UNBROKEN LINE OF APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION?

“This is the sole Church of Christ which in the creed we profess to be one, holy, catholic and apostolic, which our Saviour, after his resurrection, entrusted to Peter's pastoral care, commissioning him and the other apostles to extend and rule it...The Roman Pontiff, as the successor of Peter, is the perpetual and visible source and foundation of the unity both of the bishops and of the whole company of the faithful”. [Vatican II: The Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents, rev. ed. (Costello Publishing, 1988), vol. 1, pp.357,376]

The claim that the popes are the successors of the apostle Peter is the cornerstone of Roman Catholicism, without which that Church would lose its uniqueness and could not function. We must therefore spend further time to examine this claim carefully. Is there actually an unbroken line of popes succeeding Peter?

For apostolic succession to occur, each pope must choose his own successor and personally lay hands on him and ordain him. This was the procedure when Paul and Barnabas were sent forth by the church at Antioch on their first missionary journey (Acts 13:3). Timothy's appointment to the ministry was also by the elders laying hands upon him (1 Timothy 4:14), as did Paul when he  imparted  a  special  spiritual  gift  to  Timothy  (2  Timothy  1:6). This biblical procedure, however, has never been followed with regard to successors of the bishops of Rome or the popes. A pope's successor is chosen not by him, but after his death by others; and it has most often been done in the most ungodly manner, as we shall see.

Furthermore, there is no record that Peter was ever Bishop of Rome, and therefore no Bishop of Rome could possibly be his successor. Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons (178-200), provided a list of the first 12 Bishops of Rome. Linus was the first. Peter's name does not appear. Eusebius of Caesaria, the Father of church history, never mentions Peter as Bishop of Rome. He simply says that Peter came to Rome “about the end of his days” and was crucified there. Paul, in writing his epistle to the Romans, greets many people by name, but not Peter. That would be a strange omission if Peter had been living in Rome, and especially if he were its bishop!

Missing Links in the “Unbroken Line”

The Vatican puts out an official list of the popes, arbitrarily beginning with Peter and continuing to the present. There have been several such lists which were apparently considered accurate at one time but subsequently had to be revised-and now conflict with each other. The earliest lists come from Liber Pontificalis (Book of Popes), presumably first composed under Pope Hormisdus (514-23), yet even the Catholic Encyclopedia casts doubt upon its authenticity, and most scholars today agree that it mixed fact with fiction. Who the actual Bishops of Rome were cannot be known with any certainty at this late date. Even the New Catholic Encyclopedia, published by the Catholic University of America, acknowledges this fact:

But it must be frankly admitted that bias or deficiencies in the sources make it impossible to determine in certain cases whether the claimants were popes or anti- popes. [New Catholic Encyclopedia (Catholic University of America, 1967), vol. 1, p. 632, s.v. “Antipopes”]

The simple truth is that the Roman Catholic Church itself, with all of its archives, cannot verify an accurate and complete list of the popes. The alleged “unbroken line of succession back to Peter” is therefore a mere fiction. Anyone who takes the time to seriously attempt a verification of its accuracy will conclude that the Church has fabricated an official list of popes in order to justify the papacy and its pretensions. Nor was the Bishop of Rome considered to be the pope of the universal Church until about a thousand years after Pentecost!

Apostolic Succession?

For centuries the citizens of Rome considered it their right to elect the Bishop of Rome. This custom is proof that the Bishop of Rome had jurisdiction only over that territory, for if he had had jurisdiction over the whole Church, then all of the Church would have been involved in choosing him, as it is today. When at times the right to elect their own Bishop was denied them, the citizens of Rome revolted and forced their will upon the local civil and religious authorities. How could such pressure by mob violence be called apostolic succession by the direction of the Holy Spirit?

Feuds were carried on between powerful families (Colonna, Orsini, Annibaldi, Conti, Caetani, et al), who fought wars for the papacy for centuries. For example, Boniface VIII, a Caetani, had to battle the Colonna to remain in power. At the height of his success he had all of Western Christendom coming to Rome for the great Jubilee in 1300. But in 1303 he was seized by emissaries of Philip the Fair of France, and Rome fell into French possession. As a consequence, the papacy was moved to France, and from 1309-77 the popes were French and resided at Avignon. Such political maneuverings could hardly constitute apostolic succession!

Popes were both installed and deposed by imperial armies or Roman mobs. Some were murdered. More than one pope was executed by a jealous husband who found him in bed with his wife-hardly apostolic succession. Money and/or violence most often determined who would be “Peter's successor”. No wonder that in the Concordat of Worms (between Pope Calixtus II and the Emperor Henry V, September 23, 1122) the pope was made to swear that the election of bishops and abbots would take place “without simony and without any violence” [Sidney Z. Ehler, John B, Morrall, trans. And eds., Church and State Through the Centuries (London, 1954), p. 48], which all too often decided Church affairs.

At times there were several rivals each claiming to have been legally voted in by a legitimate council. One of the earliest examples of multiple popes was created by the simultaneous election by rival factions of Popes Ursinus and Damasus. The former's followers managed, after much violence, to install him as pope. Later, after a bloody three-day battle, Damasus, with the backing of the emperor, emerged the victor and continued as vicar of Christ for 18 years (36684). So “apostolic succession” by an “unbroken line from Peter” operated by armed force? Really?

Ironically, Damasus was the first who, in 382, used the phrase “Thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build my church” to claim supreme spiritual authority. Bloody, wealthy, powerful, and exceedingly corrupt, Damasus surrounded himself with luxuries that would have made an emperor blush. There is no way to justify any connection between him and Christ, yet he remains one link in that chain of alleged unbroken succession back to Peter.

Violence, Intrigue, and Simony

Stephen VII (896-7), who exhumed Pope Formosus and condemned the corpse for heresy at a mock trial, was soon thereafter strangled by zealots who opposed him. His party promptly elected a Cardinal Sergius to be pope, but he was chased out of Rome by a rival faction which had elected Romanus as its “vicar of Christ”. Of the strange manner in which popes followed one another in an “unbroken line of apostolic succession from Peter”, one historian writes:

“Over the next twelve months four more popes scrambled onto the bloodstained [papal] throne, maintained themselves precariously for a few weeks-or even days- before being hurled themselves into their graves. Seven popes and an anti-pope had appeared in a little over six years when ... Cardinal Sergius reappeared after seven years' exile, backed now by the swords of a feudal lord who saw a means thereby of gaining entry into Rome. The reigning pope [Leo V, 903] found his grave, the slaughters in the city reached a climax, and then Cardinal Sergius emerged as Pope Sergius [III, 904-11], sole survivor of the claimants and now supreme pontiff. [E. R. Chamberlin, The Bad Popes (Barnes & Noble, 1969), p. 21]

