Tradition as Interpretation: Conflicting Views

As I start part 28 of my Sola Scriptura series, I am going to document some of the conflicting views on the interpretation of Scripture that we see before and during the Middle Ages to further drive home the point that there was no unanimous consent among the Church fathers concerning how Scripture was to be interpreted. In the previous blog we looked at a few of these conflicting interpretations but my goal in this blog will be to demonstrate that this was not an isolated case, which was William Webster’s point in this section of his book, Holy Scripture, Ground and Pillar of Our Faith, Vol II.

We will start off this blog with the scriptural rule used for biblical interpretation in the Middle Ages. It's important to understand what the Church fathers believed the rules for interpreting Scripture were so a proper foundation for this evaluation of their methodologies can be made. After that, I will discuss what ‘patristic contenas’ were and what part they played in the process of Scriptural interpretation. And finally, I will end with a few examples of the conflicts the Church fathers had with each other over the ‘interpretations’ they came up with.

How Scripture is to be interpreted is critical to the understanding of the Word of God. Most New Testament verses and passages are quite straightforward and don’t need any elaboration, while others can have nuanced differences based on the definition of the Greek words being used by the writer of the Gospel or Epistle. Most of the time, the meanings within the New Testament are obvious by simply reading the text. But there are deeper meanings to glean from the text based upon some of the cultural statements recorded in Scripture as well as some of the Greek words used. A version like the NIV that seeks to update the idioms and cultural language can help that process, while other times a more literal version like the NASB can bring better clarity to what the writer of Scripture was saying.

The point of this blog, as well as the previous one, is that allegorical interpretations did not bring more clarity, they actually created confusion and unneeded disagreements. There were even times when the Church fathers just disagreed with each other. And there is no denial that there are verses and/or passages that were written to be understood as allegorical, but Scripture itself provides the context for how Scripture intended it to be understood. Why? Because Scripture interprets Scripture.

Middle Ages

As we begin our look at the Middle Ages, we see the influences of Scriptural interpretation from both the Alexandrian and Antiochene schools. There is a continued influence of the allegorical methodology which relied upon the definition outlined by Augustine and John Cassian. But it was Cassian that took the interpretative methodology of Augustine into a decidedly different direction which seemed to rely more on the allegorical, mystical, and spiritual view of Scripture. [1]

Before the Church moved into the Middle Ages, Augustine attempted to create a set of rules to synthesize an acceptable method of interpretation that everyone could agree upon. It was a four-fold or four-legged exegetical approach referred to as ‘quadriga.’ My assumption is that the word came about as a reference to a chariot drawn by four horses hitched side-by-side. The chariot, in this case, is the Scripture and the four horses, the four interpretive methods.

So, what were these four interpretive methods? They were:

• Literal - grounds our interpretation in the historical and contextual realities of the biblical text.
• Allegorical - supposedly uncovers deeper spiritual truths that are said to resonate with the overall story of salvation.
• Moral - provides the reader with ethical imperatives and life application. [2]
• Anagogical or eschatological - a forward-looking perspective, focusing on promises of the faith that concentrated on the mystical or spiritual interpretation of statements or events, scriptural exegesis (eisegesis?) to detect allusions to the afterlife. [3]

There were allegorical and anagogical perspectives for certain Scriptures, but these two, when being applied to all Scripture verses, relied upon the creative and fanciful ideas of commentators, which did not need to be grounded in Scripture. Maybe some commentators were less imaginative, and were better at allowing Scripture to interpret Scripture, but others, as we saw in the previous blog, were overly creative as well as speculative in their allegories. Without being grounded in Scripture, can these speculative allegories be trusted? Was there something to back up those allegorical interpretations? The answers to those questions are obvious: they cannot be trusted because there was nothing that actually backed up those interpretations, and that was the real issue with these methodologies.

