De locis theologicis

WHERE THE ARGUMENTS OF CHAPTER SIX ARE REFUTED

Answer to the first. I answer the first argument as follows: If Christ does not receive testimony from a human being, where, then, is this: “There was a man sent from God to bear witness to the light”? Where, again, is this: “You will bear witness to me, because you have been with me from the beginning”? And, to avoid repeating everything, where is this: “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem”? etc. The meaning, then, is: “I do not need human testimony, but I nevertheless present John’s testimony for your sake.” Hence he adds: “But I say these things so that you may be saved.” That he does not seek human testimony—which, of course, he must be understood not to need—he proves by adding: “I have testimony greater than John’s,” etc. And he really does prove that one who has divine testimony does not receive human testimony for his own sake, but still does not reject it when offered for the benefit of others. In the same sense he then adds: “I do not receive glory from human beings,” although Peter is said to have glorified God by his death. Enough about the first argument. Answer to the second. The second is easily answered: the Apostle is speaking there not with the unlearned but with the learned. For he says: “I did not write to you as though you did not know the truth, but as though you knew it.” The inner anointing, then, is sufficient for the wise teachers of the Church to refute what opposes the faith; but the unlearned also need external teaching, especially from those whom God has appointed as pastors and teachers in the Church. We should also understand that the doctrine of faith necessary to each individual may perhaps become known to each person directly, if that person has the Spirit dwelling within. But matters of faith that are not necessary to each individual, yet pertain to the common good of the Church, are not at once known by good people merely because they have the Spirit of God and the anointing. For if a simple woman were asked whether the accidents in the Sacrament of the Altar exist without a subject, although she is holy and just, there would be no need for the anointing to teach her about this. But if you asked her whether Christ shed his blood for our sins, the anointing would certainly teach her that, since God does not deny the faith necessary for salvation to anyone who does what lies within her. Since this question about the number of canonical books does not concern individuals but must be referred to learned men in the Church, it follows that having the anointing is not enough to know whether this book or that is canonical. The anointing does not simply teach just anyone about everything, but teaches each person about what is proper and necessary to that person. These points were more than enough to evade the second argument. But, to accommodate those who desire something further by way of explanation of that testimony, a third answer must also be added. The fact that some people in the primitive Church made such progress in virtue and doctrine that they needed no external teacher, since they knew everything through the Spirit’s teaching, does not mean that we should extend that grace of the Holy Spirit to everyone, including our own time. Otherwise, if someone today does not have the gift of tongues or the many other gifts that the Spirit bestowed on the faithful at the beginning, that person should not think that he has received the Spirit or consider himself anointed unless, like Anthony, the Egyptian monk, he understands the Divine Scriptures without any knowledge of letters. And if even now the anointing teaches everything without an external teacher, then parents should not teach their little children the doctrine of Christ; the people should not even go to churches to hear and learn the Gospel itself; indeed, they should read no books or listen to someone reading and explaining one; instead, they should expect to be carried up to the third heaven and there learn all the mysteries of Christian doctrine.