Attempting to establish stability in selecting popes, in 1059 Nicholas 11(1059-61) “defined the role of the cardinals in the [papal] electoral process. During the Third Lateran Council in 1179, Alexander III (1159-8 1) restricted papal elections to the cardinals”. [ James A. Coriden, Thomas J. Green, Donald E. Heintschel, eds., The Code of Canon Law (Paulist Press, 1985) Canon 332, p. 270] It was hardly an improvement. As one nineteenth century historian pointed out, “Few papal elections, if any, have been other than simoniacal [bought off for money].... The invention of the Sacred College [of cardinals] has been, on the whole, perhaps the most fertile source of corruption in the Church. Many cardinals went to Rome for the conclave with their bankers”. [T. A. Trollope, The Papal Conclaves (1876), cited in Peter de Rosa, Vicars of Christ: The Dark Side of Papacy (Crown Publishers, 1988), p. 98]

Much insight into such corruption comes from the diaries of John Burchard. Master of Ceremonies at the conclave that elected Rodrigo Borgia (Pope Alexander VI [1492-1503]), Burchard concludes that only five votes were not bought in that election. “The young cardinal Giovanni de' Medici, who had refused to sell his vote, thought it prudent to leave Rome immediately”. [Chamberlin, op. cit., p. 172]  In those days a cardinal's hat sold for a king's ransom, so it took a fortune to enter the polluted stream of “apostolic succession”. Money flowed in from all over Europe to back favorite candidates. Borgia bought the papacy with “villas, towns and abbeys ... [and] four mule-loads of silver to his greatest rival, Cardinal Sforza, to induce him to step down”. Peter de Rosa remarks facetiously:

“It is instructive to see, by way of Burchard’s diaries, how the Holy Spirit goes about choosing St. Peter’s successor”. [Peter de Rosa, Vicars of Christ: The Dark Side of Papacy (Crown Publishers, 1988), p. 104]

Sex and Succession

Some popes were put in office by their mistresses-six by a mother-and-daughter pair of prostitutes. Theodora of Rome (wife of a powerful Roman Senator) was most successful at this strategy. She manipulated Roman politics by exploiting the fact that her daughter, Marozia, was the mistress of Pope Sergius III. Known as “the mistress of Rome”, Marozia did not hesitate at murder to accomplish her ambitions. Theodora herself was mistress to two ecclesiastics whom she  maneuvered  in  quick  succession,  after  Sergius's  death,  onto  “Peter's  throne”—popes

Anastasius III (911-13) and Lando (913-14). Falling in love with a priest from Ravena, she maneuvered him also onto the papal throne.

That prostitutes determined who would be pope could hardly be “apostolic succession”! Of this remarkable mother and daughter Edward Gibbon wrote in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire:

“The influence of two prostitutes, Marozia and Theodora, was founded on their wealth and beauty, their political and amorous intrigues. The most strenuous of their lovers were rewarded with the Roman mitre.... The bastard son, the grandson, and the great grandson of Marozia-a rare genealogy-were seated in the Chair of St. Peter”. [Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (London, 1830), chapter xlix]

Alberic, another of Marozia's sons, with his armed thugs, literally controlled Rome. He made the Roman leaders swear to elect his son (Marozia's grandson), Octavian, not only as his successor to the Imperial throne but, upon the death of the pope, to that supreme religious office as well. And so it happened that Octavian called himself Pope John XII, while at the same time retaining the name Octavian as prince. Thus both the civil and ecclesiastical thrones were joined in one man.

John XII (955-63) was obsessed with illicit sex even more than he was with power. Though he had many regular mistresses, they were not enough. It was no longer safe for any woman to come into St. Peters! Bishop Liudprand of Cremona, papal observer and chronicler of that time, tells that the pope “was so blindly in love with [one mistress] that he made her governor of several cities-and even gave to her the golden crosses and cups of St. Peter himself”. Roman mobs that had supported him and cared nothing about his amorous affairs were angered by the loss of properties which Romans had looked upon as part of their heritage.

Surrounded by mobs who were now eager to remove him, and besieged by the new King of Italy with his armies from without, Octavian abandoned his position as civil ruler but would not give up the even more lucrative and influential papacy, though he made no pretense of being a religious man, much less a true Christian. The papacy still had the power to crown emperors, so the pope summoned Otto, King of Germany and Europe's most powerful monarch, to Rome to be crowned Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. Otto came in haste with his army to the aid of the besieged pontiff.

After his coronation by John XII, Otto attempted to lecture the young pope about his dissolute life. John XII pretended to heed the advice. But after Otto and his armies had left, the pope, unwilling to abandon his sexual exploits, offered the Imperial crown to Berenger, the very enemy whose armies had plundered northern Italy and because of whose threats he had appealed to Otto.

Tempted by the prize that was now dangled in front of him, Berenger nevertheless declined, knowing that his forces were no match for Otto's army. The frantic pope then appealed to everyone from Saracens to Huns to rescue him from the man he had just crowned emperor of the Holy Roman Empire and with whom he had sworn to revive the ancient partnership between crown and papacy that had once worked so well between Leo III and Charlemagne!

Papal Musical Chairs

When Otto returned with his army to settle accounts, John XII fled from Rome to Tivoli with what Vatican treasures he could carry. Otto opened a synod to decide John's fate. Bishop Liudprand presided in the emperor's name and recorded the proceedings. Witnesses were called and the crimes of the pope established, from fornication with numerous women who were named, to blinding Benedict, his spiritual father, to the murder of a Cardinal John, to toasting Satan at St. Peter's altar. But before Otto could execute justice, Pope John XII was killed by a husband who found the unrepentant pontiff bedded with his wife. Yet John XII is on the official Roman Catholic list of popes, each known as “His holiness, Vicar of Christ”.

Not long after Otto's death in Germany, the papacy fell under the control of a powerful family of warlords in the Alban hills. The leader of the clan, Gregory of Tusculum, through wealth and the power of the sword succeeded in placing two of his three sons and a grandson (one succeeding the other) on the supposed throne of St. Peter. The Alberics of Tusculum could eventually boast of 40 cardinals, 3 antipopes, and 13 popes issuing from that one family. It would be a mockery to say that the wealth and power that produced this remarkable familial network of popes had anything to do with apostolic succession.

Of this period, Church historian von Dollinger, himself a devout Catholic, writes:

“...the Roman Church was enslaved and degraded, while the Apostolic See became the prey and the plaything of rival factions of the nobles, and for a long time of ambitious and profligate women. It was only renovated for a brief interval (997-1003) in the persons of Gregory V and Silvester II, by the influence of the Saxon emperor… Then  the  Papacy  sank  back  into  utter  confusion  and  moral  impotence;  the Tuscan Counts made it hereditary in their family; again and again dissolute boys, like  John  XII  [age  16  when  he  became  Pope]  and  Benedict  IX  [at  age  11], occupied and disgraced the Apostolic throne, which was now bought and sold like a piece of merchandise, and at last three Popes fought for the tiara, until the Emperor Henry III put an end to the scandal by elevating a German bishop to the See of Rome”. [J. H. Ignaz von Dollinger, The Pope and the Council (London, 1869), p. 81]

Chased by mobs from Rome in 1045, Pope Benedict IX (1032-44; 1045; 1047-8) fled to the protection of his uncle, Count Gregory, whose army controlled the hill country of Tusculum. In his absence, John, Bishop of the Sabine Hills, entered Rome and installed himself as pope under the name Sylvester III (1045). He occupied the “throne of Peter” a mere three months until Benedict stormed back with more swords than Sylvester could summon and ruled as pope once again. Yet both of these men are on the official Vatican list of those considered worthy of the titles “His Holiness” and “Vicar of Christ”.

