What Scripture doth plainly deliver, to that first place both of credit and obedience is due; the next whereunto is whatsoever any man can necessarily conclude by force of reason; after these the voice of the Church succeedeth. That which the Church by her ecclesiastical authority shall probably think and define to be true or good, must in congruity of reason over-rule all other inferior judgments whatsoever.

Thus the highest authority is given to Holy Scripture and then those things that may be deduced from it by reason. Tradition (understood as synonymous with Hooker’s “voice of the Church”) is given only a secondary authority and in this it is not considered to be an infallible one.

The objection might be raised at this point that an authority without infallibility is useless. However, this is certainly not the case in any other matter of human understanding so one wonders why theology must attain standards not demanded elsewhere. No other realm of authority in human understanding insists on infallibility. Neither Newton nor Einstein was infallible on matters of physics but this was not a requirement to judge the body of their work worthy of respect.

Indeed, certain questions of theology may never be answered this side of eternity but we can use that passed down to us both as a reliable guide – though not an infallible one – to grasp both a likely answer to questions that are not clearly covered in Holy Scripture and as a guide to the most reliable interpretation of Divine writ.

A related (though certainly not identical) view is presented by the Eastern Orthodox Churches in their veneration of Mary. Many things concerning the Holy Virgin are believed by the Orthodox with all their hearts as true but have never been raised to the level of dogma. The dogmas concerning Mary are actually few and most of these reflect Christological concerns. However, there are other commonly held beliefs concerning Mary that are given Church tradition through the prayers and hymns of the Divine Liturgy and the writings of the Eastern Fathers that are part of their understanding of the Faith though not raised to the dogmatic level.

Thus the point I wish to emphasize is that something may be held as true and not likely subject to revision without necessarily being considered infallible. In any field of study, existing views are subject to being challenged but the new concept must explain the fruitful results of that it would replace. For example, Einstein’s Theory of Relativity reduces to Newton’s Laws in most but the extreme circumstances and works in those circumstances where Newton’s Laws failed. Hence, it explained Newton’s success until those circumstances were encountered.

Yet we have even more to assure ourselves of the wisdom of the Church than the experience and faith of the great saints of two millennia. We have Christ’s promise that the Church can never be overcome by darkness and His assurance that the Holy Spirit will lead us to all truth. Now He never stated that the road to the truth would always be easy or that the recognition of the Spirit’s leading would be immediate, but that in the fullness of time the Church would be led – sometimes kicking and screaming – to all truth. It is thus clear the teaching of the historic Church safeguards the truths of the faith in her exegesis of Holy Scripture and her witness through this age.

Now the objection might be raised that there is no absolute assurance that the Church’s understanding at this time is true. Perhaps this is the case but given the choice between the greatest minds and most devout souls in the legacy of the Church against the word of a modern revisionist who claims to understand what none before could grasp, siding with the former seems a far more prudent path. This is not to say that such determinations are without possibility of reform. Past giants of the faith may through no fault of their own have erred in their judgment. But as their age was closer to the Apostles’ own and their understanding of the Faith is steeped in the world from which the Church first arose, so their insights are much to be favored.

Those who seek to revise long held beliefs must overcome hurdles before them that all but make their desired changes impossible. The first hurdle is their insistence that private judgment – no matter how well intentioned – is to overrule the clear teaching of Christendom held as far back as one can ascertain with any degree of certainty.

Usually such assertions are born not out of insights but of ignorance and parochialism. The ignorance is often born of their refusal to place importance in the accumulated wisdom of the Church. Rather than consider centuries of insights, they choose to make their judgment based upon their own short reflections on matters that the Church has wrestled with for centuries. The parochialism is born out of human pride that cannot see any time or place more at the center of God’s plan than their own. Thus they often decide in favor of beliefs that turn central beliefs on its head as it lends credence to their belief in their own intelligence and uniqueness.