“Let us beware,” Augustine says, “of such exceedingly proud temptations; rather, let us consider that the Apostle Paul himself, although instructed by divine voice and Spirit, was nevertheless sent to a human being to learn from him what he ought to do. Let us also consider Cornelius: although an angel announced to him that his prayers had been heard and his alms remembered, he was nevertheless entrusted to Peter for instruction, so that from him he might hear what to believe, what to hope for, and what to love.” Acts 10. So much for the second argument. Answer to the third. The third argument could first have been evaded by repeating the distinction between matters that we set out in refuting the preceding argument. For we readily grant that the doctrine necessary to each person in his own life and state will be clear and known to the person who does God’s will: just as a sound palate easily distinguishes differences in flavors, so an excellent disposition of mind enables a person to distinguish the doctrine of God necessary for salvation from the contrary error that is not from God. But common matters of the Church, which do not pertain to the judgment and faith of individuals, cannot be distinguished and judged by just anyone, however much he may do God’s will. The matters at issue in this controversy about the number of the Divine Books are of this kind. Nor is judgment about these matters so evident to everyone that it is immediately at hand without a teacher. For some received Paul’s word eagerly, yet searched the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so (Acts 17); and when some taught that no one could be saved without circumcision, it was not immediately clear to everyone whether that teaching and doctrine were from God or not. Instead, the question was referred to the apostles and elders and settled after a council had been convened and a thorough inquiry first made (Acts 15). If anyone still thinks that what has been said in refutation of this argument is not enough, let him also have this answer. Christ did not say that whoever does God’s will can, by himself and without a teacher, distinguish all the true doctrine of the prophets, evangelists, and apostles from false doctrine, or that sheep can recognize Christ’s voice without an external teacher and refute the contrary voice of a stranger. Rather, he taught that when a suitable teacher of the faith is present, one who sets forth what is to be believed at the right time and place, with solid weight and certain authority, then a hearer who is good will accept God’s doctrine, while one who is bad will reject it. For Christ was speaking in a particular way about himself and his own doctrine: since God the Father had marked him out, given him to the world as its leader and teacher, and confirmed him by every kind of testimony, no one could sinlessly refuse to believe him as he proclaimed the Gospel with so many and such great arguments, excelled in the glory of his life, doctrine, and miracles, and possessed human—and indeed divine—authority. Let Luther go now and exult in the most groundless way, as if he had battered the Church’s faith with the strongest rams. Let us instead understand the sense of Christ’s words that we have stated, both from the other testimonies of the Evangelist and especially from this very passage that Luther cites against us from chapter 10. “The works,” the Lord says, “that I do in my Father’s name, these bear witness about me; but you do not believe, because you are not of my sheep.” And immediately afterward: “My sheep hear my voice.” For certainly, if they did not hear it, they would not be Christ’s sheep, since they would shut their ears and refuse to hear the voice they had recognized as that of their own shepherd. From this it is clear how ineptly

those testimonies of the Lord are applied to Luther in this matter that we are now discussing. So much for the third argument. Answer to the fourth. Before answering the fourth, I think it worthwhile to touch briefly on a few points, so that not only this argument may more easily be dissolved but also the matters to be discussed later may be explained. First, then, I establish that, according to the common law, certain external and human inducements are necessary to lead us to faith in the Gospel. For how will they believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without a preacher? Again: “If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin”; and: “If I had not done works that no one else has done, they would have no excuse for their sin.” It is therefore necessary not only that the things of faith be simply set before someone who is to believe, as first principles are set before a student, but also that some external persuasion and human inducement be applied, just as certain principles of geometry are explained and commended by a teacher. Hence it was that when Moses said to the Lord, “They will not believe me,” the Lord gave him power to perform signs. Hence, again: “They preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the word by the signs that followed.” To this belong the words: “He came as a witness,” etc., “so that all might believe through him.” And Sergius Paulus, a prudent man, “when he saw what had happened, believed, being astonished at the teaching of the Lord” (Acts 13). The centurion, “seeing what had happened, glorified God, saying, ‘Truly this was the Son of God’” (Luke 23). And the father knew that it was the very hour in which Jesus had said to him, “Your son lives”; and he himself and his whole household believed. A little earlier: “Many of the Samaritans of that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, who said, ‘He told me everything I ever did’”; and many came to Jesus and said, “John performed no