Tiring of the burdens of his office and eager to devote himself entirely to his favorite lover, Benedict  sold  the  papacy  for  1500  pounds  of  gold  to  his  godfather,  Giovanni  Gratiano, archpriest of St. John's Church at the Latin Gate. Giovanni took over the papacy in May 1045 under the name of Pope Gregory VI (1045-6). With fresh resolve, Benedict returned to Rome in 1047 and set himself up as pope once again. So did Sylvester III. Now there were three popes, each ruling over that portion of Rome which his private army controlled, each claiming to be the vicar of Christ and possessor of the keys of heaven by virtue of apostolic succession.

Growing  weary  of  the  charade,  the  disillusioned  and  angry  Roman  citizens  appealed  to Emperor Henry III. He marched into Rome with his army and presided over a synod that deposed all three “popes” and installed the emperor's choice. He called himself Clement II (1046-7). But Benedict was not sc easily dispatched. As soon as the Imperial army withdrew, he returned to Rome and managed by force of arms to rule as pope for another eight months (1047-8), until Henry returned and chased him back to the Alban hills for the last time.

One would think the Roman Catholic Church would be ashamed of such fiascos and blot out the memory of evil popes and their fraudulent and often violent means of gaining and losing and recovering the papal throne. Yet in spite of such godless rivalry and in spite of the fact that their papacies overlapped (at times all three claimed to be pope), each of these adversarial claimants to Peter's throne is found on the Vatican's official list of popes today.

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Appendix: Papal Infallibility and Apostolic Succession

“At the beginning of the fourteenth century... the nature of the church's inerrancy was still ill-defined. The idea that the pope might be personally infallible was too novel, too contrary to all traditional teaching, to find any wide spread acceptance”. [Brian Tierney, Origins of Papal Infallibility, 1150-1350: A Study on the Concepts of Infallibility, Sovereignity and Tradition in the Middle Ages (Leiden, Netherlands, 1972), p. 144]

“Rome has spoken, the dispute is at an end”.—St. Augustine (354-430)

In order to promote the necessary blind faith in the pope's infallibility and in the dogma that salvation is obtainable only in the Roman Catholic Church, its hierarchy has hidden the facts and rewritten history. One example is the quote by Augustine on the facing page. If, as the argument goes, Augustine, the greatest theologian of the Church, was willing to submit to whatever Rome (i.e., the pope and hierarchy) decreed, then surely ordinary Catholics ought to do the same. Such submission, however, is not what Augustine proposed. In context, the quote means something else. Two synods had ruled on a disputed matter and the Bishop of Rome had concurred, which “appeared to him [Augustine] more than enough, and so the matter might be regarded as at an end. That a Roman judgment in itself was not conclusive, but that a `Concilium plenarium' was necessary for that purpose, he had himself maintained...” [J. H. Ignaz von Dollinger, The Pope and the Council (London, 1869), p. 58]

Nowhere else in his voluminous writings did Augustine even come close to suggesting that the Bishop of Rome had the final say on issues of faith or morals. In fact, Augustine said that the African Church had been correct in rejecting Roman Bishop Stephen's (254-7) opinion on settling a baptismal dispute. Never once, in all the arguments he proposed on many issues, did Augustine suggest that the Bishop of Rome should be consulted as the final arbiter of orthodoxy, or even that he should be consulted at all.

Interestingly enough, though the Council of Nicea in 325 decreed that the three Bishops of Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch (the concept of a “pope” was still unknown) be designated as “superior” to other bishops of less important Christian centers, the Bishop of Rome at the time refused to accept such a distinction for himself. Historian Lars Qualben comments further:

“The General Council of Constantinople in 381 designated the bishop of that city a patriarch; and the General Council of Chalcedon in 451 gave the same title to the bishop of Jerusalem [leaving out the bishop of Rome]...[and] the patriarch of Constantinople [not of Rome] was voted the chief bishop of the entire church.

“After the Western empire was destroyed in 476, the emperor of Constantinople became the sole emperor of the world, and this new dignity naturally added some prestige to the patriarch of that city.... The bishop of Rome and the patriarch of Constantinople became leading rivals for church supremacy”. [Lars Qualben, History of the Christian Church]

A Doctrine First Declared by Emperors

Emperors had, in fact, declared the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome over the Western Church (but not over the Church universal) and called him “the Roman Pope” as early as the fifth century. An edict of the Emperors Valentinian III and Theodosius II in 445 declared: “We decree by this perpetual Edict that it will not be lawful for the bishops of Gaul or of other provinces to attempt anything contrary to ancient custom without the authority of that venerable man the Pope of the Eternal City”. [Sidney Z. Ehler, John B, Morrall, trans. And eds., Church and State Through the Centuries (London, 1954), pp. 7-9]

It must be noted that this recognition of papal authority comes from emperors, not from an ecumenical council representing the Church. The purpose on the part of the emperors was not to conform to Scripture but to maintain unity in the empire-and unity among the rival bishops and their followers was essential to that end. Rome, being the capital, had to be the center of ecclesiastical authority even as it was of civil.

Moreover, for a Catholic to take comfort in such declarations, he must also accept the fact that at the same time the emperors honored the Bishop of Rome's authority they made it clear that they were above him. The Emperor Justinian, for example, in his edict of April 17, 535, on the “Relations  between  Church  and  State”,  declared:  “There  is,  indeed,  a  recognition  of  the distinction between the clerical and lay elements in Christian society; but, for all practical purposes, the Emperor is to be the controller of both, exercising, as he apparently is to do, a supervision over the `moral wellbeing' of the clergy”. [Ibid., pp. 9-10]

It would be centuries before the popes would establish their authority over emperors and kings and even longer before papal infallibility and dominion over the entire Church would be thoroughly established. In fact, councils asserted their authority over popes. More than one council deposed rival claimants to Peter's throne, who were simultaneously insisting that each was the one true vicar of Christ. Though now and then the Bishop of Rome, for his own selfish reasons, attempted to assert his authority over the rest of the Church, it was not accepted by Christendom in general until near the second millennium, nor could he point either to tradition or to conciliar decrees to support the idea.

The claim was finally made to stick in the West 19 years after the Great Schism, when, in 1073, Pope Gregory VII forbade Catholics to call anyone pope except the Bishop of Rome. Before then, many bishops were fondly addressed as “pope” or “papa”. Though the Roman Catholic Church lists “popes” going back to the very beginning, and all of the alleged Bishops of Rome are now commonly referred to as such, in actual fact this title was not commonly accepted in its present meaning prior to 1073.

