Unmasking the Counter-Reformation Agenda: Richard Simon’s Assault on Sola Scriptura
Introduction and Historical Context
In the late seventeenth century, a French Oratorian priest named Richard Simon (1638–1712) laid the groundwork for what we now call modern textual criticism. Simon’s Critical History of the Text of the New Testament broke with many established norms of his day by insisting that Scripture had undergone continuous variation in its transmission, prompting readers to lose certainty about having a unified, authoritative biblical text. Although Simon was a Catholic priest, his contribution went beyond purely ecclesiastical concerns; he claimed to be conducting a neutral, “scientific” inquiry into the biblical manuscripts and their variant readings. In truth, his overarching goal was aimed squarely at destabilizing the confidence that Protestants, particularly those in the Reformed tradition, placed in the doctrine of Sola Scriptura.
To appreciate the magnitude of Simon’s impact, one must recall that the Reformation a century earlier had established Sola Scriptura as a fundamental principle—namely, that the Holy Scriptures alone are the highest authority in matters of faith and practice. Luther, Calvin, and other Reformers insisted that while church councils, traditions, and historical testimonies were not meaningless, they could not rival the authority or clarity of the inspired biblical text. This principle was intimately linked with a strong conviction that God had providentially preserved His Word, making Scripture alone reliably sufficient for doctrine.
Richard Simon, in the spirit of the Counter-Reformation, sought to overturn precisely this confidence, claiming that the reality of scribal changes throughout the centuries rendered any single, uniformly preserved text a mirage. If Protestants could be brought to question the text itself, then the alternative—an infallible magisterium that could presumably guarantee the authenticity and meaning of Scripture—would appear more attractive. In other words, the Church of Rome, with its claims to authoritative tradition, stood ready to welcome back any who feared that Scripture alone might be too fragile or uncertain a foundation upon which to build faith.
The following exploration demonstrates how Richard Simon’s textual work, though couched in the language of scholarly inquiry, was fundamentally a polemical tool designed to steer believers away from Sola Scriptura. This article will also show why, from a confessional bibliology standpoint, Simon’s presuppositions about Scripture clash with the very testimony Scripture bears about itself.
I. Simon’s Challenge to Sola Scriptura
1. A Catholic Apologist Confronting Protestant Foundations
By the seventeenth century, it was clear that the Reformation was not simply a short-lived schism but a substantial realignment in Western Christianity. Catholic scholars could no longer rely on general councils and papal decrees to win the theological battles unilaterally. They needed a new strategy to undermine the radical claim of Sola Scriptura. Richard Simon’s textual research became one such strategy.
In his Critical History of the Text of the New Testament, Simon cataloged variations in extant Greek manuscripts, as well as numerous disputes over how best to interpret or standardize these textual differences. He posited that so many variations existed, and that they were so widespread in the earliest centuries, that it would be implausible for Protestants to hold that the Holy Spirit had preserved a pristine text unscathed by scribes.
2. Undercutting the Certainty of the Word
Protestants believed that Scripture has inherent clarity and internal consistency: it is self-authenticating, and God has preserved it in such a way that His people could rely on it (cf. Westminster Confession of Faith 1.8). Simon considered this naive. By introducing detailed arguments about corrupted manuscripts, he strove to show that no one could confidently say which variant was the “true” reading across a variety of controversial passages. Therefore, in his mind, the text alone was not enough to settle theological disputes: one needed an authoritative Church to interpret or even identify the genuine readings.
3. The End Game: A Return to Rome
Simon’s position was that if a believer realized the biblical text could not be pinned down with absolute precision, the next logical step was to rely on the Church—specifically, the Church of Rome. The hallmark Catholic claim of the day was that the Bible, while vitally important, was incomplete without the guidance of Sacred Tradition and a living magisterium. By design, Simon’s textual criticism had a pastoral and apologetic punch: to “drive people back to Rome,” or at the very least to encourage them to question the Reformation’s confidence in Scripture alone.
II. Techniques and Strategies
1. Appeal to Ecclesiastical Tradition
One fundamental aspect of Simon’s approach was to propose that from the earliest centuries, it was never Scripture in isolation that reigned supreme but rather Scripture as approved and interpreted by the bishops. He invoked patristic citations and Church council decisions to bolster the idea that the communal, hierarchical dimension of Christian life had always been the true arbiter of the text. This emphasis allowed him to portray the Reformers—who insisted on Scripture’s stand-alone clarity—as misguided and historically uninformed.
2. Emphasis on Manuscript Discrepancies
While it is true that numerous small differences do exist among the Greek New Testament manuscripts—things like spelling variations, word order changes, or omissions and additions in the margin—Simon’s writings magnified the significance of these phenomena to such an extent that many of his Protestant readers began to fear that no stable text existed at all.
