Scripture Alone & Roman Catholicism

The Reformed faith views the matter precisely in reverse, holding that Scripture alone expresses divine truth with perfect clarity, and so regarding the Scriptures alone as finally authoritative. The interpretation of the Church (as in its creeds) must always, therefore, be regarded as less than a perfectly clear expression of divine truth, and as necessarily subordinate to Scripture. The authority of creeds is determined by Scripture, not determinative of Scripture. They have authority only if, and to the extent that, they truly are faithful to Scripture.”

G.I. Williamson

The Westminster Confession of Faith: for Study Classes

1.) Now add the reality that if the average layperson needs the Roman Catholic Church to tell him what Scripture means because God’s speaking is so opaque in God’s inspired special Revelation (Scripture) how is the average layperson supposed to understand the uninspired interpretation of what God speaks in His Word as given by the Church without someone else explaining to him what the Church means when it interprets God’s perspicuous word. In other words this reasoning falls into an infinite regress. If man is not capable of understanding God’s spoken Word aright and so needs an interpreter then it is only reasonable to believe that man is not capable of understanding the interpreter of God’s Word aright and so needs yet another interpreter to interpret the original interpreter’s interpretation of God’s Word…. ad infinitum.

Are we to believe that the Roman Catholic Church can explain with more clarity than the God of the universe?

2.) The Roman Catholic church has made so many errors in Church history that it is laughable that they want to insist that they have been preserved in their teachings from error by the special assistance of the Holy Ghost. Whether it is the embrace of purgatory (nowhere taught in Scripture) or the embrace of relics (nowhere taught in Scripture) or having Mary as a co-redemptrix or mediatrix (nowhere taught in Scripture) the history of the Roman Catholic church is one error after another.

3.) It is a pretty good gig to be in the position as an Institution to give yourself the ability to be the one in charge of what God does or does not say. Rome, when it makes this move, has indeed ascended to the seat of God. It really doesn’t matter what God says if Rome is the one with the final authority of what God says and means. Honestly, it seems beyond obvious that with this doctrine of the Church having authority over Scripture that the Roman Catholic Institutional Church has made itself to be God. With this false doctrine promulgated by Rome it is the case that in the Church we live and move and have our being.

4.) This doctrine underscores another doctrine by Rome and that is their doctrine that their is no salvation outside the Church of Rome. This is an obvious implication of the above authority over Scripture. If the Church is God’s final interpreter of God’s mind then it is obvious that to be out of fellowship with the Roman Catholic Church is to be out of fellowship with God. This Roman Catholic doctrine of being the “mouth of God” keeps people who really believe this chained as slaves inside the Roman Catholic whore of a “church.” If one really believed this doctrine one would never leave Rome no matter what demonic deviation Rome might insists that God really says.

5.) Of course this issue was the formal principle of the Reformation. While “Justification by grace alone through faith alone, in Christ alone” was the material principle of the Reformation (the fuse that was lit that set the whole thing off) behind the material principle was the formal principle which was a dispute of where the authority lie in order to determine where to find the mind of God. Rome, following their epistemological doctrine that the Church is the ultimate authority, the Reformers insisted that the epistemological authority for men is the written word of God.