Saving Infallibility by Denying It

We have shown that the manner in which many popes attained that office (through military might, the maneuverings of prostitutes, purchase, patronage of emperors, mob violence, etc.) disproves the claim that the papacy has come down from Peter by an unbroken line of apostolic succession. That more than one pope occupied “Peter's Chair” at one time, each claiming to be the one true, infallible pope, supreme head of the Church and each using his alleged power to excommunicate the others, also proves the theory of apostolic succession to be a fiction. The last time more than one aspirant made simultaneous claim to the papacy the issue was settled in a manner  which  in  fact  also  pulls  the  rug  out  from under  any  valid  claim by  the  popes  to infallibility.

Early in the fifteenth century there were three men who each claimed to be pope. They were Gregory XII (1406-15), whose first pontifical act was to pawn his tiara for 6000 florins to pay his gambling debts; Benedict XIII (1394-1423) of Avignon (one of a number of popes who resided in Avignon's papal palace during a schism that lasted more than 100 years, with rivals in Rome and Avignon each claiming to be the true pope and excommunicating each other); and Alexander V (1409-10) whose chief pastime was feasting and who was attended in his regal palace by 400 servants, all females. The latter pope was poisoned by Baldassare Cossa, who took the pontificate in his place as John XXIII (1410-15).

These three were all deposed by the Council of Constance, until then the largest council in the West, with 300 bishops present, 300 doctors, and the deputies of 15 universities. Although he is now shown as an “antipope”, it was Pope John XXIII who formally opened the Council on All Saints' Day 1414. Such was the intrigue surrounding this gathering of Church leaders that some 500 bodies ended up in nearby Lake Constance in the four-year course of that allegedly holy convocation. It was also reported that 1200 prostitutes had to be brought in to keep the bishops and cardinals and their assistants in good humor. Yet this same council condemned Jan Hus to the flames in 1415 for preaching that there was no higher authority than Holy Scripture, which all men, even priests and popes, ought to obey by living Christlike, holy lives.

Of the three above-named popes who each claimed to be the one true vicar of Christ, only Gregory XII is now shown on official lists as a legitimate pope (though he was deposed by this Council), the other two as antipopes. When in 1958 Pope Pius XII's successor took the name John XXIII, more than one Catholic cathedral, finding that its list of popes already contained a Pope John XXIII, had to make a hasty correction. The original Pope John XXIII has been described  as  a  “former  pirate,  mass-murderer,  mass-fornicator  with  a  partiality  for  nuns, adulterer on a scale unknown outside fables, simoniac par excellence, blackmailer, pimp, master of dirty tricks”. [Peter de Rosa, Vicars of Christ: The Dark Side of Papacy (Crown Publishers, 1988), pp. 93-94]

In a twist worthy of a soap opera, Pope John XXIII, who opened the Council with great pomp, was condemned by it to prison. He was treated far more lightly than he deserved, the original 54 charges against him being reduced to a mere five. Edward Gibbon wrote sarcastically in The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: “The most scandalous charges [against John XXIII] were suppressed; the Vicar of Christ was only accused [and found guilty] of piracy, murder, rape, sodomy and incest. Whereas incorruptible Jan Hus had been burned at the stake by the Council of Constance for pleading Church reform, John XXIII was given a mere three year prison sentence for his numerous and appalling crimes.

Cardinal Oddo Colonna was named the new pope by the Council of Constance and called himself Martin V (1417-31). Upon former Pope John XXIII's release from prison, Pope Martin V reinstated this master criminal and murderer as Bishop of Frascati and Cardinal of Tusculum. Thereafter, exercising the power of the Roman Catholic Church, Cardinal Baldassare Cossa ordained priests and solemnly turned the wafer and wine into the body and blood of Christ-at least that was what the faithful believed. As a cardinal, the former Pope John XXIII, now an ex- convict, was qualified to cast votes for new popes along with fellow cardinals, many of whom were not far behind him in the list of their crimes as well.

Ironically, the Council of Constance saved the Church from three rival popes by asserting its authority over the papacy. The vote was unanimous in establishing the following principle:

“Every  lawfully  convoked  Ecumenical  Council  representing the  Church  derives  its authority immediately from Christ, and every one, the Pope included, is subject to it in matters of faith, in the healing of schism, and the reformation of the Church”. [Dollinger, op. cit., p. 244]

Had papal infallibility as it is known today been accepted then, this solution to the dilemma of three rival popes would have been impossible. The very dogma of papal infallibity, which was established at the First Vatican Council in 1870, is a denial of the authority which a previous council, the Council of Constance, had asserted over popes in order to save the Church.

Von Dollinger's comments are of interest, especially since his book came out a few weeks before Vatican I would contradict Constance on the important issue of conciliar versus papal power:

“Gregory XII and Benedict XIII had been deserted by their Cardinals, and all that could be held to constitute the Roman Church took part in the Council [of Constance]. If a Pope is subject to a Council in matters of faith he is not infallible; the Church, and the Council which represents it, inherit the promises of Christ, and not the Pope, who may err apart from a Council, and can be judged by it for his error...

“And they [the Council's decrees] deny the fundamental position of the Papal system, which is thereby tacitly but very eloquently signalized as an error and abuse. Yet that system had prevailed in the administration of the Church for centuries, had been taught in the canon law books and the schools of the Religious Orders, especially by Thomist divines, and assumed or expressly affirmed in all pronouncements and decision of the Popes, the new authorities for the laws of the Church. And now not a voice was raised in its favor; no one opposed the doctrines of Constance, no one protested!” [Dollinger, op. cit., p. 244-45]

SOLA SCRIPTURA?

Sola scriptura (Latin ablative, “by Scripture alone”) is the Evangelical/Protestant Christian doctrine that the Bible contains all knowledge necessary for salvation and holiness.

Well meaning Evangelicals say today:

• “The Catholic church teaches many things that are honorable and moral”.
• “Instead of using a sweeping statement that it is wrong on all it teaches, it would be better to find areas of agreement, establish some common ground, and build from there”.
• “We should also keep in mind that Catholics and Evangelicals hold a number of major beliefs in common”.
• “Today’s Vatican is eager to join hands with Protestants worldwide”.
• “The Catholic church has changed”, is what we hear on and on…

A series of articles [#The Catholic Church and the Last Days] in which we will sift through biblical truth and Catholic doctrine to present a well-defined portrait of this “church” and answer, among many others, these questions: Can a true born-again Christian have anything to do with Roman Catholicism? Should Catholics be evangelized? Are there differences between Catholics and biblical Christians? What does it really mean to be a Christian?
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The well-known axiom that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely is just as true in religion as in politics. In fact, religious power is even more corrupting than political power. Absolutism reaches its ultimate abusive pinnacle when it claims to act for God. Vatican II requires “loyal submission of the will and intellect” to the Roman Pontiff “even when he does not speak ex cathedra…” [Austin Flannery, O.P, gen. ed., Vatican Council II: The Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents, rev. ed. (Costello Publishing, 1988), vol. 1, p. 379]. No Catholic can presume to obey God and His Word directly but must give that absolute obedience to the Church, which acts for God and thus stands between the individual and God.

