Where is That in the Bible?
"Where is that in the Bible?"
This is often a question asked of the Catholic during discussions with non-Catholics. It is based upon the Protestant belief that the Bible alone is the ultimate infallible authority in matters of faith and doctrine, to the exclusion of any other extrabiblical authority. This is in contrast to the Catholic Church which believes that the overall deposit of faith given to the Apostles and subsequently passed down to their successors in the Catholic Church includes both Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition. This does not mean that the Catholic Church thinks it is more authoritative than the Bible, however, as the Catechism states:"Yet this Magisterium is not superior to the Word of God, but is its servant. It teaches only what has been handed on to it. At the divine command and with the help of the Holy Spirit, it listens to this devotedly, guards it with dedication and expounds it faithfully. All that it proposes for belief as being divinely revealed is drawn from this single deposit of faith." (CCC 86)In rejecting the teaching authority of the Catholic Church, Martin Luther originated the idea of sola scriptura, or the "Bible Alone". It is no coincidence that since the Reformation, there now exist approximately 26,000 Protestant denominations which often teach not only different doctrines but sometimes ones that are directly opposed to each other. As the old joke goes, "throw 10 Baptists in a room and you'll get 11 different opinions", thereby demonstrating the inevitable consequence of sola scriptura.
During his earthly ministry, Jesus spent much time performing miracles, preaching the new gospel of grace, confronting the legalistic Jewish authorities, and teaching the Apostles and disciples. He put Peter in charge of the new church (Mt 16:16-19) and gave all the Apostles the power to forgive sin (Jn 20:20-23). After his Death and Resurrection Jesus even spent another 40 days preparing these new leaders for their roles in the new church. However, at no time did Jesus ever command them to write "the Bible". Even with all of his teaching on baptism, prayer, repentance, the Eucharist, works and faith, Jesus never instructed anyone to write anything resembling the books of the Bible.
The Catholic Church has never insisted that a person's salvation was dependent upon his or her ability to read. Sola scriptura, on the other hand, presumes a literate public with the money to pay for a Bible as well as the time to read it in the first place. However, this most certainly was not always the case, as the majority of people could not read, Bibles had to be handwritten, and most people did not have the leisure time we enjoy today.
If the Bible is to be the ultimate infallible authority, it would stand to reason that it would say so, but it does not. There is no passage in Scripture that definitively establishes this. Some may try to claim that 2 Tim 3:15-17 proves sola scriptura for one example, but it does not (see Who is the Man of God in 2 Tim 3:15-17?). Most importantly, the Bible doesn't even tell us which books are supposed to belong in it!
What it really comes down to is the issue of authority. Jesus established an infallible church to speak with divine authority (Lk 10:16, Acts 15:28) which was promised the guidance of Holy Spirit (Jn 16:13, Jn 14:26). It was this infallible church which developed the doctrine of the Trinity (a word which is not found in the Bible, by the way). It was this infallible church which was enabled by the Holy Spirit to determine which books belonged in the Bible in the first place, and it is this infallible church which listens to Scripture devotedly, guards it with dedication and expounds it faithfully.
It is not as if scriptural controversy never happened until the Reformation, however. It should be noted that from the earliest times in church history, there were those who took it upon themselves to interpret scripture according to their own ideas which happened to be in opposition to true Church authorities. In his arguments with the Arians, Athanasius said, "However here too they introduce their private fictions, and contend that the Son and the Father are not in such wise 'one' or 'like', as the Church preaches, but as they themselves would have it." (Discourses Against the Arians, III:10). Gnosticism was another heresy the early Church Fathers had to combat. Irenaeus provided a good analogy regarding the perils of private interpretation:By transferring passages, and dressing them up anew, and making one thing out of another, they succeed in deluding many through their wicked art in adapting the oracles of the Lord to their opinions. Their manner of acting is just as if one, when a beautiful image of a king has been constructed by some skillful artist out of precious jewels, should then take this likeness of the man all to peices, should rearrange the gems, and so fit them together as to make them into the form of a dog or of a fox, and even that but poorly executed; and should then maintain and declare that this was the beautiful image of the king which the skillful artist constructed, pointing to the jewels which had been admirably fitted together by the first artist to form the image of the king, but have been with bad effect transferred by the latter one to the shape of a dog, and by thus exhibiting the jewels, should deceive the ignorant who had no conception what a king's form was like, and persuade them that that miserable likeness of the fox was, in fact, the beautiful image of the king. In like manner do these persons patch together old wives' fables, and then endeavour, by violently drawing away from their proper connection, words, expressions, and parables whenever found, to adapt the oracles of God to their baseless fictions. We have already stated how far they proceed in this way with respect to the interior of the Pleroma. (Against Heresies, 1,8)So, while some Catholic doctrines may not explicitly outlined in Scripture, they are indeed supported by it since no Catholic doctrine can contradict Scripture or Tradition. Protestants often ask, "where is that in the Bible", when what they should really be asking themselves is "where is the notion of 'Bible alone' in the Bible?" The answer is that it isn't there. The question the Catholic should ask is "what does the Bible say is the pillar and foundation of truth?" The answer is the church (1 Tim 3:15).