Nor am I opposed to the moral understanding of Scripture, but in today’s world, far too many churches make the focus of virtually all their sermons from the pulpit about life application. I understand that the job of the pastor is to prepare his flock to walk out their faith in the world around them, but those life application sermons do not always teach the believer how to apply Scripture in their everyday lives. While it’s true we need to apply Scripture to our lives – far too many Christians never attempt to do that – more often than not, what we really need is to better understand what Scripture is saying without the ‘life lesson’ so that we are forced to focus on the words of Scripture, not the moralistic life application we end up hearing. It’s the difference between giving me the fish – life application – and teaching me to fish – giving me the tools to understand Scripture so I can apply it to my life. I do understand that this is not the main focus for what happened in the Middle Ages, but it does demonstrate the far-reaching fallout of the Augustine/Cassian approach to understanding Scripture.

But getting back to literal vs allegorical, as Robert Grant pointed out, during this time of the Middle Ages,

The most important and characteristic method of biblical interpretation, however, was not literal but allegorical. In the late patristic age and Medieval Ages, a system of allegorization was developed according to which four meanings were sought in every text. [4] [emphasis added]

Imagine trying to allegorize, mystify and spiritualize, “Go and sin no more.” Grant also provided a little ‘jingle’ used at that time to explain these four tenets of interpretation:

The letter shows us what God and our fathers did; the allegory shows us where our faith is hid; the moral meaning gives us rules of daily life; the anagogy shows us where we end our strife. [5]

The Middle Ages may have started with the four-legged interpretive model described above but because of an Aristolelian view of nature being adopted, the pendulum started to swing back to the literal meaning of Scripture under Thomas Aquinas.

But the question I asked was, “Why did it swing back?” The Middle Ages saw the rise of the scholastic era, but to understand what was going on during this era, theologically speaking, we need to define a term. So, what is ‘scholasticism?’

Scholasticism originally began as a reconciliation of the philosophy of the ancient classical philosophers with medieval Christian theology. It was not a philosophy or theology in itself, but a tool and method for learning which emphasized dialectical reasoning. The primary purpose of scholasticism was to find the answer to a question or resolve a contradiction… It combined religious doctrine, study of the ideas of the Church fathers, and philosophical and logical analysis based on Aristotle and his commentators, and to some extent on themes from Plato. [6]

You might be asking, “What on earth is ‘dialectical reasoning?’” Well, it’s a method of argumentation that involves arriving at the truth through the process of logical debate between two opposing viewpoints. (Yes, I stole that from AI) So, it wasn’t about inventing some wild interpretation of a verse, it was a way of arriving at what a phrase was saying by approaching it from different angles and viewpoints. If you ever read Thomas Aquinas, you will see that in about 30 seconds. He is exhausting to read. But I digress.

So, as Augustine had attempted centuries before, the theologians during the scholastic period were attempting to marry philosophy and Christian theology to help them answer theological questions and resolve supposed biblical and theological contradictions. But because this method was based on Aristotle and focused on answering questions rather than inventing interpretations, there was a movement away from the allegorical and towards the literal understanding of Scripture. I appreciate that the movement was back towards the literal meaning of Scripture, but I’m disappointed that, once again, the Church engaged philosophy to do so.

Hugh of St Victor (1096-1141) seems to have been the first voice in this new era and disagreed with his contemporaries because they were ignoring the literal sense of Scripture. His student, Andrew (d. 1175) followed in his footsteps by grounding himself in Hebrew for his exegesis of the Old Testament. A century later, Albert the Great (1200-1280) and Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) shifted the focus away from allegorism and towards an even greater emphasis on the literal interpretation of Scripture. [7]

The intention was not to insinuate that Aquinas rejected all allegory because he still held to the four-legged meanings model, but he placed the primary emphasis on the literal meaning of Scripture. Aquinas wrote,

Thus in Holy Writ no confusion results, for all the senses are found in one – the literal – from which alone can any argument be drawn, and not from those intended in allegory, as Augustine says (Epis. 48). Nevertheless, nothing of Holy Scripture perishes on account of this, since nothing necessary to faith is contained under the spiritual sense which is not elsewhere put forward by the Scripture in its literal sense. [8] [emphasis added]

This is actually good to hear from Aquinas, since I find a lot of his writings a little difficult to parse.

