Bryan Cross is an apostate who recently was in a dialog with Mike Horton on the topic of Sola Scriptura.
I found the dialog interesting because Bryan could not seem to distinguish between a handling of Scripture or Truth where an autonomous individual interpreter gets to decide what is authoritative, on the one hand, and a proper view of teaching authority granted by the Word on the other.
In other words, he presents the tired canard that you either have an infallible teaching office or it's just Bryan Cross and his Bible. Mike rightly pointed out his views in the interview as naive (where he states, for instance, that ecumenical councils have never contradicted one another) and mis representative of the Reformed position. One wonders whether a Roman Catholic exists that actually wants to interact with the substance of the Reformed view of a Church with teaching authority that exists in subordination to the authority of the Word.
Recommend you pick up the Nov/Dec 2010 issue of Modern Reformation as a great discussion of Sola Scriptura. I think the Reformers were right to draw a parallel between the Enthusiasts of their day and the Roman Catholic Church. In both cases, essentially, the Word becomes subordinate to either an individual or a magisterium that claims for itself immediate access to the Holy Spirit apart from the Word of God. With all his talk about teaching authority, at the end of the day, Bryan shows his true colors when he talks about the way he approached the Westminster Confession of Faith:
Brian has now replaced Scripture with an implicit trust in the teaching Magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church and as Mike Horton notes:
Brian can speak in the abstract about the infallible teaching office of the RCC but, in reality, this can only remain an abstraction because its actual content is so large and complex that no two Roman Catholics will actually be able to comprehensively re-construct what that teaching is nor will they agree upon their conclusions.
It remains, therefore, a convenient "unicorn", this idea of infallible teaching authority. One can remain skeptical about the perspicuity of Scripture on the one hand and use the infallible teaching authority as a convenient ploy to buttress a pagan notion that God cannot speak clearly. Then, when one is convinced to place his trust in this infallible teaching authority, the volume and complexity of the teaching allows one to cherrypick truth and interpret it as one wishes.
At the end of the day, Bryan Cross is right back where he was when he was a pagan with a Reformed Confession. He's now a pagan who interprets Roman Catholic dogma to bend and shape a deaf and mute deity to his own service.
I found the dialog interesting because Bryan could not seem to distinguish between a handling of Scripture or Truth where an autonomous individual interpreter gets to decide what is authoritative, on the one hand, and a proper view of teaching authority granted by the Word on the other.
In other words, he presents the tired canard that you either have an infallible teaching office or it's just Bryan Cross and his Bible. Mike rightly pointed out his views in the interview as naive (where he states, for instance, that ecumenical councils have never contradicted one another) and mis representative of the Reformed position. One wonders whether a Roman Catholic exists that actually wants to interact with the substance of the Reformed view of a Church with teaching authority that exists in subordination to the authority of the Word.
Recommend you pick up the Nov/Dec 2010 issue of Modern Reformation as a great discussion of Sola Scriptura. I think the Reformers were right to draw a parallel between the Enthusiasts of their day and the Roman Catholic Church. In both cases, essentially, the Word becomes subordinate to either an individual or a magisterium that claims for itself immediate access to the Holy Spirit apart from the Word of God. With all his talk about teaching authority, at the end of the day, Bryan shows his true colors when he talks about the way he approached the Westminster Confession of Faith:
Bryan Cross was the normative interpreter of Scripture for Bryan Cross. He was, for all intents and purposes, a pagan when he "agreed" to a Reformed Confession. Why? Because pagan deities are deaf and mute and cannot speak. Our God is a living God and His Word, consequently, is living and active and judges men rather than the other way around. Bryan admits that he believed his interpretation created truth rather than bowing the knee and seeing the Word as living and active and creating the world and Church that it speaks about.
Brian has now replaced Scripture with an implicit trust in the teaching Magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church and as Mike Horton notes:
I believe Mike is keenly insightful on this. At the root of the typical objection by a Roman Catholic is the same pagan idea that God cannot speak clearly and needs a cultis to speak for Him. Furthermore, the nice thing about pagan religions is all the cultic language that builds up around itself. It has an infallible teaching office that consists of tomes many orders of magnitude longer and more complex than the Scriptures themselves.
Brian can speak in the abstract about the infallible teaching office of the RCC but, in reality, this can only remain an abstraction because its actual content is so large and complex that no two Roman Catholics will actually be able to comprehensively re-construct what that teaching is nor will they agree upon their conclusions.
It remains, therefore, a convenient "unicorn", this idea of infallible teaching authority. One can remain skeptical about the perspicuity of Scripture on the one hand and use the infallible teaching authority as a convenient ploy to buttress a pagan notion that God cannot speak clearly. Then, when one is convinced to place his trust in this infallible teaching authority, the volume and complexity of the teaching allows one to cherrypick truth and interpret it as one wishes.
At the end of the day, Bryan Cross is right back where he was when he was a pagan with a Reformed Confession. He's now a pagan who interprets Roman Catholic dogma to bend and shape a deaf and mute deity to his own service.
