Q, I recently engaged in a discussion with someone I know, though not well. We began exchanging our religious backgrounds and spiritual journeys. This led to some theological themes which, for me, seemed to go around in circles until I realized that his belief, as a Roman Catholic, was that the Roman Catholic church was the one true church of God. His reasoning was that Christ left His church to His followers with Peter as its head and that church is what we call the Roman Catholic Church. For him, having Bible studies simply led to “Christian chaos.” We don’t need them because we can just know what the truth is by what Christ left behind namely, the [Roman Catholic] Church, His church. How do you respond to this?
I can see why you found yourself going around in circles with your friend. Your differences arose from fundamentally different presuppositions that you each held, so there was no way to resolve them through conversation.
These presuppositions had to do with doctrinal authority. I gather from the wording of your question that you consider the Scriptures to be the ultimate authority on matters of faith and practice for Christians. Your friend considers church teaching to be the ultimate authority. These are simply different premises, and so those who hold them will inevitably come to different conclusions. Still, let me make a couple of observations that I hope will be helpful.
First, I think a good case can be made that Scripture itself teaches that Scripture is the ultimate authority for believers. The Roman Catholic church teaches that the books of the New Testament should be accepted as canonical (that is, recognized as inspired) because they were written by Christ’s apostles and their companions. In one place, Luke, a companion of the apostle Paul, wrote that the people who came to believe in Jesus in the city of Berea were “noble” because they “examined the Scriptures every day to see whether what Paul said was true.” In other words, here we have a companion of an apostle calling believers “noble” not because they received apostolic teaching but because they tested it against the Scriptures. This is just one incident, but it is illustrative of the apostles’ approach generally. Everywhere in those New Testament books that the Roman Catholic church considers inspired because they are apostolic, what we see is the apostles appealing to Scripture as the authority for their statements. They do not say, “Now you need to believe this because we are saying it, and we are apostles.”
However, even this would not convince a person for whom church teaching was the ultimate authority that Scripture should be the ultimate authority. That person would just respond, “But the church has interpreted all those texts, using its authority, and from its interpretation, the church has declared that it is the ultimate authority.” Nevertheless, a person for whom Scripture is the ultimate authority may recognize that commitment to be consistent with Scripture itself.
The other point I’d like to make is that I sympathize with your friend’s concern about “Christian chaos” in Bible studies. That’s what happens when we read a portion of Scripture out loud and then go around the room and have everybody say what they think it means—or how it makes them feel. Our understanding of the Bible does need to be grounded in and guided by the church’s teaching. But personally I would see that teaching embodied in people whom God has gifted, called, and trained to be teachers and in the wonderful treasury of biblical and theological references and resources that have been created over the centuries within the church. We need to use those resources in our Bible studies, and we need to have good teachers.
In other words, church teaching is a necessary authority that guides and informs our understanding. A Bible study is not supposed to be the blind leading the blind. Nevertheless, church teaching is still a secondary authority. Scripture is primary.
Good Question 