediation,” but that’s just another way of saying revelation isn’t sufficient to identify itself. You’re effectively saying that divine speech cannot be known as divine until a human mechanism authenticates it. If you need a prior criterion — even a divinely instituted one — to know what counts as revelation, you’ve replaced revelation as the ground of knowledge with a method about revelation. That’s the essence of Methodism: knowing how before knowing what. In other words, you’ve built a model where divine communication isn’t sufficient to generate knowledge until the Magisterium tells you it has.

The Catholic appeal to the Church does not place faith in an institution instead of God. It places faith in Christ’s own promise to guide and preserve His Church (Matt 16:18; John 16:13). The Church is not epistemically prior to revelation but derivatively authoritative within it, serving as the divinely established means by which revelation remains public and identifiable. The Church doesn’t add to revelation, it makes revelation knowable as such, safeguarding the possibility of its recognition. If revelation is to be public and binding, it must have a visible means of identification, or it’s just private judgment.

So the question is not whether God’s communication is sufficient… it is. The question is whether we can know, with enough certainty to bind the conscience, which communication is His. The Church, grounded in Christ’s commission, does not stand before revelation, it is under it ensuring that divine revelation, which is ontologically perfect is not left epistemically inaccessible.

But that’s precisely where the circular problem appears. If the canon argument were correct, you couldn’t even know that Matthew 16:18 or John 16:13 are part of divine revelation in the first place. On your own framework, you’d need to know the Church’s authority before you could know those texts are Scripture — yet the Church’s authority is supposedly derived from those very texts. The logical order of knowing in your system is impossible.

You can’t appeal to Scripture to prove the Church’s authority if you only know what Scripture is by first trusting that same Church. And you can’t appeal to the Church to interpret those texts if, on your view, you can’t even identify them as God’s Word without the Church’s prior certification. The argument collapses under its own epistemic weight.

You keep lauding claims that are also tu qouques, or arguments from ignorance/appeal to possibility, i.e. the point that the Catholic Church could defect or could change the Canon (which it can’t in principle) would prove to me otherwise that it was not the true Church, at which point I would find another visible Church or revert to Protestantism.

The principles in place for someone who believes in a divinely instituted Church are clear on these fallacious appeals to possibility, whereas the principles in place for Protestantism are non-existent, i.e. what binds the Canon under self-attestation? Your answer was a tu qouque if I am not mistaken.

It’s not clear what you’re referring to. I haven’t appealed to possibility or ignorance — I’ve appealed to historical facts that complicate the Catholic narrative used in the canon argument. I’ve pointed out that even within Catholicism there are disputes over whether the canon is absolutely closed, and I’ve noted historical instances that at least appear to contradict indefectibility. My argument is simply that the popular Catholic canon argument is both logically and historically weak.

Also, tu quoque arguments aren’t automatically fallacious. They’re only fallacious when they evade a charge rather than expose an inconsistency. In this case, they’re directly relevant, because your position faces the same epistemic problem you accuse Protestants of: circularity. So pointing that out isn’t a dodge; it’s a reductio ad hominem in the classical sense.

I’m using ad hominem the way Peter Geach does in Reason and Argument (Basil Blackwell, 1976, pp. 26–27):

“This Latin term indicates that these are arguments addressed to a particular man—in fact, the other fellow you are disputing with. You start from something he believes as a premise, and infer a conclusion he won’t admit to be true. If you have not been cheating in your reasoning, you will have shown that your opponent’s present body of beliefs is inconsistent, and it’s up to him to modify it somewhere.”
As Geach notes, there is nothing fallacious about this procedure. If A succeeds in showing B that his doxastic system harbors a contradiction, then not everything B believes can be true.

The real problem is that these arguments always end up begging the question—assuming from the outset that the Church is a necessary epistemic condition for knowing the canon or interpreting revelation. And frankly, this sort of reasoning borders on delusion: it’s like a communist insisting that any social problem must automatically prove capitalism’s failure and communism’s necessity. It sets standards up that just are selected to get the conclusion that the church is true. It’s a closed system that predetermines its own conclusion and congratulates itself for winning.