We finally get to Nicholas of Lyra (1270-1349), who was a huge influence on the Reformers and their own approach to biblical exegesis. He still believed in the four-legged method of interpretation discussed above, but his main focus was on the literal-historical. In reference to Nicholas, Webster wrote,

While accepting the quadriga, Michael Woodward points out that Nicholas also expressed concern over the inclination of many exegetes in his day to emphasize what he called a mystical-spiritual interpretation over the literal meaning, thereby obscuring the literal understanding of Scripture. His comments highlight the fact that in the Middle Ages there were conflicting views on interpretation. Throughout the Medieval period and up to the Reformation there was no universally consistent principle agreed on by which Scripture was to be interpreted. While all agreed that the four–fold method of the quadriga was the authoritative means of determining the proper meaning of the text of Scripture, there was no agreement as to which method—the literal, allegorical, tropological or anagogical—should take priority, or what the precise meaning of Scripture was when employing those methods. Other schools, such as the Franciscans and the Dominicans, held differing viewpoints. One theologian’s understanding of the allegorical sense, for example, would differ from another’s. As was true in the Patristic Age, those of the Medieval Age also held conflicting views on the meaning of Scripture, though all were fundamentally agreed on the primacy of Scripture. [9] [emphasis added]

So, even though the likes of Albert and Aquinas had nearly exclusively moved toward the literal-historical method, during Nicholas’ day there was still a heavy reliance on the allegorical methodology. And it really didn’t change until the Reformation because there was no consistent agreed upon principle for interpreting Scripture, except for the four-legged methodology. Now, one could call that the ‘agreed upon’ method, but it created quite a lot of disagreement within the Church. And why do I say that? Because there were also different Catholic orders with their own schools, like the Dominicans and Franciscans, who held differing points of view. So, just like in the patristic age, the Medieval Age had conflicting views of Scriptural interpretation.

Patristic Contenas

During the early Middle Ages, the writers of this era began to create collections of the excerpts of the teachings and commentaries of the early Church fathers on specific subjects and passages of Scripture. They were called the ‘patristic catenas.’ As Webster wrote,

The use of patristic catenas and commentaries demonstrates the fact that tradition, for the theologians of the Middle Ages, was not just biblical but historical. They sought to maintain historical continuity in teachings. This again was the basis of the principle expressed by Vincent of Lerins of unanimous consent (universality, antiquity, and consent) and development of doctrine. [10]

Please note what Webster is saying about tradition being ‘not just biblical but historical’ as well. By ‘biblical,’ he is saying the tradition that we’ve looked at throughout this series is the Creeds which expressed the nature of God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit, and the points of biblical salvation to show that believers understood the Gospel. And added to that was the historical aspect of what the patristic authors wrote. The ‘historical’ was their commentaries and their exegesis of Scripture.

But the desire was to record what had been said by the fathers in the past and present it in a way that would be easier to find and compare the fathers with each other. Some of these collections were actually used during church councils presumably to bring clarity for specific disputes. So, these collections had a lot of value, but they also easily highlighted the different allegorical views between the early fathers, as we will see in the next section.

Conflicting Exegesis

… we have observed clear differences in approach to the interpretation of Scripture in the early Church and Middle Ages with widely varying results as to the determination of the true meaning of Scripture. While all the orthodox fathers and theologians agreed on the rule of faith and the primacy of Scripture, they did not all agree on an interpretive methodology or on the precise meaning of the specific passages of Scripture. [11] [emphasis added]

So, for the core tenants of the faith known as the ‘rule of faith’ and expressed by the Creeds, all of the Church fathers agreed on their interpretation, but when it came to the rest of Scripture, their views conflicted with each other, sometimes vehemently. And we are talking about the major Church fathers, not the obscure fathers no one has ever heard of. Basil of Caesarea (330-379) wrote about the divergence of views,

I noticed that many disagree violently with one another and also in their understanding of the Holy Scriptures. Most alarming of all is the fact that I found the very leaders of the Church themselves at such variance with one another in thought and opinion, showing so much opposition to the commands of our Lord Jesus Christ, and so mercilessly rendering asunder the Church of God and cruelly confounding His flock that, in our day, with the rise of Anomoeans, there is fulfilled in them as never before the prophecy, ‘Of your own selves shall men arise speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them.’ [12] [emphasis added]

