Unto What Shall We Liken the Roman Hermeneutic?

Rome insists that she is an authentic interpreter of Scripture. We can easily provide an example, within a document defining a dogma, of Rome making a clear blunder. But let's leave that aside for a second, and consider the effect of Rome's claims on a conversation.

Christian: We should reject Marian devotion because the Bible teaches us to trust in God alone. Roman apologist: You have wrongly interpreted the Bible. Only Rome can authentically interpret the Bible. Christian: That's not true, the Bible was written to be understood. Anyone can authentically interpret the Bible, and many do - some more, and others less, well than others. Roman Apologist: No, you cannot understand the Bible without the Roman Catholic church. Christian: That's not so. Roman Apologist: Look, it says so right here in Matthew 16:18.

Now, that appeal to Scripture looks an awful lot like the Roman Apologist conceding that people can understand the Bible without the Roman communion. But behind that appearance lies a question about what this Roman hermeneutic entails.

Is the Bible simply incomprehensible on its own, and one needs the Roman church to provide spectacles to make the incomprehensible, comprehensible? If that were true, then it would make no sense to appeal to Scripture to anyone not already looking through the spectacles.

Is the Bible simply highly complicated, and one needs the Roman church to show the map of the way through to get the solution? If this were the case, the appeal to Scripture might make sense. This is just the first breadcrumb along a trail that eventually leads to Rome. In fact, though, all of Rome's attempts to prove her distinctive doctrines from Scripture fail. When you get an answer key to a Rubik's cube, you can see the parts all come together to form the solved puzzle, even if you couldn't have done it on your own. But with Rome, you don't get satisfactory answers like that. You get alleged solutions, but even knowing the supposed solutions, one cannot arrive at these solutions from Scripture.

Sure, at first it was just a weird bunch of lines and patterns, but once you were taught how to change your focus, suddenly the beautiful stereoscopic patterns emerged. Some of Rome's converts stories make it sound like they feel Rome's hermeneutic is similar to this. The two problems are - first, they don't seem to be able to teach us how to see the butterfly amidst the squiggly lines - and second, until we see the butterfly, appeals to Scripture are just appeals to squiggle lines, and consequently futile.

In Alice Through the Looking Glass, she encounters the character Humpty Dumpty who insists on making words mean what he wants them to mean, even when that meaning is quite distant from any conventional sense of the word. Some of the arguments from the Roman side favor this interpretation. After all, some Roman apologists try to approach the Bible as though it were the creation of the Church, rather than being God's word delivered to the churches (and CCC 111 and 113 seem to encourage them to take this approach). If the Bible were the product of the Church, then the authorial intent behind the words becomes important, and we need to let Humpty Dumpty use words like "only mediator" in a far from conventional sense. One problem with that is that it turns the text of Scripture into such a "living document" that the document itself has no particular significance. Matthew 16:18 might as well teach the papacy as it teaches the bodily assumption of Mary, so long as Rome says that is what it means. The fact that we don't see it in the actual meaning of the words doesn't matter.

Ultimately, no matter what we liken the Roman hermeneutic to, we should realize that the Roman hermeneutic boils down to sola ecclesia: what Rome says goes. If the Bible appears to say the same thing, and that convinces someone that Rome is right - great. If the Bible appears to say the opposite, the Bible's apparent meaning should be subordinated to what Rome teaches.

But if that's Rome's hermeneutic, then the appeals to Scripture as an authority are really disingenuous. Honest Roman apologists shouldn't argue that we should believe them because (to use their lingo) we interpret the Bible the same way they do. After all, when we interpret the Bible differently, we're supposed to just set that aside, no matter how clear the Bible is.

Yet, I welcome comments from Roman apologists, clergy, and even laity. To what do you liken the Roman hermeneutic, and to what shall I compare it? And when you try to quote the Bible to me, do you think I'm just unaware that your church teaches that "all that has been said about the manner of interpreting Scripture is ultimately subject to the judgement of the Church which exercises the divinely conferred commission and ministry of watching over and interpreting the Word of God" (CCC 119, quoting Dei Verbum 12, 3rd paragraph)?

P.S. Oh, and by the way - the alternative is that the Bible is the very word of God, and that God made it clear enough to serve as a rule of faith and life for his church. Not all parts are equally clear, however, and sin blinds the minds of some men so that even the most clear parts become dull. Nevertheless, core doctrines (like the contents of the Apostles' creed, for example) are plainly and unmistakeably set forth in the Scriptures, without the need for any special glasses, tricky eye techniques, or authoritative lexicography.

