When discussing the Catholic faith with Protestants, it’s not uncommon to face what I call the Bible blitzkrieg. This especially happens in email or social media exchanges where the other person will defend their position with a string of Bible verses. He might say, “Catholics are wrong about salvation because we are saved by grace alone” and then list a dozen Scripture passages after that statement that he claims proves his point.
Some Protestants are capable of reciting those verses (or at least citations of them) in conversations because they’ve spent their childhood memorizing various Bible passages. And that is a good thing! St. Jerome famously quipped that “ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ.” Therefore, we should always commend a person’s intimate knowledge of Scripture.
On the other hand, it is one thing to know what the Bible says and another thing to know what it means. Jerome said of a heretical group called the Luciferians, “Let them not flatter themselves if they think they have Scripture authority for their assertions, since the devil himself quoted Scripture, and the essence of the Scriptures is not the letter, but the meaning” (Dialogue with Luciferians).
You should point out to your Protestant friend that simply listing Bible passages isn’t the way to determine what theology is correct. The Protestant scholar D.A. Carson once said, “A text without a context is a pretext for a proof text.” Making a statement and then defending it with only a dozen Bible citations is nothing more than grandstanding, or a mild form of intimidation. It’s like saying, “How can I be wrong when all these Bible verses say I’m right?”
As Jerome shows us, any heretic can string along biblical citations and say he is correct. You can find Jehovah’s Witness literature, for example, that cites dozens of passages that, according to the Witnesses, show that Jesus is not truly divine. Your Protestant friend would rightly tell them that when each of those verses is reviewed one at a time, you can see that none of them disproves the deity of Christ. He just needs to see that the same is true when we go through the dozens of Bible verses he has cited as evidence against Catholicism.
I find in many of these instances that the cited verses aren’t just incorrect interpretations; they are irrelevant interpretations. The verse has nothing to do with the topic being discussed. For example, when defending sola scriptura, Protestants often cite biblical passages that affirm the goodness and utility of Scripture. But sola scriptura isn’t the claim that Scripture is good. It’s the claim that Scripture is the only source that contains all Christian doctrine.
One gentleman I encountered included a string of citations that included Hebrews 4:12. I then said he should slowly read the passage: “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”
I asked him where that verse says anything about Scripture being the only infallible rule of faith or containing all Christian doctrine. He admitted it didn’t. Then I asked him, “And where does this passage say anything about Scripture?” He said, “Well, it says ‘the word of God.’”
“Right,” I told him, “but the word of God and Scripture aren’t identical. First Thessalonians 2:13 says the preaching of the apostles was ‘the word of God,’ so ‘word of God’ doesn’t always mean Scripture. In some cases, it’s talking about Jesus, the Word made flesh, which is what Hebrews 4:12 is talking about. It’s talking about the living word, and we know that because the very next verse says, ‘And before him no creature is hidden, but all are open and laid bare to the eyes of him with whom we have to do.’”
At this point, the gentleman was so startled at having misunderstood the passage for so long that he was more receptive to my concern that he had made similar errors in the other passages he cited in defense of his arguments against Catholicism.
When you are faced with a Bible blitzkrieg, remember that this isn’t an actual war. You’re allowed to ask for a break so you can look up these verses and get back to your interlocutor with your thoughts. You can remind him that studying Bible verses is always better than slinging Bible verses. Moreover, St. Peter reminds us that Scripture contains difficult passages that people can misunderstand to their own destruction (2 Pet. 3:16), so you want to consult authoritative sources to find out what these verses might mean and, at the least, what they absolutely cannot mean.
This can be helpful, because some Protestants operate under the mistaken assumption that Catholics are prohibited from reading or interpreting the Bible for themselves. They might cite the Second Vatican Council, which said, “The task of authentically interpreting the word of God, whether written or handed on, has been entrusted exclusively to the living teaching office of the Church” (Dei Verbum 10).
But the Church has infallibly defined the meaning of only a handful of biblical passages. The Church allows biblical scholars a wide degree of latitude in interpreting the literal and spiritual meaning of biblical texts, provided that they follow the council’s direction to be attentive to the “analogy of faith” and interpret the texts in light of all divine revelation (CCC 114). So, for example, a biblical interpreter could not conclude that a particular Bible passage teaches that Mary gave birth to other children or that Christ is not fully divine, since the Church has infallibly taught that those beliefs are in error, and Scripture is without error (Dei Verbum 11).
Finally, don’t get discouraged if your Protestant friend knows more biblical citations than you do.
Scott Hahn, a professor of theology at the Franciscan University of Steubenville, once said that Protestants know the Bible the way a mailman knows the neighborhood. The mailman knows that the Johnsons live at 123 Maplewood Street, and so if he needs to get the mail to them, he knows which streets to follow to get there. In the same way, Protestants who have a deep passion for understanding the Bible can cite a biblical passage’s exact chapter and verse.
Catholics, on the other hand, know the Bible the way kids know a neighborhood. They may not know that the Johnsons live at 123 Maplewood Street, but they do know that the Johnsons live on the top of the hill next to the house with the old green fence and the barking dog. They can get you to the same place, but in a less direct way.
Catholics know a lot of Scripture. Even if they don’t read the Bible, they hear the Bible at Mass, and they might read biblical passages in Catholic devotionals and prayer books. They may not be able to cite Scripture verses, but the chapters-and-verses convention we use to cite these passages came into existence only in the Middle Ages. It wasn’t an original part of the Bible.
When Jesus showed the Sadducees that the Old Testament does refer to a resurrection of the dead, he said, “But that the dead are raised, even Moses showed, in the passage about the bush [emphasis added], where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.”
So don’t feel as though you can’t talk about the Bible just because you may not remember the chapter and verse where a passage is located. Even our Lord didn’t cite the Bible in this way! You can survive the Bible blitzkrieg by humbling leading the person through different parts of Scripture with the light of the Church’s teaching as a helpful guide to interpreting it.