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Did Theodoret of Cyrus Teach Sola Scriptura? White vs. Matatics (1997): Part 2

Did Theodoret of Cyrus Teach Sola Scriptura? White vs. Matatics (1997): Part 2

Last updated on: April 4, 2018 at 9:03 pm by Scott Eric Alt

Did Theodoret of Cyrus Teach Sola Scriptura? White vs. Matatics (1997): Part 2 2018-04-04T21:03:37-04:00 Scott Eric Alt

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Note: Part 1 of this series on the 1997 sola scriptura debate between James White & Gerry Matatics can be found here. In this post, I pick up where I left off in Dr.* White’s opening statement.

Not satisfied with his effort to co-opt St. Cyril of Jerusalem into a defense of sola scriptura, Dr.* James White (Th.D., D.Min., etc., etc.), of Alpha & Omega Sophistries, goes on to abuse the text of Theodoret’s Dialogues by quoting him out of context too. This comes at about the 23:00 mark in his 1997 debate with Gerry Matatics. The quotation Dr.* White provides us is this one: “The doctrine of the Church should be proven, not announced. Therefore show that the Scriptures teach these things.” I will get there.

***

Theodoret (ca. 393-458), born in Antioch, was bishop of the Greek city Cyrus, whose ruins are in northern Syria near the Turkish border. He played a key role in the Nestorian controversy of the fifth century. Nestorius and his followers denied the hypostatic union between Christ’s human and divine natures; they rejected the title Theotokos for Mary, believing (as do many Protestants today) that Mary was the mother of Christ only, not of God. Nestorianism was condemned as a heresy, first by the Council of Ephesus in 431, and then by the Council of Chalcedon in 451. According to the Canons of Ephesus:

If anyone does not confess that Emmanuel is God in truth, and therefore that the holy virgin is the Theotokos (for she bore in a fleshly way the Word of God become flesh), let him be anathema.

According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, Theodoret’s role in all this was a complicated one. Along with John of Antioch, he had petitioned Nestorius not to reject the title Theotokos, but to no avail. However, he defended Nestorius at the Council—not because he was confused in his Christology, but because did not believe Nestorius taught that Christ was two persons. Because of his opposition to Cyril of Alexandria, who wrote the articles condemning Nestorius, Theodoret was later excommunicated, but would be restored to both the Church and his see by the Council of Chalcedon. In the sixth century, proposals known as the Three Chapters anathematized Theodoret for his writings against Cyril, but the Chapters were themselves condemned by the Second Council of Constantinople.

So while we need to admit these things, we must also understand the role the Dialogues played in all this controversy. The reason Theodoret wrote them was to defend himself against the charge of Nestorianism that led to his excommunication. He wanted to show that his Christology was orthodox, to affirm the hypostatic union of two natures in one divine person, and also to refute heresy. But the key question, for our purposes here, is whether, in his Dialogues, he also taught sola scriptura. Dr.* White says that he did.

***

There are three Dialogues (you can find them here), between an orthodox Christian (Orthodoxos) and a heretic (Eranistes). In the Prologue, Theodoret gives an overview of true Christology.

[T]o call our Lord Christ God only is the way of Simon, of Cerdo, of Marcion, and of others who share this abominable opinion. [Christ was both God and man.]

The acknowledgment of His birth from a Virgin, but coupled with the assertion that this birth was merely a process of transition, and that God the Word took nothing of the Virgin’s nature, is stolen from Valentinus and Bardesanes and the adherents of their fables. [Christ took his human nature from Mary.]

To call the godhead and the manhood of the Lord Christ one nature is the error filched from the follies of Apollinarius. [Christ is two natures in one divine person.]

Again the attribution of capacity of suffering to the divinity of the Christ is a theft from the blasphemy of Arius and Eunomius. [Christ suffered on the cross in his human person, not his divine person.]

In the first dialogue, Orthodoxos shows that “the divinity of Christ is immutable.” That is, the Word was not changed into flesh, but it took flesh—i.e., from Mary.

In the second, Orthodoxos shows that Christ is both fully human and fully divine.

