More on Wheaton, Catholics, and Scripture

Notre Dame's John O'Callaghan e-mails in criticism of Wheaton College's dismissal of Joshua Hochschild, and in response to my account of what Wheaton's arguments might be:

On the questions you raise: A) no doubt Wheaton College should be given deference on many of the things it believes.  But I don't think it should be given deference on what it believes Roman Catholics believe.  Many Protestants believe that Catholics worship Mary.  But surely we should not give deference to them on that.  Nor should we give them deference in claiming that we do not believe any of the statements they list in their Statement of Faith.

B) Josh Hochschild was asked whether he could sign the statement put before him, not statements of any number of beliefs held by members of Wheaton that are not expressed in that statement.  I imagine one reason Wheaton does not try to put all of the things its members believe into the Statement of Faith, is that beyond what is explicitly in it, they probably cannot achieve any kind of uniformity on what to include.  If they included more, they might have to fire more than they do.

C) Logically, one can maintain that Holy Scripture is the "supreme and final authority in all that [it] say[s]" without also maintaining that it is the supreme and final authority in all that it does not say, that is, in all that the Word of God says.  Catholics believe that more is said in the Word of God than only Holy Scripture.  But, Wheaton's Statement of Faith does not exclude that, even if many of its members may believe that it ought to be excluded.  Again, if they put that in, I suspect they would have to fire some more faculty.  And in any case, the authority of the Church is not above the Word of God, whatever it says.

Finally, D) on what the WSJ reports Josh as saying, I think he was making an analogy of proportionality, like 2-is-to-3 as 4-is-to-6.  But in such an analogy one is not committed to the claim that 2=4 or 3=6.  One may clam that Protestants may turn to their pastors as authorities the way Catholics turn to the magisterium of the RC church, without anyone claiming that the authority of their pastors is the kind of authority possessed by the magisterium of the RC church.

Tom