The Faith of Our Fathers. Gibbons James
The Church And The Bible.
The Church, as we have just seen, is the only Divinely constituted teacher of Revelation.
Now, the Scripture is the great depository of the Word of God. Therefore, the Church is the divinely appointed Custodian and Interpreter of the Bible. For, her office of infallible Guide were superfluous if each individual could interpret the Bible for himself.
That God never intended the Bible to be the Christian's rule of faith, independently of the living authority of the Church, will be the subject of this chapter.
No nation ever had a greater veneration for the Bible than the Jewish people. The Holy Scripture was their pride and their glory. It was their national song in time of peace; it was their meditation and solace in time of tribulation and exile. And yet the Jews never dreamed of settling their religious controversies by a private appeal to the Word of God.
Whenever any religious dispute arose among the people it was decided by the High Priest and the Sanhedrim, which was a council consisting of seventy-two civil and ecclesiastical judges. The sentence of the High Priest and of his associate judges was to be obeyed under penalty of [pg 078] death. “If thou perceive,” says the Book of Deuteronomy, “that there be among you a hard and doubtful matter in judgment, … thou shalt come to the Priests of the Levitical race and to the judge, … and they shall show thee the truth of the judgment. … And thou shalt follow their sentence; neither shalt thou decline to the right hand, nor to the left. … But he that will … refuse to obey the commandment of the Priest, … that man shall die, and thou shalt take away the evil from Israel.”135
From this clear sentence you perceive that God does not refer the Jews for the settlement of their controversies to the letter of the law, but to the living authority of the ecclesiastical tribunal which He had expressly established for that purpose.
Hence, the Priests were required to be intimately acquainted with the Sacred Scripture, because they were the depositaries of God's law, and were its expounders to the people. “The lips of the Priest shall keep knowledge, and they (the people) shall seek the law at his mouth, because he is the angel (or messenger) of the Lord of hosts.”136
And, in fact, very few of the children of Israel, except the Priests, were in possession of the Divine Books. The holy manuscript was rare and precious. And what provision did God make that all the people might have an opportunity of hearing the Scriptures? Did He command the sacred volume to be multiplied? No; but He ordered the Priests and the Levites to be distributed through the different tribes, that they might always be at hand to instruct the people in the knowledge of the law. The Jews were even forbidden [pg 079] to read certain portions of the Scripture till they had reached the age of thirty years.
Does our Savior reverse this state of things when He comes on earth? Does He tell the Jews to be their own guides in the study of the Scriptures? By no means; but He commands them to obey their constituted teachers, no matter how disedifying might be their private lives. “Then said Jesus to the multitudes and to His disciples: The Scribes and Pharisees sit upon the chair of Moses. All things therefore whatsoever they shall say to you, observe and do.”137
It is true our Lord said on one occasion “Search the Scriptures, for you think in them to have life everlasting, and the same are they that give testimony to Me.”138 This passage is triumphantly quoted as an argument in favor of private interpretation. But it proves nothing of the kind. Many learned commentators, ancient and modern, express the verb in the indicative mood: “Ye search the Scriptures.” At all events, our Savior speaks here only of the Old Testament because the New Testament was not yet written. He addresses not the multitude, but the Pharisees, who were the teachers of the law, and reproaches them for not admitting His Divinity. “You have,” He says, “the Scriptures in your hands; why then do you not recognize Me as the Messiah, since they give testimony that I am the Son of God?” He refers them to the Scriptures for a proof of His Divinity, not as to a source from which they were to derive all knowledge in regard to the truths of revelation.
Besides, He did not rest the proof of His Divinity upon the sole testimony of Scripture. For He showed it [pg 080] First—By the testimony of John the Baptist (v. 33), who had said, “Behold the Lamb of God; behold Him who taketh away the sins of the world.” See also John i. 34.
Second—By the miracles which He wrought (v. 36).
Third—By the testimony of the Father (v. 37), when He said: “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye Him.” Matt. iii. 16; Luke ix. 35.
Fourth—By the Scriptures of the Old Testament; as if He were to say, “If you are unwilling to receive these three proofs, though they are most cogent, at least you cannot reject the testimony of the Scriptures, of which you boast so much.”
Finally, in this very passage our Lord is explaining the sense of Holy Writ; therefore, its true meaning is not left to the private interpretation of every chance reader. It is, therefore, a grave perversion of the sacred text to adduce these words in vindication of private interpretation of the Scriptures.
But when our Redeemer abolished the Old Law and established His Church, did He intend that His Gospel should be disseminated by the circulation of the Bible, or by the living voice of His disciples? This is a vital question. I answer most emphatically, that it was by preaching alone that He intended to convert the nations, and by preaching alone they were converted. No nation has ever yet been converted by the agency of Bible Associations.
Jesus Himself never wrote a line of Scripture. He never once commanded His Apostles to write a word,139 or even to circulate the Scriptures already [pg 081] existing. When He sends them on their Apostolic errand, He says: “Go teach all nations.”140 “Preach the Gospel to every creature.”141 “He that heareth you heareth Me.”142 And we find the Apostles acting in strict accordance with these instructions.
Of the twelve Apostles, the seventy-two disciples, and early followers of our Lord only eight have left us any of their sacred writings. And the Gospels and Epistles were addressed to particular persons or particular churches. They were written on the occasion of some emergency, just as Bishops issue Pastoral letters to correct abuses which may spring up in the Church, or to lay down some rules of conduct for the faithful. The Apostles are never reported to have circulated a single volume of the Holy Scripture, but “they going forth, preached everywhere, the Lord co-operating with them.”143
Thus we see that in the Old and the New Dispensation the people were to be guided by a living authority, and not by their private interpretation of the Scriptures.
Indeed, until the religious revolution of the sixteenth century, it was a thing unheard of from the beginning of the world, that people should be governed by the dead letter of the law either in civil or ecclesiastical affairs. How are your civil affairs regulated in this State, for instance? Certainly not in accordance with your personal interpretation of the laws of Virginia, but in accordance with decisions which are rendered by the constituted judges of the State.
Now what the civil code is to the citizen, the Scripture is to the Christian. The Word of God, [pg 082] as well as the civil law, must have an interpreter, by whose decision we are obliged to abide.
We often hear the shibboleth: “The Bible, and the Bible only, must be your guide.” Why, then, do you go to the useless expense of building fine churches and Sabbath-schools? What is the use of your preaching sermons and catechizing the young, if the Bible at home is a sufficient guide for your people? The fact is, you reverend gentlemen contradict in practice what you so vehemently advance in theory. Do not tell me that the Bible is all-sufficient; or, if you believe it is self-sufficient, cease your instructions. Stand not between the people and the Scriptures.
I will address myself now in a friendly spirit to a non-Catholic, and will proceed to show him that he cannot consistently accept the silent Book of Scripture as his sufficient guide.
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