The corruption of power reaches its greatest height in Catholicism's bold claim that its members cannot understand the Bible for themselves but must accept unquestioningly the Church's interpretation: “The task of giving an authentic interpretation of the Word of God...has been entrusted to the living teaching office of the Church alone” [Ibid, p.755]. With that edict, God's Word, the one repository of truth and liberty which is capable of destroying despotism, is kept under Church control and shrouded in mystery. This leaves devout Catholics at the mercy of their clergy, a clergy which, as we have seen, is all too readily corrupted.

Blind Acceptance

To escape that destructive enslavement, the Reformers urged submission to God's pure Word as the ultimate authority rather than to the Church or the pope. The basic issue that sparked the Reformation (and which remains the basic issue today) was whether to continue in blind submission to Rome's dogmas, even though they contradicted the Bible, or to submit to God's Word alone as the final authority. Menno Simons's biographer relates the conflict he faced:

“The real problem came when Menno, having dared to open the lids of the Bible, discovered that it contained nothing of the traditional teaching of the Church on the Mass. By that discovery his inner conflict was brought to a climax, for he now was compelled to decide which of two authorities was to be supreme in his life, the Church or the Holy Scriptures” [From Harold S. Bender, A Brief Biography of Menno Simons, p. 5, at beginning of The Complete Writings of Menno Simons, c.1496-1561 (Herald Press, 1956) (translated from the Dutch by Leonard Verduin and edited by J.C. Wenger, with a biography by Harold S. Bender)].

The Reformers made that choice in favor of Scripture and their central cry became Sola Scriptura! That liberating truth was rejected at the Council of Trent by bishops who were unwilling to surrender control of the people under them. It was even considered to be harmful for the people to possess the Bible in their own tongue because they might take it literally, which Rome argues even today must not be done. From her viewpoint only a specially trained elite can understand the Bible:

“The interpreter must.... go back wholly in spirit to those remote centuries ... with the aid of history, archaeology, ethnology, and other sciences, accurately determine what modes of writing the authors of that ancient period would be likely to use, and in fact did use” [Pope Pius XII, Divino Afflante Spiritu, no. 34-35, 1943].

Trent's view that the authority for the Catholic is the Church, not the Bible, remains in force today. Only Scripture scholars trained at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome with “a degree in theology [and] mastery of six or seven languages (including Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek...)” are capable of understanding the Bible. Having earned “a Licentiate in Sacred Scripture...the Catholic Church's license to teach Scripture”, [George Martin, "Is There a Catholic Way to Read the Bible?" New Covenant, June 1993, p. 13] they alone can teach the Bible. No layman is qualified. Vatican II insists:

“It is for the bishops, with whom the apostolic doctrine resides, suitably to instruct the faithful entrusted to them in the correct use of…the New Testament…by giving them translations of the sacred texts which are equipped with necessary and really adequate explanations” [ Flannery, op. Cit., vol. 1, pp. 764-65].

What the Bible Says

The Bible was given by God to all mankind, not to an elite group to explain it to others. It is to be a lamp on the path (Psalm 119:105) of all who heed it. Moses proclaimed that man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God (Deuteronomy 8:3) - and not a whisper about that word being interpreted by an elite hierarchy. Psalm 1 speaks of the blessed man who meditates upon God's Word (variously called the law, statutes, judgments, commandments, etc.) day and night. “Man” surely includes woman, but cannot possibly be interpreted to mean only a special class of highly educated experts.

We get the impression from reading Paul's epistles that those to whom they were written were expected to understand them. The epistles are not addressed to a bishop or select group of leaders but to all of the Christians at Corinth, Ephesus, etc. Each Christian is given an understanding by the indwelling Holy Spirit of the words which the same Spirit inspired “holy men of God” to write (2 Peter 1:21).

Even a “young man” is expected to “heed” God's Word (Psalm 119:9). Again, not a hint is given that it must be explained to him by a rabbi. Christ, quoting Moses, affirmed that man is to feed upon the Bible for his very life (Deuteronomy 8:3; Matthew 4:4). Job considered God's Word “more than my necessary food” (Job 23:12). Never a word about consulting a hierarchy for its meaning!  

Trusting the Church Instead of the Bible  

The pope, in his August 15, 1993, “address to representatives of the Vietnamese community” at Denver, told them: “The challenge before you is to keep pure and lively your Catholic identity...” [The Pope Speaks, March/April, vol. 39, no. 2, 1994, p. 93]. One seldom if ever hears Catholic leaders exhorting the flock to be true simply to Christ or to God's Word, but always to the Church. Veritatis Splendor, John Paul II's 1993 treatise on morals, refers to the truth taught by Christ and mediated by the Church. Without that mediation the Catholic cannot know God's truth simply by reading God's Word. Only by such a doctrine can Rome keep its adherents blindly following its corrupt and unbiblical teachings.

Cardinal Ratzinger [Ex-pope Benedict XVI], watchdog of orthodoxy, exemplifies this blind faith in Catholicism. He tells of a theology professor who admitted that the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, declared a Roman Catholic dogma in 1950 by Pope Pius XII, could not be supported by Scripture, yet decided to believe it because “the Church is wiser than I”. Sadly, he is actually acknowledging the Church to be wiser than the Bible and thus capable of contradicting it!

Ratzinger has that same unwarranted total trust in Catholicism and pledges “to follow the Catholic faith and not my own opinions” [Time, December 6, 1993, p. 60]. Thus he guards the “faith” not by making certain that what is taught in Catholic seminaries, universities, and pulpits around the world agrees with the Word of God, but that it conforms to Catholic tradition taught by popes, councils, and church fathers-and much of it in false decretals. Vatican II says that “both Scripture and Tradition must be accepted and honored with equal feelings of devotion and reverence” [ Flannery, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 755]. The new universal Catechism of the Catholic Church recently released by the Vatican states:

“The Church to which is confided the transmission and the rendering of the Revelation does not draw solely from the Holy Scriptures her certainty on all points of Revelation [but also from Tradition and the magisterium]…[Cateschisme de L'Eglise Catholique, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1993, p. 32. Taken from the French ed., trans. privately by Yves Brault-the English edition was not yet available].

The Church Stands in the Way of Truth

Christ declared, “If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth [no hint of another source of truth]” (John 8:31,32). He did not make that statement to the 12 apostles, but to common people who had just “believed on him” (John 8:30). He said nothing of His truth having to be interpreted by the rabbis, and of course the Roman Catholic hierarchy didn't even exist then.  God's Word was available to and was to be understood, believed, and obeyed by even the newest converts. That was what Christ expected of His followers then and it is what He expects of us today as well.