This is a sad commentary made even sadder when you remember that Basil vehemently opposed the Scriptural interpretations of his own brother, Gregory of Nyssa! But these types of contradictions did not stop with these two. Duane Garrett documented how Chrysostom disagreed with Eusebius of Caesarea (265-339) and Cyril of Alexandria (376-444) when it came to their views of Isa 5:2, where it says, “And He built a tower in the middle of it, and also hewed out a wine vat in it;” Garrett wrote,

He (Chrysostom) completely rejects the view that … (Isa 5:2) refers respectively to the temple and the altar, he argues that the details of this phrase have no allegorical significance but are given only to reinforce the main point of the song, namely, that God ‘has done everything he could and has shown them every consideration.’ By contrast, Eusebius of Caesarea says that the wine-vat is the altar and the clouds are the prophets, and Cyril of Alexandria says that the tower is the temple and the wine-vat is the altar. [13]

There were other aspects to what Chrysostom disagreed with as well, but it is clear from the above, that there was no consensus on the meaning of these verses in Isaiah. Oh, and did I mention that both Eusebius and Cyril were disciples of Origen and the Alexandrian school? So, they were strong believers in allegory and didn’t agree with each other. Chrysostom had an Antiochene school background and not surprisingly, rejected both of their allegorical interpretations.

And this was not the only place in Isaiah where Chrysostom had issues with the allegorical understanding of Scripture. Isa 1:22, which says, “Your silver has become dross, Your drink diluted with water,” was another. Garrett continued,

The standard patristic interpretation of Isa 1:22 was that the Jewish scribes and rabbis who diluted the law with their own traditions were the wine merchants who mingled water with wine. Cyril of Alexandria so interprets the verse and compares it to Jesus’ confrontation with the Pharisees in Matt 15:1-6. Theodoret comments, ‘Thus the Jewish teachers corrupted the divine law by mingling their own ideas with it and supplementing it with their traditional fables.’ Eusebuis and Jerome interpret the passage in the same way. Chrysostom, on the other hand, says, ‘I disdain this exegesis, and consider the literal to be more accurate.’ [14] [emphasis added]

It would be easy to add the third citation of Isa 3:1 by Webster, but I think the point about the disagreements between the different schools of thought on interpretation has been made. There were many places within the book of Isaiah where Chysostom’s literal understanding of Scripture went against the allegorization of other Church fathers.

But the disagreements did not always involve the fathers with a propensity to allegorize. Sometimes fathers within the Antiochene school disagreed with each other, as was the case for Theodore of Mopsuestia (350-428) and Theodoret (393-458) on their respective understandings of Zechariah 9:8-10. Theodore wrote the following,

It is clear that these things are said about Zerubbabel. I am amazed at the understandings of those people who turn to bizarre interpretations, those who would apply a certain part to Zerubbabel, another part to Christ the Lord, then again another part to Zerubabel, then again another part to Christ the Lord, which is nothing else but dividing the prophecy between Zerubabel and Christ the Lord. These things are the result of the uttermost senselessness. [15]

And then we have Theodoret, who disagreed with Theodore and wrote this,

I am astonished at the stupidity of the Jews who foolishly refer this prophecy to Zerubbabel. For Zerubbabel did not rule over all Palestine, but only Judea, as they would have to admit. The prophet said that one seated on an ass would rule the whole world. We know that the Lord used an ass; that Zerubbabel had done this no one who has written concerning divine things has said even to this day. [16]

Even though Theodoret seems to have said he was responding to the ‘Jews’, it’s pretty clear that Theodoret’s comments were directed towards Theodore’s interpretation of these verses.

