<sigh> scripture alone is not the subject, and you don't care what Augustine taught, and you have no context.
In the paragraph immediately preceding the cited text, St. Augustine is discussing with St. Jerome the fittingness of using the word ludamus(“let us amuse ourselves”) in their debate over the interpretation of Scripture. Augustine says that it is good that they keep their debate in a friendly tone, so that there is no fear of offending one other by harsh words. But he goes on to say that he would not be offended if Jerome argued against him, for it is not to Jerome the man but to the Scriptures that Augustine yields authority in these matters. The complete quotation reads:
“You ask, or rather you give a command with the confiding boldness of charity, that we should amuse ourselves in the field of Scripture without wounding each other…On such terms we might amuse ourselves without fear of offending each other in the field of Scripture, but I might well wonder if the amusement was not at my expense. For I confess to your Charity that I have learned to yield this respect and honor only to the canonical books of Scripture: of these alone do I most firmly believe that the authors were completely free from error” (Letter 82:1, 2-3).
So we see, Augustine is not setting up an opposition between Church Tradition and Sacred Scripture; he is merely saying that if it comes down to taking the word of Jerome, another bishop just as himself, or the Scriptures, he will yield to the Scriptures instead of to the opinions of a private theologian. This is still the Church’s position today: Church dogma, whether it is found in Scripture or Tradition, trumps the views of private theologians.
As is often the case, the problem is one of context. When we read the entirety of St. Augustine’s letter, we see that he is saying nothing at all about the authority of Scriptures at the expense of Church Tradition or Church authority. He merely asserts that the Bible is to be preferred to the opinions of a private individual, which the Church would agree with.
The problem is that you attempt to use this citation to debunk the Catholic position and you don't really care what Augustine is getting at; you have no intention of understanding the subtleties of Augustine's thought, only of attacking the Catholic position. A verse that seems to support the Protestant position is found and then wrenched out of context to be used against the unknowing Catholic.
Furthermore, if Protestants do insist that St. Augustine was really a proto-reformer, then they picked a very bad choice, because it was this same Augustine who said of the Catholic Church,
“This same is the holy Church, the one Church, the true Church, the catholic Church, fighting against all heresies: fight, it can: be fought down, it cannot. As for heresies, they went all out of it, like as unprofitable branches pruned from the vine: but itself abides in its root, in its Vine, in its charity. "The gates of hell shall not prevail against it"
(
On the Creed: Sermon to Catechumens (14) c. 395)
When one really takes the time to dig into the works of Augustine, or any of the Church Fathers, it becomes easily apparent that they did not believe in anything even close to the Protestant notion sola scriptura. Don’t be taken in by the novel idea that Augustine, Anasthasius or any of the Church Fathers believed in the doctrines of Luther and Calvin. It simply isn’t so.
You accept a few words of Augustine, yet you reject everything else he said. It's senseless cherry picking.
"But when proper words make Scripture ambiguous, we must see in the first place that there is nothing wrong in our punctuation or pronunciation. Accordingly, if, when attention is given to the passage, it shall appear to be uncertain in what way it ought to be punctuated or pronounced, let the reader consult the rule of faith which he has gathered from the plainer passages of Scripture, and from the authority of the Church, and of which I treated at sufficient length when I was speaking in the first book about things."
Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, 3,2:2 (A.D. 397).
You don't like this quote so you ignore it. Here are more quotes for you to ignore:
"Peter bore the person of the church.”
Augustine, Sermon 149:7 (inter A.D. 391-430).
“Number the priests even from that seat of Peter. And in that order of fathers see to whom succeeded: that is the rock which the proud gates of hades do not conquer.”
Augustine, Psalmus contro Partem Donati (A.D. 393).
“We must hold to the Christian religion and to communication in her Church, which is Catholic and which is called Catholic not only by her own members but even by all her enemies. For when heretics or the adherents of schisms talk about her, not among themselves but with strangers, willy-nilly they call her nothing else but Catholic. For they will not be understood unless they distinguish her by this name which the whole world employs in her regard.”
Augustine, The True Religion, 7:12 (A.D. 390).
“Inasmuch, I repeat, as this is the case, we believe also in the Holy Church, [intending thereby] assuredly the Catholic. For both heretics and schismatics style their congregations churches. But heretics, in holding false opinions regarding God, do injury to the faith itself; while schismatics, on the other hand, in wicked separations break off from brotherly charity, although they may believe just what we believe. Wherefore neither do the heretics belong to the Church catholic, which loves God; nor do the schismatics form a part of the same.”
Augustine, On Faith and Creed, 10:21 (A.D. 393).
