Catholics, Protestants, and the Scriptures

At First Things, Richard John Neuhaus, formerly a Lutheran, now a Roman Catholic priest, writes about one of the most important issues raised in the discussion of Francis Beckwith's return to Catholicism. The issue is about authority - "the relationship between Scripture and the interpretive tradition of the Church." Excerpts:

These are questions addressed in the statement of Evangelicals and Catholics Together, “Your Word Is Truth.” In that statement, it is underscored that sola scriptura does not mean nuda scriptura—Scripture divorced from the living community of faith by which it was produced and is interpreted under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit whom Jesus promised to the Church. ...

We can be sure that neither in their living voice nor in their letters did the apostles preach sola scriptura as ETS understands that phrase, since their preaching long precedes the formation and canonization of what we call the New Testament. (St. Athanasius in his Festal Letter of A.D. 367 was the first to name the twenty-seven books of the New Testament as canonical.) The Church is not a community constituted by a book called the Bible. The Church is the extension through time of the People of Israel living in fidelity to God’s revelation of himself in Jesus the Christ under the direction of the apostolic authority that he established. That is the community that, guided by the Holy Spirit, both produced and holds itself accountable to the inspired Scriptures of Old and New Testaments. To put it differently, the question is not Scripture and tradition. The Scriptures are that part of the tradition that the Church recognizes as uniquely authoritative.

For most Protestants the issue would be whether the Catholic church has, in fact, properly held "itself accountable to the inspired Scriptures of Old and New Testaments." Neuhaus writes that the discussion of these issues "is a very lively—sometimes nasty but potentially salutary—debate ...." May the benefits of the debate outweigh the hazards.

Source: First Things: Stirring the potpourri