Rome blocks the individual's access to the truth. The Catholic can't learn directly from Christ's words, but only from the interpretation thereof by the Church. Christ said, “Come unto me... I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). Rome allows no one to come directly to Christ, but has set itself up as the intermediary channel of God's grace necessary for knowing God's truth and for salvation. On this point Rome is adamant. Otherwise she would lose her hold on the people, who could then do without her.

Would God inspire infallible Scripture and then deny to all except an elite few the ability to understand it, requiring billions of people to surrender their minds to a hierarchy by blindly accepting their interpretation of His Word? If the Holy Spirit can convince the world “of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment” (John 16:8), then surely He can teach all those in whom He dwells. John says that the Christians to whom he writes don't have to look to some special class of men for teaching but have an “anointing [of the Holy Spirit which] teacheth you of all things” (1 John 2:27).

If all Christians are “led by the Spirit of God” (Romans 8:14), then surely all must be able to understand the Scriptures which the Spirit of God has inspired. Christians “have received ... the Spirit which is of God, that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God” (1 Corinthians 2:12). There is no hint that a group of clergy must interpret the Scriptures for everyone else. And why should they? All Christians “have the mind of Christ” (verse 16). Rome dare not acknowledge this truth, for then those under her would be set free.

Rome is still searching for truth outside God's Word. Consider Rome's Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas (the Angelicum). Pope John Paul II is a graduate. Its 1200 students from 135 countries have made “the search for truth” through the thousands of volumes on theology and philosophy in its library and elsewhere their “life-objective”. [Inside the Vatican, April 1994, pp. 50-52]. Contrast Christ's statement, that by obeying His Word one knows the truth, with the complexity of the “search for truth” by Catholic scholars. Both can't be right.

A Deadly Spiritual Bondage

Ordinary Bereans checked Paul's teachings not with a hierarchy in Rome, which didn't even exist, but against the Bible (Acts 17:11). That practice was commended then and it is still each individual's responsibility to know God's Word and to test every spiritual leader by it, no matter who he may be. This is what the Bible declares.

Roman Catholics, however (like Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses and members of various cults), must accept, not check, their Church's teachings. The very Book that would bring life, light, and freedom to individuals and nations is spiritually chained out of reach even as it was once literally chained. Of course, such withholding of God's Word from the laity is consistent with Catholicism's persistent suppression of the basic human freedoms of conscience, religion, and the press.

Among  the  crimes  for  which  believers  were  committed  to  the  flames  in  the  Spanish Inquisition was the distribution and reading of the Bible. Smuggling Bibles into Communist or Muslim countries such as China or Iran is understandable, but imagine having to smuggle Bibles into a “Christian” country such as Spain, and being put to death for doing so! Yet in an Auto de Fe in Seville on December 22, 1560, Julian Hernandez, one of those burned at the stake on that occasion, was declared to be an arch-heretic because “through his great efforts and incomprehensible stealth he introduced into Spain prohibited books [Bibles and New Testaments] that he brought from far away places [Germany] where they give protection to the ungodly [Protestants].... He firmly believes that God, by means of the Scriptures, communicates to the laity just the same as He communicates to the priest” [Emelio Martinez, Recuerdos (Memoirs) de Antano (CLIE, 1909), p. 390].

To believe that God could communicate His truth through the Bible not only to the clergy but to ordinary believers was a crime punishable by death! Rome has not changed, though the Bible is no longer banned overtly as in the past. To do so today would be the wrong tactic and likely create the opposite reaction to the one desired. There is a better way: Let the people have the Bible in their hands, and even encourage them to read it, but keep it from their hearts by insisting that only the Church can interpret it.

At the same time, confidence in Scripture is undermined by Rome's teaching that the Bible is not trustworthy in its pronouncements on history or science. Catholicism takes a symbolic meaning from the book of Jonah concerning “the universality of salvation” and denies that a literal prophet named Jonah was swallowed by a literal fish [Our Sunday Visitor, June 5, 1994, p. 613]. The early chapters of Genesis are likewise viewed as symbolic rather than accounts of actual creation of the world and man, leaving the door open to evolution. Even the rapture is seen as symbolic and not referring to a literal catching up of Christians to heaven, an idea which Catholics consider to be a delusion [New Covenant, June 1993, p. 12].

The 1964 Instruction of the Biblical Commission declared that the literalist view of the Bible adopted by Fundamentalists “actually invites people to a kind of intellectual suicide” [Our Sunday Visitor, June 5, 1994, p. 6].

Did the Catholic Church Give Us the Bible?

It is claimed that only the Church can interpret the Bible because it was the Church which gave it to us. That is like saying that because Paul wrote his epistles we need him to interpret them. Furthermore, the Church did not give us the Bible-certainly not the Old Testament, for there was no Church in those days. And if the Roman Catholic Church was not needed to give us the Old Testament, then clearly it was not needed to give us the New either.

A favorite question of Catholic apologists is, “How do you know that Luke wrote the Gospel of Luke or that Matthew wrote the Gospel of Matthew?” They claim that Roman Catholic tradition contains this information. Yet no tradition proves who wrote Hebrews, Job, Esther, or various Psalms. Nor does it matter. That the authors were inspired by the Holy Spirit is what counts. This inspiration bears witness within readers who are themselves indwelt by the same Holy Spirit who inspired the writing of Scripture.

Catholicism's claim that the New Testament comes from the Church by decision of the councils is false. No early council even ruled on what was canonical; yet in these councils, to support their arguments, both sides quoted the New Testament, which had obviously been accepted by general consensus without any conciliar definition of the canon. The Synod of Antioch, in A.D. 266, denounced the doctrine of Paul of Samosata as “foreign to the ecclesiastical canon”. The Council of Nicea in 325 refers to “the canon”; and the Council of Laodicea in 363 exhorted that “only the `canonized' books of both Old and New Testaments be read in the church”. Yet none of those councils deemed it necessary to list the canonized books, indicating  that  they  were  already  well-known  and  accepted  by  the  common  consent  of Christians indwelt by the Holy Spirit.

Not until the Third Council of Carthage, in A.D. 397, do we have the first conciliar decision on the canon [Henry Clarence Theissen, Introduction to the New Testament (Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1943), p. 26]. That is rather late if without it Christians didn't know what books were in the New Testament and therefore couldn't use them, as Rome claims today! History proves that the books of the New Testament were known and accepted by Christians and in wide circulation and use at least 300 years before Carthage listed them. Historian W.H.C. Frend writes:

“The Gospels and epistles were circulating in Asia, Syria, and Alexandria (less certainly in Rome), and being read and discussed in the Christian synagogues there by about 100. In Polycarp's short letter there is an astonishing amount of direct and indirect quotation from the New Testament: Matthew, Luke, and John, Acts, the letters to the Galatians, Thessalonians, Corinthians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, Romans, the Pastorals, 1 Peter particularly, and 1 and 2 John are all used...The Christian Scriptures were quoted so familiarly as to suggest that they had been in regular use a long time” [W.H.C. Frend, The Rise of Christianity (Philadelphia, 1984), p. 135].