sign, but everything John said about this man was true.” And in John 20: “That disciple who had come first to the tomb went in, and he saw and believed. For as yet they did not know the Scripture, that he had to rise from the dead.” Finally, Philip and Peter did not merely set the faith before the eunuch and Cornelius, respectively, but also supplied reasons, etc. Next, this too must be established: human authority and all the aforementioned inducements, or any others employed by the person who sets forth the faith, are not sufficient causes for believing such that we are bound to believe; rather, an interior efficient cause is also needed, that is, God’s special aid moving us to believe. St. Thomas teaches this in his commentary on Romans 10, lecture 2, as does St. Augustine in book 1 of Retractations, chapter 21, and often elsewhere. Indeed, Sacred Scripture teaches this too. “How beautiful,” it says, “are the feet of those who announce peace, who announce good things!” Yet “not all obey the Gospel.” For Isaiah says: “Lord, who has believed what we have heard? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” Again: “Do not murmur among yourselves; no one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.” “It is written in the Prophets: ‘They shall all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard from the Father and learned comes to me.” And later, when certain disciples said, “This is a hard saying; who can hear it?” the Lord said: “For this reason I told you that no one can come to me unless it has been granted to him by my Father.” And elsewhere: “Although he had done so many signs before them, they did not believe in him,” to fulfill Isaiah’s saying: “Lord, who has believed what we have heard? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” etc. Therefore, all external and human persuasions are not enough to bring about belief, however suitably human beings may set forth the things of faith;

in addition, an interior cause is necessary: a certain divine light that moves one to believe, and a kind of inner eyes given by God’s favor for seeing. “Your eyes,” Moses says, “have seen those signs and great wonders, yet the Lord has not given you a heart to understand, or ears to hear, or eyes to see.” Christ also confirmed this clearly in his own words to Peter: “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona, because flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.” Certainly Peter had heard the testimony of John the Baptist, who had proclaimed openly that Christ was the Son of God; he had also seen many of Christ’s miracles. Yet after all this, Christ does not attribute Peter’s confession of faith either to John’s testimony and authority or to the miracles he had seen, but to divine revelation. And to the Thessalonians: “We give thanks to God that when you received from us the word of the message of faith, you accepted it not as a human word but, as it truly is, as the word of God, who is at work in you who believe.” There are also many other testimonies of Sacred Scripture confirming this point, such as in Corinthians: “No one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except in the Holy Spirit,” and the rest that follows. Again, Paul includes faith among the gifts of the Spirit; and elsewhere: “We are not sufficient,” etc. And in Luke: “A certain woman who worshiped God listened to Paul; the Lord opened her heart to attend to what Paul was saying.” And this: “Morning by morning he awakens me; he awakens my ear to hear as a teacher. The Lord God has opened my ear.” Daylight would fail me if I wished to recall all the testimonies by which this foundation is established. A third point must also be added: the formal reason for our faith is not the authority of the Church—that is, our faith’s ultimate resolution is not made into the Church’s testimony. Scholastic matters themselves compel us to use scholastic forms of expression, and Latins ought to forgive us for words worn smooth by long use in the schools. For we pursue not so much elegance of speech as clarity in disputation. But to the matter at hand. I cannot conceal the error of those who assert that our faith must be reduced, as to its ultimate cause of believing, to the belief that the Church is truthful, to which, they say, we assent first by acquired faith and only afterward by infused faith. If this were true, the first formal reason for infused faith would not be uncreated truth but created truth. Thus our faith would not rest on divine truth as its foundation, but on human truth. Moreover, since assent to a conclusion is not more certain than assent to its principles, as Aristotle shows in book 1 of the Posterior Analytics, if infused faith rested on acquired faith, then the belief that God is triune, to which we assent by infused faith, would be no firmer or more certain for us than the belief that the Church is truthful, to which, according to their view, we assent by acquired faith and by the inducements of human causes. Furthermore, we never regard any human being as so truthful by acquired faith that we do not fear he may either be deceived or deceive. Therefore, if assent to the Catholic faith depended on acquired faith, it could not be altogether firm. In addition, if all those who taught me—or even angels of heaven—were to assert the opposite of what I hold by faith, my faith would not be shaken on that account, in accordance with the Apostle Paul’s injunction: “Even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you,” etc. Therefore, the assent of our faith does not rest on human causes and inducements, which acquired faith follows. Accordingly, so that our mind may not waver, the authority of Divine Scripture must be sought from a source higher than either human reason or authority.