Catholic Apologist:

Ok its cool to see how our convo naturally gets to the kernel of the disagreement. I’ve had this discussion so many times in the past and it almost always ends up here:

This objection misunderstands the order of being (what is true in reality) and the order of knowing (how we come to know it), which is exactly what Bryan Cross clarifies in Tu Quoque. The Catholic position isn’t that the Church must first “prove” its authority apart from revelation, or that Scripture must first “prove” itself apart from the Church. It’s that Christ Himself who is the ontological source of both Scripture and the Church established a visible, Spirit-guided community to authoritatively preserve and identify His revelation.

In the Catholic view, Scripture and Church are not two competing epistemic starting points, but mutual things that operating within a single divine system. The Church recognized certain writings as inspired because she was already the living community commissioned by Christ and animated by the same Spirit who inspired those writings. The recognition of Scripture, therefore, is a participation in revelation, not a precondition. The believer encounters Christ’s authority in the integrated witness of Word and Church, both of which are derived from Him.

So the alleged circularity of “you can’t know the Church without Scripture or Scripture without the Church” only arises if you treat them as independent sources of evidence. But the Catholic does not. We know Christ’s authority through the historically continuous witness of the apostolic Church, which hands on both the Word written and the Word preached as one deposit of faith. The circle is hermeneutical, not vicious: it’s the same kind of rational coherence we find in trusting a mother’s voice before being able to articulate why it’s trustworthy. The act of faith rests not in a syllogism but on the credibility of the divine Person who speaks through His Body.

Again if you would have just read the Tu qouque prior you would have seen that your response assumes that because the Church plays a necessary role in identifying revelation, the conclusion (that the Church is true) is smuggled in from the start. But the Catholic claim, as Bryan Cross explains in Tu Quoque, isn’t a syllogism designed to prove the Church’s truth from within its own system. It’s a historical-theological inference about how Christ chose to make revelation publicly accessible.

The Reformed person treats Scripture and Church as two independent epistemic starting points competing for priority. The Catholic sees them as a single divine order: Christ’s revelation gives rise to both the apostolic writings and the apostolic community, and each illuminates the other. There’s no circular dependence of equals in my system. The Church isn’t epistemically prior to revelation but rather the living medium through which revelation is identified and transmitted. You don’t first “believe in the Church instead of God”. You believe God’s revelation as it comes through the institution He established to safeguard it.

Calling this “closed-system reasoning” misses the point that every epistemic system depends on basic trust conditions… whether in self-authentication, inner illumination, or the witness of the Church. The Reformed position also “selects standards to get its conclusion” by presupposing that Scripture must be self-authenticating and that the Church cannot be infallible. The difference is that the Catholic appeal is historically anchored in a concrete community founded by Christ, while the Reformed appeal ultimately reduces to private judgment. So the system is not circular. it’s coherent: revelation grounds the Church, and the Church in turn guards revelation, forming a virtuous, not vicious, circle.

[This is what I am referring to and what you had stated prior about my canon being unbinding which is both a tu qouque and an appeal to ignorance. Hard to keep everything in sync. Lots of things you said I have not even addressed but its impossible to keep it all flowing clearly! ]

I’ve pointed out that even within Catholicism there are disputes over whether the canon is absolutely closed, and I’ve noted historical instances that at least appear to contradict indefectibility. My argument is simply that the popular Catholic canon argument is both logically and historically weak.

It’s not weak either logically or historically. I am thoroughly unconvinced by your arguments and have heard them all before.

Also, tu quoque arguments aren’t automatically fallacious. They’re only fallacious when they evade a charge rather than expose an inconsistency. In this case, they’re directly relevant, because your position faces the same epistemic problem you accuse Protestants of: circularity. So pointing that out isn’t a dodge; it’s a reductio ad hominem in the classical sense.

I know they are not fallacious, they are just typically not constructive, can be used as sophistry, and can obviously lack a positive case for your position, yet most of your responses say that “you too” suffer from the same circularity which I have pointed out that the Catholic position does not, and the articles I shared try to make a strong case for in the article’s comments and the content. Your claim above for instance was that the Church can change therefore it invalidates her past proclamations making the Magisterium incoherent which is both a tu qouque because you never dealt with how your canon is binding (and still haven’t) and is an appeal to possibility.

