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A Pillar with the Bible on Top

After eighteen years as an Evangelical Protestant who believed that the Bible alone is the Word of God—inerrant, infallible, indestructible—I converted to Catholicism. “What could have happened to him?” is the question my Protestant friends must have asked themselves many times. Now, after a time of study and reflection, I would like to answer that question for my friends and for others.

I have always loved the Bible. My earliest memories of the Bible return me to a time of innocence, of memories of my grandmother taking me to Sabbath school. At six years old, I loved the Bible stories of Jesus, David and Goliath, Samson and Delilah, Moses, Noah, and all the rest.

It wasn’t until after the death of my first child and a failed marriage that my relationship to God was something that I wanted and needed. I consoled myself in him and his word, the Bible. The Bible came alive speaking words of comfort, love, and deliverance to my heart and soul. God was speaking to me, directly to me. My real love for Christ and his Word was kindled then. It has since grown and matured.

In college, my major in philosophy only made my faith in the Bible more resolute. The philosophers reached to the stars for truth but only grasped air. The truth contained in the Bible towered above them. Professing themselves wise they became fools. The message of the cross was foolishness to them (1 Cor. 1:18 ff). Every philosophy contained only a partial truth and was unable to explain the whole of reality. But the Bible, with the Incarnation and the Trinity, explained the classical problems of time and eternity, of the universal and the particular, of the one and the many, of immutability and change.

I have continued to read and study apologetics and history. My love for the Bible and Jesus Christ has continued. One cannot love the Bible and Jesus without loving the Church. But the Protestant churches I’ve belonged to have been trouble in my Christian experience. They never seemed like the Bible’s description of “church.” At twenty-one I gave my life to Jesus, and the church I joined was young and a delight. Seven young pastors, most of them still in seminary, were leading this little church. At twenty-three I was remarried and one of these pastors conducted our wedding service. This beautiful church was later destroyed by these same pastors. My young wife and I had to leave the only church home that I had known until then.

After a series of failures with local churches, I was challenged by a Scott Hahn tape in which he asked, “What is the pillar and foundation of truth?” Being a good Evangelical Protestant, I thought, “The Bible, of course!” But Hahn pointed out that the Bible in 1 Timothy 3:15 says the pillar and foundation of truth is the Church! I had to admit, at least on this point, that I was wrong.

This unexpected answer got my attention. I began to think about what it meant to have the Church as foundational to truth. Could God have gifted the Church with infallibility like he had gifted the Bible? This thought began to take hold of me. (I had a vision at the time of a waist-high Corinthian pillar with a Bible open on top.) I knew the churches that I had been associated with certainly weren’t infallible.

The problem of why there are unresolved doctrinal splits and interpretations among Christians had always nagged me. If two pastors, who seemed to live upright, holy lives, taught divergent doctrines and each claimed his teaching was from the Holy Spirit, how could this be? I knew the Holy Spirit could not teach “A” and “not-A” at the same time. Could this ever be resolved? Protestants have resolved this problem by denominationalism: New denominations are born as a result of differences over biblical interpretation.

I reasoned that if God did gift the Church, I could find out by testing Catholic articles of faith against the Bible. But I had to admit that I really knew nothing of Catholic belief. I knew that to be fair I must concentrate not only on held belief but on those articles of faith that Catholics held as indisputable. I set out to find out what exactly Catholics believe that distinguishes them from everyone else.

I went to one of the most respected Catholic churches in the San Francisco Bay Area, Our Lady of Peace in Santa Clara. There I found a well-stocked bookstore with someone I recognized as a fellow pro-lifer behind the counter. I told her I wanted to see the Catholic “articles of faith.” She looked puzzled. I told her that almost all Protestant churches have them: usually short, concise statements of belief that the church held as central. “They might be printed in their Sunday bulletins, hung on the walls, or even appear in their Yellow Page ads,” I said. She told me that the Catholic “articles of faith” was the Apostle’s Creed. “As a Protestant I already accept that,” I said. “I want those articles that are distinctive to Catholics. The beliefs that make Catholics Catholic.” After more discussion I ended up purchasing a Baltimore Catechism. I found it at the time a little too simplistic. I was looking for more. This question was still bothering me: Could God have gifted the Church with infallibility just like the Bible?

It began to make sense that this should be so. I imagined those two disagreeing pastors could have their teachings resolved to the one truth. The Church could interpret the Bible and resolve their conflict. Maybe Jesus’ prayer in John 17, that believers be one as the Father and he are one, was possible. The picture of the Bible opened on the pillar began to make sense. The pillar supports the Bible. The pillar was there first, and God placed his Holy Bible there for all the world to see.

