Gregg Allison on Catholics and ETS

Gregg Allison, Associated Professor of Christian Theology at SBTS, shares two reasons that he believes informed Roman Catholics could not sign the ETS doctrinal statement:

1. “In my opinion, Roman Catholics should find the wording of the ETS doctrinal basis strange at least, for it does not view the Word of God as consisting of both Tradition and Scripture. The statement ‘the Bible alone . . . is the Word of God written’ is a woefully inadequate statement about what Roman Catholics believe about the Word of God, and I would seriously doubt that informed Roman Catholics would sign it.”

2. “If authors’ intent means anything, then the ETS statement concerning ‘the Bible’ means that those sixty-six books constitute ‘the Word of God written.’ Roman Catholics cannot agree with this, because for them ‘the Bible’ refers to the seventy-three books (Tobit, Judith, Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, 1 and 2 Maccabees are included) with expanded editions of Esther and Daniel.

   “Thus, that to which the ETS statement concerning ‘the Bible’ refers, and that to which Roman Catholics refer when they use that term, are different matters. This is a second reason that I would seriously doubt that informed Roman Catholics would sign the ETS doctrinal basis.”

Read the whole post at Andreas Köstenberger’s blog.

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