I am all for reductios, they just have to work. I am convinced in this case that yours do not.

Q: Why is your position not just solo Scriptura and private judgement?
Would also love a response to this when you can:

Again Romans 1 is about general revelation with the very different question of how divine revelation is recognized and interpreted. Romans 1 teaches that all people can know God exists through creation, but it says nothing about how believers identify the canon or interpret doctrine. The Catholic point is not that revelation fails because people disagree, but that revelation requires a divinely guided means of recognition otherwise epistemic access to revelation is private judgment. As a Reformed person I would have used perspicuity in the same way: “when God intends to make something known, His revelation succeeds” but it merely begs how do we know what He intended to reveal and how do we settle a dispute amongst sincere believers that is also binding? History shows that sincere Christians have profoundly disagreed on essential moral and doctrinal issues, not because they suppressed truth like the pagans in Romans 1 but because the interpretive principle of self-authentication is not accessible, non-binding, non-objective, etc. The modern Protestant acceptance of contraception which was universally condemned by all Christians before 1930s is a super clear example: if God’s moral revelation in Scripture were self-evident and sufficient, how did virtually the entire Christian world get it wrong that it was in fact a grave moral sin for nineteen centuries? That historical reversal exposes the inadequacy of claiming that divine revelation “succeeds” apart from an visible divinely instituted Church, because without that visible interpretive body, revelation remains true in itself but is functionally confusing or unknowable in practice.
Lastly, I would love to clearly address anything that I may have missed. Maybe compiling what you think are my weakest or unaddressed points. Thanks!

VincentthefakeGregBahnsen:

This objection misunderstands the order of being (what is true in reality) and the order of knowing (how we come to know it), which is exactly what Bryan Cross clarifies in Tu Quoque. The Catholic position isn’t that the Church must first “prove” its authority apart from revelation, or that Scripture must first “prove” itself apart from the Church. It’s that Christ Himself who is the ontological source of both Scripture and the Church established a visible, Spirit-guided community to authoritatively preserve and identify His revelation.

In the Catholic view, Scripture and Church are not two competing epistemic starting points, but mutual things that operating within a single divine system. The Church recognized certain writings as inspired because she was already the living community commissioned by Christ and animated by the same Spirit who inspired those writings. The recognition of Scripture, therefore, is a participation in revelation, not a precondition. The believer encounters Christ’s authority in the integrated witness of Word and Church, both of which are derived from Him.

So the alleged circularity of “you can’t know the Church without Scripture or Scripture without the Church” only arises if you treat them as independent sources of evidence. But the Catholic does not. We know Christ’s authority through the historically continuous witness of the apostolic Church, which hands on both the Word written and the Word preached as one deposit of faith. The circle is hermeneutical, not vicious: it’s the same kind of rational coherence we find in trusting a mother’s voice before being able to articulate why it’s trustworthy. The act of faith rests not in a syllogism but on the credibility of the divine Person who speaks through His Body.

It seems to me there are a few points being missed:

Firstly, you’re confusing what your argument entails with what you personally believe. The canon argument you’ve advanced does entail that the Church is epistemically prior to Scripture—that one must first know which institution is divinely authorized before one can know which writings are divine. So most of this response collapses on its own terms. You may believe that Scripture and Church operate harmoniously, but your argument itself makes the Church logically prior to Scripture in the order of knowing.

Secondly, the canon argument you’re invoking isn’t even standard among Catholic thinkers. Many Catholic theologians and apologists (including those loyal to the Magisterium) openly concede that the “you can’t know the canon without the Church” line is deeply flawed. Rejecting it doesn’t undermine Catholic orthodoxy

Thirdly, the “you’re confusing ontology with epistemology” retort is confused. It’s often thrown at presuppositionalists but never actually unpacked and it isn’t here either. My argument is explicitly epistemological: the question isn’t what the Church is, but whether it must be a necessary precondition for knowing divine revelation. Your claim that we need the Church to know the canon is epistemic, not ontological, and that’s precisely what’s under dispute. Your argument concerns not what exists (ontology) but how we come to know what exists (epistemology), so the charge misses the mark entirely.