But what was it that made Catholics Catholic? I had to know. If I could refute any of their dogmas using the Bible, then their Church wasn’t infallible, and I would be done with this idea. To find the dogma became my quest.

Fr. Raymond Dunn, the Catholic priest who challenged me by giving me Scott Hahn’s testimony tape, recommended a book, The Church Teaches: Documents of the Church in English Translation, by the Jesuit Fathers of St. Mary’s College in Kansas. I found Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma by Ludwig Ott. At last—Catholic dogma. No wonder the woman at the bookstore had given me a funny look. Catholic dogma covered almost 2000 years of Church teaching. You couldn’t fit it in a church bulletin or in a Yellow Pages ad. These two books contained what I was looking for. I began to study and ask questions of Fr. Dunn and some of my Catholic pro-life friends.

I learned about apostolic succession and the magisterium, the authoritative teaching body of the Catholic Church. The magisterium is made up of the world-wide bishops and headed up by the pope. The bishops can trace their ordinations back, by name, to the apostles. These, and these alone, make up the living authority for biblical interpretation in Catholic belief. For reasons of inquiry I accepted this belief, at this point.

I then had to deal with papal infallibility and the headship of the pope. Matthew 16 was central here. As I studied the arguments on both sides for whether or not Jesus was to build his Church on the apostle Peter, the Catholic interpretation seemed to be more literal and more defensible than the Protestant interpretation I had learned. I had learned that Jesus built his Church on the confession of Peter that Jesus was the Messiah, the Christ, and not on Peter himself. But as even many Protestant scholars had reluctantly agreed, biblical hermeneutics seemed to favor the Catholic position.

Well, okay, I thought, maybe I could accept this. I couldn’t prove from the Bible that it was untrue. So I proceeded, giving Catholics the benefit of the doubt. After all, I thought, it was Catholics who gave us Protestants the Bible in the first place, and they were right at least then; they kept the faith before the Bible was completed and before the printing press.

I reasoned from this that if the magisterium taught it, then it must be true and the Bible would not contradict it. If it did, the whole thing collapsed and I might have to consider becoming a member of the Eastern Orthodox Church, which doesn’t recognize the Roman pontiff. Still not able to disprove my thesis, I conceded these points. After accepting the magisterium and papal infallibility, I had to deal with two Marian doctrines, the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption. 

From my study of Catholic dogma, I learned that Mary, the Mother of God, came into this world without sin. This seemed to contradict Romans 3:23 (“[S]ince all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, they are justified by his grace as a gift”). Catholics do not believe that because Mary was without original sin she had no need for redemption by Christ’s death on the cross. Mary’s redemption, they profess, happened then and there at Calvary just like mine except that, by a special grace given by God, sin did not accompany her into her birth, and she lived her life by God’s grace without sin. (Thus she overcame Satan—see Genesis 3:15 and Revelation 12.)

Could God have pre-redeemed her? Could his grace have shielded her from sin from the moment of birth throughout her life? Is not the possibility of a moment-by-moment life of grace, free from sin, taught by the Bible? Could Mary, by God’s grace, actually have achieved this? I recalled Elizabeth’s exclamation: “Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb” (Luke 1:42).

This dogmatic teaching seemed too fantastic. Admittedly, since he is omnipotent God can do anything. But this? Maybe the Bible could help me here, I thought. If I could find an example of a another human being besides Mary coming into the world without sin, then my current understanding of Romans 3:23 would have to give way. Immediately three examples came to mind: Adam, Eve, and Jesus Christ himself. All three came into this world without sin. (It is true that Adam and Eve later went on to sin, but they did not have to. They could have continued to live without sin if they obeyed God and trusted him fully.) The “all” in Romans 3:23 did not include Jesus; therefore, conceivably, it could also not include Mary.

“Well, this is not a great argument,” I thought, “but at least it is not falsified by the Bible.” I figured that I’d go along with the Catholic teaching on this point aswell and see where it led.

It led immediately to a big problem for me. If Mary was without sin, then her physical death didn’t make sense. Death is the result of sin; the Bible is clear on this point (Rom. 6:23). If Mary was redeemed before her birth and lived her life without sin, why should she die?

