I’ve said this many times in the past
it is because of debates like these that Jesus instituted a Church with infallible teaching authority. Christ only instituted one teaching authority, the Church. So a person teaching the truth is teaching the truth handed to us from Christ to the Church.
Obviously, those who disagree with Catholicism have worked very very hard to come to their conclusions; they’ve looked at the greek, they’ve studied all the relevent passages; they’ve read books and read the papers of learned scholars.
What about all the folk who don’t take the time to do all of that? Who are they to listen to?
All that the Protestants are doing is forming a different church and saying “Listen to what I have to say! I have authority because I am teaching the truth” But in reality, they doubt it all the time. They’ve spent all this time and energy pouring themselves into studying doctrines which didn’t even exist in the early church, were never taught, and they use the Bible to justify all of it.
You can use the Scriptures to justify anything you want, like Peter says in 2 Peter 3:15-17
“And count the forebearance of our Lord as salvation. So also our beloved brother Paul wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, speaking of this as he does in all his letters. There are some things in them hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other scriptures. You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, beware lest you be carried away with the error of lawless men and lose your own stability.”
Peter is saying, there are some men who have taken Paul’s writings and completely distorted them. Peter himself says that his writings are hard to understand. Also the other Scriptures (the Old Testament no doubt) are twisted to fit these conflicting doctrines.
Peter is saying HOLD ON and do not fall away! Even so early, there were some trying to act on “my own authority which i say is inspired by the Holy Spirit” idea.
Obviously, those people that Peter is talking about were very sincere in their false beliefs. 2 Peter is practically entirely about false teachers! But Peter is saying HOLD ON to our teachings! Like Paul said in 2 Thessalonians Ch 2 verse 15.
“So then, brethren, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by letter”
Apart Peter and Paul were the leaders in the Church endowed with the authority to teach and preach. It was never given to the individual believer to interpret the Scriptures on our own, God just isn’t that cruel.
So for as much time as you perhaps have spent in trying to discover the truth of the Scriptures, would it be completely impossible to think that maybe, just maybe, you’re not even working as God wills you to work? Look to the early Church Fathers, see what they taught, they were taught by the Apostles themselves.
To finish my point, i would direct your attention to 2 Thessalonians 3:6
“Now, we command you, bretheren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you keep away from any brother who is living in idleness and not in accord with the tradition that you received from us.”
A couple things I want to point out
1.) Paul commands in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to do something.
2.) He commands the bretheren (us) to keep away from those who are not living in accord with the traditions handed down by the Apostles.
3.) If Paul commands it (and this is in the Word of God) then we are ALL bound by it; is Paul not assuming that there is actually a way to distinguish between that which IS handed down by the Apostles and that which is NOT?
Paul is already assuming that the faithful that he is writing to knows what he’s talking about; he knows that they know who to turn to for the teaching of Jesus Christ.
If Paul has commanded it, there are, simply by the use of reason, MANY Christians who have not followed his command simply by looking at the division in the Church.
To what/whom are we to look to to distinguish between truth and lies? Paul assumes that we’re actually able to do that.