"For in the Catholic Church, not to speak of the purest wisdom, to the knowledge of which a few spiritual, men attain in this life…--not to speak of this wisdom, which you do not believe to be in the Catholic Church, there are many other things which most justly keep me in her bosom. The consent of peoples and nations…so does her authority…the succession of priests…[a]nd so, lastly, does the name itself of Catholic, which, not without reason, amid so many heresies, the Church has thus retained; so that, though all heretics wish to be called Catholics, yet when a stranger asks where the Catholic Church meets, no heretic will venture to point to his own chapel or house. Such then in number and importance are the precious ties belonging to the Christian name which keep a believer in the Catholic Church…Now if the truth is so clearly proved as to leave no possibility of doubt, it must be set before all the things that keep me in the Catholic Church…For my part, I should not believe the gospel except as moved by the authority of the Catholic Church…for it was through the Catholics that I got my faith in it; and so, whatever you bring from the gospel will no longer have any weight with me. Wherefore, if no clear proof of the apostleship of Manichaeus is found in the gospel, I will believe the Catholics rather than you."
Augustine, Against the Epistle of Manichaeus, 4:5,5:6 (A.D 397).
"You think that you make a very acute remark when you affirm the name Catholic to mean universal, not in respect to the communion as embracing the whole world, but in respect to the observance of all Divine precepts and of all the sacraments, as if we (even accepting the position that the Church is called Catholic because it honestly holds the whole truth, of which fragments here and there are found in some heresies) rested upon the testimony of this word's signification, and not upon the promises of God, and so many indisputable testimonies of the truth itself, our demonstration of the existence of the Church of God in all nations."
Augustine, To Vincent the Rogatist, 93:7,23 (A.D. 403).
"As to those other things which we hold on the authority, not of Scripture, but of tradition, and which are observed throughout the whole world, it may be understood that they are held as approved and instituted either by the apostles themselves, or by plenary Councils, whose authority in the Church is most useful, e.g. the annual commemoration, by special solemnities, of the Lord's passion, resurrection, and ascension, and of the descent of the Holy Spirit from heaven, and whatever else is in like manner observed by the whole Church wherever it has been established."
Augustine, To Januarius, Epistle 54:1 (A.D. 400).
"[H]e, I say, abundantly shows that he was most willing to correct his own opinion, if any one should prove to him that it is as certain that the baptism of Christ can be given by those who have strayed from the fold, as that it could not he lost when they strayed; on which subject we have already said much. Nor should we ourselves venture to assert anything of the kind, were we not supported by the unanimous authority of the whole Church, to which he himself would unquestionably have yielded, if at that time the truth of this question had been placed beyond dispute by the investigation and decree of a plenary Council. For if he quotes Peter as an example for his allowing himself quietly and peacefully to be corrected by one junior colleague, how much more readily would he himself, with the Council of his province, have yielded to the authority of the whole world, when the truth had been thus brought to light?"
Augustine, On Baptism against the Donatist, 2:5 (A.D. 401).
"What the custom of the Church has always held, what this argument has failed to prove false, and what a plenary Council has confirmed, this we follow!"
Augustine, On Baptism against the Donatist, 4:10 (A.D. 401).
"There is not, however, such narrowness in the moral excellence of the Catholic Church as that I should limit my praise of it to the life of those here mentioned. For how many bishops have I known most excellent and holy men, how many, presbyters, how many deacons, and ministers of all kinds of the divine sacraments, whose virtue seems to me more admirable and more worthy of commendation on account of the greater difficulty of preserving it amidst the manifold varieties of men, and in this life of turmoil!"
Augustine, On the Morals of the Catholic Church, 69 (A.D. 388).
"Through my most beloved son Laurentius, the presbyter, and Peter the monk, I received thy Fraternity's letter, in which thou hast been at pains to question me on many points…Augustine's first question. I ask, most blessed father, concerning bishops, how they should live with their clergy: And concerning the offerings of the faithful which are received at the altars, both into what portions they should be divided, and how the bishop ought to deal with them in the Church. Answer of St. Gregory, Pope of the City of Rome. Holy Scripture, which no doubt thou knowest well, bears witness, and especially the epistles of the blessed Paul to Timothy, in which he studied to instruct him how he ought to behave himself in the house of God. Now it is the custom of the Apostolic See to deliver an injunction to bishops when ordained, that of all emoluments that come in four divisions should be made: to wit, one for the bishop and his household on account of hospitality and entertainment; another for the clergy; a third for the poor; and a fourth for the reparation of Churches.”
Pope Gregory the Great [regn A.D. 590-604], To Augustine, Epistle 64 (A.D. 595).