It is a peculiarity of our time that we find such comfort in the iconoclastic. We celebrate all manner of novelty in the name of “progress” while derisively labeling any appeal to tradition as “dead orthodoxy.” Certainly there have been past reformers who sought to change the Church but it was always – regardless of how well-founded their execution – by appealing to an earlier time. The Protestant Reformers were no less knowledgeable of the Church Fathers as their Catholic opponents and did seek to place their reforms within the Great Tradition of the Church. The denial of continuity we see now is of an entirely different character and seeks to create a new church as an adversary to the one founded by our Lord. Such desires echo the deception of the serpent that we can be as God.

If the revisionists’ first hurdle is their overconfidence in their own abilities, then their second is their lack of confidence in Christ. As mentioned above, Jesus vowed the gates of hell would never prevail and the Church would be led to all truth but their vanity says, “No – the Church has fallen into darkness and the Holy Spirit has neglected his duties until God has raised me to set things right.” In the Church’s early centuries this was the claim of the Gnostics, the Montanists, and other groups both heretical and pseudo-Christian. In medieval times the Bogomils and the Cathari would advance such claims. There were similar leanings in the more radical elements of the Protestant Reformation and again in the heretical groups arising from the ashes of the Millerite fantasy. And today we see this spirit of rebellion against our inherited tradition throughout the Church.

This rebellion is not just the dissent of leftists who seek to throw off all remnants of Christian morality and order but also the so-called “conservatives” whose conservation extends only to their self-proclaimed right to decide all matters of theology for themselves. Overlooking their attitude merely differentiates them from the leftists in their political affiliations and occasions of sin, they strongly assert an adherence to “old-time religion” while their beliefs are more reflective of American values than Christian ones.

Now one may rightly ask how it would be possible for any reform to take place. For this we take a look at how it has in fact been reformed in the past. A problem that first arises might initially elicit different solutions until the matter is discussed, debated, and, most importantly, prayed over. Over time we may trust that the Holy Spirit will raise up those who will put forth an orthodox solution to the dilemma. The faithful will recognize this since it will be rooted in both the Holy Scripture and the tradition of the Church but now applied in a new area. As this process goes forth, there will undoubtedly be those who resist the reform – not always from malice but often from caution – and it may take years for the correct view to be recognized. Naturally, the more widely held and the more established the more established within the Church’s tradition a view may be, the more powerful and overwhelming the evidence in favor of an alternative must be in order to warrant any reform. But this is as it should be if we are to claim to worship a God who is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

We have seen such changes in the past. The belief in triune nature of God has been with us in a nascent form from the Apostolic age but the understanding of the Most Holy and Blessed Trinity that was formulated at Nicea and Constantinople was the result of centuries of theological reflection upon the Holy Scriptures aided by the living tradition of the Church. This development was necessitated by heretical views promoted during the founding centuries of the Church.

We can also see how reform works in the development of eschatology. There was much debate over the exact meaning of the millennium that often motivated some to reject the Book of Revelation as canonical. Early premillennial beliefs developed from the popularity of certain apocryphal writings rejected by the Church that linked the millennium to both an early return of Christ and the placing of hell buried within the earth. Those who saw hell as a spiritual rather than overtly physical torment rejected this view and saw the millennium as a spiritual kingdom age of the Church. As the centuries wore on, the obvious weakness of the premillennial view became apparent and was rejected. However, many of those who held the erroneous view were still seen as great saints given they did not have the benefit of such hindsight.

Finally, I turn to the matter of sola scriptura as itself a doctrine. I would assert that it functions less as doctrine so much as metadoctrine. That is, it serves as a methodological principle from whence we may decide the relative strength of received beliefs. It states that only those doctrines proven from Holy Scripture are to be understood as absolutely infallible. Many other things may be believed as true with almost assured confidence but it rests upon a lesser authority than that derived from Holy Scripture.

This rejects both assertions by Catholic apologists that sola scriptura must be proven from Holy Scripture to avoid circularity and the assertion by Protestant apologists that it in fact can so be proven. The former assertion confuses deductions proved within a theory from the intuitive principles that give rise to its postulates while the latter is a matter of poor analysis wherein preconceived notions are read into passages that do not address the issue.