Three Signs of a New Testament Church and My Journey Home to Rome

By Andrew M. Greenwell, Esq.
7/31/2012
Catholic Online (www.catholic.org)

I turned to the Apostolic Fathers sort of like the Ethiopian turned to St. Philip

"To be deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant," famously wrote John Henry Cardinal Newman in his introduction to his Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine. I can attest to the truth of these words. I started reading the nineteen centuries' old works of St. Ignatius, the third bishop of Antioch when I was a Protestant. By the time I finished, I was well on the road toward becoming a Catholic.

The martyrdom of Ignatius of Antioch

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CORPUS CHRISTI, TX (Catholic Online) - Most evangelical or fundamentalist Protestants believe in the perspicuity of Scripture. They have to because they have rejected any teaching authority in the Church. Simply put, the doctrine of perspicuity of Scripture is that, in the words of Charles Hodge, the Protestant theologian and founder of Princeton Theological Seminary, the "Bible is a plain book," and therefore requires no one to interpret it.

The theory of perspicuity advances the notion that a man can sit down at home with a Bible in hand, and, presumably with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, will have no problem understanding the Bible's doctrine. There is no need for an intermediary, no need for a teaching Church, no need for an ecclesia docens. There is therefore no need for bishops and certainly no need for a Pope.

Some problems are immediately apparent in holding the doctrine of the perspicuity of Scripture. First of all, there is no place in the Scriptures that states that the Bible is perspicuous. Indeed, there is no place in the Bible that tells us what books compose the Bible, which means that what books are in the Bible is itself not perspicuous. There is simply no Biblical foundation for the doctrine. It finds no warrant in Scripture or the words of Jesus.

In fact, the falsity of the doctrine of the perspicuity of Scripture appears clearly attested to by Scripture itself, expressly at least as it relates to the epistles of the Apostle Paul and implicitly with respect to Scripture as a whole. St. Peter says: "in them [St. Paul's letters] there are some things hard to understand that the ignorant and unstable distort to their own destruction, just as they do the other scriptures." (2 Pet. 3:16).

It is perspicuous to St. Peter that the Bible is not perspicuous.

The doctrine of Scriptural perspicuity was never part of the received Church teaching, just like it clearly was not part of what St. Peter believed to be true. It was a Protestant novelty. It is a contrived truth to escape the Church's divinely-instituted teachers--the bishops and the Pope--and to escape the body of Tradition which testifies against its truth.

In addition to its theoretical lack of foundation, there is another problem with this notion: it does not work. The doctrine of the perspicuity of Scripture has been a practical nightmare. Although a precise count of Protestant denominations is probably impossible, most experts put Protestant denominations at hovering between 21,000 to 33,000 world-wide, each one, of course, with its own view of supposedly perspicuous Scripture that justifies its existence. The number of interpretations of Scripture is legion.

What time has therefore attested to is that Protestant model is intrinsically unstable and uncertain, and that suggests overwhelmingly strongly that it is false. The historical evidence is monolithically against the truth of the doctrine of perspicuity of Scripture. As Origen said in his work On Prayer, "the word of God is one, but many are the words alien to God."

I confronted this problem of interpretational cacophony endemic in Protestantism on my way back to the Catholic Church. Although raised Catholic, by the time I went to college I had left the Church and pretty much rejected Christianity altogether, sort of holding an incongruous blend composed of intellectual agnosticism and practical atheism. Towards the end of my undergraduate studies, however, I had a conversion, but that conversion was to evangelical or fundamentalist Protestantism.

Eventually, I found myself frequenting Southern Baptist Churches. I accepted the authority of Scripture sort of on faith, and assumed that it was readily interpretable as the Southern Baptists taught.

However, I soon grew frustrated with the impracticability and unworkability of the doctrine of Scriptural perspicuity. Take, for example, the words of Jesus in the sixth chapter of the Gospel of John, "Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you." (John 6:53) How were these words to be understood? Many of Jesus' disciples obviously had problems with them. The Gospel of John states that many murmured: "This saying is hard; who can accept it?"