As I studied further I found that among Catholics there seemed to be room for debate as to whether or not Mary did in fact die an earthly death. Consulting a Catholic catechism, I found a curious footnote on this point: “Regarding the question of Mary’s death, and being fair to Pope Pius XII [who defined the dogma of the Assumption of Mary], the question of Mary’s death is open, but we believe that she died.” Pius XII, in defining the dogma of the Assumption of Mary, stated: “The Immaculate Mother of God, ever Virgin, after her life on earth, was assumed body and soul, to the glory of heaven” (Munificentissimus Deus, 1950). That’s it. The dogma does not teach that Mary died a physical death, even though most theologians believe that she did die.

It seemed to me that if the doctrine of the Assumption was false, then Mary’s earthly tomb would be located somewhere, and it would be equally as famous as the empty tomb of Jesus. Historically, though, there is no tomb. In addition, there are no religious relics of the bones of Mary anywhere to be found, unlike the other early saints of Christendom. One would reason that Mary would be the second-most well-known historical figure of early Christianity next to Jesus, and, if she had died anywhere on the planet and not been assumed into heaven, then some credible record of the whereabouts of her entombed body would have been passed down through the ages. But there are none.

At this point the Scripture began to take on a new meaning . . . a distinctly Catholic meaning. 

Catholics believe in transubstantiation, the physical change of the elements of bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus Christ, leaving just the appearance of bread and wine. Pretty fantastic, I thought. I had always believed, like most Protestants, that the bread and wine were just symbols. Now I had to look at the dogma of transubstantiation.

Jesus said, “You search the scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness to me; yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life” (John 5:39–40). I had spent eighteen years believing in the Protestant interpretation and now I was challenged with a new interpretation. The question of John 6 and Jesus as the bread of life and the Catholic interpretation of transubstantiation filled my mind. What did Scripture testify concerning this? “Truly, truly, 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). This is the crux of the matter: Was Jesus just speaking metaphorically or did he literally mean what he said?

I had been taught as a Protestant that Jesus was referring to his death on the cross. I began to rethink this interpretation. The text of John 6 testifies that the hearers of Jesus’ word understood him as meaning his literal flesh and blood: “Many of his disciples, when they heard it, said, ‘This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?’” (John 6:60). Jesus answered, “Do you take offense at this?” (John 6:61). What was the consequence of hearing and understanding Jesus’ statement about eating his flesh and drinking his blood? “After this, many of his disciples drew back and no longer went about with him” (John 6:66). Jesus never tried to give any other meaning to his words. In fact, he turned to his twelve disciples and said, “Will you also go away?” (John 6:67).

His statement was so difficult precisely because of the literal meaning it conveyed. The hearers—both the disciples who left and those who stayed—understood Jesus rightly. It seemed to me that the Catholic interpretation was more in line with the text, and even many Protestant theologians agreed. Either Jesus meant what he said, or he meant something else that we never can be sure of. It was just this uncertainty of interpretation that gave me problems in the first place.

How could the Holy Spirit teach us if we couldn’t be sure of the interpretation? The Holy Spirit can’t teach us if each person is the sole arbiter for himself for the correct interpretation of Scripture. Sola scriptura is false. It has always been something in conjunction with Scripture. For Protestants, it is Scripture plus the individual; for Catholics, it is Scripture plus the magisterium. It has never been sola scriptura. Scripture stands mute without someone to interpret. It is either the individual or a church. If a church, then which church? There was only one answer that made sense to me historically and fit the facts: the Catholic Church.

I am a Catholic now. I never could go back to Protestantism. I believe that Jesus is teaching us by the Holy Spirit through the Church; that there is only one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic Church that is the pillar and foundation of truth; that disagreements about Scripture are settled in the Church; that there is only one authoritative teaching body; that the Church is not ours to make as we will, but it is God’s to have made as he saw fit.

Christian unity exists here and now, and it is only in the Catholic Church that this unity exists today. This point was brought home to me when I began first going to Mass at Our Lady of Peace in Santa Clara, California. One day I had arrived early, and as I prepared myself quietly for Mass, I watched people come in. Here it was, noon in Silicon Valley, and people from all walks of life were coming humbly to worship and partake of the Body of the Lord. I was struck by the thought just then: “All over the world people are coming to noontime Mass, to hear the same Sscripture and eat the same food—Jesus’ flesh, his Body—and this has been the same for nearly two thousand years. Unity in truth, doctrine, and worship does physically exist in the Body of Christ today.” I wept.

I began to hunger for the Eucharist, to have Jesus in me, literally. At Easter 1992 that hunger was finally satisfied. I, my wife, and five of my six children received the sacrament of the Eucharist for the first time.

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