This post is an excerpt from the forthcoming book Rome Examined: Examination of the Decrees of the Council of Trent. In this concise distillation of Chemnitz’s magisterial critique, we present his scriptural case against Rome’s decrees on tradition, justification, the sacraments, and papal authority—one section at a time. (Find all the excerpts here: https://wolfmueller.co/category/rome-examined/)
1:1: On Holy Scripture
The Papists Reject the Bible as the Rule of Faith
[1] Andrada and other papist authors provide explanations of the doctrinal decrees of the Tridentine session. To what extent they may be useful in our examination will become evident from this section on Holy Scripture and further from what is said about traditions.
[2] I had written that the Jesuits are in agreement with other papists on the principle that Holy Scripture is a mutilated, fragmentary, and incomplete teaching, because it does not contain all the elements of teaching on faith and morals.
Andrada reproached me for this, as though it were a lie. Therefore, I thought, “Who knows? Maybe the Council of Trent wants to speak of Scripture reverently.” Thus, I took care to determine whether Andrada, a key figure at the council, would confess that heavenly doctrine exists in Scripture completely.
By no means, however, does he think this is the case. He admits that I have expressed the papists’ view, differing only in the words chosen. Why then does he raise such an outcry? He fears that if he speaks so recklessly about Scripture it will stir the people. Thus, to avoid agitating the people, the edges have been dulled at Trent, accounting for this high kind of style which now merits our full attention.
[3] Andrada concludes from Jeremiah 31:33 with the rest of the papal authors that the uniqueness of the New Testament’s teaching in its divine distinction from the Old Covenant consists in that it is not contained on stone tablets or recorded with pen and ink. Without Christ’s actual command, the evangelists and apostles committed some parts of this teaching to writing. For the Lord had given the command to preach, but not the command to write. But from the papal interpretation of this passage the undeniable conclusion clearly follows that the brief sum of New Testament teaching written down by the apostles with pen and ink is actually contrary to God’s Word and will.
[4] Therefore, we would have the holy books of the New Covenant written down without the will of Christ, indeed even against God’s clear and explicit command expressed in Scripture!
Also, Andrada finally reaches the conclusion that much of what is unwritten must be believed and that the rule of faith is not in Scripture but rather in the judgment of the church.
Pighius, in his work Ecclesiastical Hierarchy (bk. 1, ch. 2), places the authority of the church over that of the Bible in some circumstances. Therefore, he concludes in the fourth chapter of the same work that the firm and immovable standard of the Bible is contained within the domain of ecclesiastical tradition.[1]
[5] In short, there are two reasons why the papists do not allow the Bible to serve as the rule of faith:
- Because it is inadequate and does not contain everything that is necessary for faith and life;
- Because even in that which it does contain, it is uncertain and instable, like a wax nose.
[6] This we must now examine, not with a fraudulent scale according to our own whims, as Augustine has warned, but rather with God’s scale, the Holy Scriptures.[2]
[1] “All the authority which the scripture now hath with us, depends necessarily upon the authority of the church [Lat. Omnia quæ nunc apud nos est scripturarum auctoritas ab ecclesiæ auctoritate dependet necessario]” – Albert Pighius, Hierarchiæ Ecclesiasticæ Assertio (digitized 1544 edition), Liber I, cap. 2, Fol. XIIII, link: https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_yEHzhqsqDCAC/page/n38/mode/1up
[2] “[N]ot that we establish our case in it with the emptiness with which they establish theirs, but that we then show them that we don’t want to trust in such things since we do not invent such things that we say lest we spend the time useful for necessary things in things that are not necessary. They therefore do this, since they cannot find evidence resting on robust and firm truth with which they might defend their case and they want to seem to say something, while they are ashamed to remain silent and they are not embarrassed to speak inanities. All such things then removed, let them demonstrate their Church, if they can, not in the speeches and murmurs of African, not in the councils of their bishops, not in the epistles of whatever debates, not in false signs and prodigies, since we are prepared and cautioned against them by the word of the Lord, but in the precept of the law, in the predictions of the prophets, in the songs of the psalms, in the utterances of the one shepherd himself, in the preaching of the evangelists, that is in all the canonical authority of the holy books, and not such that they might gather and cite things that are spoken obscurely or ambiguously or metaphorically which anyone might interpret according to his own opinion as he wishes. Such things cannot be properly understood and explained unless first those things that are said most openly are held with a strong faith.” – Augustine of Hippo, De Unitate Ecclesiae, XVIII, 47, link: https://www.semperreformanda.com/de-unitate-ecclesiae-on-the-unity-of-the-church-by-augustine/