In effect, Simon was combining legitimate scholarly observation with rhetorical flourish. He drew attention to every known variant he could find, using them to paint a picture of chaos and unreliability. By amplifying the frequency of these variations, he invited lay Protestants to doubt whether the text they possessed could truly be the Word of God “as originally given,” a phrase many Reformed confessions used to affirm biblical inspiration.
3. Undermining the Protestant Editions
Simon also sought to expose perceived biases in the editorial work of Reformed scholars such as Théodore de Beza or the compilers of the early “Protestant” Greek New Testaments (e.g., Stephanus’s editions). He alleged that their theological presuppositions skewed their selection of readings, implying that the so-called “pure” text of the Reformers was marred by sectarian aims. By doing so, he hoped to highlight that textual criticism was never neutral—and, in his view, the solution to these biases was to bow to the ecclesial oversight of Rome, which alone could keep the text from sectarian meddling.
4. Casting the Reformers as Novelties
Another technique was to characterize the Protestant approach to Scripture as a novel experiment—where a single text, in effect, was declared supreme, outside the living Tradition of the Church. Simon’s claim that this experiment was failing, due to the manifold uncertainties of the manuscripts, fed into the larger Catholic apologetic that Lutheranism and Calvinism were inevitably self-destructing.
III. Presuppositional Analysis
To understand why confessional Protestants so vehemently opposed Simon, one must consider presuppositional apologetics. In presuppositional thinking, every scholar approaches Scripture and theology with certain ultimate commitments or “starting points.” These starting points dictate how one interprets evidence. Confessional bibliology, a view strongly rooted in the Reformed tradition, presupposes the divine origin and providentially guarded integrity of the biblical text. Richard Simon, however, presupposed that only ecclesiastical authority (rooted in Rome) could safeguard and interpret Scripture reliably.
1. Competing Worldviews
- Reformed Confession: Scripture is the authentic voice of God, superintended by His Holy Spirit, and stands as the ultimate standard (Psalm 119:160, John 10:35). Yes, variants exist, but they do not threaten the core or the wholeness of God’s message, since God sovereignly preserves His Word through history (Matthew 5:18).
- Simon’s Catholic Orientation: Tradition and the Church’s decisions are ultimate. The text, on its own, cannot confirm its own authenticity; it requires ecclesiastical ratification. From this vantage point, a multiplicity of conflicting readings indicated the insufficiency of Scripture alone and thereby demanded a magisterium to adjudicate.
The conflict lies not primarily in the data—both sides recognized scribal variants existed—but in how the data is interpreted, the significance assigned to these findings, and which authority is ultimately trustworthy.
2. Denial of Scripture’s Self-Authenticating Nature
A central theme of confessional bibliology is that Scripture declares itself to be God-breathed (2 Timothy 3:16) and does not depend on external human authorities to render it trustworthy. Richard Simon insisted the opposite: that the biblical text cannot testify to its own authenticity effectively enough. Instead, ecclesiastical tradition must vouch for it. This strikes directly at the heart of Sola Scriptura by disallowing Scripture’s capacity to function as its own witness.
It is crucial to note that no Reformed theologian would deny the importance of historical inquiry, nor would they belittle the labor of textual criticism in comparing manuscripts. However, they would maintain that these tasks unfold under the overarching providential promise that the Word of God remains substantially intact and doctrinally clear. Simon’s posture that “only Rome can settle these variations” is thus deemed a foreign conclusion if one’s starting point is Scripture’s self-attestation.
3. Historical vs. Theological Conclusions
Another presuppositional incongruity is that Simon’s historical conclusions were inextricably linked to his theological premises. While he often pretended to be merely a critical historian, his Catholic orthodoxy guided his arguments. Confessional bibliology sees the authority of Scripture as an a priori given. Simon’s stance, by contrast, invests the Church with the authority to define what Scripture is. So in effect, we have an epistemological circle: for Simon, the text gains its secure meaning from the Church; for confessional Protestants, the Church is recognized precisely because it aligns with the self-authenticating Word.
4. The Impact on Faith
From a Protestant vantage point, Scripture undergirds the believer’s faith. If that foundation is placed under suspicion, it can lead to a systemic crisis of faith. Simon’s method, according to confessional bibliology, aimed to do just that: shake the Protestant’s trust in Scripture alone so thoroughly that the only “safe harbor” would be returning to Rome.
This methodology is not neutral, and it raises the question: Could it be that modern textual critics who echo Simon’s arguments are likewise operating from an underlying assumption incompatible with Scripture’s own claims about itself? For adherents of confessional bibliology, the answer is a resounding yes.