No  rabbinical  body  decided  upon  the  canon  of  the  Old  Testament.  That  canon  was recognized by Israel and available as it was being written. Daniel, a captive in Babylon, had a copy of Jeremiah written only a few years earlier and was studying it as Scripture (Daniel 9:2). We are certain that the entire Old Testament was well-known when Christ was here and undoubtedly long before, for every Israelite was required to meditate upon it day and night.

God's Word Speaks Directly to All

In Old Testament times the common people were expected to know God's Word, not through rabbinical interpretation but for themselves, and were able to know it. That fact, as well as its availability to all, is very clear from Christ's rebuke of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus: “0 fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken...” (Luke 24:25). He would not have used such harsh language in holding these two ordinary people responsible for their ignorance of prophecies had not all of the Old Testament Scriptures been readily available, familiar, and understandable to the ordinary Jew. He then expounded unto them in all the Scriptures (which must therefore have been known) “the things concerning himself” (Luke 24:25-27). All of the Scriptures were even available to the faraway Bereans north of Greece, who, as we have seen, “searched the Scriptures daily” (Acts 17:11).

The same evidence is found in the fact that Timothy knew the Old Testament from early childhood (2 Timothy 3:15) and that it was taught to him not by the rabbis in the synagogue but at home by his mother and grandmother, who themselves were women of faith (2 Timothy 1:5). It is certainly clear that no one in Old Testament times looked to any hierarchy for an official interpretation of Scripture. Nor did the early church. Nor should we today.

The plain words of the Bible, without Rome's domineering interpretation, give the lie to the hierarchical structure of the Roman Catholic Church and the authoritarianism of its clergy. Priscilla and Aquila were an ordinary husband and wife who labored daily at tentmaking (Acts 18:3). Yet a “church [met] in their house” (1 Corinthians 16:19) and they were capable teachers of God's Word, even instructing a man so eloquent as Apollos (Acts 18:26). Paul referred to them as “my helpers in Christ Jesus” (Romans 16:3). They had never been to seminary and were not part of a clerical hierarchy (which didn't exist), but they knew God and His Word by the Holy Spirit indwelling them. So should all Christians today.

According to Paul, ordinary Christians are to judge whether a preacher is speaking God's truth. Paul submitted his writings to the same criteria, inviting his readers to judge by the Holy Spirit within them whether his epistles were from God or not: “If any man think himself to be a prophet or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things that I write unto you are the commandments of the Lord” (1 Corinthians 14:37). It was by the same witness of the Holy Spirit within each individual believer that the first-century church decided which books were canonical. In exactly the same way Christians today recognize the Bible as God's inspired Word.

The Sad Consequences

Unfortunately, the average Catholic has been taught to look to the Church hierarchy for the instruction which the Holy Spirit desires to give directly to believers. To Rome, to suggest that the Holy Spirit speaks to individuals through the words of the Bible is anathema. Karl Keating, one of the leading Catholic lay apologists, writes:

“The Catholic believes in inspiration because the Church tells him so-that is putting it bluntly-and that same church has the authority to interpret the inspired text. Fundamentalists have no interpreting authority other than themselves [Karl Keating, Catholicism and Fundamentalism: The Attack on "Romanist" by “Bible Christians” (Ignatius Press, 1988), pp. 125-27].

In fact, “Fundamentalists” look to the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Catholicism also claims that guidance, but only for its hierarchy, who alone can be led of the Spirit to understand the Bible. Yet the Bible says every Christian is indwelt, empowered, and led of the Holy Spirit. In fact, one is not even a Christian without this inner witness and leading of the Holy Spirit:

“Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.... For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.... The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God...” (Romans 8:9,14,16).

“But God hath revealed them [the “things of God”] unto us by his Spirit; for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.... the things of God knoweth no man but [by] the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God, that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Spirit teacheth” (1 Corinthians 2:10-13).

Having been convinced that he cannot understand the Bible for himself, the devout Catholic is at the mercy of his Church and must believe whatever it teaches. The Convert's Catechism of Catholic Doctrine bluntly declares:

“Man can obtain a knowledge of God's Word [only from the Catholic Church and through its duly constituted channels. When he has once mastered this principle of divine authority [residing in the Church], the inquirer is prepared to accept whatever the divine Church teaches of faith, morals and the means of grace” [Rev. Peter Geiermann, C. SS. R., The Convert's Catechism of Catholic Doctrine (Tan Books and Publishers, Inc., 1977), Imprimatur Joseph E. Ritter, S.T.D., Archbishop of St. Louis), pp. vi, 25-27].

Here again, brazenly stated, is the first principle of every cult: “Check your mind at the door and believe whatever the group or church or guru or prophet in charge says”. The idea appeals to those who think that by thus surrendering their minds to an infallible authority they escape their individual moral responsibility to God. Others are afraid to think for themselves because that would put them outside the Church, where “there is no salvation” [This teaching is all through Vatican II. E.g. see Flannery, op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 365, 381]. By this means God's Word, which should speak powerfully to each individual, is held just out of reach of individual Catholics by their Church.

When Was the New Testament Canon Established?

That the New Testament canon, exactly like the Old, was _accepted and recognized by a consensus of the believers as it was being written is clear from the historic evidence we have given above. Further proof comes from the testimony of Peter:

“Even as our beloved brother Paul also according to the wisdom given unto him hath written unto you, as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest [twist], as they do also the other Scriptures, unto their own destruction” (2 Peter 3:15,16).

Peter acknowledges Paul's writings to be Scripture. So has, apparently, the entire body of believers at this time. “The other Scriptures” by that time would have included most of the remainder of the New Testament. Furthermore, these books were so readily available and well- known by common consensus already at this early date (about A.D. 66) that Peter didn't even need to name them. Christians knew what writings were inspired of God in the same way a native in the jungle knows that the gospel is true: by the convicting power of the Holy Spirit.

Tragically, Catholicism not only teaches that the Church hierarchy alone can interpret the Bible, but that no one can believe it without the Church attesting to its authenticity. Keating suggests that the gospel itself has no power without this endorsement. He quotes St. Augustine: “I would not believe in the Gospel if the authority of the Catholic Church did not move me to do so” [Keating, op. cit., pp. 125-27]. If that is true, then no one prior to the Third Council of Carthage in A.D. 397 could have believed or preached the gospel!

Yet the gospel was preached from the very beginning. Paul turned the world upside down with the gospel (Acts 17:6). Within the first two centuries about 10 percent of the Roman Empire became Christians and studied, meditated upon, believed, and were led by both the Old and New Testament Scriptures exactly as we have them today. If they could know what books were inspired and could be guided by them without the authenticating stamp of the Roman Catholic Church (which didn't yet exist), then so can we today.

