One should not, after centuries of such folly, be surprised when Roman Catholicism exposes its shameful pride. As our senses have grown dull, they’ve become more brazen with each passing year. They, after all, are the one true church. They are the source of an infallible tradition. They hold the checkbook to the treasury of merit. Heck, their patron saint, Mary, is supposedly the Queen of the Universe.
Tradition, that mysterious unnamed repository of revelation, according to Rome, is equal in authority to the Word of God. But it gets still worse. The Roman church, according to the Roman church, stands over God’s Word like a colossus. They don’t just claim to have a perfect understanding of the Bible. They don’t just claim to be equal in authority to the Bible. They claim that they gave us the Bible. Rome saves us. Rome vets God’s Word.
Here is how the argument goes. When controversy arose early in the life of the church over whether this book or that belonged in the canon, the church convened a council to settle the matter. They settled the matter. Ipso pronto, hey presto, and QED, the church “gave us” the Bible and is therefore its master. Yeah, no.
First, the good Roman Catholics back in the time of this council, were better than their children. They did “finalize” the canon, but even they recognized the Bible was their authority, not the other way around. The language they used to affirm the canon was “Recipimus,” Latin meaning, “We receive.” “We receive these books to be the authoritative Word of God.” They affirmed not that they made the canon, but that they recognized it. They did not give it its authority, but recognized the authority it already had. Rome no more gave us the Bible than I crowned the Lord Jesus when I “made” Him Lord. He was Lord long before I was born. I just, by His grace and power, recognized it.
Second, when you challenge Rome, asking where they got the authority to give the Bible its authority, they will inevitably turn to Jesus, Peter and Caesarea Philippi. There Peter affirmed that Jesus was the Christ. There Jesus said that Peter was the Rock. And there Jesus said He would build His church upon the rock. There are nuanced arguments about what Jesus must have meant, Rome affirming this was Jesus anointing Peter as the first Pope, most Protestants affirming the rock is the declaration of Peter, that Jesus is the Christ, not that Peter is the pope. Trouble is, even if we stipulate Rome’s position, we still have an inescapable problem. If this is that place where Rome gets its authority, then Rome’s authority rests on the authority of the Bible. Uh-oh. The Bible’s authority rests on Rome whose authority rests on the Bible. Both feet planted firmly in mid-air.
The Bible is the alone Word of God. And those who think they gave Him His voice, those are not the people whose voices we should be listening to.
Don’t believe the hype.
The true church, moving away from Rome and traditions, and affirming scripture as the soul authority, is what we as Protestants celebrate most about the Reformation. However, all the splintered groups coming out of that movement have given us traditions of our own that have divided us. Some of the mainline churches are dead or dying, and some of the ones that are popping up, even today, don’t look anything like a New Testament church. Standing on scripture alone is a tradition we must adhere to, but, we can all be fallible in our interpretation of scripture. So, I believe that looking back can keep us from veering away from the gospel of grace.