Moreover, the apostles and prophets ultimately resolved their faith into divine authority and truth. Therefore, we do not resolve our faith into the human authority of the Church. For the faith is the same, and accordingly it has the same object and formal reason. What happens accidentally to the object of some habit does not change the formal reason of that object. But the fact that these or those people propose articles to be believed is altogether accidental. Since the prophets and apostles assented to the articles of faith because God revealed them, then, we too will have the same reason for believing. Unless perhaps our faith is not a theological virtue, whose first and formal reason, if we believe these people, would be human rather than divine truth. Nor are testimonies of Sacred Scripture lacking in confirmation of this point, such as: “They believed the Lord and Moses his servant.” It does not say “Moses and the Lord,” but “the Lord and Moses.” Again: “Whoever believes in me believes not in me but in him who sent me,” and the rest that follows; and to the Thessalonians: “We give thanks to God that when you received from us the word of the message of faith, you accepted it not as a human word but, as it truly is, as the word of God.” Along with these three certain and stable propositions, this too is joined: the ultimate resolution of our faith is made into an interior efficient cause, that is, into God moving us to believe. For example, I assent by infused faith to this article, “God is triune,” and to this one, “The Church cannot err,” as well as to all the other principles of Christian doctrine—not because John or anyone else has said so, but because God has revealed it. I believe immediately that “God has revealed it,” however, because I am moved by God through a special impulse. Thus, on the side of the object, the formal moving reason is the revealing divine truth; yet this alone is not sufficient to move us unless an interior cause is present, that is, God also moving us by a gratuitous and special concurrence. St. Thomas, II–II, question 2, article 9, reply to objection 3; Augustine, Confessions 2, chapter 3. Although this point firmly adheres to the foundation already laid in the second proposition, it is also sustained by the testimony cited in the argument. For this is the sense of what the Apostle John says: “If we receive human testimony, the testimony of God is greater.” But from where, Apostle, shall we believe that this is God’s testimony? “Whoever believes in the Son of God,” he says, “has God’s testimony within himself.” If we wish to trace this matter to its source and see where everything flows from, we must finally understand that the habit of faith stands in relation to the discipline of theology as the habit of understanding stands to the human sciences and abilities. Just as our understanding, in the course of the natural sciences, first engages with principles and then proceeds to know the rest, which is derived from the principles laid down, so in knowing supernatural things there are certain supernatural principles, from belief in which the faithful mind proceeds to investigate the rest. “Whoever approaches God,” it says, “must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.” And again: “Although you ought by this time to be teachers, you again need someone to teach you the elements of the beginning of God’s words.” It immediately explains what those elements are, saying: “Leaving behind the beginning of Christ’s teaching, let us press on to what is more perfect, not laying again the foundation of repentance, faith in God, instruction about baptisms, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment.”

Once these points have been explained, it can easily be understood, I think, that what was said a little earlier is true: certain human and external supports must intervene to bring about belief, yet they are not sufficient in themselves, nor is our faith’s resolution made into them, but into an interior divine cause that stirs and moves us to believe. Many things come before assent to the principles of geometry or arithmetic as preliminaries and antecedents, such as sense perception and the teacher’s explanation and persuasion. The teacher does not present those same principles in just any way, but also explains them either by examples evident to the senses or by well-known effects. Yet none of those is the formal reason for assent. Rather, they are like determinations and conditions without which the student would not understand such principles. The formal reason, however, is the natural light inherent within us, by which that evident assent is produced; just as this external light is the formal reason that makes colors evident. In the same way, then, setting forth what must be believed, persuading, and performing miracles determine the intellect to believe as conditions without which the intellect is hardly ever determined; but the formal reason for assent is the light of faith that God infuses into the believer. If you now apply what we have said to Sacred Scripture, you will certainly find it so consistent with Scripture that we ought to obtain the agreement of any opponent. To this belongs John’s saying: “Now we believe not because of your speech; for we ourselves have heard, and we know that this man is truly the Savior of the world,” to pass over those other passages recalled earlier. Enough and more than enough has been said in refutation of the fourth argument; from it, however, the final three arguments can also be easily dissolved. For although, with respect to one or another person who rejects Sacred Scripture, the authority of the Church comes first—since by the Church’s authority we rightly prove to that person that this is Paul’s letter and that is James’s—it does not follow that the authority of the Church is absolutely the formal reason