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Vs. Whitaker #1: Relation of the Bible & the Church

Vs. Whitaker #1: Relation of the Bible & the Church

Last updated on: June 19, 2026 at 3:55 pm by Dave Armstrong

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Vs. Whitaker #1: Relation of the Bible & the Church 2026-06-19T15:55:41-04:00 Dave Armstrong

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This is the initial transcript for the video (posted below), “Has this early Protestant already PROVEN Sola Scriptura?” (Catholic Bible Highlights with Kenny Burchard, 6-19-26).

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William Whitaker (1548-1595) was a Calvinist Anglican apologist. His book Disputation on Holy Scripture, published in 1588, is considered by many Protestants to be the best book-length defense of sola Scriptura of all time. In my book, Pillars of Sola Scriptura (2012), I devoted 173 pages to refuting its arguments. This video is drawn from chapter 2.

They make the authority of scripture depend upon the church, and so do in fact make the scripture inferior to the church, . . . (pp. 275-276)

The Council of Trent, that Whitaker lived through, contradicts this portrayal:

[The Synod] receives and venerates with an equal affection of piety, and reverence, all the books both of the Old and of the New Testament–seeing that one God is the author of both — . . . (Decree Concerning the Canonical Scriptures)

God being the ultimate author, inspiring the human writers, occurs prior to the canon of the Bible. It’s what makes the Bible what it is. The Catholic Church does not pretend to be superior to Holy Scripture. The First Vatican Council in 1870 was more specific about this:

These the Church holds to be sacred and canonical; not because, . . . they were afterward approved by her authority; . . . but because, having been written by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, they have God for their author, and have been delivered as such to the Church herself. (Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith, chapter II)

Whitaker in subsequent remarks confuses two things. The following two ideas are logically and categorically distinct:

Reverence is due to all the books in the Bible because of their intrinsic status as a God-breathed, that is, inspired writing.

We definitively know what specific books are in the Bible Scripture primarily because of the authoritative decrees of the Catholic Church.

#1 isn’t dependent on #2. It exists on its own. And this is what Catholics contend. At the same time we assert the practical necessity of #2. It’s the difference between what a thing is in itself and how human beings receive it.

We deny that we believe the scriptures solely on account of this commendation of them by the church. . . . the scripture . . . is to be received, not only because the church hath so determined and commanded, but because it comes from God; and that we certainly know that it comes from God, not by the church, but by the Holy Ghost. (pp. 279-280)

This is also the Catholic view, as already explained. So once again, as so often, a Protestant apologist is fighting against straw men and not our real belief. Catholics don’t dispute the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit, either. It’s doubly absurd because Whitaker cites four Catholic apologists (Bellarmine, Stapleton, Cochlaeus, Andradius) denying what he nevertheless continues to assert about Catholic belief on this matter. Go figure . . .

St. Francis de Sales (1567-1622), a Doctor of the Catholic Church, who lived shortly after Whitaker, confirms what I have been contending, in his Catholic Controversy, written in 1596:

But here is the difficulty. If these books were not from the beginning of undoubted authority in the Church, who can give them this authority? In truth the Church cannot give truth or certitude to the Scripture, or make a book canonical if it were not so, but the Church can make a book known as canonical, and make us certain of its certitude, and is fully able to declare that a book is canonical which is not held as such by every one, . . . not changing the substance of the book which of itself was canonical, but changing the persuasion of Christians, making it quite assured where previously it had not been so.

For Calvin and the very bibles of Geneva, and the Lutherans, receive several books as holy, sacred, and canonical which have not been acknowledged by all the Ancients as such, and about which there has been a doubt. If there has been a doubt formerly, what reason can they have to make them assured and certain nowadays, except that which S. Augustine had [as we said above]: “I would not believe the Gospel unless the authority of the Catholic Church moved me;” and “We receive the New and the Old Testament in that number of books which the authority of the Holy Catholic Church determines.” Truly we should be very ill assured if we were to rest our faith on these particular interior inspirations, of which we only know that they exist or ever did exist, by the testimony of some private persons. (translated by H. B. Canon MacKey, 3rd revised edition, London: Burns & Oates, 1909; section: “The Rule of Faith”, pp. 110-113)

Catholics aren’t arguing that no one can ascertain a biblical book at all without the Church, but rather, that no one can be certain of the entire canon, without the definitive Church decree as to its contents. These are two different propositions. But Whitaker continually misrepresents our position as supposedly holding that no one can determine what particular books are biblical and canonical at all unless the Church tells him it is so.

Whitaker sinks deeper and deeper into wars against straw men and writes downright silly, self-refuting false dichotomies like the following:

I am surprised that Stapleton should have been so stupid as not to see that, if it be God who teaches through the church, the authority of God must be greater than that of the church. (p. 286)

It does not therefore follow that because the church knows very well the voice of Christ, the authority of the church is greater than that of Christ. (p. 288)

As if any informed Catholic ever claimed that the Church has more authority than Christ Himself! . . . That’s not the issue at all, but it makes great “copy”, and makes Catholics look ridiculous, to (supposedly) believe such a patently absurd thing, doesn’t it?

Meanwhile, throughout this section, Whitaker he ignores the real difficulties: “what to do when men disagree on the canon (or anything else in theology)?” “Who has the final say?” “How do we arrive at the complete unity and oneness of doctrine that the Bible so often commands us to do?” These are practical issues of supreme importance. The Catholic “solution” (which we contend was already the teaching of the Bible) is an infallible Church guided in a unique fashion by the Holy Spirit, and apostolic succession.

BOOK REPLIED TO

William Whitaker, Disputation on Holy Scripture: Against the Papists, Especially Bellarmine and Stapleton, 1588; edition published in 1849 by the University Press of Cambridge.

DAVE’S RELATED BOOKS

Pillars of Sola Scriptura: Replies to Whitaker, Goode, & Biblical “Proofs” for “Bible Alone” (Lulu Press: July 2012, 310 pages)

100 Biblical Arguments Against Sola Scriptura (Catholic Answers Press: May 2012 / second revised edition: Bridge Builders press: Aug. 2025, 127 pages)

DAVE’S RELATED WEB PAGES

Bible, Tradition, Canon, & “Sola Scriptura”

The [Catholic] Church and Ecclesiology

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Summary: William Whitaker, in his Disputation on Holy Scripture (1588), claims that Catholicism makes Scripture inferior to the Church. We show how this is patently false & a caricature.

Bible and Tradition

Disputation on Holy Scripture

pillars of sola Scriptura

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