Nor were the disagreements between the fathers always reserved for the Old Testament, there were interpretive differences within the New Testament as well. Let’s take the case of John 6 and the touchy subject of Communion. There were actually Church fathers that believed that communion was figurative, that the elements of bread and wine represented the body and blood of Jesus. Other Church fathers believed the elements transformed from bread into Jesus’ body and wine into His blood. For instance, Cyril of Jerusalem believed in a transformation that resembled modern day ‘transubstantiation,’ where ‘Pope’ Gelasius (492-496) did not. Gelasius wrote,

The sacrament which we receive of the body and blood of Christ is a divine thing. Wherefore also by means of it we are made partakers of the divine nature. Yet the substance or nature of the bread and wine does not cease to be. And certainly the image and likeness of the body and blood of Christ is set out in the celebration of the mysteries. Therefore it is plainly enough shown to us that we must think this in the case of the Lord Christ Himself which we confess, celebrate, and receive in the case of the image of Him. Thus, as the elements pass into this, that is, the divine substance by the Holy Ghost, and none the less remain in their own proper nature, so they show that the principal mystery itself, the efficacy and virtue of which they truly make present (repræsentant) to us, consists in this, that the two natures remain each in its own proper being so that there is one Christ because He is whole and real.

(Evangelical Answers : Gelasius I and Transubstantiation) [17] [emphasis added]

Now, I know that Catholics will vehemently disagree with the above, which is why I added a lot to the endnote, but it seems clear that ‘Pope’ Gelasius did not believe in transubstantiation. Likewise, Augustine believed John 6 was to be taken figuratively and even used it as a teaching example to illustrate how to interpret Scripture. He wrote,

If the sentence is one of command, either forbidding a crime or vice, or enjoining an act of prudence or benevolence, it is not figurative. If, however, it seems to enjoin a crime or vice, or to forbid an act of prudence or benevolence, it is figurative. “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man,” says Christ, “and drink His blood, ye have no life in you.” This seems to enjoin a crime or a vice; it is therefore a figure, enjoining that we should have a share in the sufferings of our Lord, and that we should retain a sweet and profitable memory of the fact that His flesh was wounded and crucified for us. [emphasis added]

Philip Schaff, NPNF1 Vol II, St. Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, 3.16.24

So, Augustine did not believe in the physical transformation of the bread and the wine into the body and blood of Jesus since He is currently in heaven until His second coming. Augustine warned that, “... one must be careful to distinguish the difference between what is true of Christ as man and what is true of Him as God. As God, he says, Christ is everywhere present spiritually, but as man, He is physically present only in heaven.” [18] Interestingly, this was the same view believed and taught by Clement of Alexandria, Eusebius, Origen, Tertullian and Cyprian (i.e., no physical transformation of the bread and wine). That is a very influential list of early Church fathers.

Philip Schaff wrote the following about the differing views of the Church fathers,

The realistic and mystic view is represented by several fathers and the early liturgies, whose testimony we shall further cite below. They speak in enthusiastic and extravagant terms of the sacrament and sacrifice of the altar. They teach a real presence of the body and blood of Christ, which is included in the very idea of a real sacrifice, and they see in the mystical union of it with the sensible elements a sort of repetition of the incarnation of the Logos. With the act of consecration a change accordingly takes place in the elements, whereby they become vehicles and organs of the life of Christ, although by no means necessarily changed into another substance. … illustrated by the miraculous transformation of water into wine, the assimilation of food, and the pervasive power of leaven. [19] [emphasis added]

Schaff continued with this,

The symbolical view, though on a realistic basis, is represented first by Eusebius, who calls the Supper a commemoration of Christ by the symbols of his body and blood, and takes the flesh and blood of Christ in the sixth chapter of John to mean the words of Christ, which are spirit and life, the true food of the soul, to believers. Here appears the influence of his venerated Origen, whose views in regard to the sacramental aspect of the Eucharist he substantially repeats. [20] [emphasis added]

And he ended with,

It is remarkable that Augustine, in other respects so decidedly catholic in the doctrine of the church and of baptism, and in the cardinal points of the Latin orthodoxy, follows the older African theologians, Tertullian and Cyprian, in a symbolical theory of the Supper, which however includes a real spiritual participation of the Lord by faith, and in this respect stands nearest to the Calvinistic or Orthodox Reformed doctrine, while in minor points he differs from it as much as from transubstantiation and consubstantiation. [21] [emphasis added]

You might think that I’m belaboring the point, but transubstantiation is an important belief within Catholicism since it carries an anathema, which is to say those that do not believe their doctrinal view are cursed and cut off from Christ. That’s ludicrous, of course, but then I’m not Catholic. With so many Church fathers believing that communion was commemorative or a remembrance, it is easy to see that this is yet another theological belief where there was no unanimous consent.