for believing. This is like when we try to persuade someone who denies the principles of natural philosophy by means of well-known effects: we are not seeking a cause on which the principles of philosophy depend, but rather some argument or sure indication concerning the matter under dispute. And in nearly every discipline it happens that we use a cause against someone ignorant of it, because of the mutual connection between the two. I could show this at length with examples from many disciplines, but what is clear should not be long. So I will give one example of a kind that is easily understood and based on one point, yet can be extended to many. The astrologer persuades us from a lunar eclipse that the Earth is interposed between the Sun and the Moon, yet he does not use an inept form of argument. Indeed, the most learned have made excellent use of this; I would not invoke their authority if I were to speak before some rustic people. But since I am writing to those for whom this is not unfamiliar, why should I pretend to have wasted my efforts if I have devoted any work to these studies? Learned men have therefore used a kind of argument that later writers call “from a posteriori,” Aristotle, according to the ancient interpretation of the commentators, calls a demonstration “that it is,” and we call an argument from effects. Since effects are often better known than their own causes, they are repeatedly brought forward to point those causes out; nevertheless, effects are not thereby the formal reasons for their causes. To stay with the same example, if we infer from a lunar eclipse that the Earth is interposed, the eclipse itself is not for that reason the formal reason for the interposition; on the contrary, if we consider the nature of things, the interposition of the Earth itself is the formal reason why the Moon undergoes an eclipse. What, then, happens in the other arts also happens in theology, so that

the order of things is sometimes rearranged for the sake of human understanding, so that we argue most aptly from the Old Testament against those who deny the New, and conversely from the New against those who deny the Old. For not only does a philosopher teach that, by a kind of natural impulse, people are carried from what is better known to us toward what is less known; we also experience this without any philosopher as our teacher. Therefore, we persuade a Jew, for whom the Old Testament is more certain, of the New from the Old. “We have,” it says, “the prophetic word made more sure; you do well to attend to it as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.” And in Acts 17: “Those who received Paul’s word eagerly searched the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so.” Conversely, we must gather the authority of the Old Testament from the New when dealing with someone who accepts the New Testament but rejects the Old. In the same way, the authority of the Church is connected with the authority of Sacred Scripture, and, by the rule governing connected things, we use each to prove the other. But if the question is asked generally, how a believer knows that the things he holds by faith have been revealed by God, he cannot bring in the authority of the Church, because one of the revealed truths is that the Church cannot err, as stated in 1 Tim. 3. Nor does a true Catholic assent to this proposition, as some pretend, “The Church is truthful,” solely through human conjectures, on which acquired faith rests, in the way that Muslims cling to their teachers, Jews to their rabbis, Gentiles to their philosophers, and everyone to their elders. Christians do not do so, I say; rather, by the interior light infused by the Holy Spirit, they are moved most firmly and certainly to believe that the Christian Church cannot err, while Muslims, Jews, and pagans can err. Next, one may answer that even if the Church had to set forth, in general, the things to be believed, it would not follow that faith’s ultimate resolution is made into the Church’s authority. For the Church’s authority is not by itself the reason that moves us to believe, but a cause without which we would not believe. In accordance with the rule prescribed by Paul, the things we must believe have to be presented to us by a human being if we are to believe them. God, however, provided that the Church should be the one to set forth with sure and firm judgment the things that we truly must believe. For example, the Church sets forth that Matthew’s Gospel has been revealed by God, and it can set forth nothing to me except what is true. I therefore do not believe the Evangelist speaks truth because the Church says he speaks truth, but because God has revealed it. And yet the Church’s act of presenting it is a cause without which I would not accept that Gospel as Matthew’s. Thus I certainly believe that the Church has been inspired by the Holy Spirit, not so that it may confer truth or authority on the canonical books, but so that it may teach that these books, and no others, are canonical. And if the Church gives us access to knowing such Sacred Books, we should not immediately stop there; rather, we must go further and rely on the solid truth of God. From this we understand what Augustine meant when he said, “I would not believe the Gospel unless the authority of the Church moved me,” and again: “Through Catholics I had come to believe the Gospel.” Augustine’s dispute was with the Manichaeans, who wanted people to believe a certain gospel of their own without question and to put their faith in Mani. Augustine therefore asks what they would do if they met someone who did not even believe the Gospel, and by what kind of persuasion they would bring him over to their position. He asserts that he himself could not have been brought to embrace the Gospel in any other way than by being persuaded through the Church’s authority.