And in the third, he shows that the divinity of Christ is “impassable.” In other words, Christ’s divine nature did not suffer in the passion; only His human nature did.

***

The first thing that must be said about the words Dr.* White quotes—they are from the third Dialogue—is that they are not spoken by Orthodoxos but by the heretic Eranistes. That’s odd; Dr.* White does not mention that. Isn’t that important? Here is the wording in the translation at New Advent:

The decrees of the Church must be given not only declaratorily but demonstratively. Tell me then how these doctrines are taught in the divine Scripture.

Eight times during these three debates, Eranistes says “Where is that in the Scriptures?” or “I will only believe it if it is in the Scriptures” or “the Scriptures do not say that.”

Now, I do not want to push this point too far. I just find it strange that, in attempting to show that Theodoret taught sola scriptura, Dr.* White chooses the words, not of Orthodoxos, but of the heretic. Eranistes does not speak for Theodoret. So why does Dr.* White quote his words? Perhaps he can explain it to us, if he has the courage to read my refutations of him, which I doubt.

But in fact, Orthodoxos says very similar things throughout the Dialogues; and Dr.* White could have quoted them if he had liked.

Do not, I beg you, bring in human reason. I shall yield to scripture alone.
I am not so rash as to say anything concerning which Divine Scripture is silent.

And yet, while Orthodoxos affirms these truths twice, Eranistes speaks words like these seventeen times. One soon gets the feeling that Eranistes says “You must prove it to me from the Scriptures” so many times only because he doth protest too much. He says these things as an excuse to avoid orthodoxy, not as a reason to embrace it. If he insists that Orthodoxos prove his Christology from the Scriptures, that does not—as we shall see—save him from heresy.

But if Orthodoxos can assert his Christology from Scripture, does he derive it from Scripture alone? By no means. In fact, he tells us at the outset that he gets it “[by] Holy Scripture, both Old and New, and by the Fathers in Council in Nicæa.” He gets it—mark this, Dr.* White—from both the Scriptures and the Church. He gets it from the Creed as much as from the Bible. And while he does say that that all his doctrines are to be found in Scripture—Catholics do affirm material sufficiency—we must make note of all the other the things he finds proofs of in Scripture, none of which Dr.* White would accept.

I. The Real Presence. In fact, nearly a thousand years before Aquinas, Theodoret affirms something very like the distinction between substance and accidents.

Orth. You know how God called His own body bread?

Eran. Yes.

Orth. And how in another place he called His flesh grain?

Eran. Yes, I know. For I have heard Him saying The hour has come that the Son of man should be glorified, and Except a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abides alone; but if it die it brings forth much fruit.

Orth. Yes; and in the giving of the mysteries He called the bread, body, and what had been mixed, blood.

Eran. He so did.

Orth. Yet naturally the body would properly be called body, and the blood, blood.

Eran. Agreed.

Orth. But our Saviour changed the names, and to His body gave the name of the symbol and to the symbol that of his body. So, after calling himself a vine, he spoke of the symbol as blood.

Eran. True. But I am desirous of knowing the reason of the change of names.

Orth. To them that are initiated in divine things the intention is plain. For he wished the partakers in the divine mysteries not to give heed to the nature of the visible objects, but, by means of the variation of the names, to believe the change wrought of grace. For He, we know, who spoke of his natural body as grain and bread, and, again, called Himself a vine, dignified the visible symbols by the appellation of the body and blood, not because He had changed their nature, but because to their nature He had added grace.

God does not change their nature (or substance), but he adds grace. Now lest anyone protest that Orthodoxos is clearly speaking about symbols here, it is important to point out that the word “symbol” does not mean “metaphor” in this context. Theodoret uses it in the more archaic sense of an object that is invested with additional meaning beyond its merely material one.

The discussion on this point is taken up again in the Second Dialogue.

Orth. Tell me now; the mystic symbols which are offered to God by them who perform priestly rites, of what are they symbols?

Eran. Of the body and blood of the Lord.

Orth. Of the real body or not?

Eran. The real.

Orth. Good.

