![]() As an ardent defender of sola fide, I didn’t particularly like NPP, but this was not some amateur, obviously politicized scholarly movement I could casually dismiss. In my undergraduate religious studies course at the University of Virginia and then at my Calvinist seminary, I learned about something called the “New Perspective on Paul,” whose proponents questioned (if not openly attacked) the doctrine of sola fide as un-Biblical. Other inter-Protestant debates, however, were a bit thornier. Paul’s letters, for example, featured a book that featured pro-LGBTQ interpretations of St. ![]() ![]() But some Protestant interpretations seemed contrary not only to the thinking of the early Reformers, but even natural law itself. Granted, this sometimes seemed like an easy problem to resolve. Yet there was a dilemma: Protestants disagreed over just about everything, including what is necessary for salvation. And wasn’t that exactly what the first generation of Reformers was repudiating in their rebellion against Rome? Otherwise, we would be thrust back into a paradigm in which we would require recourse to some alternative, exterior authority. It made immediate sense to me: if we Protestants believe that Scripture is the only infallible rule of faith, then of course there must be some principle that makes it accessible to the individual Christian. I first encountered this doctrine in college while reading the works of the prolific Reformed thinker R.C. In other words, the Bible is at least clear regarding what is necessary for salvation. It reads:Īll things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all: yet those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed for salvation are so clearly propounded, and opened in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them. Nevertheless, the most common definition of perspicuity is that offered by the Westminster Confession of Faith, a creedal document of English Presbyterians published in 1647. Some believe the Bible is clear as regards the “essential truths of the Christian faith:” others say it is clear in reference to the Gospel and still others will say it is clear on just about everything. Perspicuity, generally speaking, means that the Bible is clear, though there is not a single, agreed-upon Protestant definition of the doctrine. And, even if not regularly preached from the Protestant pulpit, it is the key that unlocks all the rest of Protestant doctrines, as I argue in my new book, The Obscurity of Scripture. But it was affirmed by all the leading thinkers of the Reformation: Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Cranmer. Perspicuity is not one of the five “solas” – sola scriptura, sola fide, sola gratia, solus Christus, and soli deo gloria – that serve as the core doctrines of the Protestant Reformation. My answer involves a Protestant doctrine most Catholics – and even most Protestants – have never heard of: perspicuity, otherwise known as clarity. When people learn that I used to be a Calvinist seminary student, the typical response is to ask why I decided to become Catholic.
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