Fourthly, what you say in the second paragraph are simply theological affirmations that Scripture and Church exist in harmony, that both are derived from Christ, and so on. None of that engages the epistemic order. It just repeats your theology as if that were an argument for how we know which words are God’s.

Fifthly, your final paragraph only heightens the circularity. Claiming that the Church is the historical continuation of the apostolic community that hands on revelation is precisely what’s in question. How do you know that Christ commissioned this kind of Church—the Roman Catholic Church—with infallible authority? You know it, by your own admission, through the biblical and historical record. But if you can reason from history and Scripture to identify the true Church, then I can reason from the same data to the opposite conclusion: that Scripture contradicts Catholic dogma.

And if you respond that private interpretation of those historical or scriptural details is illegitimate, then the argument collapses into a self-serving criterion—only the Church can validate the Church. That isn’t harmony between Scripture and Church. it’s circular self-authentication disguised as divine order to be believed without reason. The point remains: if your argument for knowing revelation requires first knowing the Church, then revelation itself can never be the ground of that knowledge. Remember this is your argument to persuade the Protestant to becoming some sort of Catholic. The argument isn’t meant to be something that the Protestant is suppose to believe for no reason.

But if you lose the necessity of knowing the Church first to know divine revelation, then there simply isn’t any part of the Canon argument left to worry about for Protestants. The central thesis of this just is reducible to the claim that the church is necessary to know the canon.

Again if you would have just read the Tu qouque prior you would have seen that your response assumes that because the Church plays a necessary role in identifying revelation, the conclusion (that the Church is true) is smuggled in from the start. But the Catholic claim, as Bryan Cross explains in Tu Quoque, isn’t a syllogism designed to prove the Church’s truth from within its own system. It’s a historical-theological inference about how Christ chose to make revelation publicly accessible. The Reformed person treats Scripture and Church as two independent epistemic starting points competing for priority. The Catholic sees them as a single divine order: Christ’s revelation gives rise to both the apostolic writings and the apostolic community, and each illuminates the other. There’s no circular dependence of equals in my system. The Church isn’t epistemically prior to revelation but rather the living medium through which revelation is identified and transmitted. You don’t first “believe in the Church instead of God”. You believe God’s revelation as it comes through the institution He established to safeguard it. Calling this “closed-system reasoning” misses the point that every epistemic system depends on basic trust conditions… whether in self-authentication, inner illumination, or the witness of the Church. The Reformed position also “selects standards to get its conclusion” by presupposing that Scripture must be self-authenticating and that the Church cannot be infallible. The difference is that the Catholic appeal is historically anchored in a concrete community founded by Christ, while the Reformed appeal ultimately reduces to private judgment. So the system is not circular. it’s coherent: revelation grounds the Church, and the Church in turn guards revelation, forming a virtuous, not vicious, circle.

Notice your opening claim: “the Church plays a necessary role in identifying revelation.” That’s precisely a claim about the order of knowing, not being. Identification is an epistemic act. You’re describing a process like a police lineup—God’s writings are presented, and the Church identifies which ones are legitimate. But that already assumes the Church is the organ of recognition before revelation can be known. That’s epistemic priority, no matter how you phrase it.

Your next statement is equally problematic. You say the canon argument isn’t meant to “prove the Church’s truth from within its own system.” Certainly, that isn’t your intention, but that’s exactly what happens. The argument is circular because the only reason to accept its premises is that you already accept the Catholic Church’s claims. Instead of showing that the Church is necessary to know the canon, you simply burden shift—deflecting by asking the Protestant to prove the contrary. And when you call your position a “historical-theological inference,” you face another problem: how do you know how to make that inference without already knowing something about revelation?

You can appeal to history, but history won’t tell you that Restorationist movements are false. Both Catholics and Protestants appeal to Scripture to refute them. But suppose I started a restorationist sect today and claimed new revelation: “Jesus appeared to me and told me I’m the infallible interpreter, and the 66 books are canon.” On your principle, you couldn’t know that’s false apart from me, because you’ve made external certification the very criterion of knowing revelation. Yet that’s absurd. You’d instinctively appeal to Scripture to test me—which is precisely the Protestant principle at work.