So, where does this bring us? It should demonstrate that there was no real consensus on how to interpret Scripture outside of the ‘rule of faith.’ Everything else seemed to have questions and disagreements. Webster summarized the variations in interpretation this way,

It is clear, then, that while the fathers and theologians all agreed on the rule of faith, they did not all agree on the precise meaning of Scripture itself, holding to differing interpretive methodologies resulting in differences in interpretation. As Boniface Ramsey points out, “It must be clear that the interpretation of Scripture in the early Church was an affair that offered almost innumerable possibilities and variations.” [22] [emphasis added]

Some of these variations were just flat out wrong. An allegory with no basis for its interpretation should be rejected out of hand and not entertained. Far too often this should have been the position taken for the interpretations coming out of the school of Alexandria. But there were other variations, literal or allegorical and based on context given by Scripture, that were plausible and amounted to ‘a difference of opinion.’ Still others were minor differences of focus where the core of what was being said was in agreement. I call those ‘nuanced differences’ and see those between commentators like Gill, Calvin, Barnes, etc. They were all saying the same thing, but each brought out different aspects in those verses that the others did not.

So, you see, it is not that there are 30,000 Protestant positions (one for each supposed denomination - oh! And the number of denominations keeps increasing all the time), it’s that, just as the Church fathers before and during the Catholic era disagreed or had different views, the same is true for Protestants today. If it was ‘ok’ for the Church fathers to have differing interpretations, why is all of a sudden heretical for the Protestants to disagree with each other? After all, it was the Church fathers that were said to be in ‘unanimous consent,’ which we now know is completely unsubstantiated.

Let me end with this last quote from Webster,

The Council of Trent would have us believe it is possible to interpret Scripture in accordance with the ‘unanimous consent of the fathers.’ Such consent is nonexistent, excepting what related to the rule of faith or a very few specific passages. And, in some cases, where the fathers expressed universal consent, Rome has interpreted Scripture contrary to it. As has been pointed out, the appeal to Trent and Vatican I to unanimous consent is historically untenable. [23] [emphasis added]

Conclusion

Between this blog and my previous one, what we observed was the Church fathers moved into and out of differing interpretive understandings of Scripture, which completely undercuts the concept of ‘unanimous consent.’ If there was real ‘unanimous consent’ then there would have been one consistent interpretive methodology used by Church fathers throughout the history of the Church, which would fit what the Council of Trent and Vatican I said in their summary documentation. Unfortunately, that was not what we saw from history at all.

What we saw historically was a shifting model of interpretation from one age to another. Once the Reformation began there was an explosion of commentaries on the Scriptures which has continued up to our own time. Protestants have had a burning desire to know what Scripture says and means. Because there were so many Protestants writing commentaries on Scripture, the Catholic Church assumed that there were wide differences between the interpretations for the Gospels and Epistles. But in their zeal to accuse Protestantism, Catholicism forgot that they lost the moral high ground the second they were asked for their infallible commentaries of Scripture, which they had never created. And it's obvious why they never created them, isn’t it? There was no ‘unanimous consent’ because the ‘patristic contenas’ demonstrated the differences between the allegorical interpretations of the Church fathers. The Magisterium would have been forced to say one ‘doctor’ of the Church was right and another ‘doctor’ of the Church was wrong. Instead, it has opted not to speak at all.

But that has never been something very difficult for the Protestants because they read the Church fathers for who they were - fallible human beings who tried to serve God with all their hearts, but were in the end, just like you and me, fallible human beings who made mistakes.