IV. Why Simon’s Counter-Reformation Tactics Strike at the Heart of Sola Scriptura
1. The Protestant Doctrine of Scripture
Most Reformed confessions (e.g., the Westminster Confession, the Belgic Confession, the London Baptist Confession of Faith) affirm that Scripture is sufficient (2 Timothy 3:17) and perspicuous (Psalm 119:105). This does not entail that every single manuscript has been copied flawlessly; nor does it deny the legitimate role of scholarly inquiry in resolving textual variants. But it does mean that God’s truth, especially in regard to salvation and essential doctrines, is neither lost in transmission nor dependent on external tradition to “confirm” it.
2. Simon’s Argument as a “Direct Hit”
Simon’s claims can be likened to an assault on that critical foundation. If the text is so corrupted—if no one can truly know which reading is correct—then any notion of Scripture interpreting Scripture falls apart. The interpretive center shifts from Scripture itself to the institutional church, in this case the papacy. While official Catholic teaching recognized the Bible’s importance, it also insisted that tradition and the Church’s authority stand equal or even superior to the text in practical terms. Simon’s research was valuable in Catholic circles because it seemed to tangibly justify this position against the “radical” claims of Sola Scriptura.
3. Driving People Back to Rome
History teaches us that religious controversies rarely remain purely theoretical. In the wake of the Reformation, many individuals were torn between old loyalties and new convictions. If these believers could be made to distrust the authenticity of their Bibles, the door to Catholic reconversion opened wider. Why trust a “possibly corrupt” text when the Roman Church offered a comprehensive, centuries-old tradition that could supposedly guarantee the correct version of Scripture? It was an effective polemical move, using textual criticism as a Trojan Horse into the realm of theology and ecclesiology.
4. Echoes in Modern Debates
Though centuries have passed, the shadow of Simon’s approach lingers in some forms of modern biblical scholarship, where the idea that no stable text exists is sometimes used to cast doubt on biblical authority as a whole. Of course, not all textual critics share Simon’s expressly Catholic motivations. Nonetheless, the rhetorical function of highlighting vast textual complexities can still undermine confidence in Scriptural reliability if not tempered by the biblical presupposition of God’s sovereign preservation.
V. Conclusion
Richard Simon’s Critical History of the Text of the New Testament stands as a singularly important moment in Western theological and academic history. It heralded what many see as the birth of modern textual criticism. More than that, however, it exemplified a Counter-Reformation agenda: to undermine the Protestant Reformation’s central principle of Sola Scriptura. By magnifying textual variations, alleging that no Christian could truly establish a pure text without reliance on Rome, Simon’s scholarship functioned as an apologetic to drive anxious Protestants back to the Roman Catholic fold.
A confessional bibliology viewpoint, deeply rooted in the Reformed tradition, responds by pointing out the presuppositional mismatch: Scripture, according to Scripture’s own testimony, is God-breathed (2 Timothy 3:16), enduringly preserved (Matthew 24:35), and effective as the final authority for faith and practice (Psalm 119:160). This high view recognizes that historical inquiry into manuscripts, while valuable, does not overturn the Spirit’s superintendence of God’s Word. Variants, though real, have not effaced the essential doctrines or the trustworthiness of the text. Meanwhile, from Simon’s vantage point, the impetus was always to yield to an extrinsic authority—Rome—thereby dethroning Scripture from its Reformation status as the final rule of faith.
In many respects, the legacy of Simon’s work reminds us that textual criticism is never purely academic. When we speak of who controls the interpretation of Scripture—whether an individual, a faith community, or an ecclesiastical institution—we are asking a question of ultimate authority. Simon offered a cunning argument that if the text itself were found insufficient, the Roman Church must step into the breach. Confessional bibliology, however, insists that the Church exists as a witness to the Word, not its judge. Indeed, the classical Protestant position is that the Holy Spirit ensures God’s people will not be left to wander hopelessly in textual chaos, but will find within Scripture itself all that is necessary for life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3).
Therefore, analyzing Richard Simon’s scholarship forces us to confront a critical juncture in Christian history. It is not an overstatement to say that Simon was both an innovator in the realm of manuscripts and a polemicist with a calculated theological objective. He remains a cautionary figure for those who might conflate earnest scholarship with hidden agendas, or who might assume that revealing textual variants inevitably means endorsing a particular form of ecclesiastical authority.
The confessional bibliology tradition’s response, which resonates through modern Reformed circles, is that Scripture is self-attesting, God has providentially preserved His message, and historical scholarship—while helpful—must always be practiced within the bounds of faith in God’s sovereign care for His written revelation. Hence, the parted ways between Richard Simon and the Reformed confessions continue to illustrate the abiding question: Does the text govern the Church, or does the Church govern the text? For those in confessional Protestantism, the answer remains unshaken: “Let God be true, and every man a liar” (Romans 3:4). The Word of God stands above all human institutions, precisely because it is His Word, not ours—divinely inspired and providentially protected for the salvation of His people.