For some, the teaching was offensive, and when Jesus confirmed it, they left him altogether, presumably because they understood Jesus to be teaching these words to be literally true--something which, of course, would have offended the sentiments of the ordinary Jew.

Most Protestants will interpret these words figuratively, symbolically, and avoid the difficulty of what seems Jesus' plain ...

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Theresa H
9 months ago
We are aware of many conversion such as Andrew's these days and thank God for their witness. It is powerful and speaks volumes to both Non-Catholics AND Catholics. For a cradle Catholic who has been steeped in Sacred Scripture and the Teaching of the Catholic Church from ones youth, it is very hard to understand how/why non-Catholics reading the Bible don't get it--that Jesus MEANT WHAT HE SAID to Peter and the Apostles during the course of His 3 year ministry with them. E.g., "You are Peter and on this rock I will build my Church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.... And to you I will give the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven and whatsoever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven and whatsoever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.....(the Sacrament of Penance/Confession).... And “Lo, I am with you always, until the end of time." And those incredible words at the Last Supper: "This IS my body...This IS my blood...." Non-Catholics get caught up in the words. "Do this in REMEMBRANCE of me"--as if Jesus didn't mean what He told them to do! We must take Jesus at His Word--with what "Peter" and the Apostles, and their successors and the ordained priests united with them have continued to do and say and will continue to do and say..."until the end of time!" Often I also wonder HOW the priest stands there and says those incredible words! At the moment when he says: "This is MY Body...;" it is truly "not I who live, but Christ lives in me" (St. Paul)--like no other moment in his day! He doesn't say:"This is the Body of Christ"....This is the Blood of Christ…” He says: “This is MY Body….This is MY Blood…,” at that moment when the priest holds the bread in his hands, he is Jesus-- and the "sacred species" is no longer bread--and the wine is no longer wine, the "substance" (what makes something what it is) has been changed and what we "see" as bread (and wine) IS "really and truly" the body and blood, soul and divinity, of Jesus Christ who lives and reigns forever! We call this "Transubstantiation," as we fall "down in adoration... "(Hymn of St. Thomas Aquinas) before the Blessed Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist!
Barbara Logan
9 months ago
Thank you! This could be my testimony. The Eucharist is so central to our faith that being without it is unthinkable. I am still trying to come to terms with some doctrines that seem extra-Scriptural to me, but am happy to bow to the authority of the Church's greater wisdom and understanding.
Kathy
9 months ago
This is a powerful article. The history of the Catholic Church is very important, and must not be forgotten, especially by Catholic. Sadly we do not take the time to research our history, the history that gives us knowledge and power. In order to defend our faith, we must understand the truth.
Tom McGuire
9 months ago
This description of your journey to the Catholic Church may be of great help to many. I hope it gets wide circulation. I often disagree with your views, but with your discovery of and journey to the Catholic Church I rejoice.
abey
9 months ago
Just as it is said "Know a person by his works" so also know a Church by its beliefs & where beliefs are causing its members to fall away from the Scriptures, like unto many a protestants moving into the delusion of gay relationships & to many a Evangelicals becoming complacent to it even in the name of love, tolerance, compassion etc, ignoring/not knowing that above all these so called delusions is God who is love itself & to reach Him is to keep His word in the spirit & truth & not to human pleasings, passions or twistings even out of Fear/Political correctness. Where God speaks the truth, the devil plays the flute, so listen to the truth & not be swayed by the flute, like a la Kris'na or a Vishnu who changes himself into a female out to tempt, so unlike God who has at no time tempted any man, Truth is not to tempting neither does it ever tempt, which makes The Faith to be off that Truth & to this adheres the teachings Catholic Church, come in from the Apostolic times through Saints like St Ignatius, believed to be the Child lifted by Jesus & saying of the manner "Kingdom of God is like unto one of these little ones" & to the writing in St. Jude " The Faith which was once (& for all ) delivered unto the saints.

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