It is interesting that the Church started with a literal approach to Scripture, and we can say that with confidence because the ‘rule of faith’ did not interpret the doctrines that were used to create the Creeds in an allegorical manner. Historically, we then saw the Church switching to an allegorical vs literal approach. By the time of Augustine, he was attempting to move the Church to a synthesis of the two, even though after him the Church fathers drifted into a mostly allegorical methodology. And finally, in the late Medieval period the Church moved back to a more literal approach. All of these changes created massive differences between the interpretive views of various Church fathers in various eras. Because this was what we saw from an honest historical review of the Church, one cannot say with a straight face that there was anything even remotely close to ‘the unanimous consent of the fathers.’

Accordingly the Holy Spirit has, with admirable wisdom and care for our welfare, so arranged the Holy Scriptures as by the plainer passages to satisfy our hunger, and by the more obscure to stimulate our appetite. For almost nothing is dug out of those obscure passages which may not be found set forth in the plainest language elsewhere.

Augustine, NPNF1, Vol. II, On Christian Doctrine, Book II, Chapter 6.8

Footnotes

1. Brief survey of the history of hermeneutics – 9. Middle Ages (II) - Covenant Baptist Theological Seminary
2. The first three are taken from, What the Bible Reveals: The Four Levels of Meaning - God's Blessing
3. Anagogical - Quadriga - Wikipedia
4. William Webster, Holy Scripture, Ground and Pillar of Our Faith Vol II, (Battle Creek, WA: Christian Resource, Inc, 2001), p. 175.
5. Ibid, p. 175.
6. Scholasticism - New World Encyclopedia
7. Summarized from William Webster, Holy Scripture, Ground and Pillar of Our Faith Vol II, (Battle Creek, WA: Christian Resource, Inc, 2001), p. 176.
8. William Webster, Holy Scripture, Ground and Pillar of Our Faith Vol II, (Battle Creek, WA: Christian Resource, Inc, 2001), p. 176.
9. Ibid, p. 177.
10. Ibid, p. 178.
11. Ibid, p. 178.
12. Ibid, p. 179.
13. Ibid, p. 179.
14. Ibid, p. 180.
15. Ibid, pp. 180-181.
16. Ibid, p. 181.
17. This blog is quite complete, having information from all sides of this issue. Long but a good read. See also: Rational Christian Discernment: Pope Gelasius And Transubstantiation. You can examine the source material from Philip Schaff here, Philip Schaff: History of the Christian Church, Volume III: Nicene and Post-Nicene Christianity. A.D. 311-600 - Christian Classics Ethereal Library. The link to the source material for Webster can be found here: A History of the Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist - Google Books, see Volume I, p. 102.
18. William Webster, Holy Scripture, Ground and Pillar of Our Faith Vol II, (Battle Creek, WA: Christian Resource, Inc, 2001), p. 182.
19. Philip Schaff and David Schley Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 3 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1910), 493. (p/o Logos Bible Software)
20. Ibid, 495.
21. Ibid, 498.
22. William Webster, Holy Scripture, Ground and Pillar of Our Faith Vol II, (Battle Creek, WA: Christian Resource, Inc, 2001), p. 183.
23. Ibid, p. 183.

This blog has a heavy reliance upon the book, Holy Scripture: The Ground and Pillar of Our Faith, Volume II. pp 175 through 184.

In the process of researching this subject, I ran across an electronic verse of a ‘catena’ created from the public domain Anti-Nicene Fathers. It is provided here for reference only: e-Catena: Compiled Allusions to the NT in the Ante-Nicene Fathers. There are several others that are likely as valuable as well.

For the best treatment of Sola Scriptura in book form, please consider investing in the 3 volume set of: David T. King and William Webster, Holy Scripture, Ground and Pillar of Our Faith, Volume 1, Volume 2, Volume 3 (Battle Creek, WA: Christian Resource, Inc, 2001). It's the guide I'm using to integrate some of my own study on this important subject. This book set is inexpensive and worth every penny.

All Scriptures quotes are from the New American Standard Bible, 1995 Revision, unless otherwise noted. Verse links from Blue Letter Bible, https://www.blueletterbible.org/