Did the Fathers Teach ‘Bible Alone’? Some Protestants Say Yes

Perspicuity is the Protestant doctrine that Holy Scripture is clear enough that any humble, prayerful Christian, regardless of academic pedigree, intellectual ability, or ecclesial authority, is able to understand what is necessary for salvation. But did the Church Fathers teach this doctrine?

This has been perhaps the most frequent response to my 2023 book The Obscurity of Scripture: Disputing Sola Scriptura and the Protestant Notion of Biblical Perspicuity, in which I present the various philosophical, theological, historical, and sociological problems with the doctrine. If the Church did teach the doctrine of perspicuity, it would certainly undermine, though not necessarily cripple, the thesis of my book. So let’s examine the evidence.

When Protestants argue that the Church Fathers did in fact teach biblical perspicuity, they will appeal to quotations from several Fathers that seem to affirm the clarity of Scripture. Here I’ll cite some of the most common.

St. Ireaneus in Against Heresies declares,

When . . . they are confuted from the Scriptures, they turn round and accuse these same Scriptures, as if they were not correct, nor of authority, and [assert] that they are ambiguous, and that the truth cannot be extracted from them by those who are ignorant of tradition (3.2.1).

Similarly, in St. Augustine’s On Christian Doctrine, we read this:

Those matters that are plainly laid down in them [the Scriptures], whether rules of life or rules of faith, are to be searched into more carefully and more diligently; and the more of these a man discovers, the more capacious does his understanding become. For among the things that are plainly laid down in Scripture are to be found all matters that concern faith and the manner of life (2.9.14).

The great preacher St. John Chrysostom, in a homily on St. Paul’s second letter to the Thessalonians, asserts, “All things are clear and open that are in the divine Scriptures; the necessary things are all plain.”

Before analyzing the above, a few questions arise. The first is whether, when Church Fathers talk about Scripture being clear or not ambiguous, they mean the same thing that Protestants mean by Scripture’s clarity. The second is, even if we presume that Protestants are correct, what do these same Church Fathers believe is necessary for salvation, given that this is precisely part of the Protestant definition of perspicuity?

So what do the Church Fathers mean by scriptural clarity? Elsewhere in Against Heresies, the second-century bishop of Lyon urges us to obtain the truth “from the Church,” that we should “lay hold of the tradition of the truth,” and that we should “have recourse to the most ancient Churches with which the apostles held constant intercourse, and learn from them what is certain and clear.” We should do this in order to “follow the course of the tradition which they handed down to those to whom they did commit the Churches” (3.4.1) Again, Irenaeus argues that “all churches must agree” with the church in Rome, “for it is a matter of necessity that every church should agree with this church, on account of its preeminent authority” (3.3.2).

In sum, Irenaeus appeals to ecclesial institutions as interpretive authorities of Holy Scripture and apostolic tradition. Yet if Scripture were clear in the sense that Protestants define clarity, why would we need ecclesial authorities such as bishops to interpret the Bible for us? Why would we need to “learn the truth . . . from those who possess that succession of the Church which is from the apostles,” as Irenaeus elsewhere writes (4.26.5)?

We find similar appeals to the interpretive authority of the institutional Church in the writings of Augustine. In his On Christian Doctrine, he writes, “If, when attention is given to the passage, it shall appear to be uncertain in what way it ought to be punctuated or pronounced, let the reader consult the rule of faith which he has gathered from the plainer passages of Scripture, and from the authority of the Church” (3.2.2). Elsewhere we read this: “One cannot have [salvation] except in the Catholic Church. . . . Never can one find salvation except in the Catholic Church” (Sermon to the People of the Church of Caesarea, 6)

Finally, John Chrysostom urged the faithful to “hold the traditions which ye were taught, whether by word, or by epistle of ours. Hence it is manifest, that they did not deliver all things by Epistle, but many things also unwritten, and in like manner both the one and the other are worthy of credit” (The Homilies, On 2 Thessalonians, 4:2). In his letter to Innocent, bishop of Rome, Chrysostom asked Innocent to “be induced to exert your zeal on our behalf, for in so doing ye will confer a favor not upon ourselves alone but also upon the Church at large. . . . Fare thee well always, and pray for me, most honored and holy master.”

Thus, at least as it concerns Irenaeus, Augustine, and Chrysostom, we see these Church Fathers appealing to the ecclesial and interpretive authority of the bishops, and, pre-eminently, the bishop of Rome. If that’s the case, it would seem odd if these same Patristic sources affirmed a doctrine that asserted that it is the individual Christian, and not the bishops (and, principally, the bishop of Rome) who possesses ultimate authority over biblical doctrine.

How, then, do we understand Patristic declarations affirming Scripture’s clarity? Catholic interpreters such as St. Robert Bellarmine and St. Francis de Sales argue that the Church Fathers are affirming Scripture’s clarity in regards to certain moral questions, or when under the doctrinal and interpretive supervision of ecclesial authorities. With regard to the former, prohibitions of adultery or murder, for example, possess a certain clarity, because all of us, by virtue of the natural law, have at least some understanding of what those evils look like. As for the latter, once we are properly catechized, the meaning of many scriptural texts does indeed become “clear” to us, in the sense that we can readily understand and apply them.

Finally, let’s consider what these same Church Fathers teach about salvation. Irenaeus taught that “man is, as far as faith is concerned, in his own control” (4.37.5) and that there are “things by which man is justified and draws near to God” (4.17.1-4). Augustine in his book On Faith and Works warns of the “false assurance that faith alone is sufficient for salvation or that they need not perform good works in order to be saved.” In the same book he declares, “The works of the law are meritorious not before but after justification.” And Chrysostom writes, “That you may not then, when you hear that he has chosen us, imagine that faith alone is sufficient, he proceeds to add life and conduct” (Homily 1 on Ephesians), and again, “Yet not even from this do we assert that faith alone is sufficient to salvation. And the directions for living given in many places of the Gospels show this” (Homily 31 on John).

The above quotes show that the same Church Fathers trotted out as affirming perspicuity also believed that Scripture teaches that man is not saved by faith alone (that foundational credo of the Reformation), but rather that he is saved through faith and love manifested in works and obedience to the law. Of course, it would be special pleading for Protestants to claim some Patristic excerpts as authoritative but others—from the same Patristic sources—as not. That would amount to selectively citing sources when it seems to suit one’s argument and ignoring the parts of those same sources when they do not.

That said, a consideration of the Church Fathers’ writings in their totality indicate that they did not teach perspicuity, but rather believed that Holy Scripture is clear in a moral sense, rather than being clear in the sense of being able to adjudicate theological debates without recourse to some external ecclesial authority. Thus, even those patristic quotations that might at first glance seem to align with Protestant understandings of Scripture’s clarity are best understood as correlating with the Catholic position, in which ultimate interpretive and doctrinal authority rests in the Magisterium. As Augustine famously declared, “indeed, I would not believe the Gospel myself if the authority of the Catholic Church did not influence me to do so” (Against the Letter of Mani Called “The Foundation”).