Paul was always subject to the Church. If God promised to protect the Church from teaching error, where does that leave you?H. Richard said:
It is incorrect to regard St. Paul as some kind of spiritual “lone ranger,” on his own with no particular ecclesiastical allegiance, since he was commissioned by Jesus Himself as an Apostle.
- In his very conversion experience, Jesus informed Paul that he would be told what to do (Acts 9:6; cf. 9:17).
- He went to see St. Peter in Jerusalem for fifteen days in order to be confirmed in his calling (Galatians 1:18),
- and fourteen years later was commissioned by Peter, James, and John (Galatians 2:1-2,9).
- He was also sent out by the Church at Antioch (Acts 13:1-4), which was in contact with the Church at Jerusalem (Acts 11:19-27).
- Later on, Paul reported back to Antioch (Acts 14:26-28).
- Acts 15:2 states: “. . . Paul and Barnabas and some of the others were appointed to go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and the elders about this question.”
- The next verse refers to Paul and Barnabas “being sent on their way by the church.”
- Paul did what he was told to do by the Jerusalem Council (where he played no huge role),
- and Paul and Barnabas were sent off, or commissioned by the council (15:22-27), and shared its binding teachings in their missionary journeys: “. . . delivered to them for observance the decisions which had been reached by the apostles and elders who were at Jerusalem” (Acts 16:4).
Furthermore, Paul appears to be passing on his office to Timothy (1 Tim 6:20; 2 Tim 1:6, 13-14; 2 Tim 4:1-6), and tells him to pass his office along, in turn (2 Tim 2:1-2) which would be another indication of apostolic succession in the Bible.
The attempt to pretend that St. Paul was somehow on his own, disconnected to the institutional Church, has always failed, as unbiblical. Protestant frown upon institutions, but we Catholics rather like the Church that Jesus Christ set up, initially led by St. Peter.
You’re trying to set the Bible against the Church, which is typical Protestant methodology, and ultra-unbiblical. The Bible never does that. I’ve already given the example of the Jerusalem Council, which plainly shows the infallibility of the Church.
The Bible repeatedly teaches that the Church is indefectible; therefore, the hypothetical of rejecting the (one true, historic) Church, as supposedly going against the Bible, is impossible according to the Bible. It is not a situation that would ever come up, because of God’s promised protection.
What the Bible says is to reject those who cause divisions, which is the very essence of the onset of Protestantism: schism, sectarianism, and division. It is Protestantism that departed from the historic Church, which is indefectible and infallible (see also 1 Tim 3:15).
The one true Church is and always will be in harmony with God’s inspired revelation, the Bible; yes. Thus, we reject any form of Protestantism, because they fail this test. It’s not a matter of one thing being “under” the other. All of that is the invention of the 16th century and the biblically bankrupt and meaningless notion of sola Scriptura. The Bible presents Scripture-Tradition-Church as a “three-legged stool”: the rule of faith. All are in harmony; all work together.
And is any church and any teacher to be rejected who strays from God’s words, as Paul commands? That is the fundamental issue.
Sure; this is why we reject any form of Protestantism, because all fail the test of allegiance to God’s Word in Holy Scripture, and the historical pedigree that the fathers always taught was necessary. Every heretic in the history of the world thumbed their nose at the institutional Church and went by Scripture alone. It is the heretical worldview to do so, precisely because they know they can’t prove that their views were passed down through history in an unbroken succession.
Therefore, heresies and Protestantism either had to play games with history in order to pretend that it fits with their views, or ignore it altogether.
I gave several passages showing that Paul was under Church authority, in various ways. It is the pitting of the ultimate source against the secondary, human source (the Church) which is the problem in your approach and that of Protestantism in general. You guys don’t like human, institutional authority and don’t have enough faith to believe that God can and does preserve it, so you try to undermine it by fallacious arguments, as presently.
No doubt you aren’t even aware that you are doing it. To do this is automatic in Protestantism; it’s like breathing. It’s like the fish that doesn’t know it’s in water. It all comes from the rejection of the infallibility of the Church (which is one thing that sola Scriptura always entails).
In Galatians 1-2 Paul is referring to his initial conversion. But even then God made sure there was someone else around, to urge him to get baptized (Ananias: Acts 22:12-16). He received the revelation initially and then sought to have it confirmed by Church authority (Gal 2:1-2); then his authority was accepted or verified by James, Peter, and John (Gal 2:9).
So we see that the Bible doesn’t pit the divine call directly from God, against Church authority, as you do. You do it because it is Protestant man-made tradition to do so; period, and because the Protestant has to always undermine the authority of the Church, and the Catholic Church, in order to bolster his own anti-system, that was set up against the historic Church in the first place.
We believe in faith that the Church is infallible and indefectible, based on many biblical indications. It is theoretically possible (speaking in terms of philosophy or epistemology) that the Church could stray and have to be rejected, but the Bible rules that out. We believe in faith that it has not and will not.
Protestants don’t have enough faith to believe that God could preserve an infallible Church, even though they can muster up even more faith than that, which is required to believe in an infallible Bible written by a bunch of sinners and hypocrites.
We simply have more faith than you guys do. It’s a supernatural gift. We believe that the authoritative Church is also a key part of God’s plan to save the souls of men. We follow the model of the Jerusalem Council, whereas you guys reject that or ignore it, because it doesn’t fit in with the man-made tradition of Protestantism and a supposedly non-infallible Church.
What is straying from God’s word is the very notion of denominationalism, which is always considered an outrage in the NT; the rejection of apostolic succession, and of, e.g., bishops (plainly present in the NT), or belief in a non-literal Eucharist, or a baptism that doesn’t regenerate, or sola Scriptura or faith alone (separation of justification and sanctification): all the host of unbiblical teachings that are in Protestantism. That’s why I left the system; wanting to follow biblical teachings more closely, traditional moral teachings, and the historic Christian Church.
The Bible teaches that the true Church is infallible and indefectible. That is a promise of God. One either accepts it in faith or not. That is the task: does one accept all of what the Bible teaches, or just selectively, with man-made traditions added to it?
There is such a thing as a false church and false gospel, that must be rejected, and there is also the one true Church that cannot fail doctrinally, based on God’s protection. You assert the first thing but reject the second, which is your difficulty (accepting one part of the Bible but not another). We accept both things and have no difficulty.
Dialogue With a Calvinist