[…]

Eran. What do you call the gift which is offered before the priestly invocation? … And after the consecration how do you name these?

Orth. Christ’s body and Christ’s blood.

Eran. And do you believe that you partake of Christ’s body and blood?

Orth. I do. … [Now watch this.] [E]ven after the consecration the mystic symbols are not deprived of their own nature; they remain in their former substance figure and form; they are visible and tangible as they were before. But they are regarded as what they have become, and believed so to be, and are worshipped as being what they are believed to be.

That’s substance and accidents.

II. The Priesthood. In the Second Dialogue, Orthodoxos and Eranistes have a discussion of the priesthood of Christ as found in the Book of Hebrews. But two things stand out, and one is that neither of them dispute that there is a priesthood. The second is that Eranistes concedes that the passage about Melchizedek “is a very difficult one and requires much explanation.” He affirms here the problem with formal sufficiency.

III. The Theotokos. Because Christ took his flesh from Mary, and because his humanity is not divisible from his deity, therefore Mary is rightly called the Mother of God.

IV. Apostolic Succession. The Church Fathers, he says, are “successors of the divine apostles.”

Orthodoxos will not teach us anything that is not to be found in Scripture. Why will Dr.* White not yield to Scripture on these points?

***

If you read the Dialogues all the way through, from beginning to end, you will find one more thing that is very odd for someone who—so Dr.* White tells us—teaches sola scriptura. It is this: In each of the three, Orthodoxos and Eranistes argue back and forth, from Scripture, for almost the entire part of the dialogue. Eranistes time and again will say things like “Where is that in Scripture?” or “I don’t find it so in Scripture.” Orthodoxos will continue to give proofs of true Christology from Scripture. Dr.* White might say that this shows how Scripture is sufficient to resolve such disputes. But no; here’s the point: Scripture alone does not settle the matter between the two. In every case, Eranistes remains unconvinced until Orthodoxos quotes from the Church Fathers and shows that they taught the same doctrine that he does. This takes place three times out of three.

In the first dialogue, he cites proofs from Athanasius, Ambrose, Ignatius, Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Methodius, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa, among others.

In the second, he cites, Ignatius, Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Athanasius, Ambrose, Basil, Gregory of Nyssa, John Chrysostom, Hilary, Augustine, and Cyril of Alexandria, among others.

Last, in the third, he cites Ignatius, Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Athanasius, Pope Damasus, Ambrose, Basil, Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa, Theophilus, Gelasius, and John of Constantinople, among others.

Now, wouldn’t you say that that is odd? If Theodoret had wanted to show that the Bible is the sole rule of faith, why is he quoting all these guys as somehow authoritative on Christology? Wouldn’t proofs from the Bible alone have been enough to convince Eranistes? After all, he asserts the principle that Dr.* White says is his own: Show me where it is in the Bible! Then why is the Bible not sufficient for Orthodoxos to prove his case? Why does the debate remain unsettled until he quotes from the Fathers? And Orthodoxos cites many Fathers, and at great length, too. Why does he do this?

He tells us why. “They are successors of the divine apostles,” he says at the end of the First Dialogue. That is why. “Does it seem right for you to wag the tongue of blasphemy against them?” It is as bad to do that as to abuse the Bible.

And Eranistes concedes the point. “It were the uttermost foolishness,” he says, “to withstand authorities so many and so great.” Take note of that, Dr.* White.

At the end of the Second Dialogue, Orthodoxos again says: “It is mad and rash against those noble champions of the faith”—the Church Fathers—“so much to wag your tongue.” And finally, at the end of the Third, he says:

Imitate the bees. As you flit in mental flight about the meads of the divine Scripture, among the fair flowers of these illustrious Fathers, build us in your heart the honey-comb of the faith.”

One must reason from both the Scriptures (“meads,” i.e., honey) and the Fathers (flowers). Only through both can one build “the honey-comb of the faith.”

Again it is not five minutes into his opening statement, and Dr.* James White (Th.D., D.Min., etc., etc.) keeps on picking for cherries. He will have to do better than this if he wants to win his debate with Mr. Matatics. … [To be continued.]

***

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