The absurdity and destructiveness of the view that God's Word must have Rome's endorsement is immediately apparent. It is a blasphemous denial that the gospel in itself has power to save or that the Holy Spirit can use the Bible to speak directly to hearers' hearts. Under this view, one must twist prove that the Roman Catholic Church is the one true Church, that it is infallible, that it says the Bible is true, and that therefore the Bible and the gospel must be believed; only then can the gospel be preached. How absurd! Yet to a Catholic this view makes perfect sense because the Church is the vehicle of salvation. One's eternal destiny depends not upon one's relationship to Christ, who is revealed in His Word, but upon one's relationship to that Church and participation in its sacraments.

This theory, of course, is refuted by the Bible itself. Christ and His disciples preached the gospel before any church was established. Early in His ministry, before even saying anything about establishing His church, Christ sent His disciples forth, “and they departed, and went through the towns, preaching the gospel” (Luke 9:6). Eleven times in the four Gospels we are told that Christ and His disciples were engaged in preaching the gospel, a gospel which is “the power of God unto salvation” to those who believe it (Romans 1:16). Yet there was no Roman Catholic Church in existence to verify that the gospel was true. Nor does today's preaching need Rome's endorsement any more than it did in the beginning.

Three thousand souls were saved on the day of Pentecost without Peter saying one word about an infallible Church putting its approval on what he preached. Even after Pentecost we find no attempt by Christians, who “went everywhere preaching the Word” (Acts 8:4), to prove that an infallible Church existed and endorsed the gospel. We read of the preaching of Philip in Samaria and of Paul in many places, where multitudes believed; yet not once is the gospel supported by the statement that Christ established an infallible Church and that the bishops of this Church had put their official stamp of approval upon what was being preached. If the endorsement of the Roman Catholic Church wasn't needed then, neither is it needed now, for the Word of God is “living and powerful ... a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12).

The Sufficiency of Scripture

“Show us one verse in the Bible that clearly declares Sola Scriptura, that the Bible is sufficient in itself”, is the specious challenge thrown out by Catholic apologists. One might as well demand “just one verse that states that God is a triune being of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit”. No single verse says so, yet the doctrine of the trinity is accepted by both Catholics and Protestants as biblical. Nor is there a single verse which contains the words “the Bible is sufficient”. However, when we put together the many verses in the Bible on this topic it is clear that the Bible teaches its own sufficiency both to authenticate itself to the reader and to lead to spiritual maturity and effectiveness all who are indwelt by the Holy Spirit and read it with open hearts.

Paul  declared  that  Scripture  was  given  for  “doctrine,  for  reproof,  for  correction,  for instruction in righteousness” and that the Bible itself makes the man or woman of God “perfect [i.e., mature, complete, all that God intended], thoroughly furnished [equipped] unto all good works” (2 Timothy 3:16,17). In other words, the Bible contains all the doctrine, correction, and instruction in righteousness that is needed for those who heed it to become complete in Christ. Catholic apologists quote nineteeth-century Cardinal John Henry Newman to the effect that if this passage proves the above, then it “proves too much”, that “the Old Testament alone would be sufficient as a rule of faith, the New Testament unnecessary” because all Timothy had was the Old Testament [Ibid., pp. 140-41]. The argument is fallacious for several reasons.

First of all, Timothy had more than the Old Testament. This is Paul's second epistle to him, so he has at least two epistles from Paul in addition to the Old Testament. Paul goes on to say that he is about to be martyred (2 Timothy 4:6-8), making this the last epistle Paul wrote. So Timothy, obviously, has all of Paul's epistles. The date is probably around A.D. 66, so he also has the first three Gospels and most of the rest of the New Testament.

Furthermore, when Paul says “all Scripture” it is clear that he means the entire Bible, not merely that which had been written up to that time. Similar expressions are often used in Scripture, but they never mean only the Bible written to that time. When Jesus said, “The word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day” (John 12:48), He didn't mean only what he had spoken to that time. Likewise, when he said, “Thy Word is truth” (John 17:17) He obviously meant all of God's Word, though all had not yet been written.

When the writer of Hebrews said, “The Word of God is living and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword”, he didn't mean only that part of the Word of God that had been written to that time. Nor did Paul by “all Scripture” mean only that which had been written to that time. He clearly meant all Scripture. So Cardinal Newman was wrong, and naively so. Yet Catholic apologists confidently quote his folly to disprove the sufficiency of Scripture.

“That the man of God may be perfect” simply means that the Word of God is all one needs to be “perfect” in the sense of being mature and all that God wants a Christian to be. Catholic apologists refer to other verses where the word “perfect” is used, such as: “If you would be perfect, sell all you have and give to the poor”, or “Let patience have its perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire”, etc. They then contend that if it can be argued from 2 Timothy 3:17 that the Bible is sufficient to perfect believers, then selling everything one has and giving it to the poor or being patient is also sufficient to make one perfect.

Again the argument fails. Suppose an athletic trainer offers a perfect diet with all the nutritional elements one needs to produce a perfect body. This doesn't mean that other things, such as exercise, aren't necessary. Paul is saying that the doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness contained in Scripture is sufficient teaching for the man (or woman) of God to be all God desires. This does not mean that one doesn't have to exercise patience, faith, obedience, charity, etc., which themselves are taught by Scripture. It does mean that in the area of doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness the Bible needs no supplementation from tradition or any other source.

Moreover,  Paul  goes  on  to say that the  man  (or  woman)  of  God  is,  by  the  Scriptures themselves, “thoroughly prepared unto every good work”. The Bible never makes such a statement about patience or love or charity or tradition or anything else. Paul is clearly teaching Sola Scriptura. This doctrine was not invented by the Reformers; they derived it from Scripture.

The Central Issue – A Clear Choice

When Thomas Howard, brother of Elizabeth Elliot (wife of martyred missionary Jim Elliot), became a Catholic, Gordon College removed him from its faculty. Among the reasons given was the fact that the statement of faith which all faculty had to sign affirmed the Bible as “the only infallible guide in faith and practice”-impossible for a Catholic to sign. Howard acknowledged that “the sole authority of Scripture is a principle unique to Protestantism, and that he, as a Catholic, could not subscribe to it” [Christianity Today, September 20, 1985].  

Sola Scriptura remains the central issue at the heart of the Reformation. One must choose between submitting to the authority of the Bible or to that of the Roman Catholic Church. One cannot do both because of the clear conflict between the two.  

The choice one must make is obvious. Blind submission to any earthly hierarchy in itself contradicts the Bible. Moreover, we have given more than sufficient evidence from history to show that the Roman Catholic Church, from the pope down, has forfeited any claim it may ever have had to be trusted.

The most tragic consequence of the blind faith in their Church as the sole interpreter of God's Word for mankind is that hundreds of millions of Catholics consequently trust it for their eternal destiny. The question of salvation, therefore, is also a key issue necessarily separating Catholics and evangelicals.

“Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so” (Acts 17:11).

“For we are not writing to you anything other than what you read and understand and I hope you will fully understand” (2 Corinthians 1:13).

“Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15).