You say, “The Church isn’t epistemically prior to revelation but the living medium through which revelation is identified and transmitted.” But that identification language again is epistemic. To say revelation is “identified through” the Church just means that people come to know revelation through the Church—so the Church is epistemically prior whether you admit it or not. The argument requires that structure.

As for “trust conditions,” it’s unclear what you mean. If you simply mean that all knowledge involves trust in sources, that’s trivial. But if you mean the Roman Catholic Church itself is the trust condition for knowing revelation, then that’s precisely the claim under dispute—and you haven’t given non-circular grounds for it. Saying, “It’s trustworthy because it’s divinely guided,” only works if you already accept that it’s divinely guided. It’s the epistemic equivalent of a salesman saying, “Trust me because I’m trustworthy.” That may sell cars, but it’s not a serious foundation for eternal certainty. Furthermore, I don’t agree with John Frame’s thoughts about circularity. Begging the question is just to assume the human mind can think something and make it true, only God can do that. I am fine with epistemic circularity, but think that is distinct from begging the question.

Finally, you misrepresent “private judgment.” Protestants don’t mean that whatever one privately believes is true. They mean that personal judgment is an inescapable part of the knowing process. Every act of faith includes an individual’s assent to what he takes to be God’s revelation. Catholics engage in private judgment, too—when they decide the Roman Church is the true one. The difference is that the Protestant admits it. The Catholic disguises it behind institutional rhetoric, but the psychology and epistemic structure are identical.

In short, your argument keeps smuggling in the very epistemic hierarchy it denies. The Church’s “identifying role” makes it the epistemic gatekeeper of revelation, which is just what I’ve been saying all along.

I know they are not fallacious, they are just typically not constructive, can be used as sophistry, and can obviously lack a positive case for your position, yet most of your responses say that “you too” suffer from the same circularity which I have pointed out that the Catholic position does not, and the articles I shared try to make a strong case for in the article’s comments and the content. Your claim above for instance was that the Church can change therefore it invalidates her past proclamations making the Magisterium incoherent which is both a tu qouque because you never dealt with how your canon is binding (and still haven’t) and is an appeal to possibility.

I am all for reductios, they just have to work. I am convinced in this case that yours do not.

Q: Why is your position not just solo Scriptura and private judgement?

Since you agree that tu quoque arguments aren’t intrinsically fallacious, it’s hard to see why my responses should be dismissed. You’re misunderstanding what I’ve been doing. I’m not merely saying “you too.” I’m showing that your canon argument entails the very circularity you accuse me of—only worse, because it makes divine revelation epistemically dependent on human certification. That means something other than God is made capable of justifying divine speech, which is incoherent. What could possibly have more power or reliability to bind, justify, and command trust than God Himself? that’s a reductio ad absurdum.

As for how the canon is binding, the answer has been clear from the start: divine speech is self-binding. When God speaks, His Word bears intrinsic authority. It doesn’t need ratification from an institution any more than creation needs a committee to exist. God’s Word obligates by virtue of who He is—the One whose speech brings reality into being. That’s why Paul can say in Romans 1 that divine revelation is binding even when suppressed. The same logic applies to Scripture: its authority is objective, even when disputed.

So yes, I affirm that the canon binds because its Author is God. Whether or not I can chart every epistemic step with exhaustive precision is irrelevant. The point is that your position remains self-defeating: it denies that God’s own revelation can identify itself without the Church’s approval.

You can call that “unconstructive,” but that’s exactly what a reductio is for. to expose incoherence, not to invent an alternative mechanism. Even if I granted ignorance about how God binds us through His Word, your system would still collapse on its own terms. The issue isn’t that Protestants lack a mechanism. it’s that your mechanism replaces divine self-attestation with ecclesial fiat.

When people say “Solo Scriptura” or “me and my Bible,” they usually mean a kind of theological autonomy. where I become the final authority, accountable to no one but my own opinion. That’s not what I believe. There are objectively right and wrong ways to read Scripture because God actually said something definite. The text has meaning grounded in His intention, not in personal preference.

