Protestant Hermeneutics as the “Infidel Principle” in Disguise: Bishop John B. Purcell’s Case Against Sola Scriptura in His Debate with Alexander Campbell

On January 13, 1837, Bishop John B. Purcell (1800-1883) walked into a small Baptist church a block south of his cathedral in Cincinnati. Surrounded by a crowd of onlookers, he met one of the Ohio Valley’s up-and-coming Protestant leaders for a weeklong debate on Catholicism. His opponent was Alexander Campbell (1788-1866), one of the intellectual architects of the American-born restoration movement known as the Disciples of Christ. In the debate, Purcell leveraged against the anti-Catholic sentiment in Cincinnati to accomplish two goals of “pastoral apologetics.” First, he claimed the effects of Protestant hermeneutics were identical to the inherent agnosticism of Deism, or what Purcell called the “infidel principle.” Against this backdrop, Purcell pursued his second goal: he presented Catholicism as the sound religious alternative to the ecclesial dead-end of Protestantism. Purcell’s participation in the debate was an expression of “Enlightenment Catholicism,” and an attempt to show the Catholic Church in the nineteenth century welcomed the opportunity to simultaneously defend the Church and open itself to critical investigation.