"Petilianus said: 'If you declare that yon hold the Catholic Church, the word 'catholic' is merely the Greek equivalent for entire or whole. But it is clear that you are not in the whole, because you have gone aside into the part.' Augustine answered: I too indeed have attained to a very slight knowledge of the Greek language, scarcely to be called knowledge at all, yet I am not shameless in saying that I know that means not 'one,' but 'the whole;' and that means "according to the whole:" whence the Catholic Church received its name, according to the saying of the Lord, 'It is not for you to know the times, which the Father hath put in His own power. But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in Judea, and in Samaria, and even in the whole earth.' Here you have the origin of the name 'Catholic.'
Augustine, Answer to Letters of Petilian, 2:38 [90] (A.D. 400).
St. Augustine and Sola Scriptura
Did St. Augustine believe in
sola Scriptura?
Because Augustine held the Scriptures in high esteem and venerated them as an inerrant authority for the Church, many Protestant theologians and apologists have quoted him as a support for the notion of sola Scriptura. In his famous Letter to Jerome (no. 82 ca. 405) Augustine says:
Augustine goes on to contrast this infallible authority of the canonical Scriptures with other writings about the same subjects:
I have learned to yield this respect and honor only to the canonical books of Scripture: of these alone do I most firmly believe that the authors were completely free from error. And if in these writings I am perplexed by anything which appears to me opposed to truth, I do not hesitate to suppose that either the manuscript is faulty, or the translator has not caught the meaning of what was said, or I myself have failed to understand it.
Advocates of sola Scriptura like to point out that Augustine even uses the Protestant phrase in the first sentence (solis eis Scripturarum libris “to the books of Scripture alone”) which supports their contention that the great Bishop of Hippo embraced sola Scriptura.
This is a case where careful reading of documents is of paramount importance. (which Oz doesn't care about) The contexts of Augustine’s comments and those of Reformers in the sixteenth century are quite different, not only in time, but in substance.
Protestants contrasted the absolute authority of Scripture and what they considered the unjust authority of tradition or the magisterium of the Church. For them, the Scriptures alone were the proper source from which Christian doctrine and morals should be extracted. To add the authority of the Church was to undermine God’s authority by adding human authority to it.
But in Augustine’s arguments with Jerome ten centuries earlier, the issue was not about the authority of the canonical Scriptures taken as a whole — Jerome himself affirmed that — but whether one should allow historical mistakes within Scripture. When Paul writes of Peter in Galatians 2:14 he did not act in accord with “the truth of the gospel,” Jerome had supposed that Paul had made a mistake in his writing. Augustine, in the quotations above, is affirming that the Scriptures are inerrant, not that they are the sole authority. Other writings may err but not the Scriptures.
Still, a Protestant may say that even this lesser affirmation by Augustine means that he believed that Church tradition, writings of the Fathers, and Church councils could err while the Scriptures alone could not. They therefore could be the only source of absolute truth for the Church. So the Protestant Reformers saw themselves as justified in appealing to Augustine. And if one limits himself to a few select quotations from Augustine’s writings, that may seem to be true, a fact which would explain how generations of Protestants could see themselves as faithful to the Bishop of Hippo.
Sola Scriptura as a Problem of Interpretation
Many contemporary apologists, both Catholic and Protestant, have limited their debate about the sole authority of Scripture to affirmations or denials about the Scriptures taken as a whole, prior to any interpretation by an individual or the Church. In this framing of the question, Catholic apologists often cite Church Fathers who affirm the necessity of both Scripture and Tradition. And there is an abundance of such texts to be had. Augustine, however, did not face the problem in that form. Rather, his life and work had more to do with how to interpret the Scriptures in the light of schisms and heresies all around him. Three examples in his lifetime were Manicheanism, Donatism, and what may be called simplistic literalism.
In his disputes with Faustus the Manichean bishop, Augustine insisted on the absolute authority of the canonical Scriptures against Faustus’s claim that there were later writings of equal authority.
Attending carefully to the wording of this statement reveals three important truths in Augustine’s thinking. Manichean writings (“books of later writers”) cannot be held as of equal authority with the Bible because they lack the confirmation of the historic Church (“through the succession of bishops and the propagation of churches”).
Here Augustine says that the Church is the protector of Scripture’s integrity. (which Oz doesn't like)When he invokes the imagery of a seat, Augustine means the Church as an authority. It is to this seat that every believing Christian must live in obedience. While the Scriptures rightly command the assent and obedience of every Christian, the same Scriptures can only be known by their derivation from and connection with the historic Church.
The excellence of the canonical authority of the Old and New Testaments is distinct from the books of later writers. This authority was confirmed in the times of the Apostles through the succession of bishops and the propagation of churches, as if it was settled in a heavenly manner in a kind of seat to which every believing and pious mind lives in obedience. (Against Faustus, 11.5)
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