Why doesn’t the Church infallibly interpret every verse of Scripture?

rotes­tant apol­o­gists will often pose this ques­tion to Catholics: If your Church is real­ly infal­li­ble, why does it not just inter­pret every last verse of Scrip­ture for us? It has had two thou­sand years to do so. If it can­not do so, what good is infal­li­bil­i­ty to me?

Most often they will raise this ques­tion in the con­text of a dis­cus­sion of author­i­ty. The Catholic will say, “With­out the infal­li­ble Mag­is­teri­um as a guide, all you have is your pri­vate inter­pre­ta­tion of Scrip­ture. That is why there are so many count­less denom­i­na­tions out there.”

The Protes­tant will counter, “Unless your Church will inter­pret every verse of Scrip­ture for you, you have no more than your pri­vate inter­pre­ta­tion, either.”

It seems to be an impasse. How does one work through it?

Begging the Question

The first thing to note is that the ques­tion only makes sense if you assume sola scrip­tura as your start­ing point. For a Protes­tant, the Bible alone is the sole infal­li­ble rule of faith; unless the Bible says it, I need not believe it. It is a self-con­tra­dic­to­ry doc­trine, of course; the Bible nowhere teach­es sola scrip­tura, so a Protes­tant has only his tra­di­tion by which to defend it. But that does not need to delay us for our pur­pose here.

The real point, in this con­text, is this: If, for a Protes­tant, the Bible is the only rule of faith and prac­tice, then the only pos­si­ble rea­son to have an infal­li­ble Mag­is­teri­um is to give him the defin­i­tive inter­pre­ta­tion of the whole Bible. Once it has done that, it can step aside and leave him with his Bible alone. (And pos­si­bly a tree.)

In oth­er words, you can only ask the ques­tion if you assume that sola scrip­tura is true. You beg the ques­tion. And in doing that, you mis­take what the real pur­pose of the Mag­is­teri­um is.

Why Have a Magisterium?

But we can find the answer to the ques­tion in a few relat­ed vers­es of Scrip­ture. The first is John 16:13. In that verse, Christ is speak­ing to his dis­ci­ples after the Res­ur­rec­tion:

When the Spir­it of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own author­i­ty, but what­ev­er he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.

The sec­ond is in 1 Corinthi­ans 1:10L “I appeal to you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree and that there be no dis­sen­sions among you, but that you be unit­ed in the same mind and the same judg­ment.”

Final­ly, the third is 1 Tim­o­thy 3:15: “If I am delayed, you may know how one ought to behave in the house­hold of God, which is the church of the liv­ing God, the pil­lar and bul­wark of the truth.”

There is noth­ing in these pas­sages, or any­where else in the Bible, about the Holy Spir­it guid­ing the apos­tles into the right inter­pre­ta­tion of a par­tic­u­lar set of texts. Instead, St. Paul iden­ti­fies the Church—not the Bible but the Church—as “the pil­lar and bul­wark of the truth.” And the pur­pose of the Church is to

• main­tain the uni­ty of the faith (1 Cor. 1:10),
• main­tain the full deposit of revealed truth (John 16:13)

I will add a third, and that is to address new moral ques­tions that could not have been antic­i­pat­ed by the writ­ers of the Bible. One obvi­ous exam­ple is embry­on­ic stem cell research.

It is for these reasons—to iden­ti­fy what is true and what is false and so main­tain the uni­ty of Christians—that God gave us the Mag­is­teri­um. It was not to pro­vide an infal­li­ble inter­pre­ta­tion of every verse of Scrip­ture, or answer every ques­tion that could pos­si­bly be raised.

How Catholics Read the Bible

So where does the Bible fit in? Are Catholics sim­ply left to their own wits, no dif­fer­ent than Protes­tants?

In fact, not at all. It is not a choice between total anar­chy of inter­pre­ta­tion and rigid con­for­mi­ty to a sin­gle infal­li­ble hermeneu­tic. The Church allows Catholic read­ers of Scrip­ture lat­i­tude and free­dom to meet the text with their own intel­li­gence and inquiry, while set­ting lim­its to avoid anar­chy. We are not, in fact, left to our own pri­vate inter­pre­ta­tion. Though he set us in a large room, God also “set bars and doors” (Job 38:10).

The “bars and doors” are found in the deposit of faith. These lim­its are found in what the Church teach­es us to have been revealed by God. A Catholic may not read any verse of Scrip­ture in such a way as to con­tra­dict either the teach­ing of the Church or some oth­er verse of Scrip­ture. I must read Scrip­ture in the light of Church teach­ing, not in oppo­si­tion to it.

The Catholic approach is thus free­dom, with lim­its. In fact, it is in Protes­tantism where there is anar­chy. There, I may inter­pret any verse any way I like and still be a good Protes­tant. If I run afoul of my denom­i­na­tion, I can join or start anoth­er. Noth­ing stops me. But the alter­na­tive to anar­chy is not despo­tism.

In a few cas­es the Church does give us an author­i­ta­tive inter­pre­ta­tion of a verse of Scrip­ture. Matthew 16:18 tells us that Christ chose St. Peter as the first pope—the rock upon which he would build the Church. 1 Corinthi­ans 11:27–29 tells us that those in a state of unre­pen­tant mor­tal sin are not to receive the Holy Eucharist. Mark 10:6 tells us that mar­riage is between one man and one woman. No Catholic may dis­sent from these inter­pre­ta­tions.

But the num­ber of vers­es about which that may be said are few, and the rea­son is that it is not the pur­pose of the Mag­is­teri­um to put us in chains. It is, rather, the pur­pose of the Mag­is­teri­um to keep us with­in bound­aries so that we do not wan­der off and get lost or hurt. God did not mean to bind our free­dom, or our intel­lect, only to ensure that they do not turn vagabond.

That is why he gave us a Mag­is­teri­um, but not one that tells us every last thing and detail.

Orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished at Catholic Stand, Octo­ber 23, 2015.