The difference is about authority and binding the conscience. If by “me and my Bible” you mean that no one—no church, creed, or teacher—can ever correct you, then yes, that’s false. But if you mean that only divine authority can ultimately bind the conscience, then I agree entirely. Human authorities (pastors, councils, confessions) have a real but ministerial authority. They guide, teach, and discipline, but they cannot add to or override divine speech.

So, I reject the individualism of solo Scriptura but affirm the freedom of conscience under sola Scriptura. The Bible is not a private playground of preferences. It’s God’s speech, objectively true and self-authenticating. The church’s role is not to make it true, but to minister that truth faithfully. It’s like parents: they are divinely ordained authorities, yet perfect submission to them isn’t required in order to be faithfully listening to God. Likewise, the church is ordained to teach and lead, but its authority is derivative

Would also love a response to this when you can:

Again Romans 1 is about general revelation with the very different question of how divine revelation is recognized and interpreted. Romans 1 teaches that all people can know God exists through creation, but it says nothing about how believers identify the canon or interpret doctrine. The Catholic point is not that revelation fails because people disagree, but that revelation requires a divinely guided means of recognition otherwise epistemic access to revelation is private judgment. As a Reformed person I would have used perspicuity in the same way: “when God intends to make something known, His revelation succeeds” but it merely begs how do we know what He intended to reveal and how do we settle a dispute amongst sincere believers that is also binding? History shows that sincere Christians have profoundly disagreed on essential moral and doctrinal issues, not because they suppressed truth like the pagans in Romans 1 but because the interpretive principle of self-authentication is not accessible, non-binding, non-objective, etc. The modern Protestant acceptance of contraception which was universally condemned by all Christians before 1930s is a super clear example: if God’s moral revelation in Scripture were self-evident and sufficient, how did virtually the entire Christian world get it wrong that it was in fact a grave moral sin for nineteen centuries? That historical reversal exposes the inadequacy of claiming that divine revelation “succeeds” apart from an visible divinely instituted Church, because without that visible interpretive body, revelation remains true in itself but is functionally confusing or unknowable in practice.

Your argument was an argument from disagreement. You originally claimed that Scripture can’t be self-authenticating because people disagree about it. That’s precisely what Paul’s argument in Romans 1 refutes. Disagreement doesn’t undermine self-evidence. Revelation can be both objectively clear and subjectively resisted. The fact that people misread or misuse revelation doesn’t mean revelation itself failed.

Christians are still human, and like the pagans in Romans 1, they remain susceptible to sin and sincere mistakes. Revelation doesn’t override human nature. The fact that believers disagree or even resist truth doesn’t prove that revelation failed. it shows that people still need correction, persuasion, and sometimes discipline. God has provided means for both peaceful and, in history, even coercive persuasion, but those means don’t replace revelation itself they appeal to it to help us deal with those persons. You should know by now that proof isn’t persuasion.

So if a Christian won’t listen to reason or to Scripture, the cause is either error or sin, not a deficiency in God’s communication. Divine revelation is sufficient human reception is not. That’s why disagreement is not an epistemic argument against sola Scriptura.

And that’s why your current appeal to “epistemic access” is just the same argument I’ve been addressing. You’re still saying, “Because believers disagree, God’s revelation must require a divinely guided interpreter.” But Romans 1 contradicts that logic. God’s general revelation “succeeds” in making all people know Him, even though they universally distort it. The same principle applies to special revelation: God’s Word succeeds in communicating His truth, even when men make mistakes, twist, or ignore it.
Your claim that revelation must have a divinely guided means of recognition simply restates ecclesial Methodism. the idea that revelation can’t be known unless a method first tells us what counts as revelation. Which is just what all my prior comments are about, I won’t rehash.

As for the contraception example: the question isn’t whether Protestants disagree about moral applications—Catholics do too (look at the long debates over the death penalty, usury, just war, and even contraception). The real issue is whether divine revelation failed or human understanding is fallible. The latter is obvious. Scripture’s moral principles didn’t change; people did and that’s not to say such makes divine speech useless. Yes, many Protestants could’ve been pro-choice a century ago or defended chattel slavery two centuries ago. But scripture has always been clear about those topics and that is unlike that of contraception.
But contraception, hasn’t been universally condemned or ideas that sex can be for pleasure was among Protestants. So, I’m not sure the accuracy of these comments in the first place.