He does not, then, teach that faith in the Gospel is founded on the authority of the Church; rather, he simply teaches that there is no sure way for unbelievers or for those new in the faith to approach the Sacred Books except through the single and unanimous consent of the Catholic Church. He himself explained this sufficiently in chapter 4 of the same letter and in On the Usefulness of Believing, addressed to Honoratus. An argument concerning any sacred book is therefore rightly drawn from the authority of the Church in a controversy, and Augustine teaches this; but faith in the Divine Books must be referred not to this authority but to divine authority. Answer to the fifth. We do not wish to detain the reader further in dissolving those final three arguments, but hasten to explain what we left in the middle. The testimony from Deuteronomy that our adversaries use next does absolutely nothing for them. When the Lord warned the faithful to beware of wolves and to recognize them as they would trees, not by their leaves but by their fruits, he did not thereby exclude the faithful vigilance of dogs, the remarkable natural acuity for distinguishing wolves, or the watchful care and diligent oversight of shepherds. For if these are lacking, the sheep could not protect themselves on their own, however much Christ may have given them a sign by which to recognize wolves. Likewise, Moses instructed the people to distinguish false prophets by the outcome of events, but did not thereby disregard the judgment of priests in these matters, to whom he himself had ordered all doubtful cases to be referred a little earlier. It could often happen, moreover, that judgment about some prophet was difficult and uncertain, with different and conflicting opinions, as is usual. Answer to the sixth and seventh. The testimony cited from John is similar, and so is refuted in a similar way. The other testimony, from the First Letter to the Corinthians, is not so easily refuted; yet it is clear that the Lutherans twist Paul’s words remarkably. For if “the spiritual person,” that is, the one in whom the Spirit of God is, judges everything in general (for that is how they interpret the words), how is it that Elisha says, “Her soul is bitter, and the Lord has hidden it from me” (4 Kings 4)? How is it that Job, when certain proofs had shown him that he knew many things not, confesses his ignorance, saying: “I have spoken foolishly, and about things that exceed my knowledge” (Job 38, 39, 40, 41, 42)? How is it that the apostles did not understand what was being said (Luke 18)? How is it that Peter and John did not yet know the Scripture (John 20)? How is it that Christ opened to his disciples the Scriptures that had previously been closed to them (Luke 24)? How did Peter fail to judge that his own hesitation was contrary to the Gospel? How, again, did he say, “By no means, Lord, for I have never eaten anything common or unclean”? For he was perplexed within himself about what the vision he had seen meant (Acts 10). Let the Lutherans explain to me, if they can, why the eunuch, in whom without doubt the Spirit of God was, could not understand the passage in Isaiah without an external teacher (Acts 8). Let them explain also why the faithful who were of the circumcision disputed with Peter because he had gone to Cornelius, if just men can judge everything. Let them also explain what impeded the people of Antioch, as we recounted a little earlier in this discussion, from distinguishing Paul’s doctrine as true and the doctrine of the others as false, so that they referred the matter to the assembly at Jerusalem for the Council of the elders and apostles to judge it. I could add many such cases from the Sacred Books, but they are readily available; and what we have cited is enough to establish the point. Paul, then, does not mean that any just person can judge everything. For among the Corinthians themselves there were certain little ones and imperfect people who, even if they had the Spirit for justice, lacked the Spirit for discerning those mysteries that the Apostle communicated

communicated to the perfect. “I could not speak to you as spiritual people,” he says; “as little ones in Christ I gave you milk to drink,” etc. By spiritual men, then, he means the perfect, among whom he himself spoke wisdom: those who, like Paul, had received the apostolic Spirit so that they might know the things bestowed on them, and who spoke not in words taught by human wisdom, but briefly possessed Christ’s meaning through a special gift of the Spirit. Yet even they did not judge absolutely everything, unless we want to say that by the Spirit they had become geometers, physicists, and astrologers too. Nor did they know all spiritual things. For the Spirit reserved certain things for himself and revealed some privately to one person, others to another. The division is therefore appropriate, as in “He will teach you all truth” and also, “The anointing teaches you about everything.” Spiritual and apostolic men, then, discern everything—that is, supernatural and natural things, spiritual and bodily things—not each thing individually, but all those things necessary for salvation. Once these points are understood, there is no need to answer the other testimony from the same letter. The first argument, however, is evaded in this way. It is not fitting for true and serious theologians to play with ambiguity of words. Here, then, we do not use “judgment” in the sense of the decision of someone who is superior in reality to the matter he judges. Otherwise, if this word always had that meaning, when, according to Paul, two or three prophets speak and the others judge, those who render judgment would have to be superior both to the prophets and to prophecy. We therefore assert that the Church judges the Scriptures and their meaning, that is, distinguishes what is human from what is divine, and what is true from what is false. And, as we established earlier, the Church has this capacity from Christ, not by usurped authority. “My Spirit,” he says, “which is upon you, and my words, which I have put in your mouth, shall not depart from the mouth of your seed forever.” Since we shall discuss this matter at length elsewhere, nothing further need be said now. The arguments that follow have all already been refuted in the answer to the fourth argument. Let us therefore proceed to the remaining controversies and continue in the order we have begun.