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pray4priests
Guest
I would advise that you beware of making arguments based on utility. As we develop in the faith, it is problematic deciding this or that is useful to our spiritual develpment. Remember instead the example from 8 Acts 27-31:
And behold a man of Ethiopia, an eunuch… And he was… sitting in his chariot, and reading Isaias the prophet. And the Spirit said to Philip: Go near, and join thyself to this chariot. And Philip running thither, heard him reading the prophet Isaias. And he said: Thinkest thou that thou understandest what thou readest?
Who said: How can I, unless some man show me?
The scriptures as we know them did not exist in canonical form until well after the death of the apostles. Anyone who tells you that by the scriptures alone, *sola sciptura, *we know God’s will for us must also posit that the early Church was left without guidance for over a century. Hardly the act of a loving God Who had just sent His Son to die for our sins so that we might be redeemed, is it?
The previous poster touched on the only answer that really matters: Authority. You might not end up a Gnostic by your approach, but a brief review of the Catholic Church (as H.W. Crocker III provides in his recent book, Triumph) clearly demonstrates that some form of heresy is in your future. Anyone attempting to interpret scripture without the authority and tradition of the Catholic Church is doomed to wander in the wilderness at some crucial point. As the blessed eunuch says, “How can I, unless someone shows me?”
All one has to do is look around him at the beginning of the twenty-first century at the multitude of Christian and near-Christian churchs, all proclaiming their right interpretation of scripture. Did God really intend that after the Sacrifice of His Son that we should be rudderless in this storm-tossed world?