This is a very warped view of the Catholic position, so much so that it parts brass rags with reality on just about every level.

I find it an apt description of Rome's peculiar positions.

I'd also like to mention, the Bible was not assembled into a complete volume until the 400's. [...]

So what? The Old Testament was compiled long before that, and the Torah is ancient. How one interprets them would follow precisely into how one interprets the latter work... Or YHWH is schizophrenic... Or the latter work is not of YHWH.

Sola Scriptura rolled around much later. What were people supposed to do until then?

Whats more, sola scriptura is not in the bible. Its taking a doctrine that is not in the bible that states everything not in the bible is invalid. Wouldn't that make sola scriptura invalid?

It is your definition of sola-scriptura that is invalid. Sola-scriptura does not mean 'If it isn't in the Bible, then it doesn't exist.' That would be 'solo-scriptura'.

Sola-scriptura, simply put, means that the Bible retains a primacy over any doctrine, creed, or tradition. It does not negate any doctrine, creed, or tradition unless that thing changes (explicitly, or by inference) the meaning and nature of the Scripture.

And well it should have that primacy. After all, the Bible is a series of contracts, which is why it was written down. What efficacy can a contract have if either party to the contract can simply claim a verbal change of any kind? And more odd than that, the party of the second part, Man, who has no real binding upon himself within the contracts, thinks HE is the one that can change them... YHWH, the party of the first part, who has bound Himself to the words therein, has not changed a thing. He will do as He is contractually bound to do, and to the very letter thereof. To do otherwise would negate His Word, and open Himself to claims that He is not in fact, in perfect control. and therefore, not God.

In that context, sola-scriptura is of the highest sort of necessity, by the very nature of the thing.

I think you’ve set up a straw man. I never said that Scripture has instances of correction “against the Word of God” and I never said that there are scriptural instances of correction of “clear interpretations” thereof.

If I did, it was unintentional - The comment was there to buttress my point, which was that to the very letter (IIRC) what the Apostles and Christ Himeslf railed against were the additions and traditions that added to or took away from the Scriptures themselves. Thereby, It isn't a matter of interpreting, or these, who are more worthy than any of us, would have spent their time instructing upon the interpretations rather than fixing what the authorities of the day scrambled up with their traditions. One could, I submit, extrapolate the very same as being relevant today, and throughout the entirety of history.

What I said was that there is no Scriptural basis for claiming that scripture is always easy to understand.

True to the degree that one supposes only one true meaning to a thing, and to the extent of the definition of 'always easy'. The Bible is explicit in it's declaration that there is a simple message, easy to understand, and a more difficult and nuanced message that is harder to digest - the 'milk' and the 'meat' as it were. So at the very least, there are two levels of understanding. I would submit that the levels are infinite and profound - and we are to continually be about our work of ferreting out every bit of it. That in fact, is the main reason I find the Word to be inspired - so simple and yet so very complex.

But in effect, for the purpose of this conversation, if relying upon the 'milk', it IS easy to understand.

And one can also fall back to the commandment that the Torah was to be read in it's entirety before the entire assembly every seven years - in part so that those children who had never heard the Word of YHWH would hear it. The clear implication in that is that a child of seven years is able to get something from the Torah... Since the Author of the Book (through the inspiration of His agents) is YHWH Himself, one should be able to apply that same principle to the whole of the Book.

There are MANY instances of correction against the COMMON understanding — a common understanding that also happens to be wrong.

I would like an example of same.

Furthermore, to read Scripture in a purely literal way is to get it wrong, in many instances. “Literal” does not always equal “Correct” does not always equal “Clear”.

As I am among the most fundamental of fundamentalists, I have knocked down that particular straw man many times. Even among my peers, there is only a preference toward literalism, not a perfect literalism. But even so, a direct reading is usually the best, and one can quite often derive an accurate interpretation thereby. Certainly there is little need for the monstrous interpretive bodies that are currently institutionalized (not pointing at y'all only, but I AM pointing at y'all).

The Roman church *loves* to point out the differences between the protestant denominations, but refuses to credit the similarities, which are vast by comparison. and some of our more congregational brethren have deliberative bodies which are nothing more than an handful of elders... And still they wind up believing pretty much the same things.

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